Lest we forget: this is the company that let anyone on the internet log in to any Dropbox user account they wanted with any arbitrary value for the password.
https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2011/06/yesterdays-authent...
Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
21–30 of 95 posts
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#22[deleted]
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#23Thanks to dropbox inifit I discovered Infinit.sh - http://infinit.sh/ which I got really excited about. I wonder what is their experience with using FUSE and DOKANY..
I have a similar success story. Thanks to Dropbox spamming me with "OMG UPGRADE!" every time I clicked anything, I found out about SyncThing (specifically SyncTrayzor for Windows). Thanks, Dropbox!
Thanks for the heads up on SyncTrayzor! I was running syncthing manually every time I log in.
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#24If you want to try out a FUSE-style Dropbox filesystem, I write one. It's available on Mac, Windows and soon Linux. [shameless plug]
The bit I don't quite understand about Project infinite is that you still have to manually decide what gets sync'd or not. It's also not a network volume, so things like virus scanners or search indexers can just page in-data? And if you want to offload data, you just move it from one folder to another which still eats space.
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, we should be moving in the opposite direction: make as much software as possible user-space and sandboxed. I assume a party as large as Dropbox can request Apple to extend the APIs where necessary?
> I assume a party as large as Dropbox can request Apple to extend the APIs where necessary? As large? Dropbox is like a fly to Apple. Not to mention competitors. And they haven't budged for much larger parties. So, unless it's something that Apple intends to do anyway, Dropbox's request will don't have much success.
> So, unless it's something that Apple intends to do anyway, Dropbox's request will don't have much success.
You'd think Apple would be happy to add extensions they themselves could use in the future to replace Dropbox with their own iCloud extension.
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I assume a party as large as Dropbox can request Apple to extend the APIs where necessary? As large? Dropbox is like a fly to Apple. Not to mention competitors. And they haven't budged for much larger parties. So, unless it's something that Apple intends to do anyway, Dropbox's request will don't have much success.
> So, unless it's something that Apple intends to do anyway, Dropbox's request will don't have much success. You'd think Apple would be happy to add extensions they themselves could use in the future to replace Dropbox with their own iCloud extension.
On the contrary. Why would they make them open in that case?
They could just add them internally and use them for an "upgraded Finder/iCloud" and not expose them for Dropbox to use.
Implementing them for a competitor so that they "can use them themselves in the future" doesn't make sense as a strategy -- except if they are too benevolent.
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I assume a party as large as Dropbox can request Apple to extend the APIs where necessary? As large? Dropbox is like a fly to Apple. Not to mention competitors. And they haven't budged for much larger parties. So, unless it's something that Apple intends to do anyway, Dropbox's request will don't have much success.
> So, unless it's something that Apple intends to do anyway, Dropbox's request will don't have much success. You'd think Apple would be happy to add extensions they themselves could use in the future to replace Dropbox with their own iCloud extension.
Why when they can just keep it a private API only usable by iCloud?
OS X is full of functionality unavailable to 3rd party apps (I'm looking at you Power Nap! -_-) and expecting decent behaviour from them is optimistic.
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#28If you want to try out a FUSE-style Dropbox filesystem, I write one. It's available on Mac, Windows and soon Linux. [shameless plug] http://www.expandrive.com The bit I don't quite understand about Project infinite is that you still have to manually decide what gets sync'd or not. It's also not a network volume, so things like virus scanners or search indexers can just page in-data? And if you want to offload data, y…
I've looked at your software a few times before. I've also tried to reach out to you before. To date I've never seen a response from you and I've moved on. I'm not stoked to see you're available to drop your product name in a thread about another company but inquiries to your own go unanswered.
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#29Lest we forget: this is the company that let anyone on the internet log in to any Dropbox user account they wanted with any arbitrary value for the password. https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2011/06/yesterdays-authent...
Hi Sneak! As you're no doubt aware, people change over the years. They learn from mistakes, improve how they live their lives, and become better over time.
Companies tend to be the same way, learning along the way and maturing, especially when it comes to business processes and risk-related parts of the business.
It's entirely possible that the Dropbox of 2016 isn't like the Dropbox of five years ago in many concrete ways. For example, they could have hired new people, improved testing and release processes, and become more serious about engineering discipline.
Many startups early-on make dumb mistakes and go on to great success and professionalization, but we should have both empathy and forgiveness for them in the long term. Dropbox has recently demonstrated a focused attention on large scale, challenging engineering projects (building a replacement for S3 in-house from scratch, writing kernel extensions, etc) and a reasonable observer might conclude that they've learned from the mistakes of 2011.
Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite
#30Thanks to dropbox inifit I discovered Infinit.sh - http://infinit.sh/ which I got really excited about. I wonder what is their experience with using FUSE and DOKANY..
Got excited as well, even signups for news on their slack group. But nothing so far, not even access to the beta binaries.