Why we are leaving Dropbox • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#71

Post by peu4000 » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:33 PM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #47

eevilspock wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8. Condoleezza Rice on the board. 9. Mailbox app has server-side access to your email (Gmail or iCloud). This is totally unnecessary for a mail client. They claim they need it to support Snooze functionality, but that is not true. It can be implemented entirely in the client, storing snooze meta-data (with a reference to, not a copy of, the email) only on their servers for cross-device sync purposes.

I like that this new thing where we declare our political enemies anathema and refuse to do business with anything they're affiliated with. I think we need to escalate a little, though, and start boycotting every business that uses Dropbox, too. Also, Stanford. It's the only way to effect justice in this crazy messed-up world.

I don't know man, boycotting companies you don't agree with seems a bit extreme. What's next, protesting against unfair laws? Lets not fly off the handle. We have an economy to run...

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#72

Post by fit2rule » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:37 PM UTC

The most frustrating thing for me, while watching a new generation of users grow up on Dropbox and similar functionality, is that this sort of thing should really be in the Operating System by now, as a standard feature.

But it seems the OS vendors have lost their way and are chasing shiny colors and new hardware, as usual.

Wasn't so long ago you kind of expected a new filesharing technology to be built-in to the operating system. But it does seem like those days are over - the line keeps getting redrawn, which defines what an "OS" is, to most people. At this point, at least in the case of Dropbox, the Web seems to have driven us all mad.

Store your stuff outside your house, on someone elses hardware? Really?

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#73

Post by dagw » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

vetinari wrote: post #54

dagw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do offline syncing and sharing of folders with people outside of your network? Having to manage a bunch of VPN accounts for outside users seems like a major pain and getting them all set up with OpenVPN seems like an even bigger pain.

We are using IPSEC VPN for external access. It works with standard clients in Windows, OSX, Linux, Android, iOS, whatever. It allows not only access to files on NAS, but also to webapps on another box and remote desktop on yet another box. Though I'm thinking about how to configure haproxy to allow Remote Desktop Gateway and https on the single IP, that we have.

Having to manage VPN accounts for everybody I want to share a folder with sounds like a huge pain. Especially if I have to go ask the VPN admin each time. And I'm still curious how you do offline access and syncing to local disk.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#74

Post by cefstat » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:39 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #32

I use Dropbox because they don't try to innovate on the UI side. I use it mainly to sync certain directories (like fonts, desktop backgrounds, themes, dotfiles, certain /etc files, code workspaces, and other configuration files) across my Linux machines. It's also a billion times more easy to use Dropbox with people from China than Google Drive because you can set up an EC2 server in Japan, install the command line v…

The reason I am not committing to Dropbox Pro is because I need to use such a service when I'm in China (and with people in China). Setting up an EC2 server, configuring apache or nginx, setting up some access control, etc., goes completely against the whole idea of Dropbox being simple. Also, it's one way, unless you go to extra lengths to setup some upload system. Of course if this is something you use several times each day then it's worth setting up, but for occasional use it's really an overkill. By the way, no, I haven't found any good substitute for Dropbox that works in China.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#75

Post by acdha » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:39 PM UTC

kfk wrote: post #70

The worst thing for me is not being able to sync only 1 folder instead of the whole thing. When you are syncing a mobile phone, you don't want to be downloading GBs of stuff, maybe only 1 folder with your resized pictures...

The mobile app has never downloaded everything.

The desktop app allows you to select a subset of folders to sync: https://www.dropbox.com/en/help/175

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#76

Post by normloman » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:40 PM UTC

csbrooks wrote: post #27

codingdave wrote: post #14

It may be time to explain the "So What?" test of writing again. You should ask yourself that question any time you write an article. (Or give a talk, teach a lesson...) If you gave enough information, that should sound like a stupid question. But if it sounds like something that might reasonably be asked, you forgot to communicate something important. In this case, the big missing piece of data is what they will be u…

"Dropbox sucks", with specific reasons why, is informative to me as a potential user. Not sure "so what?" is a reasonable test anyway. If you're snarky enough, couldn't you ask that about any article at all?

It doesn't matter how snarky you are. You're not asking whether it matters to you, but whether it matters to your audience. Unless you're writing to an audience of nihilists, the test is still a helpful judge of newsworthiness.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#77

Post by lazerwalker » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

I've moved away from Dropbox purely because the desktop (OS X) app has gotten so terrible. Besides the lack of responsiveness mentioned in the article, Dropbox routinely takes up > 90% of my CPU resources while running. If I'm working at a coffee shop without power, having Dropbox running literally halves my battery life. This is new as of the last six months, and happens consistently across multiple Macs. I've asked Dropbox employees about this, and they've just shrugged.

I don't care if they innovate or not. I care that the experience of using Dropbox is measurably worse than it was a year ago.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#78

Post by eevilspock » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:41 PM UTC

xomateix wrote: post #17

I've been using copy.com for a while and I'm quite happy with it. The main reason I chose it (at the time) was 20GB for free accounts, fair storage in shared folders and pricing (I have the 250GB account). (Disclaimer: this is a referral link that will give us 5gb https://copy.com?r=b2yUAQ ;-))

I can't figure out whether they have client-side encryption with a user-specific encryption key that they do not have access to.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#79

Post by benologist » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:43 PM UTC

lazerwalker wrote: post #77

I've moved away from Dropbox purely because the desktop (OS X) app has gotten so terrible. Besides the lack of responsiveness mentioned in the article, Dropbox routinely takes up > 90% of my CPU resources while running. If I'm working at a coffee shop without power, having Dropbox running literally halves my battery life. This is new as of the last six months, and happens consistently across multiple Macs. I've asked…

That happens to me too, it's also getting a bit silly that you still can't exclude directories easily, and the "share" menu only seems to work in the root dropbox folder these days.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#80

Post by zurn » Thu, Apr 23, 2015, 3:44 PM UTC

vetinari wrote: post #64

zurn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A NAS box is going to get hacked (X), have backups neglected/misconfigured/misdelegated and then have data accidentally deleted or experience disk crashes, etc. You can improve your chances by investing time and energy on taking good care of it, but even then you can still get bitten. (X) devices from both vendors you mentioned are pretty frequent victims

Only devices with services exposed to Internet were hacked. Devices inside LAN, with external access provided by VPN, were not hacked. This applies to any service or device that you run. NAS is no exception. Your printer could be hacked, if you exposed it to the Net. Data can be accidentaly deleted anywhere, cloud providers or your own storage. You must make backups anyway.

No, that's 90s thinking. Current methods don't require the boxes/services to be directly internet-addressable.

An exception is when you have a completely isolated LAN that's not serving internet-connected computers. But that's pretty spartan.