aFrInaTi0n

thanks for verfication. @anyUser

I will need to write me a second little scraper to get me the details of the folders.. Are pictures also able to have a description? I think I haven't seen that so far..

Little update from my side: I finished with mirroring all images in their original structure of "user/folder/to/image.png". Some Stats: Grabbed files: 4682606 / Total Size: 2030 GB ("there are ~300.000 files diff from the homepages counter of public files" -> need to doublecheck this) Next steps: [Finished] Mirroring all images from public hosted brickshelf files [Started] Creating thumbs of all pictures (est time: 1 day) Creating zips on userlevel (est. time: 2-3 days) Host a simple browsable brickshelf-mirror for people with no IT skills at all being able to browse through the directories & pull their user folders with a 1-click (not same scripts / looks , but same content structure) (Hint: I am doing this as a private entitity on my private server, from the law perspective it may not be 100% clean. But I think I will take the risk as all pictures were uploaded originally with the intention on sharing them in the internet by the owners - as long as I am not earning money with the hosting and not claiming one of the pictures would be mine I hope nobody would be that mad at me - anyways if I bring up such mirror I will put a contact mail address in for legal claims.) Other question I have: How important are the folder descriptions and keywords (and view counts of files) considered? Did not consider those yet..

Thanks for the headsup for bricksafe, Nathan! And thanks again for your earlier you creating bricksafe. I am grateful since years as I was guessing you are cross-financing it from rebrickable. Thanks for all your wonderful service (even if discontinued, but I think we all understand the reasons)!

I like the discontinued Star Trek line of MegaBlocks - their figures are very detail-printed and you can really create a TNG scene with it.. other aestethics than with minifigs, but in (my very personal) opinion they are great.. I would hope they gather themself a new license from CBS... 🫡🙄 (@mods, it is original LEGO bricks shown + Mattel license covered non-minifig figures, so hope the pictures are ok in the spoiler box - if not, please moderate me!) (And yes, Riker was never with the away team to save Picard from the borg - but that one head from a Call of Duty set was just having the 1:1 fit to create a Riker figure, could not resist to it.. )

I wasn't thinking of releasing something. :D But nevertheless, the question is: What would you need? Delivering your username and the script downloading everything beneath which is available to the public? @Lipko Thanks will have a look, I just played around with it yesterday, but still interesting it may not work out as expected to everybody :D

I set up some open source project what allows for exactly what I was explaining. An example, the same picture: 1. with the shortening service (https://yourls.reum.it/9ri3f): 2. Without the shortening service (original picture URL https://bricksafe.com/cache/aFrInaTi0n/temp/propellers-difference.png/250x250.png): So "using such would make no difference at all for the browsers".

I am an IT guy, I'll trz to explain as best as I can.. basically the service would create some link with a crafted token, like https://imagemapping.service/?=[very long cryptic token] If this link would be included in a forum like Eurobricks & a user opens the topic, the browser will try to load from the cryptic URL, but instead of directly getting the image contents sent back, the service will give a redirect "sorry my browser friend, the image is nbot really here, you need to do a knock knock on the following URL: https://original.domain.com/link/to/your/shared/picture.png" the browser will say "ah nice dude, thanks will do so" and the picture will then just be loaded from the original URL. such redirects can happening in milliseconds.. As I never dived into this topic before, I just asked ChatGPT:

What would be a nice thing for users to have: A service inbetween which just would just do allow for update mappings of original files with whatever picked / used backend being used, may it be Google, MS or any other of the big ones cloudedrives or via URLs (for brickshelf, bricksafe or such) and create fixed URLs via the service which can be changed to other "backends". With such service any user could easily move his contents to another platform and just use the service to configure the links to the changed backend-system. Also such service would create not much costs at all, as those URL-Mapping-Rewrites cost basically nothing in comparison to huge pictures..

I am no developer of the vendor, so I can't tell what there reasons were, if any..

Ok, nice to know - then excuse my wrong / outdated knowledge!

We are also relying on the product from the vendor. Your request could possibly be done, but we have another topic in the pipeline, which is another major upgrade to the latest product version. When this happens we would like to also move to the new major release as soon as possible to take this as our starting point for working on UI Improvements. Background is, their new major release has been completely restructured and all old version themes may not work out anymore - that is why we don't want to create us doubled efforts in the current latest and the to be released one.. sorry for the inconvenciences though! I can't really promise anything, but I may take a look - if it may be an easy "swap line x with line y", then I may report back - if you haven't heard anything from me by end of February, please don't hesitate to send me another friendly reminder of me wanting to do so.. I as a user of Eurobricks.com would also wish some times to have better possibilities to get to the right contents faster, I don't like it that much that all the elements are eating up very much space of the viewport, so even if one is in a forum view, it may just show the topmost 2-3 topics & one directly needs to tab-scroll to get deeper... But I guess the same reasons for us waiting for the big new major release may apply here. If interested, you can take a glimpse at the vendor's preview board they created for showcase reasons: https://preview.invisionalpha5.com/

