Yeah, it does feel like that. I wanted to backup my photos but eventually realized that instead of just uploading them to a NAS, I could use something like Immich to get a nice gallery. Immich even calls uploading from your phone backup. So my photos are backed up now, right? Nope, you have to back up Immich too. Ah, ok, it has these database backups, that’s fine right? Nope, that’s just a db dump, you need to backup the actual photo files. Ok, I will setup RAID so they are mirrored to another hard drive. RAID IS NOT BACKUP!!! Ok, fine, I will rsync them to another external hard drive periodically. Nope, what if your place burns down? Ok, I will also spend 13€ a month on a Hetzner storage box and upload an encrypted backup there with borg. Where are you storing your borg passphrase? Fine, I’ll write it down on a piece of paper and give that to my parents to store at their house. Am I done? Is that 3-2-1? Yeah, but it’s not automated, you should have a backup server. Aaaahhhhhh!

Because software allows you to turn it on remote or automatically according to some logic (scheduling, presence detection etc.) rather than having to manually connect a circuit at a predefined physical location.