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I work for a startup and want to sync my dev machines at home and work and also a build farm. Bt sync is a good solution. I am a musician and want to sync my

I work for a startup and want to sync my dev machines at home and work and also a build farm. Bt sync is a good solution. I am a musician and want to sync my tracks with a few producers. Bt sync is a good solution. I am a political activist and want to ensure my data will be available to my affinity group even if Dropbox is threatened with a state security letter. Bt sync is an excellent solution.

niels_olson 14y ago
> I am a political activist ... Bt sync is an excellent solution. I think it will need more cute cats before you can make that call. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_activism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_acti...
- gph 14y ago
  Why? How is the government going to shut down what is basically a private decentralized p2p network? There isn't any central server they can take out and the traffic over the network would look like any other encrypted traffic. If they gained access to the sync group with full permissions they could destroy it and get IP addresses, etc. And the format itself might not lend itself to all the needs of a political activist group. But I don't see how the cute cat theory holds any water here.
  - 6d0debc071 14y ago
    It would look like any other encrypted information, but I'm unsure that the traffic patterns themselves wouldn't be distinctive.
    - lifeguard 14y ago
      Not the point of the use-case. And obviously Tor could be added to the mix.
      - 6d0debc071 14y ago
        I'm unsure that Tor networks are viable in the long term for the same reason - they're subject to traffic analysis. Japan's police have been asking for Tor networks to be blocked over there: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22248692 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22248692
  - zurn 14y ago
    > Why? How is the government going to shut down what is basically a private decentralized p2p network? There isn't any central server they can take out and the traffic over the network would look like any other encrypted traffic. Many ISPs, schools, cafes and corporate networks do this today already. They only allow HTTP (which goes through monitoring) and HTTPS which is decrypted by a MITM proxy (you have to allow their CA cert on your machine, uncompromised HTTPS is blocked). In many countries this type of shenanigans are forbidden by law (friendly governments exist too).
    - gph 14y ago
      True, but adding cute cats to the mix isn't going to fix that either. I wasn't trying to argue that it was technically infeasible for an Orwellian government to stop it, just that it would be near impossible to stop where this type of traffic isn't already blocked.
      - niels_olson 14y ago
        The cute cat theory posits the resource doesn't provably work at scale until it hosts a lot of simple, vacuous content. While 200 TB exceeds the number of cute cats I have ever seen, I'm afraid it may not exceed the youtube bandwidth. It has to work before it can work well. Thus, while PGP technically works great, I haven't heard a lot of Egyptions, Syrians, etc, lauding Phil Zimmerman. Instead, they seem happier with Facebook.
utnick 14y ago
your 3rd example would not be an ideal use-case If one member of your affinity group gets arrested, the police would have access to all of your files plus all of the IP addresses of everyone in your affinity group
- dmix 14y ago
  Well they could use a larger protective stack than just sync: IP addresses = VPN Files = Truecrypted
- lifeguard 14y ago
  You are mis-characterizing the use case. It is preventing censorship, not securing data.
buro9 14y ago
And IMHO all of the scenarios above are why BT Sync is more a Box alternative rather than a Dropbox alternative. Or more accurately a Groove competitor, but they're not the cool kids on the block any longer. Business scenarios make this good for us, but for consumers this isn't a Dropbox alternative.

niels_olson 14y ago

> I am a political activist ... Bt sync is an excellent solution. I think it will need more cute cats before you can make that call. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_activism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_acti...

gph 14y ago
Why? How is the government going to shut down what is basically a private decentralized p2p network? There isn't any central server they can take out and the traffic over the network would look like any other encrypted traffic. If they gained access to the sync group with full permissions they could destroy it and get IP addresses, etc. And the format itself might not lend itself to all the needs of a political activist group. But I don't see how the cute cat theory holds any water here.
- 6d0debc071 14y ago
  It would look like any other encrypted information, but I'm unsure that the traffic patterns themselves wouldn't be distinctive.
  - lifeguard 14y ago
    Not the point of the use-case. And obviously Tor could be added to the mix.
    - 6d0debc071 14y ago
      I'm unsure that Tor networks are viable in the long term for the same reason - they're subject to traffic analysis. Japan's police have been asking for Tor networks to be blocked over there: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22248692 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22248692
- zurn 14y ago
  > Why? How is the government going to shut down what is basically a private decentralized p2p network? There isn't any central server they can take out and the traffic over the network would look like any other encrypted traffic. Many ISPs, schools, cafes and corporate networks do this today already. They only allow HTTP (which goes through monitoring) and HTTPS which is decrypted by a MITM proxy (you have to allow their CA cert on your machine, uncompromised HTTPS is blocked). In many countries this type of shenanigans are forbidden by law (friendly governments exist too).
  - gph 14y ago
    True, but adding cute cats to the mix isn't going to fix that either. I wasn't trying to argue that it was technically infeasible for an Orwellian government to stop it, just that it would be near impossible to stop where this type of traffic isn't already blocked.
    - niels_olson 14y ago
      The cute cat theory posits the resource doesn't provably work at scale until it hosts a lot of simple, vacuous content. While 200 TB exceeds the number of cute cats I have ever seen, I'm afraid it may not exceed the youtube bandwidth. It has to work before it can work well. Thus, while PGP technically works great, I haven't heard a lot of Egyptions, Syrians, etc, lauding Phil Zimmerman. Instead, they seem happier with Facebook.

utnick 14y ago

your 3rd example would not be an ideal use-case If one member of your affinity group gets arrested, the police would have access to all of your files plus all of the IP addresses of everyone in your affinity group

dmix 14y ago
Well they could use a larger protective stack than just sync: IP addresses = VPN Files = Truecrypted
lifeguard 14y ago
You are mis-characterizing the use case. It is preventing censorship, not securing data.

buro9 14y ago

And IMHO all of the scenarios above are why BT Sync is more a Box alternative rather than a Dropbox alternative. Or more accurately a Groove competitor, but they're not the cool kids on the block any longer. Business scenarios make this good for us, but for consumers this isn't a Dropbox alternative.