I am no fan of Discord at all - my spidersense tells me they got too much power by too many people. Also the dll hooks directly working and without even asking the user before, for e.g. "recognizing played games from steam and other locally installed platforms" is concerning me a bit - did they also not tell us they have a DLL hook into our chrome browsers and basically have access to all our sensitive data already?! Funny incident last week when I sent a link to a non-public topic in discord and the preview window was able to read the fucking contents - so I am really concerned (but also still using their service, so I am part of the issue!).

I have the big fear of everybody now trying to pull ALL files & their service getting a huge price increase for a raised traffic. What I already got from the communications with them is, they are in activly in search for a new owner who has a strong interest to keep the site and all the historical assets in place. Whoever that may be has to invest time and money - and there may be even more hidden & dangerous topics like securing the platform with a new valid TOS and other legal notices may create the need for the owner to have that verified by a lawyer as the owner may otherwise be held responsible for sharing inapprobiate content from the platform to the internet. Also the owner needs to think of some approval procedure for having some security layer in to not directly publish every uploaded image - this may need additional efforts in time or money to develop such (AI is no valid argument here, as there are some projects out there to cover the functionality, still they need to be implemented into the solution). also one would need to constantly monitor the platform and do security fixes / prevent spammers from missusing the service, etc... Th point I would like to make is: I think plenty of people may take the thought of "buying and running brickshelf" a little bit too easy and not thinking of the legal possibilities which may arise in worst cases - as long as one has no solutions for those I would highly recommend to think again about those parts and really consider if one is willing to take all the legal and financial risks. Additionally the issue is not solved but just shifted as the new owner will die one day in the future - so as mentioned already I think such sites / or interested buyers should really think about creating an association and let it own the site. This would help to share the accountability, costs and efforts.

It is how capitalism works, I reckon..

@Good old Lego builder yes unfortunately the vendor of the forum seem to have removed that.

I find LDraw quite amazing for what they achieved, to quote: via https://www.ldraw.org/article/283.html - such would be ideal in my opinion to be considered from the people owning any site which got important over time.

Wonderful vessel - gives me vibes of the old childhood days. I would also love for them bringing some of the old themes.. trans neon green esp. would be a nice thing for a project I still have in mind :D

I got a mail reply with a roughly estimated - not final - pricetag. Not disclosing any details here, but my feeling is it could be a rough commitment for a single person already. Think they may answer your mail aswell - in my answer it was included that plenty of people messaged them already. So I have the feeling they are in search for an option which would allow the service to remain online.

I am very happy finally we are getting an update for the Buwizz app with some fixes, from their email-Newsletter: So another project I need to schedule for the upcoming weekend. As I am an not always easy customer: I am very happy that we can finally see some works being put again in improving the app experience - Kudos and love!

@Berthil live and let live is the thing I am saying to myself as I feel getting into the period of life where one has "more than enough" expectations. And as those are emotionally bound to the self there may be a strong bias for those whenever we are approached with new possibilities. At least this helps me personally to let go and not concern myself any further.. not always working though.. xD *still learning Oh interesting, is the cookie not working, as you mention '"you need to set it every day again"? if so I may have screwed up in another code place.. :o "working with experts once"

Yeah, to be honest as I am a still very junior member by joining, I think Eurobricks is an adult community and also the community may have its own preferences which are silently agreed up on just the usage of the platform - I guess young people may be pity with us... But shall they have their fun at TikTok, Instagram and whatnot *giggle - finally starting to feel old :D

@SpacePolice89ah dang, where is the like button so I can easily agree on your posting?!

I am no native english speaking so excuse my poorly written question for ChatGPT, but here is it's answer: So I think there would be ways, but think some lawyer may be better consulted for both parties knowing everything is well defined & all surrounding parameters would fit - but doing it right would directly cost money.. *sigh I think we can agree on such change would be no easy thing, like just signing a 2-line contract on a kitchen table...

@MAB I am no lawyer & I think also national laws may be different - but it should be no issue if the owner of a platform changes, when the platform stays the same. So all previous agreements are still in place - from my newbish non-professional opinion at least that should be the case! :D Just think of Twitter/X as an example of changed ownerships & just going on with the regular business.. So yes, all cases need to be put into contracts between the former and the new owner - but if that is covered I wouldn't see esp this as a big stopper.