Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 363 posts

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#201

Post by wyxuan »

jpxw wrote: post #173
StavrosK wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happens in Greece with buses. It's a very popular way for moms to send home-made food to their single/university student sons.

I remember watching a Top Gear special in India which showed the delivery system for hot food for workers from their wives - the food was placed in metal tins, loaded into pallets, driven to trains, offloaded from trains, and driven to the workers. The reliability of the system was surprisingly high IIRC

Dabbawalla is the name you’re looking for, and that’s more local than some of the other things suggested in the thread

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#204

Post by qrv3w »

spurgu wrote: post #186
theobeers wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magic Wormhole is good. These days I use croc,[0] which I find even better. [0]: https://github.com/schollz/croc

I don't see an option to send text (browsed through README and Issues), is this not possible with croc? With Magic Wormhole it's the default to get a message prompt when running "wormhole send". Or you can do it as a oneliner with "wormhole send --text 'something'". Wormhole William can do this as well IIRC. I use MWH often for sending stuff like URL's, passwords, API keys... having to create a file for that is quite…

Not possible right now. This is a good idea, I can add it in :)

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#205

Post by hoorayimhelping »

livueta wrote: post #86

Bittorrent. No, really. Lots of nice behaviors when transferring large amounts of data between arbitrary endpoints. Transferring the torrent metadata is pretty trivial and can be done via a wide range of methods, and having that flexibility can be nice. Unlike HTTP, you get reasonable retry behavior on network hiccups. Also, more robust data integrity guarantees, though a manual hash test is probably a good idea eith…

>Just encrypt your stuff beforehand.

This is such a facepalm moment. "This service is awesome, it does everything you need, it's reliable, it's safe, it's practical, and all you have to do is encrypt your files, share encryption keys, validate identities, and establish trust with the person you're sharing with. Also if you screw it up in any way, your file is public forever. It's so rad!"

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#207

Post by capableweb »

0-_-0 wrote: post #177
mc10 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebTorrent is pretty limited though: > ... a browser-based WebTorrent client or "web peer" can only connect to other clients that support WebTorrent/WebRTC. (from https://webtorrent.io/faq ) This essentially splinters the world into the bittorrent and webtorrent halves, which makes it far less useful.

WebTorrent is part of libtorrent now, so should be part of all torrent clients based on it, e.g. qBittorrent: https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/pull/4123

Not quite there yet. Latest release of libtorrent was 1.2.9, seems it's scheduled for "some branch" after 2.0 (https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/pull/4123#issuecomment-...). Add in some time for clients to actually start using it as well, which is not guaranteed either.

The DHT remains split for now.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#209

Post by voltagex_ »

arsome wrote: post #179
livueta wrote: post #86

Bittorrent. No, really. Lots of nice behaviors when transferring large amounts of data between arbitrary endpoints. Transferring the torrent metadata is pretty trivial and can be done via a wide range of methods, and having that flexibility can be nice. Unlike HTTP, you get reasonable retry behavior on network hiccups. Also, more robust data integrity guarantees, though a manual hash test is probably a good idea eith…

Just be careful - unless you mark that torrent private it'll get posted to the DHT and crawlers like BtDig will pick it up and list it publicly. For this reason I prefer using something like Syncthing which is designed more with this purpose in mind.

How are BtDig crawling the DHT? I thought this was made impossible or at least more difficult a while ago.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#210

Post by tomcam »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #165
geocrasher wrote: post #57

5GB on my local network: Windows File Share, Rsync, or HTTP depending on source/destination 5GB on Internet: Upload to my OVH VPS and HTTP or Rsync it to its destination 10TB, local or Internet: Physical Hard Drive. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes! https://www.tidbitsfortechs.com/2013/09/never-underestimate-... And since you now buy 1TB micro SD cards, so perhaps I'd split th…

> Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes! The exact quote [0] by Andrew Tanenbaum is: "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.". Obligatory xkcd [1]. I met Andy Tanenbaum in 2008 at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. I was the Technology Evangelist for AWS in Europe, giving a seminar there on cloud computing. I loved him. Funny, sm…

> I didn't even know he was American until I met him in person

Nothing wrong with that. Some my best friends are American

Post reply on HN