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My contribution to XKCD’s #949

joachim-breitner.de

31–40 of 56 posts

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#31

Didn't Dropbox's share links more or less solve this problem? Maybe not for 100% of the population, but I've managed to walk my mom through the process, and isn't that generally the success metric for things like this?

Dropbox has a storage limit, requires an account and is non free software.

The usage proposed here is a "no-strings" attached approach. Ideally you want something you can trust, hence free software, and that does not store anything.

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#32
WeTransfer (wetransfer.com) is pretty popular in the Netherlands. It's easy to use, only requires an e-mailadress and allows you to send files up to 2GB and as an added bonus it's quite pretty. I really love it's simplicity.

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#33
post #20
post #12

The problem isn't 'sending a file', it's 'peer to peer communication', which is hard without an intermediary and/or shennanigans due to ubiquitous NAT. I image in the everyone-has-an-IP universe of ip6, this will no longer be an issue.

ipv6 will still have this issue, because _no fucking way_ will i put a directly-accessible-from-anywhere computer on a network. the "how do i serve a directory" problem is _so_ solved: `python -m SimpleHTTPServer` or: dropbox (it's not hard to install, as much as xkcd whinges about it) google drive email This is a solved problem.

> directly-accessible-from-anywhere computer on a network

followed by

> python -m SimpleHTTPServer

is a bit of a contradiction.

Dropbox has some pretty serious limitations for transferring files; you're limited on file size, you have to upload to their servers, you're subject to their definition of objectionable content, and sharing a particular file too much (for their definition of too much) will cause them to take down the file.

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#34
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ipv6 will still have this issue, because _no fucking way_ will i put a directly-accessible-from-anywhere computer on a network. the "how do i serve a directory" problem is _so_ solved: `python -m SimpleHTTPServer` or: dropbox (it's not hard to install, as much as xkcd whinges about it) google drive email This is a solved problem.

> directly-accessible-from-anywhere computer on a network followed by > python -m SimpleHTTPServer is a bit of a contradiction. Dropbox has some pretty serious limitations for transferring files; you're limited on file size, you have to upload to their servers, you're subject to their definition of objectionable content, and sharing a particular file too much (for their definition of too much) will cause them to take…

My suggestion for SimpleHTTPServer was in response to the blog post.

>Dropbox has some pretty serious limitations for transferring files; you're limited on file size, you have to upload to their servers, you're subject to their definition of objectionable content, and sharing a particular file too much (for their definition of too much) will cause them to take down the file.

Link to this being a real problem for someone?

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#35
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to sign up with Dropbox just to download a file somebody was sharing with me. The way UbuntuOne (and maybe other providers) just give you a link anybody can use is much better imho.

I'm pretty sure they did it wrong then. You can share a link to any file inside of your dropbox, and anyone can download it regardless of whether they have an account.

Sounds like the person used the "Share this File/Folder" not the "Share Dropbox link" menu option

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#36
So he's built a file sharing tool which requires an SSH server to work? So why not just use sshfs, scp or rsync?

I don't mean to stamp on someone's creativity, but SSH already has a whole bunch of tools for transferring files - all of which already work pretty well.

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#37
post #28
post #5

"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." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 :)

It's a really geeky approach. The 949 problem concerns a lot of persons who does not even know what a server is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

:)

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#38
post #5

"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." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 :)

FTP is just a horrible and massively outdated protocol which we really shouldn't be advocating for the modern internet[1]. Particularly when everything you've suggested can be much more cleanly done using existing tools on Linux / UNIX / OS X: scp, rsync, git, sshfs (some of which are often pre-installed on the *nix image)

[1] http://mywiki.wooledge.org/FtpMustDie

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#39
post #36

So he's built a file sharing tool which requires an SSH server to work? So why not just use sshfs, scp or rsync? I don't mean to stamp on someone's creativity, but SSH already has a whole bunch of tools for transferring files - all of which already work pretty well.

Because with file-share, the file is never stored on the ssh-server; it is transferred the instant the other sides starts the download. The SSH-Server is required to share the file at a publicly available address (which my own computer is likely not). So no need to clean up files after the download, for example, or even to have any free disk space.

Re: My contribution to XKCD’s #949

#40
post #5

"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." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 :)

Note that all these require transferring the file to the server first, before a link can be shared with anyone, and especially cleaning up later. With my tool, the link is instantly available, and as soon as I stop the program, nothing is left anywhere, especially not on the server.
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