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Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

forbes.com

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Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#91

Post by mkramlich »

pg wrote: post #78

Drew's case shows how hard it is to generalize. We're generally reluctant to fund single founders. And yet the most successful startup we've funded had a single founder at the time he applied: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html We strongly encouraged Drew to get a cofounder, and he found Arash before the summer 2007 cycle began. Arash turned out to be the perfect cofounder. So Dropbox is pretty much the best c…

> This is why one of our rules is that we'll break any of our rules.

which is also how DNA and gene machinery work. for good (beneficial mutations) and bad (cancer)

Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#92

Post by skadamat »

Inspirational story, thanks for that Forbes. I wish I had started programming from an earlier age (I only started 4-5 years ago, I'm a junior at UT Austin) but Drew is still an idol for me for both his crazy development skills and entrepreneurial talent. I use Dropbox on a daily basis and definitely laude him for seeing the idea through and not selling it to a big fish.

Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#93

Post by skadamat »

billtx wrote: post #66

Dropbox is written is Python correct? Would it be faster/more efficient/smaller footprint if it was written in C++? I just have this (likely) wrong perception about Python from the original BitTorrent vs uTorrent.

I think he means that all the server side stuff is Python? The native Windows application is probably written in C++ though. Or did I completely misunderstand your comment?

Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#94

Post by jaylevitt »

Maakuth wrote: post #77
rdp wrote: post #46

My biggest issue with Dropbox, and I am probably not alone in this, is still security. After the lapses earlier in the year, I still store most files in a TrueCrypt share in my DropBox folders. Since I can't access the TrueCrypt volume from my phone or other mobile devices, it limits the portability of the data.

We've been told they do encrypt files internally. I don't think there is any usable way to have users manage their keys by themselves. Who wants to input large encryption keys to their mobile phone every time they want to use Dropbox? And if the phone remembers the key, then it's not too far from the current situation.

"My phone stores my private key" is very, very far from "Dropbox's servers can see all my data".

Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#95

Post by rajatsuri »

dhouston wrote: post #62
byrneseyeview wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was almost certainly a joke. Avoid sarcasm when talking to journalists; some quotes, out of context, are too good to pass up.

wildly out of context (comically so if you know me IRL) -- oh well :)

Yeah I cringed when I read that part. I guess not every press piece will be perfect, and hey, they have to sell magazines ;)

Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#96

Post by mrb »

scott_s wrote: post #89
wmf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A process can't change the address space of another process, period. Don't forget ptrace.

I had, but that's not the situation I had in mind. You can only use ptrace on a child process. You can't use ptrace to attach to, say, another user's process.

You can attach to any of your processes, that's how debuggers work! Ever used gdb to attach to a running process and debug it on the fly? This is done with ptrace() with the PT_ATTACH flag.

Now ptrace is known to be severly limited on Mac OS X, but there are ways around it: http://uninformed.org/index.cgi?v=4&a=3&p=14

Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#97

Post by mtgred »

dr_ wrote: post #15

Jobs never changed his interpretation of things. He did in fact feel cloud storage was a feature and not a product, and that's exactly what iCloud is. For Apple it's a feature that will hopefully tie people in to their iOS devices. And with the likelihood that over time they will offer greater amounts of storage for free or a minimum payment, that's not good for Dropbox. I like Dropbox, I use it almost daily. But so…

iCloud is not cross platform. Dropbox has its place for this feature alone. In fact I use Dropbox mainly for syncing dotfiles between my various Mac OS/Linux/Windows machines iCloud just can't do that. The corporate world also lives on Windows and is a huge market.

Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#98

Post by bdonlan »

scott_s wrote: post #56
simplekoala wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are injecting code into running Finder process? Hmmm, so they figured one of the jump instructions target address in Finder process ( for a function invocation, most likely the code to show the pop-up), and changed that location to jump to a different address where they injected their code? Don't you need root privileges to muck with Finder's process space? I see dropbox process running with non-privileged uid.…

A process can't change the address space of another process, period. Even if one is a root process. Separation of address spaces is a basic security service provided by the operating system. So I'm also puzzled how they are able to modify memory in Finder's address space. The closest thing I can think of is that Finder executes arbitrary processes on behalf of the user. That is, when I double click on something, Find…

> A process can't change the address space of another process, period. Even if one is a root process. Separation of address spaces is a basic security service provided by the operating system. So I'm also puzzled how they are able to modify memory in Finder's address space.

Sure you can. Every major PC OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) has a debugging API that, in fact, does allow you to read and write the memory of other processes. Windows even has a convenient function to allocate blocks of memory in other processes' address space, and another function to spawn a thread in another process with an arbitrary entry point - which makes this sort of thing relatively easy to do.

Mind you, the primitives provided can be a bit difficult to work with, but it's far from impossible.

Re: Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

#99

Post by paulmckeever »

JacobAldridge wrote: post #4

"Ferdowsi from the start insisted Dropbox’s home page be a simple stick-figure video showing what the product does. No table of features and pricing; instead, a story about a guy who loses stuff and goes on a trip to Africa." This made me realise I'd never been to the Dropbox homepage. I heard about the company here on HN (Drew's YC Application form is a great read), and I didn't have a need at that time - about 6 mo…

I found this part of the article a little strange. I've heard Drew present alongside Adam Smith and recall him talking about how the design of the home page started off way more complex and that it was through A/B testing they ended up with the video.

Journalistic license maybe?

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