Poll: Did you “drop Dropbox”?
A few months ago there was an intense discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069 regarding the appointment of Condoleezza Rice on the Board of Dropbox.
The linked page was http://www.drop-dropbox.com/.
Looking at Crunchbase profile of Dropbox indicates that Rice continues as a Board member.
I am curious to know how many users decided to drop Dropbox as a consequence of the above.
Don't forget to upvote the post itself to get more people to vote on this.
315 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 335 ms ] threadI'm wanting to set up a backup server for music and such, but most virtual server providers (like Linode, DigitalOcean) don't seem optimized toward hard drive space. Could you point me in the right direction?
Personally, I continue using DropBox the same way I did before: that is not much. Several people I work with use it to share data with teams. I don't generally have much say in that. For me, a much more pressing problem with Dropbox is headless operation support, especially on Linux. Debian packages would be nicer than letting Rice go.
Personally, I continue using DropBox the same way I did before: that is not much. Several people I work with use it to share data with teams. I don't generally have much say in that. For me, a much more pressing problem with Dropbox is headless operation support, especially on Linux. Debian packages would be nicer than letting Rice go.
Wuala, SpiderOak, even GDrive/DropBox + EncFS/Ecryptfs/BoxCryptor. So many better options than DropBox for those of us with privacy concerns.
And for the more DIY people, there's OwnCloud, git-annex assistant (which supports encrypted remotes!), SyncThing and TahoeLAFS. Anyone know of a good sync client for TahoeLAFS though?
If you have privacy concerns, you're going to pick something where that's not possible anyways.
Maybe someone can explain this to me - is it just partisan political crap?
Also, definitely a partisan decision on my part. I'm sure if the appointment was a "liberal/democrat" with a similar record of facilitating NSA snooping, etc, I'd find a way to justify not dropping dropbox.
I didn't take my RE any deeper, but trust it at your own risk. I'd recommend SyncThing over it as a good open alternative, though it's admittedly not as polished yet.
Admittedly I am listing several closed tools, but only those I've had good experiences with.
I do love the idea of OwnCloud, and I've tried it a few times in the past. But it almost feels like they are paying more attention to making a "virtual web desktop" with the new file editing stuff, and less attention to proper file syncing. I've tried to use them for syncing in the past on my CoLo file server, and on a fast machine in my home, and it's just too slow and buggy for now. I wish I was a competent programmer so I could contribute in that department.
Late edit: I just realized you took my statement about BitTorrent's "open nature" to mean open source or protocol. I apologize, I didn't mean it that way and should have worded it better. What I meant was "open for all to see what you're transferring". Basically, the contents would be easy to snoop from what I understand. Sorry about any confusion.
I'd be willing to accept closed source if they at least published a cryptographic protocol, but closed source and closed protocol, where I myself have seen that the little bit of vague documentation that they do have has been incorrect in the past, is quite untrustworthy in my opinion.
Considering the number of alternatives available - may as well just use something else. I'll give it another look if they open the protocol in one way or another as they do surely have the ease of use nailed down.
edit: http://www.geek.com/news/dropbox-security-glitch-meant-any-p...
Dropbox is probably the LEAST feature-rich and mid-range to high in the cost part , compared to all the other file sharing services out there.
And to be clear, the actual client you install to make the backups is extremely easy to install and use, it's just the server that can be tricky to set up.
I use BTSync for "heavy lifting", since there is no cap on usage (other than bandwidth caps) but it doesn't run on everything.
That said, I'm currently installing my own file server at home over a VPN. Once I'm done with that, I shouldn't really need any other third-party solution.
I really don't keep magic lists of people that are cool or not-cool.
As far as privacy, it remains a concern, but Rice has absolutely zero impact on that, so the whole thing was not germane to my internet activity.
What concerns me more about Dropbox is this practice of giving away space -- but only for a limited amount of time. I bought some products and got a huge amount of space, but only for a year or two.
Now what the hell am I going to do two years later? Download 100GB over my satellite connection? They've effectively trapped me into doing business with them. That's the kind of thing I find much more objectionable than keeping a roster of who plays on which team in SV.
This is my biggest issue with them, once you get past the privacy issues. I have a 500GB colocated file server that I can use OwnCloud, rsync, btsync, etc. on once my 30GB of "free" Dropbox space runs out. I've already got it all backed up to that server anyway using rsync. Now I just have to figure out which sync method works across all of my devices (GNU/Linux, Windows, Windows Phone, Android, OS X).
Besides, who says you need to transfer to your home? There are ways of doing cloud-to-cloud transfer. The most basic of which is simply getting a cheap VPS with a couple of TBs of storage (mine costs 20€/month) and pull from there.
Not everybody is left-leaning here.
Racists prejudice a specific race. Sexists prejudice a specific gender. Conservatives, however, are just people that have a different view on how a country should be run. These three things are completely separate qualities. Some people may exhibit several of these qualities, while others do not. I imagine this is why you are being downvoted.
For everything else, there's Fox News ...
I was about to say something like "welcome to modern politics", except we have evidence of this kind of thing going on since elections in ancient Rome, and it's probably far older than that, too. So "welcome to human nature", maybe.
In right-winger logic they are, of course.
Basically, most of the people on this planet that consider themselves conservative wouldn't want to be associated with the US Republican Party.
Interestingly both Lyndon Johnson and Bush Jr. were Southern Democrats. Most of the craziness about today's GOP can be traced to the fact that they were overrun with former Dixiecrats. Bush was basically a Dixiecrat who ran as a Republican.
The Southern Democrat position combines everything bad about the Democrats (big government, high taxes, etc.) with everything bad about the Republicans (fundamentalism, warmongering). (Bush did raise taxes, just indirectly. Taxation equals spending as per simple double-entry accounting, and Bush raised spending and increased the size of government considerably.)
PS: They were weary of BitSync b/c of BitTorrent pirate news but the news about the celeb nudie pictures helped them finally come around to what I've been saying all along: RETAIN CONTROL OF YOUR DATA!!!!!
Edit: -derision
No option for this.
The drop-dropbox.com has its arguments pretty well presented really.
And the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
This is the free market at work.
2. Foreign diplomats are not subject to warrants and are exactly the sort of people that get spied upon. I guarantee you that every major country is spying on every foreign diplomat, limited only by their ability. While I don't think private citizens should be spied on, if you are in a diplomatic post you should just expect it.
3. I view the Iraq War as legitimate, as do most people, and she did a stellar job in her role as National Security Advisor.
2. Irrelevant, none of us are in a diplomatic post here but we're still all being spied on via any avenue by the NSA- dropbox being a confirmed avenue for this purpose.
3. I don't think you'll find too many people agreeing with you here. After all, it was the US and a few minor cronies (Poland, Georgia) going in alone, with the majority of our allies and all of the rest of the world saying we were making a huge mistake-- a mistake which has haunted us ever since, and caused many of our allies to turn away from us and seek more autonomy. "Doing a stellar job" at torturing people and knocking over governments is not a positive thing to say about someone.
I am from nowhere near the U.S. and consider D/R pretty much the same and I immediatly switched from Dropbox and stopped recommending it to anyone. The appointment of mass surveliance advocate to a top position in a tech company that holds your data is a clear "we don't care about you, your rights and your opinon" message to privacy advocates.
I don't want to support a tech company that is strongly integrated with government/government departments/government executives.
Also the appointment of Rice could be a warrant canary, a hint to those paranoid, that Dropbox is not secure for other infrastructural reasons. But that's probably mine personal feel good fantasy:)