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April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

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Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#111

Post by ghshephard »

singular wrote: post #95
ccozan wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the success of the Dropbox depends on the common people wanting to simply share/keep their files and not necessarily if someone can keep 300k+ files in there. For me as a hacker, I have at my disposal ( due also to higher income ) more powerful tools or hardware ( local/private NAS, higher bw, Amazon AWS, etc) real tools ( rsync, versioning, can customize/choose the filesystem, etc ) to achieve the same thing…

Ok, that's fine, so what is there to stop dropbox from popping up a warning when this limit is exceeded? Or for there to be some means of deleting things from the server side without having to manually click through to delete N files at once (where N Having the system break irrevocably at any stage is totally unacceptable when you're dealing with people's data. Presumably you'd have a problem if gmail stopped working…

In some ways, it reminds me of Apple's attitude towards their Pro Users - these users make up less than 1% of their customer base, and their revenue stream (and effort/attention) is focussed on the other 99%. So, because 99% of the users will never run into this problem, they're going to put minimal/no attention to resolving it, while focussing all their attention towards the 99%.

The 1% hopefully realize this and migrate to things like http://www.filetransporter.com/ or http://www.filosync.com/ that might (or might not) suit your needs better.

3 years later with a Pro Account that I use every day - with a bunch of huge honking firmware images - I'm up to 3.02 GBytes and 1,965 items.

And I thought I was a power users.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#112

Post by guiniveretoo »

kartikkumar wrote: post #45
frabcus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When first shown it by a friend, I didn't want to use it because I was ideologically only using open source stuff, and servers I have control over. I carried on using Unison and some dodgy shell scripts. Some years later, I got a free 60Gb Dropbox account with a new Samsung phone. It seemed a good way to sync my music and photos, and to let me access text files on the phone. I'd meanwhile got fed up with my hand made…

And therein lies a fascinating fact about Dropbox. Drew made the tradeoff between convenience and security/ownership one that convenience won out, particularly for a lot of people that from the outset were not expecting it. I think Dropbox's adoption in the smartphone world has been one of the most ingenious partnerships. I had pretty much the same experience in that I really only started looking at Dropbox as a seri…

As a linux user (though I wouldn't consider myself a power user) I shopped around for a long time to find a cross-platform cloud backup solution.

After poking at a lot of the other options out there, Dropbox ended up being The One. The ease of use, lack of (unnecessary) IU (I'm looking at you, SpiderOak), and general un-buggyness after some time of trying out the free account sold me on it.

Since I started paying for Dropbox, I have become concerned about privacy and have encrypted my more sensitive data with Encfs. There have been some other companies started in the last year or so that I'm considering (Copy looks nice, and I want to see what appears based on http://camlistore.org/).

Roll-your-own backup systems are cool and all, but I've got shit to do that's not file management.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#113

Post by giulianob »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #108
nostrademons wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a simple file sharing server on their own PC or a server they own..." I think that's the part you're missing. What fraction of the general population can set up a file-sharing server? What fraction of the population even owns a server? What fraction of the population even knows what a server is ? DropBox faced this objection over and over again from the investors they pitched, and Drew's answer was variations on "Bu…

That's the thing though, how many "grandmas and grandpas" really need a file sharing service for blobs of data? There already exists "better" solutions to share common file types: flickr/picasa for images, youtube for video, email for word documents, etc. The vast majority of people simply don't need an arbitrary file hosting service. Somehow they've managed to convince people they do. On the other hand, if you give…

Grandmas and grandpas is a bit extreme. Just about anyone I know uses Dropbox nowadays because it's just simpler than the alternative. I even use it to share files w/ my wife when we're in the same house. I have a SMB share that I use for some things but when I have to send my wife some pictures I just put them in our shared Dropbox. It's easier and she can access it later on her phone too even. Convenience is a very important factor.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#114

Post by mden »

300bps wrote: post #105
singular wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so just pop up a warning in this situation. It's been a year and a half at least they've acknowledged this problem, so prevent somebody from having a non-functioning product - wouldn't take much effort. The problem is they hide this problem away and in no way warn you, I fully accept that they might not want to prioritise fixing this, I just ask for common courtesy - I had a month with dropbox basically not worki…

Ok, so just pop up a warning in this situation. My friend, I don't believe you realize just how outside of the norm you are. 300k files is quite a large number of files for even a local file store to choke on. But there are actually two things that put you outside the norm. First, it is likely only technical users who are going to acquire 300,000 files in their DropBox. Second, technical users are already typically a…

I'm not sure how your response is actually addressing the suggestion to pop-up a warning. If the company is aware of the issue and there is no technical reason not to implement a warning, even if it would help out only .1% of the users, then why not do it? I would understand if it was some large feature and they didn't want to waste resources, but it's unlikely the case here (undoubtedly they keep track of how many files you have synced and they already have the ability to do desktop notifications).

