I dropped DropBox when they put Condoleezza Rice on the board. Thanks for reminding me that that was a good move.
Same here, and I told everyone else.
The site is still up.
Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
151–160 of 393 posts
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#152Many of us here are taking the opportunity to suggest Syncthing. I second that. We have been using it for years in our studio, moving much more data than it would ever be possible or practical with Dropbox and never had a bad surprise. We were also pleasantly surprised to see it working flawlessly behind a fairly thick NAT/Firewall when working from home. It's very stable, resilient and easy to set up for anyone lurk…
Also there's no iOS app.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#153From my perspective, Dropbox was doomed to decline ever since they made a big splash about how proud they were of moving off of public cloud in to self manage data centers. While they no doubt reduced their operating costs with that move, I couldn't help it feel that this meant that they were investing so many of their precious mental cycles, hiring cycles, maintenance cycles, into plumbing instead of user-centered i…
There's no reason why an org can't multitask their future plans. They more or less were forced to cut their own costs because their competitors owned the infrastructure they run on, they could never run cheaper than their competitors. Any good business leaves business roadmaps to different executives. Infrastructure doesn't need to be the primary concern of sales and product managers who should be plotting the growth of the company externally while a CTO is left to handle the "internal growth" of the company to match.
Their true problem regardless is staying relevant in a market where the competitors offer better value through bundling as entire IT and cloud platforms. There's no point for businesses to use Dropbox when Microsoft provides Onedrive for Windows businesses and Google provides gdrive with gsuite. Hell for consumers, Apple and Microsoft provide seamlessly integrated storage in their operating systems.
Dropbox can spend years developing their own office suite tools but they'll never be able to breach the brainshare and stability that the titans provide. There's only so many ways you can "innovate" file handling before you are flogging a dead horse or repainting a car tire for the 50th time. Dropbox's only chance was to breach heavily into cloud office suites _before_ google and microsoft jumped in full speed, which they didn't and the ship has sailed.
Does it mean they can't stay alive? Well, they are floundering and playing catch up is difficult. Even Box is eating their business lunch and carving a niche because they offer a true professional business interface for IT admins to configure everything, down to legal compliance requirements. Dropbox is a fucking toy in comparison too focused on minimal hipster UIs based on a design language they originally used for consumers and have tried to force it onto business for more years than they should have.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#154I left dropbox when they changed the full page upsell to "dropbox business" so that I couldn't easily figure out how to skip it and get on with my work. I had a paid pro account at the time. I actually had a conversation with a product manager; I checked the yes you can contact me when I cancelled my account. They simply refused to admit that an upsell was a advertisement and that disrupting my workflow on my paid, p…
Same with the ads for Amazon videos on Amazon Prime. They are ads and I don't want ads. But they don't see it that way (don't get me started on the forced watching of texts on Blue Rays).
I am cancelling it the moment the expanse is over.
Worst part is, prime crashes my TV's video player. Once that happens I am not able to play any video at all, even on other apps. And ads made it worse since it usually crashes as I switch videos and adds are more video switching.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes wtf, I'm already paying and trying to watch a series I enjoy, stop pestering me. Just one of many dark patterns at Amazon, cancelling Prime is so difficult that Norwegan Consumer Council and 15 others yesterday started a legal fight with Amazon: https://www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/amazon-manipulates-... The video there is quite aggravating.
I've cancelled Prime, now they hit me with week long delivery times which after a day are reduced by half or less, just to get me back on Prime.
I still have prime, and a good half of my "next day shipping" deliveries are delayed by a day, two days or even more.
Granted, the current situation is problematic, but this happened even before and since you are prime, you don't get any money back or something like that. It's just bad luck then.
Now, you might think you could rely on the services where you pay extra for same-day delivery or morning next day. But those end up missing the delivery window a good half of the times I used them - even before the pandemic.
Next day or same day delivery just isn't something that seems to work reliably here in Western Europe.
I know companies where a local driver will literally get in a car and bring me what I need right away, but that doesn't scale to Amazon levels.
Given that prime delivery rarely holds its promise, it is no surprise that Amazon needs to make non-prime delivery even less attractive.
But you know, there are other vendors! Plus, you are less likely to get a fake product if you order directly from there.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#156I left dropbox when they changed the full page upsell to "dropbox business" so that I couldn't easily figure out how to skip it and get on with my work. I had a paid pro account at the time. I actually had a conversation with a product manager; I checked the yes you can contact me when I cancelled my account. They simply refused to admit that an upsell was a advertisement and that disrupting my workflow on my paid, p…
I stopped using Dropbox when they stopped allowing bulk note exports in Paper. Paper is so good, but it's ruined by their moat-building. They seem to be headed down a path of increasingly dark patterns.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same with the ads for Amazon videos on Amazon Prime. They are ads and I don't want ads. But they don't see it that way (don't get me started on the forced watching of texts on Blue Rays).
I personally don't mind the ads on Amazon Prime because they're instantly skippable and do actually show things I might be interested in. Plus they don't show random shit like ads for a car or a TV or something. I don't sit and browse Amazon (because the browsing experience on Amazon prime is dogshit), so I go straight to anything I want to watch on there. The only opportunity to discover new shows on there is usuall…
The Prime Video experience is slightly better after a recent update. Now when you quickly add something to your watch list, it doesn’t freak out and forget where it was/load entirely new genres.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#158I really wish mobile OSes would allow you to grant apps permissions but serve fake data, (that's important!) without giving the app the ability to tell the difference. Just so it appears to the app that you've given the permission, when you in fact have not. This would solve this entire class of problems and then some. So, for example: - App "has" access to contacts, but the system returns that you have none. - App "…
Although it’ll never happen a cool idea would be to serve trap addresses and phone numbers so the developer can receive an instant ban if spam ends up on these addresses
This would, of course, be immediately abused to ban competitors' apps.
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#159is Samba really that hard to setup?
Re: Tell HN: Dropbox now requires access to contacts for Google login
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
> My other bugbear are the auto playing videos on Netflix and the use of massive spoilers in episode thumbnails. You can actually turn off "Autoplay previews" now. You have to log into your account from a web browser, and then look at the Playback settings for the profile you want to change.
What you can’t turn off is the bit where they drop you into another trailer when you’ve just finished watching a series after months of investment. A little time to digest would be real nice.
Every single video app I have on my AppleTV: Netflix, Amazon, Criterion, even Apple’s own TV app, shrinks whatever you are watching down to a thumbnail just before the movie or show ends.
I fucking hate it. Yes, I’m one of those weirdos who sits through to the end when the copyright rolls past and gets pissed off when the lights come on at a theater during the credits.
It is incredibly disrespectful to the film.
This is one of those “good taste” things that I feel like Steve Jobs wouldn’t have tolerated.
It’s especially annoying on some older films with short end credits because it happens before the movie is even over.