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There's some famous HN quote when Dropbox launched about how it would could be implemented "quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with

by veidr 7y ago

There's some famous HN quote when Dropbox launched about how it would could be implemented "quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs and blah blah blah..." Actually back then Dropbox was pretty neat an there was no way my dad could implement that himself, and even for us nerds, it would be a major hassle to set up and keep running... so Dropbox had real and obvious value. My point replying here was that now, under some circumstances anyway (see below), it now really is quite trivial for regular people not willing to expend any^W much effort at all to set it up and keep it running. (It is less than one minute of one-step installing and then configuring Syncthing.) However the thing I missed, as pointed out in some of these comments, is that not everybody has a machine at home that is on all the time. I do, and I set up an iMac for my dad and sister etc and told them to just leave it on all the time and just let the screen sleep after an hour. I think a lot of people do that, and I think it is a good idea in general, but if you don't want to do that, then yeah in that scenario Dropbox still does have some value.

pizza234 7y ago
> I think a lot of people do that, and I think it is a good idea in general My experience is the opposite. I don't know a lot of people who have a machine turned on 24/7. Additionally, I think that leaving a client machine running 24/7 is not a good idea, considering heat/consumption, (potential) noise and wear. Also, I think other people missed one point in this discussion. If one has a local filesharing server, and carries a machine (laptop/tablet) out, they need to sync immediately every time when they come back home. It's a hassle. I do have a 24/7 server, and used to have a filesync service on it, but all things considered, a free Dropbox account turned out to be the most conventient choice.
- veidr 7y ago
  Yeah, I think I've realized just because me and most of my friends do it, and my family all does it (and of course they do because I give all of them a new iMac for Christmas every 5 years or so and set it up for them), probably not as many people do this as I think. (Strong disagree that it's a bad idea though; it's super handy, all your windows are just where you left them and your email is already there before you sit down at the computer. iMac machines in particular are highly reliable and will happily run continuously for many years beyond the time frame you'd still want to use them. Seconds matter.) But anyway, the main point of this reply is to say that with Syncthing you never need to sync immediately, or manually at all, in this scenario. If I take my laptop out and work at a cafe or something, it syncs continuously and flawlessly, and when I get back home my iMac Pro is already totally up-to-date. It's only when you do some work with huge files on an airplane with no connectivity, or something like that, where you might need to make sure you turn it on again when you land and make sure it is on and connected to the internet to make sure all the changes get synced back to all the other machines. If you have at least one always-on machine, Syncthing is just as convenient, but objectively superior (security and price being the biggest two). If you don't want to or can't have one always-on machine, then that might be a reasonable use case for Dropbox for file sync.
mickael-kerjean 7y ago
> quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs and blah blah blah... This quote has haunted me for quite some time until I realised the best way to solve the Dropbox problem lay in the UNIX philosophy with at least: a storage component + a sync component + a web UI component At that stage, it becomes a game of lego in a healthy ecosystem of tools. As I was just missing the web UI component, I built it: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash

by veidr 7y ago

pizza234 7y ago

> I think a lot of people do that, and I think it is a good idea in general My experience is the opposite. I don't know a lot of people who have a machine turned on 24/7. Additionally, I think that leaving a client machine running 24/7 is not a good idea, considering heat/consumption, (potential) noise and wear. Also, I think other people missed one point in this discussion. If one has a local filesharing server, and carries a machine (laptop/tablet) out, they need to sync immediately every time when they come back home. It's a hassle. I do have a 24/7 server, and used to have a filesync service on it, but all things considered, a free Dropbox account turned out to be the most conventient choice.

veidr 7y ago
Yeah, I think I've realized just because me and most of my friends do it, and my family all does it (and of course they do because I give all of them a new iMac for Christmas every 5 years or so and set it up for them), probably not as many people do this as I think. (Strong disagree that it's a bad idea though; it's super handy, all your windows are just where you left them and your email is already there before you sit down at the computer. iMac machines in particular are highly reliable and will happily run continuously for many years beyond the time frame you'd still want to use them. Seconds matter.) But anyway, the main point of this reply is to say that with Syncthing you never need to sync immediately, or manually at all, in this scenario. If I take my laptop out and work at a cafe or something, it syncs continuously and flawlessly, and when I get back home my iMac Pro is already totally up-to-date. It's only when you do some work with huge files on an airplane with no connectivity, or something like that, where you might need to make sure you turn it on again when you land and make sure it is on and connected to the internet to make sure all the changes get synced back to all the other machines. If you have at least one always-on machine, Syncthing is just as convenient, but objectively superior (security and price being the biggest two). If you don't want to or can't have one always-on machine, then that might be a reasonable use case for Dropbox for file sync.

mickael-kerjean 7y ago

> quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs and blah blah blah... This quote has haunted me for quite some time until I realised the best way to solve the Dropbox problem lay in the UNIX philosophy with at least: a storage component + a sync component + a web UI component At that stage, it becomes a game of lego in a healthy ecosystem of tools. As I was just missing the web UI component, I built it: https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash