7 ms·

Tell HN: AeroFS - File Syncing Without Servers

248 points by yurisagalov 16y ago

endlessvoid94 16y ago
I think the consumer market for this doesn't care how their files are backed up. They just want it to work.
- yurisagalov 16y ago
  RE: "it just works" - you're right of course, and we're definitely trying to make it as simple as possible. There are some features we're going to implement down the road that can be done better with p2p solutions though (aggregated storage across devices, for example), so I hope you give us a chance! :)
  - StavrosK 16y ago
    Yeah, if your thing means I can sync my data across computers without you seeing any of it, I'm never using Dropbox again.
- Goosey 16y ago
  On the other hand, I do. You don't have to be as big to be the biggest fish in a smaller pond. (Or as 'The Dip' puts it, to be the best in the world start by shrinking the world)
- aik 16y ago
  The business or enterprise markets are massive though.
chime 16y ago
So many questions... 1) Does it work well with huge files? 1GB+ etc? Will a 1-byte change mean complete download to all devices? 2) Does it work well with 100k small files in deeply nested folders? 3) Will you charge for software and/or support? 4) What happens when one of the devices doesn't have enough storage? 4GB SSD laptop vs. 100GB HDD. 5) Will any of my computers have to be up 24/7?
- yurisagalov 16y ago
  1. It should work great for huge files, especially over LANs. Right now a 1byte change will mean a re-download, but one of the first things we're doing is introduce diff-based downloads :) 2. It should 3. We're not 100% sure how we're going to charge for it yet, but anyone who signs up for the beta will be grandfathered into whatever system we end up using (i.e. you won't have to pay) 4. I'm actually going to address this in a separate post, but we've designed it in such a way where you'll actually stream files from one device to the other (based on a least-recently-used policy), so in effect you should have access to ~104GB of data. 5. This relates to #4, but is up to you, largely. If you have computers that are up 24/7, great. If you don't, you can leverage our cloud servers for better availability.
  - hxr 16y ago
    I am working on something exactly similar in my free time as a side project. Nothing to show yet, but I am currently playing with rsync to support incremental diff-based syncs. Will your program be open source?
    - weihan 16y ago
      yeah rsync is the de-facto standard for delta sync I think :) Open API and/or open source part of AeroFS are in our plans.
  - sabat 16y ago
    Your headline is ingenious: "We may be late to the party, but we brought a keg."
    - adamgravitis 16y ago
      That's pretty much Yuri's modus operandi.
      - unavoidable 16y ago
        Ain't that true. I think Yuri owes us a keg next time we see him.
blocke 16y ago
"Each AeroFS device has its own 1024bit RSA key pair, which is certified by us to be authentic." That suspiciously reads like the AeroFS people get a copy of your key. If that's the case then it's only marginally more secure than DropBox. Hope I'm reading that wrong...
- yurisagalov 16y ago
  We don't get a copy of your private key (neither should anyone else, ever). We do get a copy of your public key, to certify it (we use OpenSSL's CA)
  - blocke 16y ago
    So how do you "invite" someone? Swap public keys?
    - weihan 16y ago
      We generate a temporary password for the user being invited and encode it in the invitation code sent to the user's email address. We use this temp pass to verify the user when he/she signs up and destroy the pass immediately after. During initial setup, the user's device generates its own public key pair and sends a CSR (certify signing request) to us for certification.
blocke 16y ago
On another note, without yet seeing the software, I'd assume the Mac and Linux ports are both using FUSE. Is there a FUSE alternative for Windows yet?
- weihan 16y ago
  Yes. We use CBFS (http://www.eldos.com/cbfs/ http://www.eldos.com/cbfs/) for Windows.
  - blocke 16y ago
    Ah, sadly nothing for a weekend hacker but nice to know it exists. I'd guess anyone who spent time figuring out how to do Windows filesystems would want to be paid for the trauma. Thanks for the pointer and good luck with the project, I've signed up for an invite. :)
    - weihan 16y ago
      There are a few (Google "fuse windows"). In particular, Dokan (http://dokan-dev.net/en/ http://dokan-dev.net/en/) seems to be a good one. The project is quite active recently.
      - fragmede 16y ago
        Just wanted to point out that Dokan has its own version of SSHFS - http://dokan-dev.net/en/2010/01/18/open-source-dokan-sshfs/ http://dokan-dev.net/en/2010/01/18/open-source-dokan-sshfs/
    - jodrellblank 16y ago
      There's one at http://www.eterlogic.com http://www.eterlogic.com which at a glance looks free for non commercial use - Virtual Drive SDK.
slantyyz 16y ago
This offering sounds like a hybrid of Crashplan and Dropbox. Could be quite good for the use cases they specify.
- SnowLprd 16y ago
