A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers • Hacker News Board

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#11

Post by lazylizard » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 4:35 AM UTC

lazylizard wrote: post #10

lazylizard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can tech fix it by 1. Disabling the dropbox account? 2. Stopping dropbox urls from resolving in their lan if need be? Or blocking dropbox ips? 3. Buying a md1280 or similar storage quickly n put a freenas or similar on it? 4. Put syncthing or similar on all the user computers n this new nas?

Actually why is dropbox involved if its a git directory???

Git annex? Sparkleshare?

Can tech just stop the dropbox bit n just set up sparkleshare for everyone if git is holding up? If git is less than efficient..then syncthing, seafile would all work for their file sharing needs n r trivial to setup?

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#12

Post by allthecybers » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

_rkz1 wrote: post #8

The best worst thing I’ve ever read. No idea how they pulled that off for so long.

Reminds me of a firm I worked for. They decided to adopt Google Drive for the team of about 20 employees.

Every couple weeks an employee would mistake the synced folder for their local disk and rearrange files or delete files and then the files would disappear for the rest of the company.

Then we’d have to go into the backups and restore the files and send a message out to everyone to hold the files they were working on before saving them to the drive again.

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#13

Post by Iv » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

> 5. Audit has some explaining todo.

Yes, that's a total fuck up on their side as well. That an incompetent company dies while doing stupid stunts like that is understandable and how the market filters out stupidity.

That another company looks at it and thinks "Oh that looks fine", that's a total failure at their work.

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#14

Post by ryandrake » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 5:07 AM UTC

I hate to be That Guy but how on earth is this not discovered during due diligence before “insane asylum” Company was acquired?

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#15

Post by justinclift » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 5:12 AM UTC

lazylizard wrote: post #10

lazylizard wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can tech fix it by 1. Disabling the dropbox account? 2. Stopping dropbox urls from resolving in their lan if need be? Or blocking dropbox ips? 3. Buying a md1280 or similar storage quickly n put a freenas or similar on it? 4. Put syncthing or similar on all the user computers n this new nas?

Actually why is dropbox involved if its a git directory???

They probably started out with Dropbox "back in the day" as a way for shared access to things (eg employees in multiple locations), and never put adequate time into moving to something more appropriate later on.

Btw, it sounded like the "version control" mentioned wasn't git.

Maybe they're doing full copies of the application + data into a timestamped directory or similar.

That kind of thing chews disk space. :/

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#16

Post by eschneider » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 5:16 AM UTC

And this, kids, is why companies do a technical due diligence during mergers. :0

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#17

Post by djrogers » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 5:16 AM UTC

lazylizard wrote: post #11

lazylizard wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually why is dropbox involved if its a git directory???

Git annex? Sparkleshare? Can tech just stop the dropbox bit n just set up sparkleshare for everyone if git is holding up? If git is less than efficient..then syncthing, seafile would all work for their file sharing needs n r trivial to setup?

I think you missed the part where it’s not Dropbox as a file sharing solution that’s the only problem - their entire web app runs via Dropbox API calls from Heroku!

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#18

Post by InvaderFizz » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 5:46 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #14

I hate to be That Guy but how on earth is this not discovered during due diligence before “insane asylum” Company was acquired?

That's easy. Lies, misdirection, and the person doing the technical due diligence being a C-Level/Director with zero IT background but plenty of project management experience.

They know just enough to be dangerous and frustratingly useless getting useful information from. So your integration team has to do all the planning with only the foggiest idea of what they are getting into. They then spend the entire first day on the ground just getting the lay of the land. No time to schedule local cable contractors for the really needed cable runs. Let's hope that the existing CAT5 runs work fine on gigabit for the next few weeks till we can get those contractors in to replace all the wiring. Worse case, we'll have to limit the port speeds to 100Mbps at the new switch if retransmits become an issue.

Even more fun when the next project is even less detail but the entity you are acquiring is on another continent instead of a few states over.

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#19

Post by doctor_eval » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

What I find interesting is that the “insane asylum” apparently knew that it was wrong.

e.g. when asked why they need so much space on their laptops, they were evasive.

To my mind this makes it much worse. Not only were they doing something dumb, but they knew it was dumb, and they hid it instead of fixing it.

It certainly invites speculation about the company culture in the acquired business.

Re: A Dropbox account gave me stomach ulcers

#20

Post by amarshall » Sun, Dec 15, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

It should be noted that the evidence that stress is a primary cause of gastric ulcers has been fairly weak since the discovery of H. pylori, though there is some evidence stress may be a contributing factor.