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Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

fortune.com

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Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#181

Post by ksec »

pjc50 wrote: post #127
ksec wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in the real world, no one has done it better then Dropbox for simple store and sync. Which is sad but true. iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, GDrive, Box aren't any good at all. Dropbox is only better because all of their competition aren't great. I have six 2.5" HDD sitting here, along with two 3.5" HDD, all with photos, video, files etc, many are duplicated. There are currently no easy way to sort through this mess.…

I've been contemplating building such a thing, but without (or making very optional) the Cloud aspect. Not sure whether or how it could be monetised, especially if I also wanted it to be open source.

Essentially this is what NAS from Synology or Qnap should have offered in the first place.

Monetizing it by reselling the Cloud Storage space? ( Using B2 from Black Blaze ) But i really think it is a feature rather then a product.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#183

Post by paholg »

msh wrote: post #118
B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is introducing Nah, they've always been good at not listening to what they don't want to hear. People were asking about client-side encryption back in 2009, and they've been mishearing for all these years. Top notch.

Well I guess they don't want to pay for the extra storage when they can't dedup files.

There are methods of client-side encryption that still allow for deduplication.

For example, use a hash of the file as the encryption key, then encrypt that hash with the client's key.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#184

Post by saimiam »

Scea91 wrote: post #126
flunhat wrote: post #9

They've come a long way from their Show HN 10 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 From a demo hacked together over a few months (written in Python, IIRC) and posted on HN to an IPO. Pretty cool, honestly.

Thanks for the link, it was really enlightening read. It is interesting to read the elaborated comments of some naysayers there who are stuck in their old ways and can't see the value of it yet. One of them describes his solution with FUSE and FTP that 'basically achieves the same' and has doubts that anyone would want to use Dropbox if they can use FTP. Same stuff surely happens here today.

> Same stuff surely happens here today.

This is exactly what gives me hope when I post a sideproject here or on reddit and it is either met with radio silence or active resistance. I'm starting to suspect that horses don't actually like water.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#185

Post by T-hawk »

djhworld wrote: post #91

The only comment I will say about Dropbox is the price, I wish they would do a 100GB tier or something for £1.99 a month. I really cannot justify paying £7.99 a month for 1TB of storage, especially when I'll most likely use less than 10% of that space

This often comes up regarding Dropbox. It's not that Dropbox couldn't offer a cheaper tier than $10/month. It's that they don't want to.

$10/1TB is not a ratio to be arbitrarily divided, no matter how much people want to assume it should be. Dropbox would lose more revenue from customers downgrading from $10 to $2 than they would gain from the few customers that care about the difference between $0 and $2.

$10 is the floor for Dropbox to care enough to serve any customer. It's a version of "fire your pathological customers", or rather to never acquire them in the first place. SaaS vendors know that the cheapest customers are the biggest headaches. If you care about the difference between $5 and $10, Dropbox doesn't need to care about serving you.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#186

Post by concede_pluto »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #171
hellworld wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another one of Bogle's self serving comments. He's a legend but rarely unbiased. The key difference is the speculator buys it purely in the hope of flipping it. The investor considers the fundamentals of the investment. Time horizon is irrelevant. You can have special sits which you are in and out of in a month or so; but it's definitely an investment.

We are all hoping to flip our investments in the equities market; no one is holding forever. Unless you intend to die and pass your ownership interest to heirs.

Buffett's favorite holding period is forever. Cuban points out that non-dividend stocks aren't much more than baseball cards. Kiyosaki argues that the reason people suffer financially is that they purchase liabilities and list them under the asset column.

The difference between investing and speculating is whether you get paid for owning it or only for finding a greater fool to relieve you of it. The wheels have come off the equities market because management has realized putting on a convincing show for speculators nets more dumb money than actually succeeding as a business worth owning.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#187

Post by robotresearcher »

dahauns wrote: post #175
robotresearcher wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft might follow Apple's lead of OS developers including cloud sync. That's gonna leave a mark on Dropbox's business.

> Microsoft might follow Apple's lead of OS developers including cloud sync. You mean OneDrive?

Yeah, I guess so. It's had so little impact on my world that I forgot all about it.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#188

Post by nextlevelwizard »

lloeki wrote: post #109
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I still can't figure out how to access files in iCloud from my Mac and iPhone. On Mac I just open the iCloud folder and the files are there, just like Dropbox On iPhone I open the iCloud Drive app and the files are there just like on Mac, much like in Dropbox pp expect Dropbox uses list format. Personally I like iCloud currently more, but as you said it only works in Apple ecosystem (which I'm currently fine with).…

The iCloud Drive folder is indeed "just files" but it’s stored sort of hidden in a wickedly long path†. Firing up a terminal and cd’ing into ~/Dropbox is arguably easier than having to drag and drop a file in there from Finder just to have the correct path. † "~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs"

How about ~/Desktop? That's mirrored in iCloud for sure. Possibly also other paths, but that's sort of hidden knowledge.

Usually when I use it I just drag files into the shortcut in Finder, but I guess that's a point for Dropbox. Of course you can just make symlink with ~/iCloud (I'm not at my Mac right now, but as I type this I have a feeling that there is some path in your home folder to iCloud or maybe I've already linked to it.)

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#189

Post by nextlevelwizard »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #111
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I still can't figure out how to access files in iCloud from my Mac and iPhone. On Mac I just open the iCloud folder and the files are there, just like Dropbox On iPhone I open the iCloud Drive app and the files are there just like on Mac, much like in Dropbox pp expect Dropbox uses list format. Personally I like iCloud currently more, but as you said it only works in Apple ecosystem (which I'm currently fine with).…

FYI, there's also iCloud for Windows [0], and some people claim to have gotten it to work with Wine [1] on Ubuntu. [0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204283 [1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/195603/are-there-any-ways-to...

I have the Windows client installed on my "gaming pc", but it doesn't seem to sync well enough. For example I can't find my password manager vault there at all.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#190

Post by j7ake »

chii wrote: post #147
jakubp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is interesting. You may feel closer to people you haven't seen for a while when they are always "with" you on Snapchat -- I have certainly experienced that with people I don't talk to often or people who live on another continent. But then again, I can't shake the feeling that this is more about fun than really being close. I remember having close friends in high school and at the university. We spent many ho…

> the jury is still out on whether it's good. i think the jury is in on that - the market being the jury. The overwhelming majority of purchasers decide through no uncertain terms, that factory farming is the way to go. There are some people who have moral reservations against factory farming, but i believe those numbers are low (despite how loud their voices are). A silent majority (especially through less wealth co…

What about the tobacco industry? Is it wrong that government set regulations to tax cigarettes and limit advertising?

What about the gambling industry?

I feel in a few decades, this social media will be considered harmful and will be regulated and possibly taxed.

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