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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

#221

Post by kmtrowbr »

josefrichter wrote: post #202
zitterbewegung wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not buy an external drive instead? You could also use it as a backup.

External drives are a thing of history. Too much hassle, too much inconvenience, can't access anytime and anywhere I want, etc. What's the benefit of external drive compared to Dropbox really?

Dropbox works well for small files that you need to share with others. However, if you use it to back up large amounts of data ... say >100GB, the experience of using it is very poor. It consumes large amounts of CPU continually. It takes forever to run to completion (literally in some cases, in my case it ran for weeks before I gave up on it). An external hard drive is of comparable cost to Dropbox, and a one-time cost, not something you need to pay for, forever. It runs to completion in 20 minutes. You can keep multiple versions of it in different physical locations. It's conceptually simple with fewer points of failure.

Personally I tried using several different cloud backup solutions, but I gave up on them. A few encrypted external hard drives, updated every month or two in a repeatable way (e.g. a bash script), one at home, one at work ... and backup is a solved problem. Of course, to each their own.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#223

Post by 999900000999 »

choward wrote: post #195
999900000999 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why does the author even compare the two? I can do this with time machine, or by just copying to a network drive.

I believe the other was comparing the feature of being able to sync between devices. In the case of Dropbox one of those devices happens to be a third party server ran by a multi billion dollar company. The author doesn't seem to care about that device. But if the author did want a third party server storing data they could choose any cloud provider on the planet and run syncthing. You could also do the same thing wi…

Right, but this ignores the entire purpose of Dropbox for most people.

There's an Indian proverb which says something along the lines of don't judge an elephant for being unable to climb trees. I think it applies here

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#224

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

jodrellblank wrote: post #203
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? Syncthing syncs your data to other instances of syncthing that you authorize, in a p2p mesh.

It joins you into a thing which connects all users of SyncThing. I said "cloud", you said "p2p mesh" the blog said "a fully operational node of Syncthing". No real difference there. From the syncthing website " Private. None of your data is ever stored anywhere else other than on your computers ". From their open protocol page " Relay is a service which relays data between two devices which are not able to connect to…

The relays are only used if your devices can't see each other directly; over a LAN, and in many WAN cases, it won't even be used, and if you really care you can just disable it. And bluntly, if someone had a TLS break that could work after the fact on recorded data, syncthing is the least of our worries.

> (see deprecation of TLS1.3)

The what now?

> What does "Authenticated. Every device is identified by a strong cryptographic certificate." mean if you don't have to setup a certificate authority or buy a verified SSL certificate or use LetsEncrypt or generate a public/private keypair? Would you recognise your SyncThing certificate if you saw it?

It is a public/private keypair, and if you're doing the initial setup over an untrusted network, yes you should copy-paste the fingerprint and email it to yourself or whatever.

> How well do you know the SyncThing protocol? Do you know someone in a far away country cannot find a flaw in the implementation which allows them to sync to your device, or insert themselves as a relay node?

How well do you know the dropbox/icloud/gdrive/whatever protocol? Do you know that somewhat in a far away country cannot find a flaw in the implementation which allows them to sync to your device, or insert themselves as a relay node? Also, inserting themselves as a relay would not be a security break, since "Anyone can run a relay server, and it will automatically join the relay pool and be available to Syncthing users. The current list of relays can be found at https://relays.syncthing.net/." (https://docs.syncthing.net/users/strelaysrv.html)

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#225

Post by bccdee »

josefrichter wrote: post #202
zitterbewegung wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not buy an external drive instead? You could also use it as a backup.

External drives are a thing of history. Too much hassle, too much inconvenience, can't access anytime and anywhere I want, etc. What's the benefit of external drive compared to Dropbox really?

It's cheaper and faster. What's the hassle or inconvenience of a separate drive? If anything, Dropbox is less convenient because it requires installing an application to use it.

The only drawback is that you have to carry it around anywhere you want to access it. A modern external drive is the size of a phone though, so that's hardly a dealbreaker even if you do want to carry it around. Although frankly, cloud storage is much better for filesharing.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#226

Post by mahirsaid »

if that isn't enough now I'm dealing with OneDrive sucking the life out of me to try and get it to comply. its full everyday and i end up cleaning it up only to be full right after i clean i. if thats not enough forget about using it on iPhone its a disaster like seriously. oh apple broke 3 trillion market cap WOW thats great one company ruling with utter garbage ecosystem of products. people are raving about how the new iPhone finally ahs 12hrz screen ( a two year old features for most high end phones) maybe some people will wake up some day. i learned something when i used to be a cook " presentation is everything" its so true their products do look good but they are not innovators sorry to say.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#227

Post by netflixandkill »

rizalp wrote: post #144
foodstances wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startup idea: provide cloud backup service through Syncthing. End users install Syncthing and then add a remote host provided by your company that is bound to their account. That instance just keeps a copy of everything it receives on some cloud infrastructure. Slap a web interface and some modest data retention on it to recover files.

Here's hoping storage vendors (Backblaze, Wasabi, etc.) take note and sees this as worthwhile opportunity!

Can already do that with rclone, although a one button setup for syncthing would likely get some play.

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#228

Post by benhurmarcel »

foodstances wrote: post #120
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…

Startup idea: provide cloud backup service through Syncthing. End users install Syncthing and then add a remote host provided by your company that is bound to their account. That instance just keeps a copy of everything it receives on some cloud infrastructure. Slap a web interface and some modest data retention on it to recover files.

It doesn’t have an iOS app ready though

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#229

Post by josefrichter »

kmtrowbr wrote: post #221
josefrichter wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

External drives are a thing of history. Too much hassle, too much inconvenience, can't access anytime and anywhere I want, etc. What's the benefit of external drive compared to Dropbox really?

Dropbox works well for small files that you need to share with others. However, if you use it to back up large amounts of data ... say >100GB, the experience of using it is very poor. It consumes large amounts of CPU continually. It takes forever to run to completion (literally in some cases, in my case it ran for weeks before I gave up on it). An external hard drive is of comparable cost to Dropbox, and a one-time c…

Then you had some problem. I have ~1TB in Dropbox, files small and large. No problems with sync. Once in a while it does go crazy, eats up a lot of CPU and takes 1 hour to get in proper sync. It’s annoying, but luckily it’s rare. And it goes with me everywhere. How do you access external drive from your phone anyway?

Re: Computers as I used to love them

#230

Post by deergomoo »

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…

> consuming large amounts of CPU when anything changes anywhere in the filesystem

I don’t understand how this still hasn’t been addressed. On macOS at least (not sure about other platforms), rather than subscribing to filesystem events for the synced folders, it subscribes to FS events for literally everything and checks to see if each is relevant to the folders it should sync.

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