171–180 of 542 posts
Very clean and nice, but how is this financed? That is, who's paying for the server storage and the bandwidth?
I don't understand how they can afford the bandwidth... If this were on AWS it would be around $0.09 per GB for downloads.
I can't believe that there isn't a simple service to transfer data between my cellphone and my computer without going through the internet. iTunes is terribly bloated, MTP is a mess, and Bluetooth is slow and frustrating. Back in my hacker day I used to have an SSH server open on my cellphone and use it to transfer files back and forth with my computer. Why isn't there a mainstream service like that?
Besides AirDrop there is "Copy and Paste across devices" https://support.apple.com/kb/ph25168?locale=en_US
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Presumably Mozilla, just like they do for the sync and Web Push servers.
I think what the previous poster meant was 'why' are Mozilla paying for it?
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I recently switched back to iOS after years on Android, and on this point I've been very impressed with Airdrop. Dead simple UI, very quick transfer speeds, uses WiFi or Bluetooth as available. It's just a shame that it's limited to Apple devices.
The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if Google simply wants to maximize the use of their servers here (independent of what users want/need): 1. P2P doesn’t give Google all that juicy mineable data that they get when everything you do makes round trips through their servers. 2. This would also implicitly encourage Android users to rely more on services like Google Drive/Docs for all files, which is good for them. Edi…
It's a feature of the Files app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... which has over 100M installs.
Look at the 3rd screenshot.
ENCRYPTED FILE SHARING
Files’s offline file sharing is secured with WPA2 encryption, providing a more secure file transfer. Files app uses Bluetooth to set up encrypted and direct fast wifi connection, so that you can transfer app APK or large files in seconds, send videos or pictures to your friends. Safe and secure.
SHARE FILES OFFLINE
Share your pictures, videos, documents, or apps with others nearby who also have the app. With fast speed up to 480 Mbps, it’s fast, free, and it works without the internet, so it doesn’t cost mobile data. Just pair up your phone with anyone nearby who has Files app.
I can't believe that there isn't a simple service to transfer data between my cellphone and my computer without going through the internet. iTunes is terribly bloated, MTP is a mess, and Bluetooth is slow and frustrating. Back in my hacker day I used to have an SSH server open on my cellphone and use it to transfer files back and forth with my computer. Why isn't there a mainstream service like that?
I can't believe that there isn't a simple service to transfer data between my cellphone and my computer without going through the internet. iTunes is terribly bloated, MTP is a mess, and Bluetooth is slow and frustrating. Back in my hacker day I used to have an SSH server open on my cellphone and use it to transfer files back and forth with my computer. Why isn't there a mainstream service like that?
I run the reverse; my laptop runs sshd and then I ssh/scp/rsync from termux on my phone. But either way works.
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Android phones don't do this anymore, for the technical reason that allowing a computer to mount a filesystem directly requires that the phone unmount it. Mass storage expects a block device, so there's no wrapper that one could provide that would make this work with the native filesystems of the phone. What could be done is to dedicate a file on the phone as block storage, and expose that as a mass storage device. T…
Android phones show up as MTP devices, which are basically file-level storage instead of block-level storage. Most OS's (besides MacOS) will display this with the same interface as a USB mass storage device.
Wikipedia tells the sordid story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol#Compar...
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Presumably Mozilla, just like they do for the sync and Web Push servers.
I think what the previous poster meant was 'why' are Mozilla paying for it?
Of course Mozilla's not in it for the money, so there's not a direct line from Send to more revenue. Firefox is their main tool to protect the open web, and Send is a way to get more people to use that. And of course, being able to send files encrypted is good for the web as well.
Indirectly, it is primarily financed by the search engine deal in Firefox.
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What about https://syncthing.net/ ? EDIT: I know you said without going through the internet. Syncthing can be configured to only transfer over specific networks (e.g. home LAN/WI-FI)
Syncthing is in dire need of an iOS client. There's an unofficial one, but it was unmaintained and didn't sync with recent versions of Syncthing last I checked.