Hah, wow. A post with an ID under 10k. Meanwhile this one is over 47M.
I didn't realize I've been reading HN nearly its whole existence. For all my complaining about what's happened to the internet since those days, HN has managed to stay high quality without compromising.
Instead, the reply/rebuttal almost always comes from a new person. It makes nice reading when you have 6 people in an argument keeping each other honest vs 2.
Every so often someone is like, Dropbox isn’t that hard. Look at this amazing ZFS/whatever! So simple. Yeah, I keep paying Dropbox every year so I don’t have to think about it. I shoot a sync off to backblaze every once in a while.
I dislike Dropbox for reasons that aren't technical, but the big thing for me is that I want either E2EE, or control/ownership of where my data is stored. These are my personal files (no, not that kind of personal), I'm not just going to scatter them on the internet.
My solution so far has been NextCloud, but I'm getting pretty fed up with it. But not enough to actually do anything about it... yet.
> I dislike Dropbox for reasons that aren't technical, but the big thing for me is that I want either E2EE, or control/ownership of where my data is stored.
You could run something like Cryptomator on top of Dropbox:
Boxcryptor used to be amazing for this till they got acquired by Dropbox. Last I checked cryptomator couple years ago it still hand random file corruption risk, is that still true?
I do agree with you at a philosophical level. I have worked in infosec long enough to know. I am pretty careful with what I upload. It’s just hard. Every little home hosted thing. They eat your time. Take effort. Even the “easiest” solutions have a real human cost if you are hosting it yourself.
My solution is… I have no fucks left to give about it. I haven’t for a long time. It works. My family will have all our photos and valuable sentimental data preserved. I keep a local backup. I spend my time on other stuff more valuable to me. If dropbox and backblaze disappear tomorrow oh well. If all my data is leaked? Knock yourself out. All the good stuff is in encrypted volumes.
My data has been breached 12 times by my count. /Twice/ by the OPM itself as I had a security clearance. DOGE goons have all our data and walked out with USB drives with all of it.
Equifax and credit agencies are a joke. My threat model is simple, nothing you can blackmail me with goes to the cloud. And that’s that. Breach me, try to hack my finances, try to steal my crypto. I have had my SIM transferred and someone unsuccessfully attacked my crypto accounts with it.
I love Dropbox, I pay annually. I use the open source client https://maestral.app/ on the Mac for workstation use, but also integrate other systems with my Dropbox account using their API. If someone built an open source Dropbox server that sat on top of S3 compatible storage, I would not only use it, but pay to have that optionality to get out of Dropbox if they ever enshittify. I can recognize form and function worth paying for ("value"), but still want an exit plan. It's not about the spend, it is about data sovereignty. This is colloquially referred to as “vendor and third party risk management.”
at the risk of a comment that doesn't age well, for most people on HN I would definitely look into just using rclone. I also has a GUI for people who want that. rclone is mind-blowingly good. You can set up client-side encryption (so object storage never sees the data or even the filename) to be seamless. I'm a huge fan
To be fair, I can't remember the last time I needed Dropbox or Google Drive, but I do use iCloud, since it comes with plenty of storage for my family plan. I don't send anyone files like back in the day where people would send me a Dropbox link and I'd send them one back.
Hah, wow. A post with an ID under 10k. Meanwhile this one is over 47M.
I didn't realize I've been reading HN nearly its whole existence. For all my complaining about what's happened to the internet since those days, HN has managed to stay high quality without compromising.
I think a big reason is you are not notified when someone replies to your comment. It reduces heated back and forth arguments.
Instead, the reply/rebuttal almost always comes from a new person. It makes nice reading when you have 6 people in an argument keeping each other honest vs 2.
Interesting, I hadn't considered that! You're probably right.
Also submissions with more comments than upvotes are looked into, if not outright automatically flagged.
At least, here the biases are well known. I have been here since the beginning as well. :)
Every so often someone is like, Dropbox isn’t that hard. Look at this amazing ZFS/whatever! So simple. Yeah, I keep paying Dropbox every year so I don’t have to think about it. I shoot a sync off to backblaze every once in a while.
I dislike Dropbox for reasons that aren't technical, but the big thing for me is that I want either E2EE, or control/ownership of where my data is stored. These are my personal files (no, not that kind of personal), I'm not just going to scatter them on the internet.
My solution so far has been NextCloud, but I'm getting pretty fed up with it. But not enough to actually do anything about it... yet.
> I dislike Dropbox for reasons that aren't technical, but the big thing for me is that I want either E2EE, or control/ownership of where my data is stored.
You could run something like Cryptomator on top of Dropbox:
https://cryptomator.org/
It even has (paid) iOS and Android apps for mobile access.
Boxcryptor used to be amazing for this till they got acquired by Dropbox. Last I checked cryptomator couple years ago it still hand random file corruption risk, is that still true?
For now I just use hetzner storage share.
I do agree with you at a philosophical level. I have worked in infosec long enough to know. I am pretty careful with what I upload. It’s just hard. Every little home hosted thing. They eat your time. Take effort. Even the “easiest” solutions have a real human cost if you are hosting it yourself.
My solution is… I have no fucks left to give about it. I haven’t for a long time. It works. My family will have all our photos and valuable sentimental data preserved. I keep a local backup. I spend my time on other stuff more valuable to me. If dropbox and backblaze disappear tomorrow oh well. If all my data is leaked? Knock yourself out. All the good stuff is in encrypted volumes.
My data has been breached 12 times by my count. /Twice/ by the OPM itself as I had a security clearance. DOGE goons have all our data and walked out with USB drives with all of it.
Equifax and credit agencies are a joke. My threat model is simple, nothing you can blackmail me with goes to the cloud. And that’s that. Breach me, try to hack my finances, try to steal my crypto. I have had my SIM transferred and someone unsuccessfully attacked my crypto accounts with it.
Good luck to everyone with my data :)
I love Dropbox, I pay annually. I use the open source client https://maestral.app/ on the Mac for workstation use, but also integrate other systems with my Dropbox account using their API. If someone built an open source Dropbox server that sat on top of S3 compatible storage, I would not only use it, but pay to have that optionality to get out of Dropbox if they ever enshittify. I can recognize form and function worth paying for ("value"), but still want an exit plan. It's not about the spend, it is about data sovereignty. This is colloquially referred to as “vendor and third party risk management.”
lol if your data sovereignty still depends on someone else's control plane, it isn't sovereignty. same landlord. lower in the stack
I keep multiple copies across systems.
(25+ years in tech, ymmv)
at the risk of a comment that doesn't age well, for most people on HN I would definitely look into just using rclone. I also has a GUI for people who want that. rclone is mind-blowingly good. You can set up client-side encryption (so object storage never sees the data or even the filename) to be seamless. I'm a huge fan
To be fair, I can't remember the last time I needed Dropbox or Google Drive, but I do use iCloud, since it comes with plenty of storage for my family plan. I don't send anyone files like back in the day where people would send me a Dropbox link and I'd send them one back.
this is cloud to different cloud thing not physical to cloud thing tho