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Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

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Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#221

Post by mmargerum »

japanuspus wrote: post #95
mikae1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or use an open source client without telemetry such as https://maestral.app ㋡

This. Recently came back to macOS after a decade on the other side, and one surprise was how terrible the official Dropbox client was. Installed Maestral instead and it just works -- just like Dropbox used to. I see Dropbox as one of the biggest failures of the VC model. If only they had been bootstrapped, they would probably have stuck with their initial sync offering: A perfectly executed solution to a problem ever…

i've never had a single issue with dropbox on 3 macs in 10 years. Plenty of issues with google drive and one drive (or whatever it's newest name is).

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#222

Post by Dylan16807 »

nottorp wrote: post #216
JohnFen wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need off site backups Yes, but that's not technically difficult or time-consuming. > a plan for disaster recovery to match what an external service can offer. I'm not sure what you really mean by this. Isn't that what the backups are for?

> > you need off site backups > Yes, but that's not technically difficult or time-consuming. Yes, you just pay for some server space on a cloud service... oh wait... The point is all this trivial to do stuff just adds up, and sometimes it does make sense to use a 3rd party. Your pain threshold may just be larger than mine.

> Yes, you just pay for some server space on a cloud service... oh wait...

I consider dumb storage for encrypted data to still be sufficiently under my control.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#223

Post by rekabis »

mikae1 wrote: post #39
aunty_helen wrote: post #15

Wouldn't get this with a FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

Or use an open source client without telemetry such as https://maestral.app ㋡

Dangnabbit: no Windows option.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#224

Post by dreamcompiler »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #179
netruk44 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re okay with a VPS, Servarica’s 2022 Black Friday offerings (which are still available) has a 2 TB HDD VPS for $48/year.

This looks ideal. Thanks!

Update: Servarica won't take my money.

They won't let you sign up from a VPN. That's annoying but it doesn't affect me. Maybe they're trying to prevent Russian bots from signing up or something. Fine.

But after I gave them a valid credit card and billing address, they still won't take my money. Here's their support response:

"Your IP address does not match with the location you have provided. In order to accept your order your IP address must match the actual location from where you are placing the order."

Ohh kaay. I'm traveling at the moment in a different US state from my billing address. I'm not in Mongolia. And even when I'm at my billing address, my main ISP is Starlink, whose primary ground stations for me are also in a different state than I'm in. So I routinely see banner ads on websites for stores that are 500 miles away.

It's par for the course for non-technical companies to assume that IP geolocation is in any way accurate. But a cloud VPS company should know better.

Fail.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#225

Post by nottorp »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #222
nottorp wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > you need off site backups > Yes, but that's not technically difficult or time-consuming. Yes, you just pay for some server space on a cloud service... oh wait... The point is all this trivial to do stuff just adds up, and sometimes it does make sense to use a 3rd party. Your pain threshold may just be larger than mine.

> Yes, you just pay for some server space on a cloud service... oh wait... I consider dumb storage for encrypted data to still be sufficiently under my control.

I switched from Dropbox to pCloud. They claim to offer an encryption option. I haven't studied it but it's there.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#226

Post by JohnFen »

nottorp wrote: post #216
JohnFen wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you need off site backups Yes, but that's not technically difficult or time-consuming. > a plan for disaster recovery to match what an external service can offer. I'm not sure what you really mean by this. Isn't that what the backups are for?

> > you need off site backups > Yes, but that's not technically difficult or time-consuming. Yes, you just pay for some server space on a cloud service... oh wait... The point is all this trivial to do stuff just adds up, and sometimes it does make sense to use a 3rd party. Your pain threshold may just be larger than mine.

> Yes, you just pay for some server space on a cloud service...

Which is far from the only solution. I have automated off-site backups without involving the cloud.

> sometimes it does make sense to use a 3rd party.

Of course. I'm not arguing otherwise.

> Your pain threshold may just be larger than mine.

Perhaps, but I suffer very nearly zero pain on this. I probably spend a couple hours a month maintaining my systems on overage.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#227

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

JohnFen wrote: post #193
ihateyouall123 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run a lot of my own things on my network. It is a nightmare, but I still do it. If I had more money, I would absolutely outsource this process.

Interesting. I wonder why our experiences are so radically different?

Because the things you consider work and what you consider a large burden is different for everyone.

As an example.

I exclusively run hosted apps for email and chat at this point (Outlook/Gsuite/teams/slack/etc).

I use Plex for most of my personal media consumption.

When outlook/gsuite/teams/slack/etc stop working, I realize there's nothing I can do, lots of engineers are fixing it and I move on to some other task.

When Plex stops working, it doesn't come back online until I do something.

Maybe it's just restarting it's container, maybe some update broke something and I need to downgrade, maybe the spinning bit of slowly rusting metal in my basement failed and I'm going to spend the next week fighting with mdadm because the raid rebuild goes poorly. It happens. If you're self-hosting, even if you want to claim to be perfect at deploying/running software and even if you think you can constantly upgrade things without any issue or even if you think you can leave things running on old software forever, something will eventually break. Probably software at times, definitely hardware will break.

Do you see fixing and troubleshooting these kinds of issues as a burden, or a large one? That's the question.

At this point in my life I do. If not for the cost, I'd run absolutely everything on the cloud.

The amount of free time I spend with computers is not infinite and I'd prefer to spend it doing fun new things rather than troubleshooting for the 30th time why some random ISP I was trying to send mail to is blocking my home mail server. Been there, done that, burned the t-shirt out of frustration.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#228

Post by mbrochh »

mmargerum wrote: post #221
japanuspus wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Recently came back to macOS after a decade on the other side, and one surprise was how terrible the official Dropbox client was. Installed Maestral instead and it just works -- just like Dropbox used to. I see Dropbox as one of the biggest failures of the VC model. If only they had been bootstrapped, they would probably have stuck with their initial sync offering: A perfectly executed solution to a problem ever…

i've never had a single issue with dropbox on 3 macs in 10 years. Plenty of issues with google drive and one drive (or whatever it's newest name is).

Yea same. Have Dropbox on all my macs, ipads and iphones, never a single issue whatsoever.

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#229

Post by nullrouted »

api wrote: post #148
doersino wrote: post #2

I’ve been using https://github.com/samschott/maestral instead of Dropbox’s client for the last year or so and it’s been rock-solid.

Anything like this for Google Drive? That client also used to be good but has become complete bloated trash in recent years. It seems like all chat, conference, and collaboration software must devolve into bloated slow buggy trash over time.

https://www.insynchq.com/

Re: Dropbox telemetry can't be disabled

#230

Post by newaccount74 »

sneak wrote: post #87
newaccount74 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syncthing is so much better than Dropbox. There are no accounts, so it's much easier to set up syncing between multiple machines that may not belong to the same user, or to shared devices. I use it to sync family documents, work documents, for syncing Factorio save games, ... I've also never had problems with CPU usage (Dropbox often caused high CPU usage in some cases) The only downside is that background sync on iO…

Möbius Sync is more IAP cancer, unfortunately.

IAP cancer? It's a one time payment for an app that does exactly what it says in the description.

Do you expect all developers to give away their apps for free?

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