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Computers as I used to love them

tonsky.me

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Re: Computers as I used to love them

#161

Post by smaudet »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #77

The part comparing the installation is a little disingenuous IMHO. You cannot seriously be complaining about Gatekeeper if you’re using a Mac. Dropbox has a web interface so it needs an account. 2FA enhances account security. Installing Homebrew also used sudo . In fact, you had to install it first. If you didn’t, you also wouldn’t have the Homebrew-services helper. And what’s wrong with an OOBE wizard? It’s software…

I don't think its disigenuous, though. I think these 'best practices' are really just the software equivalent of legalese speak.

If you had to run an install wizard, use a key, and upload a photograph of yourself everytime you wanted to, say, put orange juice in the fridge, your average user would scream bloody murder and rightly call your product bloody garbage.

What you might see is a caretaker sign documents for a terminally disabled patient who need assisted living services and then put orange juice in the fridge...which is where the mistake comes from.

This is the software equivalent of getting a lawyer and a caretaker involved every damn time you put orange juice in the fridge - because it works for the disabled few corporations mistake 'accesibilty' for good design... And then you realize this is 'standard practice' and finally understand how abhorrently terrible pretty much every damn website, app, and program on the planet is...

Dropbox is absolute garbage. So is Apple. They need to remove 95 percent of their garbage for the average user - the option to use the assisted living features should be available but not turned on by default.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#162

Post by turtlebits »

bodge5000 wrote: post #88

Somewhat off topic, but does anyone have any recommendations for personal cloud storage. I've heard good things about Syncthing, but thats for syncing, not for storing. Preferably something as simple and easy to use/setup as possible. I want to use it mostly for storing old projects, I don't want it to be a project.

I find Wasabi (S3 compatible) to be the most useful. I'm paying $6 for ~400 GB of storage.

I store/stream all my music there (use presigned URLs for playback).

I find that most cloud storage deviate too much from a simple file management interface.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#163

Post by arnorhs »

To play the devil's advocate the main things I like about dropbox that syncthing doesn't help with is:

- being able to store way more data in the cloud than my computer can fit

- Seamlessly being able to browse all the files and seamlessly opening them even if they are not stored on my computer

- Being able to save a bunch of files. Turn off my computer, open those files on another computer later without even thinking about it.

- Having a really nice mobile experience for backing up my photos and browsing all my files, if I need to.

- Knowing that if all my computers get destroyed by a volcano all my files are still available if I decide to then buy a new computer.

- Being able to share individual files with people

There's honestly probably more that I'm forgetting.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#164

Post by ryandrake »

jwr wrote: post #9

I've been using Syncthing for about a year now, with multiple computers, and it's fantastic. Dropbox has become a real pain over the years (I've also been a paid Dropbox customer for a long time): * adding bloat and features that I don't want or need * constantly nagging me for upgrades * lying that the admin password is required (it isn't) * consuming large amounts of CPU when anything changes anywhere in the filesy…

Also: Questionable request for Accessibility permission. I was surprised to see Dropbox is still asking for this. I thought Apple put the hammer down on this behavior from apps long ago. You're supposed to only request Accessibility if it is for the purpose of supporting assistive technologies like VoiceOver, to help people with disabilities. Accessibility permissions have become something of a golden ticket or carte blanche for apps, allowing them to do just about anything on the operating system. Dropbox's dialog is vague about the purpose ("To get the most out of Dropbox") for requesting this superpower, so one can only assume that they are not doing it specifically to support assistive technologies like VoiceOver.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#165

Post by 1MachineElf »

999900000999 wrote: post #146
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no way to get around it, either. Even if you want to roll your own, you're still ultimately using AWS or another cloud provider. You don’t seem to have read the article. It expressly states there that Syncthing uses disk storage. And you’re strangely proud about not getting this whole thing and wanting a multi-billion dollar company to do it all for you, but you’d be first to cry muh freedome muh human righ…

I did read the article, presumably most people would sink their files to some cloud provider like AWS. You might have an EC2 instance which periodically syncs with your local files. https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-insise5hc6mm2 It's just what it is, so let's say AWS suspends your account, for some mysterious reason. You'll lose access to your EC2 instances

I don't know anyone who uses Synching with any type of cloud-based instance, so I'm not sure this is a real issue for Syncthing users. It's all P2P file synchronization between their own devices.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#166

Post by weystrom »

square_usual wrote: post #49

I love syncthing as much as the next guy on here, but this article feels very much like "why doesn't this square peg fit my round hole?!" Dropbox (and iCloud) are meant more for cloud file storage than pure device-to-device synce. I couldn't go to a less tech savvy friend and say, "Oh, you use Dropbox for backups? Here, use syncthing instead!" For one, most people don't have multiple computers they want to keep in sy…

I have a VPS in Digitalocean that's running syncthing ever since Untrusted Enrypted Storage[1] has been introduced last year.

It's great, it's even better than cloud storage, since the VPS never has access to the encryption key.

[1] https://docs.syncthing.net/branch/untrusted/html/users/untru...

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#167

Post by LegitShady »

k4rli wrote: post #99
bodge5000 wrote: post #88

Somewhat off topic, but does anyone have any recommendations for personal cloud storage. I've heard good things about Syncthing, but thats for syncing, not for storing. Preferably something as simple and easy to use/setup as possible. I want to use it mostly for storing old projects, I don't want it to be a project.

Google One (Drive storage) is one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) I think. Paying just 1.99 for 100GB monthly.

100gb wasn't enough for me. A family subscription to office 365 offers each user 1tb of storage and the price is reasonable compared to the competition, especially if you're already ok with paying for Microsoft office.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#168

Post by Majestic121 »

arnorhs wrote: post #163

To play the devil's advocate the main things I like about dropbox that syncthing doesn't help with is: - being able to store way more data in the cloud than my computer can fit - Seamlessly being able to browse all the files and seamlessly opening them even if they are not stored on my computer - Being able to save a bunch of files. Turn off my computer, open those files on another computer later without even thinkin…

Some of them are done by Syncthing, if you have a remote server : I've been using Syncthing to keep my keepass db synced between computer and phone, and I don't have to think about it. Same for the computer destruction scenario.

It does require to setup a server, I agree with you. I wonder if a Syncthing as a service would work?

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#169

Post by [deleted] »

bodge5000 wrote: post #147
369548684892826 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rclone is very good. Choose any cloud storage provider, and then run it through a nightly cronjob or whatever. https://rclone.org/

Oh sorry, should've been clearer, I'm not looking for backup (I'm currently using backblaze for that), just general storage.

[deleted]

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#170

Post by 999900000999 »

1MachineElf wrote: post #165
999900000999 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did read the article, presumably most people would sink their files to some cloud provider like AWS. You might have an EC2 instance which periodically syncs with your local files. https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-insise5hc6mm2 It's just what it is, so let's say AWS suspends your account, for some mysterious reason. You'll lose access to your EC2 instances

I don't know anyone who uses Synching with any type of cloud-based instance, so I'm not sure this is a real issue for Syncthing users. It's all P2P file synchronization between their own devices.

Then why does the author even compare the two?

I can do this with time machine, or by just copying to a network drive.

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