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How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

applehelpwriter.com

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Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#111

Post by espadrine »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #27
ejcx wrote: post #2

Just wanted to give the author a shoutout for being awesome. This article is published with an AMP version[0] too, which is pretty unusual for smaller blogging sites. AMP articles are so much easier on my eyes (and the author can't include their own javascript on an AMP page, so there is less bloat). I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages. [0] - http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/08/29/discovering-how-dropbo..…

AMP is not the solution. Anyone willing to use AMP to reduce bloat could also just not add bloat to HTML pages in the first place. And, using AMP itself adds bloat[1]. I couldn’t even read the author’s AMP version without enabling JavaScript. [1] https://www.ampproject.org/docs/get_started/create/basic_mar...

> Anyone willing to use AMP to reduce bloat could also just not add bloat to HTML pages in the first place.

AMP is not meant for page authors — usually, they are painfully aware of how much bloat they add. They don't have a choice when sustainability is in the balance.

AMP is for the ad networks. It draws sane restrictions to what they can do. On their end, ad networks agree to that because Google is a large partner of them and because the worst possible outcome would be having everybody use ad blockers.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#112

Post by jads »

ejcx wrote: post #2

Just wanted to give the author a shoutout for being awesome. This article is published with an AMP version[0] too, which is pretty unusual for smaller blogging sites. AMP articles are so much easier on my eyes (and the author can't include their own javascript on an AMP page, so there is less bloat). I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages. [0] - http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/08/29/discovering-how-dropbo..…

> I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages.

I wish all bloggers with sites so bloated that AMP is a fundamental difference didn't feel they needed to include large image assets, custom fonts, and fancy JavaScript libraries (not suggesting this blogger does - just a general complaint).

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#113

Post by bitwize »

ejcx wrote: post #2

Just wanted to give the author a shoutout for being awesome. This article is published with an AMP version[0] too, which is pretty unusual for smaller blogging sites. AMP articles are so much easier on my eyes (and the author can't include their own javascript on an AMP page, so there is less bloat). I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages. [0] - http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/08/29/discovering-how-dropbo..…

Why not an "HTML with minimal styles and no JavaScript" version? Oh wait, that's not reactive.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#114

Post by DINKDINK »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #50

I don't really understand the conclusion here. So the scenario is you trust dropbox with your files, and you trust them with a kernel blob implementing the filesystem, but you don't trust them to silently have accessibility rights?

>you trust dropbox with your files, and you trust them with a kernel blob implementing the filesystem, but you don't trust them to silently have accessibility rights?

The problem here isn't that you don't trust them to have accessibility rights, it's that Dropbox has phished your root password, stored it, and will continue to modify your system to meet it's desired operating criteria.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#115

Post by mmagin »

ejcx wrote: post #2

Just wanted to give the author a shoutout for being awesome. This article is published with an AMP version[0] too, which is pretty unusual for smaller blogging sites. AMP articles are so much easier on my eyes (and the author can't include their own javascript on an AMP page, so there is less bloat). I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages. [0] - http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/08/29/discovering-how-dropbo..…

Hey, I remember WAP!

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#116

Post by smpetrey »

ejcx wrote: post #2

Just wanted to give the author a shoutout for being awesome. This article is published with an AMP version[0] too, which is pretty unusual for smaller blogging sites. AMP articles are so much easier on my eyes (and the author can't include their own javascript on an AMP page, so there is less bloat). I wish all bloggers started to publish AMP pages. [0] - http://applehelpwriter.com/2016/08/29/discovering-how-dropbo..…

In case there are any Wordpress bloggers and authors out there who would like to add AMP functionality to their websites Automattic put together a nice plugin tool to do just that.[0] I wonder when this will become part of the wp-core?

[0] https://github.com/Automattic/amp-wp

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#117

Post by angryasian »

_razvan wrote: post #70
anf wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the legit reasons? Isn't it just reading and writing files to the Dropbox folder?

The accessibility features of the OS are used by Dropbox to implement the Dropbox Badge / Project Harmony feature.

I would say that notifying the user on how to do it through the security panel is the legit way to do it.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#118

Post by copperx »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #55
new299 wrote: post #29

Dropbox circumventing security restrictions (albeit for legit reasons) is particularly worrying because they have board members who support warrentless surveillance. In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board ( http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ ). Personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the securi…

Honestly they're pretty much the most expensive out of all of the storage solutions. Other than versioning they have less features than their competition as well. If they were born today I can't imagine they would have gone much of anywhere. Not sure how they're doing financially today but it seems each product they create flops. So even outside of this surveillance stuff I don't get the point in using them.

As far as I know, DropBox is the only service that does delta block uploads correctly and switches to LAN transfer when two synced computers are in the same network.

I know it's CS 101, but neither Google Drive, iCloud, or OneDrive do this.

Not to mention the other services have bizarre naming limits (e.g., dotfiles are forbidden on OneDrive).

Also, DropBox supports Linux officially.

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#119

Post by aerique »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #55
new299 wrote: post #29

Dropbox circumventing security restrictions (albeit for legit reasons) is particularly worrying because they have board members who support warrentless surveillance. In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board ( http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ ). Personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the securi…

Honestly they're pretty much the most expensive out of all of the storage solutions. Other than versioning they have less features than their competition as well. If they were born today I can't imagine they would have gone much of anywhere. Not sure how they're doing financially today but it seems each product they create flops. So even outside of this surveillance stuff I don't get the point in using them.

I've used Dropbox for quite some years because they were (one of) the first and rock-solid. Especially the latter is very important for a service like this.

Oh, and they always supported the big three OSes.

These last two features makes them stand out against the myriad of alternatives. (Especially the offerings from Apple, Google and Microsoft are laughably bad.)

Dropbox is more expensive but not that more expensive given that it just works.

That said, I switched a couple of months ago to Seafile (the German branch) and it has worked almost as good as Dropbox.

The reasons for switching were: not based in the US, supports more OSes, Rice, cheaper.

Some features like selective syncing do not work as well but others like multiple libraries are a solid addition.

I have run into a Git repo issue on Seafile that I never had on Dropbox and the client on Windows could not sync some files due to the filenames (luckily those could be renamed).

Re: How Dropbox Hacks Your Mac

#120

Post by angryasian »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #50

I don't really understand the conclusion here. So the scenario is you trust dropbox with your files, and you trust them with a kernel blob implementing the filesystem, but you don't trust them to silently have accessibility rights?

Trusting them with some files that you knowingly add vs giving them root permissions and password are two totally different things.
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