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BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

torrentfreak.com

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Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#51

Post by lifeguard »

buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

I work for a startup and want to sync my dev machines at home and work and also a build farm. Bt sync is a good solution.

I am a musician and want to sync my tracks with a few producers. Bt sync is a good solution.

I am a political activist and want to ensure my data will be available to my affinity group even if Dropbox is threatened with a state security letter. Bt sync is an excellent solution.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#52

Post by base698 »

slg wrote: post #29
notdonspaulding wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a rendezvous server that also serves as a fallback relay in case two devices that want to sync are behind highly-unfriendly NATs. In that sense, it's exactly like Dropbox. But it doesn't store your data, so yes, one device must always be on in order to sync with a new device. However, if you have a device that needs changes made on another one, it will just wait around and sync whenever the device with change…

That might very well rule Sync out for personal use by the general public. The benefit of Dropbox (and similar server backed services) is that the most up-to-date version of a file is simply there as soon as you are connected to the Internet. Most people who have two computers won’t be using them both at the same time. For example, a common use case for these services is syncing files while you are traveling. Requiri…

Unless you have a tools folder with a ton of files and Dropbox has no way to know which ones are the ones you want now. It can take up to a day to sync a large amount of files in my experience.

If I have to devise some system to zip my important stuff and keep that up to date, then I may as well just use BTSync for free.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#53

Post by mseebach »

andrethegiant wrote: post #44
buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

100Gb of Dropbox costs $10/month, BitTorrent Sync is free.

Dropbox has your stuff stored away in a fairly secure facility, while BitTorrent Sync just syncs between machines you've installed it on. That's worth something. Of course, you can just rent a cheap VPS somewhere and have it sync your BTS folders, but I think you'll be hard pressed to find a VPS with 100 GB storage for less than $10/month.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#54

Post by mikeash »

yid wrote: post #39
manishsharan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would respectfully disagree with what you seem to be implying. This service would mostly be used by us who are wary about trusting Google/Microsoft/Dropbox and the judgement of their automated decision systems with our life . Yesterday there was a HN story about a guy who got kicked off Google Docs because an automated program was trolling/mining through their users files and its judgement was not to be questioned…

Drop a TrueCrypt partition into your Dropbox [1], and you get the Dropbox QoS as well as the encryption for your kids' swimming pool photos. Plus, for non-swimming photos, you can just use the regular Dropbox folder. [1] http://tonyonsecurity.com/2012/08/05/securing-your-data-on-d...

Does this avoid conflicts in the event that you change two different files on the TrueCrypt volume at the same time on two different computers?

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#55

Post by solarkennedy »

I'm writing a puppet module to make it easy to declare shared folders. I'm almost done: https://github.com/solarkennedy/puppet-btsync

The config file is versatile enough to allow you to turn off the relay servers / dht / upnp, etc and simply declare static peers, which is cool.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#56

Post by EvilLook »

Shish2k wrote: post #14
azar1 wrote: post #3

Would love it if source was released (or if somebody could point it out to me).

No source, but they plan to have an API [1]. Personally I'd be quite content if they just documented the protocol... [1] http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/8816-will-syncapp-be-open-...

The level of asshurt expressed by GreatMarko in that thread is actually astounding.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#57

Post by lifeformed »

It doesn't feel like this overlaps with my need for Dropbox. I use Dropbox for file sharing, backup, version control, and the ability to access my files at any time from any computer (through the website). Actually syncing between computers is just a small part of it.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#59

Post by mcintyre1994 »

buro9 wrote: post #9

Really nice, but the thing is... Dropbox has gone beyond just file sharing. One example: I used to use Flickr for photo sharing, but cameras got better, images got bigger, and I have a lot of photos. I moved from Flickr to Picasa as it could cope with the directories full of photos and I didn't have to manually upload them and Google's storage space was cheaper. Then I ran out of space... over 100GB of photos, where…

Dropbox's core offering boils down to file sync + cloud sync. There's many use cases where that's what you want - access on whatever devices you have the app installed on, and also over the web.

Cloud sync leads to storage limits (which don't make sense as a consumer for file sync, but are necessary for large scale cloud sync) and centralisation (desirable for vast access, not so much for some situations).

BT sync isn't a Dropbox replacement, it's a file sync replacement that's superior in some ways, but lacks the benefits of being combined with cloud sync.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#60

Post by polarix »

Shish2k wrote: post #31

Looking at some of the examples, I'm starting to see a future where people trade entirely in hashes - send some amount of bitcoins to address X, receive access to read-only access to bittorrent folder Y which is automatically populated with the latest TV episodes for a series, etc. Any idea how to apply that sort of anonymity and convenience to the real world though? Scanning QR codes with a phone seems to be the bes…

You might think you could possibly have done this in the physical world for a few years now. Don't fool yourself. You have a face and DNA. You will not be anonymous (or even pseudonymous) as long as you carry a body.
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