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Mega has launched

mega.co.nz

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Re: Mega has launched

#181

Post by alexqgb »

beambot wrote: post #175
alexqgb wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're of any appreciable size, they're paid for by the people hosting, not downloading. You do know this, right?

Of course.... but who pays (and for what, exactly) is somewhat immaterial. You're able to post public links to files and get (effectively) unlimited downloads via Dropbox too. It was a counter-example to your Google.com/yourdesiredfile

Who pays (and why) is hardly immaterial when it has a defining effect on how the site is actually used. There's a good reason as to why Google and Dropbox can easily claim legitimacy while Mega has to struggle.

Re: Mega has launched

#182

Post by guessWhy »

rplnt wrote: post #144

Horrible site. Ignoring the fact it doesn't work in older versions of Opera, it's like early 00's and full-flash sites all over again.

It looks fine to me ?! Flash is not used at all and the design shows some taste.

Re: Mega has launched

#183

Post by jakejake »

jlgreco wrote: post #164
soup10 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty embarrassing that tech blogs are even covering this. Copyright law is about intent, not about technical specifics. The idea that new megaupload is ok because it encrypts illegitimate content before storing it is absurd.

What do you mean by "ok"? Morally ok? That is subject to opinion. I don't have a problem with them now, and I never did. Legally immune? They very well could be. Certainly any action against them is going to be much harder this time, if only because a bunch of people in New Zealand are still pissed about what happened last time without the revisions that were made. If their system works as they claim, and renders the…

As soon as a file goes public and anybody can get it, then it seems to me irrelevant that its encrypted on mega servers. They'll have to respond to takedown requests because the contents are known.

And if mega is de-duping content then that could technically eliminate "whack a mole" for the copyright holders (except for people re-encoding the file and re-uploading). I had heard in the past that mega would only take down one link.

Re: Mega has launched

#184

Post by samwillis »

ubercow13 wrote: post #179
samwillis wrote: post #89

To everyone asking about the encryption, it isn't really about protecting your data its about protecting themselves. They have created a service that is billed as a drop box competitor but it's not. This is megaupload2, they just need it to not look like they are marketing it as that. They needed a way to deny any knolage of file sharing and have found a two pronged attack. The encryption means they can deny any know…

That doesn't mean you can't use it like a Dropbox service with more free space, surely? Dropbox also doesn't encrypt your data to any meaningful degree AFAIK.

Of course. And have people use it legitimately is essential to them. People also used megaupload legitimately too.

Re: Mega has launched

#185

Post by lubos »

huhtenberg wrote: post #121
gjulianm wrote: post #48

I just found a weird things on they ToS [1] ... 8. Our service may automatically delete a piece of data you upload or give someone else access to where it determines that that data is an exact duplicate of original data already on our service. In that case, you will access that original data. Duplicate check, I get that. But, how do they do it? They say the files are encrypted on the browser, so if I upload file X an…

Perhaps they de-duplicate using smaller block sizes? Something like 256 bytes. Also, if you believe Microsoft Outlook, there's something called "compressible encryption", which implies there are encryption schemes that aren't exactly random, meaning in turn that not all N-bit blocks are equally likely.

even 256 bytes block is big enough to make collisions so rare that it's not even worth.

not to mention metadata associated with such a small block would be probably more than the size of the block itself.

Re: Mega has launched

#186

Post by samwillis »

b1n wrote: post #163
samwillis wrote: post #89

To everyone asking about the encryption, it isn't really about protecting your data its about protecting themselves. They have created a service that is billed as a drop box competitor but it's not. This is megaupload2, they just need it to not look like they are marketing it as that. They needed a way to deny any knolage of file sharing and have found a two pronged attack. The encryption means they can deny any know…

Wasn't MegaUpload popularity due to streaming video content? Doesn't the encryption make video streaming impossible in the way it was being done before (i.e. to a large psudononymous userbase)?

Yes, megavideo was a large part of their platform. I think it is only a matter of time before we see them build a video player on top of mega. I suspect there are technical hurdles to over come with decrypting and then playing the video using javascript though.

Re: Mega has launched

#187

Post by rplnt »

gee_totes wrote: post #70
zalew wrote: post #57

"Warning: You are using an outdated browser, which adversely affects your file transfer performance. Please upgrade to Google Chrome." is this a joke? I'm on FF19

Really? I'm on FF3 and I didn't get a notice, which was quite surprising. File upload didn't work though....

In Opera 11.x you don't get a warning, but the site never loads.

Re: Mega has launched

#188

Post by rplnt »

vitobcn wrote: post #60

According to Kim, over a 100,000 users registered in under an hour ( https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/292702999078387712 ). Pretty impressive, and it explains the slow responsiveness of the site.

Much ado about nothing. He's pretty clever.

Re: Mega has launched

#189

Post by rplnt »

fredsted wrote: post #34

Perhaps he should have launched it like Gmail: Gradual launch with invites. Launching a file sharing site with this much media attention is surely going to crash it.

No one would want an invite. You need huge amounts of users to successfully run a sharing portal.

Re: Mega has launched

#190

Post by alexqgb »

zxcdw wrote: post #180
georgeorwell wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, I also have a much bigger problem with commercial copyright infringement than non-commercial copyright infringement. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5084439 I can see how the Daft Punk thing would get on your nerves. It seems like all this man does is use people.

"Uses" people by creating products other people are willing to pay for. Just like your local pig farm "uses" the animals to provide you food you are willing to pay for. Mega is just being a midleman here. What's so wrong about it, really? If an industry goes down because it can't compete with "free", then maybe it should go down because technology makes the business model unprofitable? Big players go down and small o…

No, it's not "just like" at all. And that's for the not-difficult-to-discern reason that people and pigs are not interchangeable, which why you can have bacon for breakfast without being charged as an accessory to murder. And I'm sorry that think that getting the artists out of art and just handing the satisfaction of the human intellect to machines is a situation where "everyone wins."

A liberal education may not get you a job, but it'll save you from embarrassing yourself with stuff like this.

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