  Absolutely. This project has the potential to remedy a problem that, to date, I have not been able to solve. I have computers in multiple geographically-diverse locations and need a large amount data (terabytes) to always appear in each location. Other requirements: 1. Direct sync between my devices, with no third-party cloud involved 2. Fast local sync when two devices are on the same subnet are detected 3. Since individual files can be 20 GB in size, interrupted synchronizations should automatically resume when the connection is re-established (without having to start over from the beginning) 4. Encrypted transmission of data, but not encrypted on disk 5. When renaming or moving a file from one folder to another, the system should be smart enough to detect that there's no need to re-transmit that file (i.e., it just needs to rename it or move it to the new location on all other devices) 6. Ability to throttle upstream/downstream bandwidth on a per-device basis Neither Dropbox nor CrashPlan -- nor any other tool -- has been able to meet all of these requirements. In short, this is a very exciting and welcome development. I sincerely hope that this problem will soon be solved!
  - yurisagalov 16y ago
    Just as a quick note: 1,2,4,5 are already done on our end. #3 and #6 are in our top priority list and should be done soon If you want to chat more about your particular needs/use case, give me a shout at yuri@aerofs.com, I'd love talk!
  - codemechanic 16y ago
    Already Tonido meets all this requirements. How it is new? http://www.tonido.com http://www.tonido.com
j_baker 16y ago
I'm curious to know more about the technical details about how this works. Like what protocols and technologies you're using. If that information isn't too sensitive that is. :-)
- weihan 16y ago
  We developed a lot of the protocols and technologies ourselves, and could talk about them for hours :) Let me know if you have a specific area you want me to discuss.
  - j_baker 16y ago
    Not necessarily anything in particular. Just a big picture overview of how the technology works.
    - weihan 16y ago
      In short, AeroFS is a decentralized data management system running on top of p2p overlay networking. The overlay network layer presents to the data management layer a transport-agnostic view of the Internet, and addresses peers using network-independent identifiers. In this way, data management can talk to any peer regardless of network topologies and firewall restrictions, as if the world is flat :) The data management layer controls data versioning and update propagation in a fully decentralized way. As I described in another comment, we use version-vector-like data structures to track versions and mange conflicts. We use modified epidemic algorithms (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=41841 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=41841) for fast update propagation. AeroFS distinguish between peers and super peers. Super peers can help update propagation and peer communication in many ways.
- hxr 16y ago
  A lot of research went into building group communication tool kits like Spread and Ensemble. Today they are being used in server/cluster environments. I was playing with re-purposing one of these (JGroups) for my pet project. The toolkit implements the abstractions I need (A peer communication Channel, peer discovery etc.). It also provides various protocol stacks so I can use a different one for streaming movies vs. syncing files.
rlpb 16y ago
So it's Dropbox but without the requirement for a central cloud component? Is there anything I've missed?
- weihan 16y ago
  Exactly. In addition, because cloud servers to us are merely a "super peer", AeroFS offers a superset of what a cloud-based solution can provide.
- Osiris 16y ago
  No storage limitations like Dropbox.
santimt 16y ago
Does it use P2P transfer or the owner of a file should update as many copies of the file as peers syncing?
- weihan 16y ago
  It uses p2p syncing: Any device that was invited and has sufficient privileges on a file can serve the file to peers.
sabat 16y ago
Anyone have invites to give out?
- santimt 16y ago
  You can sign up in the web page to get (i hope) an invite
  - sabat 16y ago
    I'd already done that, but I'm impatient. :-)
antgiant 16y ago
Two questions 1) How does this system handle two devices behind separate NATs? (aka a work device and a home device.) 2) What is the conflict resolution protocol if a file is modified in two or more locations? (Newest wins, automatic duplication for manual resolution, etc.)
- weihan 16y ago
  1) we ICE/STUN as well as relay for firewall penetration. 2) we use a modified version of version vectors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_vector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_vector) and accompanying algorithms to detect and resolve conflicts. In a decentralized system, conflict management boils down to managing causal relationship between distributed updates, and version vector was invented just for that :)
  - antgiant 16y ago
    Thank you. However, having looked at the wikipedia page on Version Vectors it appears that is a protocol for detecting conflicts. I was interested in how you resolve them. A simple example is a zip file that I add file A to on one computer and later file B to on another computer. When I sync up do I end up with a zip containing no new files, file A, file B, both files or a corrupt zip file. (Does the answer change if the zip file is encrypted?)
    - weihan 16y ago
