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Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

blogs.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#51

Post by 1123581321 »

microtonal wrote: post #7
nimish wrote: post #3

So instead of using a FS shim to userspace on security grounds they decided to distribute a custom kext that's closed source -- ie a great way for normal bugs to turn into dangerous ones? I'm not sure I understand the logic here

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?

When Dropbox rejected Apple's acquisition offer, Jobs was pretty angry at them, so it is unlikely that Apple is willing to help them now.

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#52

Post by victorhooi »

bad_user wrote: post #36
radicaldreamer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I killed my Dropbox Pro account and upgraded iCloud storage because the integration with the Photos app in iOS is way superior and the lack of something like Project Infinite, which results in a lot of manual folder management for my long tail of old docs. Dropbox's core sync technology is still unmatched, but the Pro offering leaves a lot to be desired over some of the better integrated experiences of Google and App…

Going for iCloud, that's an odd decision, frankly. I would have understood Google Drive, but not iCloud. When it comes to my personal photos archive, I care about 2 things: (1) occasional sharing and (2) keeping my huge archive safe. Dropbox does both, iCloud does neither. iCloud sharing only works with people using iDevices and I don't have many acquaintances or family members with a preference for Apple. Dropbox al…

Or look at the recent iTunes fiasco, where they deleted your music on the local HDD, and mis-matched the music in the cloud:

https://blog.vellumatlanta.com/2016/05/04/apple-stole-my-mus...

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#53

Post by jyxent »

hemancuso wrote: post #24

If 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…

Can you comment on how close the Linux version is? I've periodically checked your website since you commented about the Linux version being in private beta, almost two years ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7932916

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#54

Post by r00fus »

1123581321 wrote: post #51
microtonal wrote: post #7

Earlier 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?

When Dropbox rejected Apple's acquisition offer, Jobs was pretty angry at them, so it is unlikely that Apple is willing to help them now.

Wasn't that like over 5 years ago under a different CEO?

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#55

Post by olavgg »

ori_b wrote: post #14
ja30278 wrote: post #12

So..the cost of an extra kernel/userspace switch was too much for a file request that is going to be serviced by a server on the other side of the internet?..really?

Pretty much, it's not going to matter: http://www.csl.sri.com/users/gehani/papers/SAC-2010.FUSE.pdf . Putting ext3 into userspace led to slightly less than 10% performance degradation on postmark. Fuse really isn't an issue in most cases, and I can't imagine that this makes a huge difference on most workloads.

There may be other reasons that we are not aware of, anyway learning how to build your own vfs most likely have huge advantages in the long run.

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#56

Post by dontblink »

oddevan wrote: post #9
microtonal wrote: post #7

Earlier 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?

Especially since Apple already has! There are new extension APIs in El Capitan specifically designed for apps like Box and Dropbox to extend the Finder. And they also released APIs designed to eliminate the need for KEXTs for virtualization products (see: Veertu and Docker for Mac beta), so I would expect them to also have/make APIs for Dropbox's use case as well. I was excited for this. Was.

Believe it or not, their APIs have very real deficiencies. To the point where they are subpar to custom solutions. E.g. is how extensions only allow for one application to be active at a time (i.e. you cannot run Google Drive and Dropbox simultaneously and have file overlay icons).

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#57

Post by hemancuso »

pault wrote: post #43
hemancuso wrote: post #24

If 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 been an expandrive user for over 5 years now, thanks for the great product!

Thanks!

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#58

Post by hemancuso »

jyxent wrote: post #53
hemancuso wrote: post #24

If 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…

Can you comment on how close the Linux version is? I've periodically checked your website since you commented about the Linux version being in private beta, almost two years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7932916

It's actually in beta now. :)

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#59

Post by 1123581321 »

r00fus wrote: post #54
1123581321 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Dropbox rejected Apple's acquisition offer, Jobs was pretty angry at them, so it is unlikely that Apple is willing to help them now.

Wasn't that like over 5 years ago under a different CEO?

Yes. iCloud, a direct Dropbox competitor, is still part of Apple's strategy, and the current CEO is executing the direction set by the last CEO.

Re: Dropbox: Going Deeper with Project Infinite

#60

Post by rrdharan »

sneak wrote: post #49
flyt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Regardless of how much they've changed, 2011 Dropbox was decidedly not two guys in a garage and their complete and total lack of security engineering diligence and multiple overlapping process failures that must have occurred to lead to that incident call every future "At Dropbox we take security seriously" into question. (See also: "goto fail".) At some point, Dropbox clearly didn't take security seriously. They cla…

Google most certainly does not fall into the former.

Google has had multiple security incidents during the lifetime of the company that resulted in an increasing investment in upping their security profile. Operation Aurora (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora) was one of them (which of course bit a number of companies and was quite a sophisticated attack), but they have had other screwups, like the SRE spying incident (http://gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-tee...) and others.

For Dropbox, the password incident did result in major and serious change; it was a turning point resulting in significant investment in product and infrastructure security. In my admittedly biased opinion Dropbox now has one of the best security teams out there. For example the product security team invests heavily in the XSS protections on Dropbox's website that are top of class, and stronger than those on many of Google's own first party properties (I'll demur on details here at the risk of likely violating one or more NDAs, but I encourage you to read https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/category/security/).

Source: I've worked as a software engineer at both Google and Dropbox and I'm reasonably familiar with engineering, infrastructure/operational and physical security practices at both organizations.

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