Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox CTO Resigns

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 133 posts

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#61

Post by guitarbill »

tbrock wrote: post #38
bitL wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox uses very sophisticated binary diff nobody else provides to minimize inbound/outbound traffic; this has some CPU/battery cost though. Competitors usually provide very dumb upload/download that might be less CPU/battery intense but much heavier on the bytes transferred. You simply might not be their target group.

Yeah, I don't think so. Their target group must be people with 10mb of files or less. Why would you need to binary diff when syncing dropbox to a new computer? Yet setting up dropbox for the first time on a new machine uses 100% of my CPU. The same S3 sync operation is barely noticible. When updating files, first check for changes with something ultra cheap like an md5 then, if changed, do the "sophisticated" stuff.

onboarding cost might be annoying, but at least it's upfront. i'd take 100% at the start for more efficient sync later.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#62

Post by tbrock »

guitarbill wrote: post #61
tbrock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't think so. Their target group must be people with 10mb of files or less. Why would you need to binary diff when syncing dropbox to a new computer? Yet setting up dropbox for the first time on a new machine uses 100% of my CPU. The same S3 sync operation is barely noticible. When updating files, first check for changes with something ultra cheap like an md5 then, if changed, do the "sophisticated" stuff.

onboarding cost might be annoying, but at least it's upfront. i'd take 100% at the start for more efficient sync later.

Yeah, if only it did that...

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#63

Post by eloff »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #43
fortran77 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 In all seriousness, have you looked at OneDrive + Office365? For $70/year you get 1 TB of storage, a client that works on all platforms, plus M…

Doesn't work on Linux which is what the quote you're referencing is talking about. Office365 comes with it's own challenges. Plus your documents are all scanned and there is no privacy protection, especially not from the US government.

Dropbox is a US company, I don't see how you get better privacy protection there. Plus Microsoft has a petty good track record, they've challenged US government requests for information in court, and fought to prevent the government from accessing data stored outside the country.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#64

Post by jchw »

bambax wrote: post #55
jonknee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs was early, but not wrong about Dropbox being a feature and not a product. I just want a folder that syncs extremely reliably, that's it. They've gone down the corporate rabbithole and now call themselves a "smart workspace" whatever that means.

Maybe, but a feature that works is worth more than a product that doesn't. Dropbox always works, everywhere. I'm old enough to remember a world pre-Drobox (and pre-high bandwidth). I used to work at different places. I kept a laptop in each office, and carried with me Iomega disks that I synced every morning. It was slow and complex and error-prone. Alternatives from either Apple or MS will never work as well, they w…

“Dropbox always works, everywhere.”

This used to be true, but has gradually become less true. Linux support has certainly taken quite a dive.

They also removed features I really liked. I used the Public folder a lot :(

(I actually used to pay for Dropbox, because I genuinely thought it was a great product. It’s still probably one of the best syncing services, but at this point I’ve just moved off of syncing services.)

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#65

Post by stevesimmons »

fortran77 wrote: post #33
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…

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 In all seriousness, have you looked at OneDrive + Office365? For $70/year you get 1 TB of storage, a client that works on all platforms, plus M…

That $70/year gets you the 1TB of storage and everything else you mention, per person, for up to five people. That's a total of up to 5TB. Perfect for a family.

(at least, that's the standard offering here in Europe...)

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#66

Post by bigiain »

fullshark wrote: post #46
jonknee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs was early, but not wrong about Dropbox being a feature and not a product. I just want a folder that syncs extremely reliably, that's it. They've gone down the corporate rabbithole and now call themselves a "smart workspace" whatever that means.

Well the corporate rabbithole was the only way they could turn it into a business, and not a feature as you say.

That's true, but it also means their product is no longer the feature I want or signed up to.

They can do what they like with their business. But I, like jonknee upthread, don't want their new changed thing, and an=m somewhat disappointed at having the feature I'm subscribed to turn into a product/business I would not have subscribed to if they'd told me up front.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#67

Post by manicdee »

bitL wrote: post #21
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…

Dropbox uses very sophisticated binary diff nobody else provides to minimize inbound/outbound traffic; this has some CPU/battery cost though. Competitors usually provide very dumb upload/download that might be less CPU/battery intense but much heavier on the bytes transferred. You simply might not be their target group.

Those who do not study ~~history~~ ~~Unix~~ rsync are doomed to repeat it poorly.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#68

Post by bigiain »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #41
defen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once iCloud launches file sharing I'm 100% done with them. Do you mean something other than this? https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/share-files-with-ic...

They mean folder sharing, which is coming in Catalina.

Which is going to be great, except for the older MacOS devices I have which won't update to Catalina. My old MacMini file/media server is doing a sterling job, in spite of having been left behind by Apple.

Lucky cron and rsync is still a thing...

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#69

Post by [deleted] »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #48
roter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have said the same thing in 2010 when I first started my business and needed file sharing/syncing in a small team. Everything just worked on Linux & Windows. Then they started tweaking everything, adding useless features, and it seems to be more of a hassle every year. But I'm still using it but if a cheaper, more lightweight service was offered, I'd probably switch.

Nextcloud? A NAS device? Google Drive? Practically all of these are cheaper and have the same or better usefulness. There's actually a ton of storage options out there.

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#70

Post by aseipp »

fortran77 wrote: post #33
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…

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 In all seriousness, have you looked at OneDrive + Office365? For $70/year you get 1 TB of storage, a client that works on all platforms, plus M…

I moved myself to this, along with the family plan ($99/USD/yr, IIRC). The nice thing is that you can still buy the Office suite separately if you want. The other thing is I finally wanted to settle on "one" cloud storage provider for me and my family, so the addition of OneDrive sealed it when combined with Excel.

Honestly, Office365 is something of a model for the SaaS software I've bought: the core offering (Office) is still available with an eternal license, but the SaaS offering is very good, well priced, and the value add of OneDrive is great when competitors charge for storage separately. There are a lot of issues with SaaS (velocity, feedback loops) but they did this one right, I think.

(The funny thing is I have an iPhone and almost exclusively use Linux, so obviously I live in a bizarro world.)

Post reply on HN