      I see. There are two categories of conflicts to resolve: meta conflicts (like when you rename a file to "foo" on device A and meanwhile rename it to "bar" on B) and data conflicts (i.e. the example you gave). We will formally describe meta conflict resolution in a separate post. Because resolution for data conflicts is very application specific, we will publish an API to allow application developers to write their own conflict resolvers. Meanwhile, we will try to provide resolvers for popular file types by default. From the end user's view, in most cases conflicts are automatically resolved without being noticed. User intervention is required if automatic resolution fails or the user wants to manually merge.
Goosey 16y ago
This is just me throwing out a toy idea here, but.. Consider that most computers have large chunks of unused space. Now draw a parallel to projects like Folding@Home which make use of unused CPU cycles for computation. Wouldn't it be nice to make use of the world's unused storage in exchange for providing your unused storage? This made me think of that as it sounds like this 'p2p supercloud' could be just another peer type. You opt in to share 100GB == you get 80GB of redundant off-site backup for free type system. Now, I am not asking you to implement this peer type (although that would rock my world if you did), but would it be possible for someone to implement it themselves? In other words will you be providing a 'peer API'?
- mkuhn 16y ago
  You should take a look at http://www.wuala.com http://www.wuala.com
  - dwiel 16y ago
    I've used wuala for linux and have found it quite rough around the edges. * not completely decentralized or open source. If wuala goes out of business, your data may not be recoverable. * web interface is lacking (poor folder navigation/listing) * doesn't work without X on linux * even with X, not all features are available through the command line or API, though some are * the interface that is provided is clunky * the status messages leave me wondering where in the process an update is. If a piece of software can't reliably tell me where it is in a process, I can't trust that the process is happening the way I expect.
    - aik 16y ago
      I agree, though I believe they're working on it. The technology is very impressive if you look into it. Concerning it not being completely decentralized - I consider it a plus since that fact ensures greater reliability.
    - mkuhn 16y ago
      Yep, Wuala is not completely open source and it is a business. Your worry that they might go out of business soon is mitigated quite a bit by the fact that they have been acquired by LaCie [1] over a year ago. I suppose Linux definitely isn't their main market and while the Web Interface is lacking at the moment they are working on an overhaul. [1] http://eu.techcrunch.com//2009/03/19/wuala-merges-with-lacie-to-take-p2p-cloud-storage-mainstream/ http://eu.techcrunch.com//2009/03/19/wuala-merges-with-lacie...
martyhu 16y ago
What about performance? I assume since many routers these days use asymmetric dsl, download/upload from hosts may be poor if only a few hosts are involved, and the hosts use ADSL.
fname 16y ago
I like the "Chat with the Founders" on the website... Is that something you built? EDIT: Thanks guys.
- yurisagalov 16y ago
  We actually use olark.com for that! It's been super helpful today in responding to comments directly on the website
- prabodh 16y ago
  It is Olark http://www.olark.com/ http://www.olark.com/
bobf 16y ago
File syncing that includes mobile devices seems to becoming increasingly important as their storage space grows. I'm excited about AeroFS and am looking forward to seeing more posts about the technical aspects.
yason 16y ago
Can I share stuff with my friends? Suppose they already host my backups and I host theirs, can I easily give them access to some of my files?
- yurisagalov 16y ago
  You can definitely share stuff with friends. Strictly speaking, right now your friends don't "host your backup" _unless_ you share with them.
  - mcritz 16y ago
    Can you go into a little more detail about sharing? Are my files kept on my devices when shared or does it implicitly mean shared files are read/write accessible by others? If so, is there a way of managing permissions?
    - weihan 16y ago
      We have implemented full-fledge access control including file ownership, read/write permissions on data/metadata, list/add/remove permissions on directories, etc. But we disabled it from the interface to keep user experience as simple as possible. Later on we may enable them based on use cases and user feedback. Our API will include ACL management as well. Currently files are read/write accessible once shared.
tsmith 16y ago
Way cool guys, and way to represent the Toronto startup scene! BTW, loved the reference to HN karma in the screenshot!
c00p3r 16y ago
a wrapper on top of git, I guess? ^_^
- yurisagalov 16y ago
  Actually, no ;) We wrote most of the underlying magic ourselves
seancron 16y ago
I see your company doc on "How To Earn HN Karma" has worked out well. Now if only you could turn karma into money... Edit: This is a reference to the picture on their signup page.
hassenben 16y ago
Could someone clarify the difference between aerofs and rsync? What can aerofs do that rsync doesn't?

