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Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

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Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#91

Post by YuriNiyazov »

ivankirigin wrote: post #26

I work at Dropbox and came up with this page. Thanks for throwing confounding variables in this soft launch experiment, Hacker News. A few points that might interest yall: 1. We won't publish to facebook or twitter without your explicit permission. 2. We ask for information about your facebook profile because it will make Dropbox better. It's mainly about learning about our users without annoying surveys. We won't ma…

iirc after tipjoy's demise you went to facebook. Why did you leave for dropbox?

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#92

Post by DenisM »

I just received an email from someone I barely knew, to use Dropbox. He had no business sending me this email, and by sending it on his behalf you put yourself and him in this situation where both of you engage in sending SPAM.

I stopped short of clicking the "report spam" button, but it cost you some amount of goodwill, so you lose either way. I will be a lot less likely now to genuinely recommend your app to my friends.

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#93

Post by wlesieutre »

ivankirigin wrote: post #26

I work at Dropbox and came up with this page. Thanks for throwing confounding variables in this soft launch experiment, Hacker News. A few points that might interest yall: 1. We won't publish to facebook or twitter without your explicit permission. 2. We ask for information about your facebook profile because it will make Dropbox better. It's mainly about learning about our users without annoying surveys. We won't ma…

Why does your application request access to the photos and videos I've uploaded to Facebook? I'm fine with you having access to my Twitter information, but this seems unnecessary.

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#94

Post by WillyF »

jeremyf wrote: post #64
ivankirigin wrote: post #26

I work at Dropbox and came up with this page. Thanks for throwing confounding variables in this soft launch experiment, Hacker News. A few points that might interest yall: 1. We won't publish to facebook or twitter without your explicit permission. 2. We ask for information about your facebook profile because it will make Dropbox better. It's mainly about learning about our users without annoying surveys. We won't ma…

Would be way cool if the "connect to Twitter" and "connect to Facebook" from this page allowed for archival of data directly into my Dropbox folder.

Backupify offers exactly this service. It would be nice if you could somehow keep the data on your Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#95

Post by ivankirigin »

fharper1961 wrote: post #82

Maybe it would be better if you could change the message before tweeting/posting to FB. I wrote something to DB that I didn't want to tweet. So I didn't do the last 2 steps, which were presumably the most important ones. I realize that not being able to change the message, is to try and ensure that the tweet is really about loving Dropbox.

You can edit the message by clicking on the little pen icon next to the text.

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#96

Post by almost »

ivankirigin wrote: post #26

I work at Dropbox and came up with this page. Thanks for throwing confounding variables in this soft launch experiment, Hacker News. A few points that might interest yall: 1. We won't publish to facebook or twitter without your explicit permission. 2. We ask for information about your facebook profile because it will make Dropbox better. It's mainly about learning about our users without annoying surveys. We won't ma…

What info do you get from Facebook? It's not that I don't trust you, I already trust you guys with all my files, but I'm interested. I also don't get why I'd want to post to Facebook from within Dropbox, got any cool use cases I'm missing?

5TB sounds good, but how long does that take to sync? I've got about 20GB in mine now I think and syncing it to a new computer seems like it would take several days (I get the "grab a snickers" message). I usually start of a new machine my rsyncing stuff over so not the end of the world, but it would be useful to download stuff at a speed resembling what my, not that great, connection can handle.

Dropbox rules by the way, it's changed how I use my computers :)

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#97

Post by almost »

gst wrote: post #47
jackowayed wrote: post #30

The brilliant thing about all of the free space that Dropbox "gives away" is that most people who get it (90%? more?) don't actually use it. I'm up to 4.9GB of free space, but I'm only using 7.6%, so I'm well under 2GB. And I would venture to guess that I'musing more space than the average free user. So their cost isn't even the pretty-low cost of (cost to store 128MB * the number of people who do the task). It's the…

Even less space is required. Dropbox stores duplicate files only once. So if many users store the same files the cost per user is practically zero. That's also the reason why uploads are so fast. If a file is already on the server it isn't uploaded again.

Is it really shared between accounts? So for example if I knew someone with Dropbox had a file that could have one of several contents and I wanted to know which of those contents they had I could try uploading the different versions and see which one uploaded faster?

A little far fetched maybe, but I'm sure there's a way to exploit something somewhere using that....

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#98

Post by ivankirigin »

almost wrote: post #96
ivankirigin wrote: post #26

I work at Dropbox and came up with this page. Thanks for throwing confounding variables in this soft launch experiment, Hacker News. A few points that might interest yall: 1. We won't publish to facebook or twitter without your explicit permission. 2. We ask for information about your facebook profile because it will make Dropbox better. It's mainly about learning about our users without annoying surveys. We won't ma…

What info do you get from Facebook? It's not that I don't trust you, I already trust you guys with all my files, but I'm interested. I also don't get why I'd want to post to Facebook from within Dropbox, got any cool use cases I'm missing? 5TB sounds good, but how long does that take to sync? I've got about 20GB in mine now I think and syncing it to a new computer seems like it would take several days (I get the "gra…

Dropbox syncs over a LAN if available and the long sync time is only for initialization. When I get a new computer, I'll just make sure to have the old computer there. This is part of the process of getting a new one already, but people need to move stuff over manually sometimes.

As far as what you can do today with facebook, if you download the beta builds from the forums you can get access to a new sharing model. You can publish links of files to facebook & twitter. This page will change a lot when we launch this properly, but you can see what i mean: https://www.dropbox.com/s/owdlzphfhiw2ao4/koalabox.PNG

Facebook and twitter are great for sharing, so it makes sense for Dropbox to leverage them when people want to share files. Photos is a good example application where sharing often means pushing to a social network.

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#99

Post by jallmann »

gst wrote: post #27

I love Dropbox from a usability point of view, but unfortunately the missing encryption is the main reason why it's not an option for me right now. I'd like to also be able to backup sensitive data, but I don't trust the Dropbox employees with access to my data. Instead, I'm currently using Wuala which encrypts the data diretly on the client. An alternative to Wuala seems to be SpiderOak, which also features client s…

Try Tarsnap, which was purpose-built for secure data storage. The founder is a regular here on HN.

Re: Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total)

#100

Post by blakeweb »

ivankirigin wrote: post #26

I work at Dropbox and came up with this page. Thanks for throwing confounding variables in this soft launch experiment, Hacker News. A few points that might interest yall: 1. We won't publish to facebook or twitter without your explicit permission. 2. We ask for information about your facebook profile because it will make Dropbox better. It's mainly about learning about our users without annoying surveys. We won't ma…

The features page of your website says this about security:

>All transmission of file data and metadata occurs over an encrypted channel (SSL).

>All files stored on Dropbox servers are encrypted (AES-256).

And yet I hear people here saying that Dropbox is "missing encryption." What's the real story? Are there more technical details on your encryption posted somewhere on your site?

I'd really like to know, as I actually have a good deal of semi-sensitive information stored in my account right now--a decision I made based on the wording I copied in above and on my trust in the Dropbox folks so far.

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