Live data from Hacker News

BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

torrentfreak.com

151–160 of 291 posts

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#151
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…

BitTorrent also solves this with, um, torrents.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#153
post #93
post #24

I've been using BitTorrent Sync for the past week. For the use case of sharing large files, it obliterates Dropbox, AeroFS, and Cubby. It distributes the files intelligently and makes optimal use of everyone's bandwidth. Dropbox, for example, slowly uploads all files to the cloud before distributing them, plus there's the space issue. AeroFS allows unlimited space, but is far slower than my Internet and LAN speeds al…

How does it handle scenarios where files were modified offline on two separate devices? Is it able to identify conflicts?

Look under "What if several people make changes to the same file?" http://forum.bittorrent.com/topic/16410-bittorrent-sync-faq/

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about crashplan?

I tried crashplan also, but the showstopper is escaping me at the moment.

Crashplan is great as a backup plan and offers a web interface for times when everything else has failed. I have used it to retrieve things a few times and I highly recommend it as a backup plan. But their web interface isn't their selling point, and you can't manipulate the files. It's read only access. It does track diffs, though, so that can be pretty handy.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#155
Is this the first time that a product has been launched with the primary motivation of showing that a particular protocol is good for things other illegal filesharing?

Up until now BitTorrent aficionados have tended to be forced back to the "I use it for Linux distros" when defending the protocol against ISPs and businesses looking to shape or block BT traffic.

If this takes off, then the "its only used for nefarious purposes" argument will be much harder to make.

I suspect that this is the real reason it's being launched - not that that's a bad thing.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#156
post #24

I've been using BitTorrent Sync for the past week. For the use case of sharing large files, it obliterates Dropbox, AeroFS, and Cubby. It distributes the files intelligently and makes optimal use of everyone's bandwidth. Dropbox, for example, slowly uploads all files to the cloud before distributing them, plus there's the space issue. AeroFS allows unlimited space, but is far slower than my Internet and LAN speeds al…

This is the exact scenario I have in mind—syncing music and photos between two laptops and a Synology DS110j. Which binary did you use for the NAS?

I used the ARM binary. Log in to your NAS and use wget to download the binary, then execute it. That's it.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#157
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can auto-sync high-res photos in Google+, too, but it ounts in the 5 GB free storage you have.

Images that are 2048x2048 and below don't consume space on Google drive.

this was all well and good to me until I saw that Google shut down someones account for violation of TOS. Im already mulling over alternatives. This might be one of them.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#158
post #24

I've been using BitTorrent Sync for the past week. For the use case of sharing large files, it obliterates Dropbox, AeroFS, and Cubby. It distributes the files intelligently and makes optimal use of everyone's bandwidth. Dropbox, for example, slowly uploads all files to the cloud before distributing them, plus there's the space issue. AeroFS allows unlimited space, but is far slower than my Internet and LAN speeds al…

If you already have a Synology box, what do you get with BS versus using Synology's own CloudStation? I've looked into BS, but I guess I'm not getting what I gain running it on my DS410.

Re: BitTorrent’s Secure Dropbox Alternative Goes Public

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I am a political activist ... Bt sync is an excellent solution. I think it will need more cute cats before you can make that call. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_acti...

Why? How is the government going to shut down what is basically a private decentralized p2p network? There isn't any central server they can take out and the traffic over the network would look like any other encrypted traffic.

If they gained access to the sync group with full permissions they could destroy it and get IP addresses, etc. And the format itself might not lend itself to all the needs of a political activist group. But I don't see how the cute cat theory holds any water here.

Post reply on HN