248 points by yurisagalov 16y ago

endlessvoid94 16y ago

I think the consumer market for this doesn't care how their files are backed up. They just want it to work.

yurisagalov 16y ago
RE: "it just works" - you're right of course, and we're definitely trying to make it as simple as possible. There are some features we're going to implement down the road that can be done better with p2p solutions though (aggregated storage across devices, for example), so I hope you give us a chance! :)
- StavrosK 16y ago
  Yeah, if your thing means I can sync my data across computers without you seeing any of it, I'm never using Dropbox again.
Goosey 16y ago
On the other hand, I do. You don't have to be as big to be the biggest fish in a smaller pond. (Or as 'The Dip' puts it, to be the best in the world start by shrinking the world)
aik 16y ago
The business or enterprise markets are massive though.

chime 16y ago

So many questions... 1) Does it work well with huge files? 1GB+ etc? Will a 1-byte change mean complete download to all devices? 2) Does it work well with 100k small files in deeply nested folders? 3) Will you charge for software and/or support? 4) What happens when one of the devices doesn't have enough storage? 4GB SSD laptop vs. 100GB HDD. 5) Will any of my computers have to be up 24/7?

yurisagalov 16y ago
1. It should work great for huge files, especially over LANs. Right now a 1byte change will mean a re-download, but one of the first things we're doing is introduce diff-based downloads :) 2. It should 3. We're not 100% sure how we're going to charge for it yet, but anyone who signs up for the beta will be grandfathered into whatever system we end up using (i.e. you won't have to pay) 4. I'm actually going to address this in a separate post, but we've designed it in such a way where you'll actually stream files from one device to the other (based on a least-recently-used policy), so in effect you should have access to ~104GB of data. 5. This relates to #4, but is up to you, largely. If you have computers that are up 24/7, great. If you don't, you can leverage our cloud servers for better availability.
- hxr 16y ago
  I am working on something exactly similar in my free time as a side project. Nothing to show yet, but I am currently playing with rsync to support incremental diff-based syncs. Will your program be open source?
  - weihan 16y ago
    yeah rsync is the de-facto standard for delta sync I think :) Open API and/or open source part of AeroFS are in our plans.
- sabat 16y ago
  Your headline is ingenious: "We may be late to the party, but we brought a keg."
  - adamgravitis 16y ago
    That's pretty much Yuri's modus operandi.
    - unavoidable 16y ago
      Ain't that true. I think Yuri owes us a keg next time we see him.