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#115

Post by singular »

scott_s wrote: post #107
singular wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly dislike the strain of negativity that seems to be typical of hn these days, but... I don't think it's totally unrelated, as I always very much admired dropbox as a company and technically, and had the sense of them being something of a hacker's company (an hn thread in which the founder is replying to technical issues definitely gives one that impression), and I was very disappointed to have that experienc…

Perhaps your use-case is not one they consider important. (As others have pointed out, 300,000 files is a lot for a synced drive.)

I don't want to belabour my points, so I'm deciding not to continue too much further in these discussions (I've come to find internet arguing is somewhat pointless regardless of the rights + wrongs of the issue at debate), however as I have repeatedly pointed out, it's very easy to hit a number like that if you store code in dropbox, esp. open source projects.

And like I've also pointed out repeatedly, fine don't consider my use-case important, but add a warning or at least don't drop supporting me because I'm too much effort, or if you are, say that's what you're doing.

If I had known dropbox wasn't suitable for developers (it having originated from yc with a technical discussion on that original thread suggests otherwise) - I wouldn't have used it in the first place.

I had used it as a developer for a long long time before hitting issues, then it become unrecoverable even after a month of patiently trying to fix it, and new work files were getting overwritten by old ones throughout. That's not an acceptable failure mode, nor is then being ignored without warning by support (at least say 'sorry you're too much effort'.)

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#116

Post by thecoffman »

Straight from Drew himeself:

   data's stored on s3, and encrypted before storage -- there'll be another 
   option to enter in an additional passphrase (or private key) when installing 
   in order to encrypt your data before it leaves your computer (kind of like 
   what mozy does.)
It is sad to me that this never came to pass. I guess the desire to offer a web interface overrode the idea of encrypting the files before they left your computer. Not that you can't use your own encryption, but having it built in would have been great.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#117

Post by Osiris »

I loved this comment:

> 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.

Trivially use three different systems to simulate some type of not quite automatic syncing.

Why do Linux users often claim something is "trivial" and then go on to list obscure commands and software packages that have to be tied together in just the right way? To me that's "possible to do", not "trivial to do".

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#118

Post by unavoidable »

Osiris wrote: post #117

I loved this comment: > 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. Trivially use three different systems to simulate some type of not quite automatic syncing. Why do Linux users ofte…

I suppose you have to come at it from the mindset of those actually using Linux. That is, if it already exists and can be glued together using open tools (as opposed to having to code it yourself), it is "trivial", since it has already been done before.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#119

Post by swalsh »

Read the comments there. Now come back. This is why you don't ask engineers for business advice. I can't tell you how many times I've come up with an idea I think is great, go to work, and talk to my buddies in firmware. The first thing almost all the time out of their mouth is basically "why don't use solution x, in addition to y, which will basically give you the same thing" where x and y are great technologies, but kind of hack to accomplish what you're doing. It kind of always kills my energy.

Giving advice is cheap, and deceptively easy to make sound wise. I've found when you want to bounce an idea, you need someone smart, who will tell you what you're missing... but also be open to new ideas. A lot of people lean on either side of that line. Engineers for some reason tend to lean on the pessimistic side.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#120

Post by jimmaswell »

fit2rule wrote: post #36
bstar77 wrote: post #3

Dropbox is definitely a case where a single person's vision was required to create a revolutionary product. Judging by the comments, leaving it to HNers as a group would have just resulted in a faster usb drive.

I think a far more insidious fact is that Dropbox fills in a gap left wide open by incompetent OS developers. Its the 21st Century - the OS should be providing such features inherently, without requiring a third party involvement. Maybe HN'ers, at that time, were somehow conscious of this fact, and thus declined to 'see the revolution' that was headed their way. Either way, since there was no other option, Dropbox wa…

Microsoft is beginning to do this with SkyDrive.
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