is that a personal preference? whether it is or isn't, i get where you're coming from. i try to get and use fully open sourced applications whenever i can but there are instances where i find a superior product that is closed sourced. in these cases i do my best to learn about the company, who operates it, their background, parent and sub structure etc. to some extent, depending on "the smell test". i really believe that Syncback is really and truly something great. even if you don't use it, it's always worth a recommendation to someone else, especially if that someone else is not very computer literate. for someone of your calibre you, you'll manage just fine with Syncthing, no doubt about it.

I agree, especially if it is cloud sourced, like this one is.. but I wouldn't say no to a local AI assistant similar to the Zettlab one which would be really helpful with my large Photos library, but also to perform tasks like installing Docker apps rather than me having to do it via Docker Compose, but I don't think we're quite there yet. Synology Photos is somewhat AI, you can ask it to search for certain people (if you have tagged them and it will attempt to match similar photos to the person) and if you put a search term in for "cars" for example, it will show you all photos with a car.

I doubt that Google will keep the same price... it may go up from that list published.