blocke 16y ago

"Each AeroFS device has its own 1024bit RSA key pair, which is certified by us to be authentic." That suspiciously reads like the AeroFS people get a copy of your key. If that's the case then it's only marginally more secure than DropBox. Hope I'm reading that wrong...

yurisagalov 16y ago
We don't get a copy of your private key (neither should anyone else, ever). We do get a copy of your public key, to certify it (we use OpenSSL's CA)
- blocke 16y ago
  So how do you "invite" someone? Swap public keys?
  - weihan 16y ago
    We generate a temporary password for the user being invited and encode it in the invitation code sent to the user's email address. We use this temp pass to verify the user when he/she signs up and destroy the pass immediately after. During initial setup, the user's device generates its own public key pair and sends a CSR (certify signing request) to us for certification.

blocke 16y ago

On another note, without yet seeing the software, I'd assume the Mac and Linux ports are both using FUSE. Is there a FUSE alternative for Windows yet?

weihan 16y ago
Yes. We use CBFS (http://www.eldos.com/cbfs/ http://www.eldos.com/cbfs/) for Windows.
- blocke 16y ago
  Ah, sadly nothing for a weekend hacker but nice to know it exists. I'd guess anyone who spent time figuring out how to do Windows filesystems would want to be paid for the trauma. Thanks for the pointer and good luck with the project, I've signed up for an invite. :)
  - weihan 16y ago
    There are a few (Google "fuse windows"). In particular, Dokan (http://dokan-dev.net/en/ http://dokan-dev.net/en/) seems to be a good one. The project is quite active recently.
    - fragmede 16y ago
      Just wanted to point out that Dokan has its own version of SSHFS - http://dokan-dev.net/en/2010/01/18/open-source-dokan-sshfs/ http://dokan-dev.net/en/2010/01/18/open-source-dokan-sshfs/
  - jodrellblank 16y ago
    There's one at http://www.eterlogic.com http://www.eterlogic.com which at a glance looks free for non commercial use - Virtual Drive SDK.

slantyyz 16y ago

This offering sounds like a hybrid of Crashplan and Dropbox. Could be quite good for the use cases they specify.

SnowLprd 16y ago
Absolutely. This project has the potential to remedy a problem that, to date, I have not been able to solve. I have computers in multiple geographically-diverse locations and need a large amount data (terabytes) to always appear in each location. Other requirements: 1. Direct sync between my devices, with no third-party cloud involved 2. Fast local sync when two devices are on the same subnet are detected 3. Since individual files can be 20 GB in size, interrupted synchronizations should automatically resume when the connection is re-established (without having to start over from the beginning) 4. Encrypted transmission of data, but not encrypted on disk 5. When renaming or moving a file from one folder to another, the system should be smart enough to detect that there's no need to re-transmit that file (i.e., it just needs to rename it or move it to the new location on all other devices) 6. Ability to throttle upstream/downstream bandwidth on a per-device basis Neither Dropbox nor CrashPlan -- nor any other tool -- has been able to meet all of these requirements. In short, this is a very exciting and welcome development. I sincerely hope that this problem will soon be solved!
- yurisagalov 16y ago
  Just as a quick note: 1,2,4,5 are already done on our end. #3 and #6 are in our top priority list and should be done soon If you want to chat more about your particular needs/use case, give me a shout at yuri@aerofs.com, I'd love talk!
- codemechanic 16y ago
  Already Tonido meets all this requirements. How it is new? http://www.tonido.com http://www.tonido.com

