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Hi all, author here, just wanted to say I am thrilled to see the HN community discuss decentralized cloud storage in more detail. There are many drawbacks today

Hi all, author here, just wanted to say I am thrilled to see the HN community discuss decentralized cloud storage in more detail. There are many drawbacks today and narrow use-cases, but our goal is to continue to improve Sia – and over the coming years we will prove that decentralized storage can compete directly with Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. We feel confident that the marketplace dynamics, in particular, will foster competition between hosts on the network and maintain prices that are an order of magnitude cheaper for storage and two orders of magnitude cheaper for bandwidth.

zherbert 7y ago
I would also add – give Sia a try, especially if you have tried it before our v1.4.0/v1.4.1 releases! https://sia.tech/get-started https://sia.tech/get-started
fitzroy 7y ago
Gotta say, the fact that the installation instructions consist primarily of getting around the "unknown / unidentified developer" restriction doesn't inspire confidence.
solidasparagus 7y ago
Pretty arrogant to say you're going to make cloud storage providers obsolete when you haven't even built a competing solution. You can't even share data yet... And what about all the other features that cloud providers offer? You say "[the] Sia software is exponentially improving, and performance and featureset is quickly approaching Amazon S3", but I see absolutely no evidence of even the most basic features of cloud storage providers. Authorization? Regulatory compliance? High-performance bandwidth? High-reliability public API/URLs? Customer support? Private cloud peering? Zero effort integration with many (most?) major data-related open source projects? Versioning? One-click, no-knowledge reliability? How much do you need to grow to hit cloud scale? 1,000,000x? More? And you're already claiming that you're going to make S3 obsolete? Your blog would hold more weight if you weren't so over-the-top, bullshit-level optimistic.
- peterkelly 7y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
  - EthanHeilman 7y ago
    I often enjoy the cynicism of HN as a counterpoint to the typical breathless media coverage of new technology. However that now famous comment on dropbox is a good demonstration that cynicism isn't a short cut to truth.
  - solidasparagus 7y ago
    I'm not saying it won't work (I have no idea - there's no reason someone can't replicate all of s3's features eventually). I'm just saying that this "we're going to replace run s3 out of business" optimism is pretty unfounded right now. And on a factual level, "featureset is quickly approaching Amazon S3" is pure bullshit.
- AmericanChopper 7y ago
  I went and tested this after reading the article https://filebase.com/ https://filebase.com/ Only took me a couple of minutes to get a file uploaded using the aws-cli. It’s the only decentralized object storage solution I’ve ever seen that seems to actually work.
  - filebase 7y ago
    Thanks for trying out our service! We're glad to hear that it was an easy experience for you.
  - mtlynch 7y ago
    Filebase is not decentralized. Filebase uses a decentralized service on the backend, but the service itself is centralized. If Filebase shuts off their servers, you lose all your data. As an analogy, email is decentralized but Gmail is not.
ken666 7y ago
Hi, Any chances that Sia will eventually support directly restic/Borg? I did not know about filebase (and looks interesting), but honestly it is barely competitive with backblaze/wasabi for backups.
- filebase 7y ago
  Thanks for checking out our service! Filebase[1] offers an S3-compatible API and we are happy to confirm that we have tested basic use cases with restic. Using Sia on our backend enables us to offer cloud storage at very competitive rates. Currently, Backblaze charges egress fees (we don't) and Wasabi has a 90-day minimum charge for all objects. (we have no minimums) [1] https://filebase.com https://filebase.com

zherbert 7y ago

I would also add – give Sia a try, especially if you have tried it before our v1.4.0/v1.4.1 releases! https://sia.tech/get-started https://sia.tech/get-started

fitzroy 7y ago

Gotta say, the fact that the installation instructions consist primarily of getting around the "unknown / unidentified developer" restriction doesn't inspire confidence.

solidasparagus 7y ago

Pretty arrogant to say you're going to make cloud storage providers obsolete when you haven't even built a competing solution. You can't even share data yet... And what about all the other features that cloud providers offer? You say "[the] Sia software is exponentially improving, and performance and featureset is quickly approaching Amazon S3", but I see absolutely no evidence of even the most basic features of cloud storage providers. Authorization? Regulatory compliance? High-performance bandwidth? High-reliability public API/URLs? Customer support? Private cloud peering? Zero effort integration with many (most?) major data-related open source projects? Versioning? One-click, no-knowledge reliability? How much do you need to grow to hit cloud scale? 1,000,000x? More? And you're already claiming that you're going to make S3 obsolete? Your blog would hold more weight if you weren't so over-the-top, bullshit-level optimistic.

peterkelly 7y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- EthanHeilman 7y ago
  I often enjoy the cynicism of HN as a counterpoint to the typical breathless media coverage of new technology. However that now famous comment on dropbox is a good demonstration that cynicism isn't a short cut to truth.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  I'm not saying it won't work (I have no idea - there's no reason someone can't replicate all of s3's features eventually). I'm just saying that this "we're going to replace run s3 out of business" optimism is pretty unfounded right now. And on a factual level, "featureset is quickly approaching Amazon S3" is pure bullshit.
AmericanChopper 7y ago
I went and tested this after reading the article https://filebase.com/ https://filebase.com/ Only took me a couple of minutes to get a file uploaded using the aws-cli. It’s the only decentralized object storage solution I’ve ever seen that seems to actually work.
- filebase 7y ago
  Thanks for trying out our service! We're glad to hear that it was an easy experience for you.
- mtlynch 7y ago
  Filebase is not decentralized. Filebase uses a decentralized service on the backend, but the service itself is centralized. If Filebase shuts off their servers, you lose all your data. As an analogy, email is decentralized but Gmail is not.

ken666 7y ago

Hi, Any chances that Sia will eventually support directly restic/Borg? I did not know about filebase (and looks interesting), but honestly it is barely competitive with backblaze/wasabi for backups.

filebase 7y ago
Thanks for checking out our service! Filebase[1] offers an S3-compatible API and we are happy to confirm that we have tested basic use cases with restic. Using Sia on our backend enables us to offer cloud storage at very competitive rates. Currently, Backblaze charges egress fees (we don't) and Wasabi has a 90-day minimum charge for all objects. (we have no minimums) [1] https://filebase.com https://filebase.com