j_baker 16y ago

I'm curious to know more about the technical details about how this works. Like what protocols and technologies you're using. If that information isn't too sensitive that is. :-)

weihan 16y ago
We developed a lot of the protocols and technologies ourselves, and could talk about them for hours :) Let me know if you have a specific area you want me to discuss.
- j_baker 16y ago
  Not necessarily anything in particular. Just a big picture overview of how the technology works.
  - weihan 16y ago
    In short, AeroFS is a decentralized data management system running on top of p2p overlay networking. The overlay network layer presents to the data management layer a transport-agnostic view of the Internet, and addresses peers using network-independent identifiers. In this way, data management can talk to any peer regardless of network topologies and firewall restrictions, as if the world is flat :) The data management layer controls data versioning and update propagation in a fully decentralized way. As I described in another comment, we use version-vector-like data structures to track versions and mange conflicts. We use modified epidemic algorithms (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=41841 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=41841) for fast update propagation. AeroFS distinguish between peers and super peers. Super peers can help update propagation and peer communication in many ways.
hxr 16y ago
A lot of research went into building group communication tool kits like Spread and Ensemble. Today they are being used in server/cluster environments. I was playing with re-purposing one of these (JGroups) for my pet project. The toolkit implements the abstractions I need (A peer communication Channel, peer discovery etc.). It also provides various protocol stacks so I can use a different one for streaming movies vs. syncing files.

rlpb 16y ago

So it's Dropbox but without the requirement for a central cloud component? Is there anything I've missed?

weihan 16y ago
Exactly. In addition, because cloud servers to us are merely a "super peer", AeroFS offers a superset of what a cloud-based solution can provide.
Osiris 16y ago
No storage limitations like Dropbox.

santimt 16y ago

Does it use P2P transfer or the owner of a file should update as many copies of the file as peers syncing?

weihan 16y ago
It uses p2p syncing: Any device that was invited and has sufficient privileges on a file can serve the file to peers.

sabat 16y ago

Anyone have invites to give out?

santimt 16y ago
You can sign up in the web page to get (i hope) an invite
- sabat 16y ago
  I'd already done that, but I'm impatient. :-)

antgiant 16y ago

Two questions 1) How does this system handle two devices behind separate NATs? (aka a work device and a home device.) 2) What is the conflict resolution protocol if a file is modified in two or more locations? (Newest wins, automatic duplication for manual resolution, etc.)

weihan 16y ago
1) we ICE/STUN as well as relay for firewall penetration. 2) we use a modified version of version vectors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_vector http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Version_vector) and accompanying algorithms to detect and resolve conflicts. In a decentralized system, conflict management boils down to managing causal relationship between distributed updates, and version vector was invented just for that :)
- antgiant 16y ago
  Thank you. However, having looked at the wikipedia page on Version Vectors it appears that is a protocol for detecting conflicts. I was interested in how you resolve them. A simple example is a zip file that I add file A to on one computer and later file B to on another computer. When I sync up do I end up with a zip containing no new files, file A, file B, both files or a corrupt zip file. (Does the answer change if the zip file is encrypted?)
  - weihan 16y ago
    I see. There are two categories of conflicts to resolve: meta conflicts (like when you rename a file to "foo" on device A and meanwhile rename it to "bar" on B) and data conflicts (i.e. the example you gave). We will formally describe meta conflict resolution in a separate post. Because resolution for data conflicts is very application specific, we will publish an API to allow application developers to write their own conflict resolvers. Meanwhile, we will try to provide resolvers for popular file types by default. From the end user's view, in most cases conflicts are automatically resolved without being noticed. User intervention is required if automatic resolution fails or the user wants to manually merge.

Goosey 16y ago

This is just me throwing out a toy idea here, but.. Consider that most computers have large chunks of unused space. Now draw a parallel to projects like Folding@Home which make use of unused CPU cycles for computation. Wouldn't it be nice to make use of the world's unused storage in exchange for providing your unused storage? This made me think of that as it sounds like this 'p2p supercloud' could be just another peer type. You opt in to share 100GB == you get 80GB of redundant off-site backup for free type system. Now, I am not asking you to implement this peer type (although that would rock my world if you did), but would it be possible for someone to implement it themselves? In other words will you be providing a 'peer API'?

mkuhn 16y ago
You should take a look at http://www.wuala.com http://www.wuala.com
- dwiel 16y ago
  I've used wuala for linux and have found it quite rough around the edges. * not completely decentralized or open source. If wuala goes out of business, your data may not be recoverable. * web interface is lacking (poor folder navigation/listing) * doesn't work without X on linux * even with X, not all features are available through the command line or API, though some are * the interface that is provided is clunky * the status messages leave me wondering where in the process an update is. If a piece of software can't reliably tell me where it is in a process, I can't trust that the process is happening the way I expect.
  - aik 16y ago
    I agree, though I believe they're working on it. The technology is very impressive if you look into it. Concerning it not being completely decentralized - I consider it a plus since that fact ensures greater reliability.
  - mkuhn 16y ago
    Yep, Wuala is not completely open source and it is a business. Your worry that they might go out of business soon is mitigated quite a bit by the fact that they have been acquired by LaCie [1] over a year ago. I suppose Linux definitely isn't their main market and while the Web Interface is lacking at the moment they are working on an overhaul. [1] http://eu.techcrunch.com//2009/03/19/wuala-merges-with-lacie-to-take-p2p-cloud-storage-mainstream/ http://eu.techcrunch.com//2009/03/19/wuala-merges-with-lacie...

martyhu 16y ago

What about performance? I assume since many routers these days use asymmetric dsl, download/upload from hosts may be poor if only a few hosts are involved, and the hosts use ADSL.

fname 16y ago

I like the "Chat with the Founders" on the website... Is that something you built? EDIT: Thanks guys.

yurisagalov 16y ago
We actually use olark.com for that! It's been super helpful today in responding to comments directly on the website
prabodh 16y ago
It is Olark http://www.olark.com/ http://www.olark.com/

bobf 16y ago

File syncing that includes mobile devices seems to becoming increasingly important as their storage space grows. I'm excited about AeroFS and am looking forward to seeing more posts about the technical aspects.

yason 16y ago

Can I share stuff with my friends? Suppose they already host my backups and I host theirs, can I easily give them access to some of my files?

yurisagalov 16y ago
You can definitely share stuff with friends. Strictly speaking, right now your friends don't "host your backup" _unless_ you share with them.
- mcritz 16y ago
  Can you go into a little more detail about sharing? Are my files kept on my devices when shared or does it implicitly mean shared files are read/write accessible by others? If so, is there a way of managing permissions?
  - weihan 16y ago
    We have implemented full-fledge access control including file ownership, read/write permissions on data/metadata, list/add/remove permissions on directories, etc. But we disabled it from the interface to keep user experience as simple as possible. Later on we may enable them based on use cases and user feedback. Our API will include ACL management as well. Currently files are read/write accessible once shared.

tsmith 16y ago

Way cool guys, and way to represent the Toronto startup scene! BTW, loved the reference to HN karma in the screenshot!

c00p3r 16y ago

a wrapper on top of git, I guess? ^_^

yurisagalov 16y ago
Actually, no ;) We wrote most of the underlying magic ourselves

seancron 16y ago

I see your company doc on "How To Earn HN Karma" has worked out well. Now if only you could turn karma into money... Edit: This is a reference to the picture on their signup page.

hassenben 16y ago

Could someone clarify the difference between aerofs and rsync? What can aerofs do that rsync doesn't?