Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmlnr | Hacker News Reader

Remember why we were able to use Skype for this? Pepperidge farm remembers!

Joke aside I transfered a lot of files inside instant messengers and they worked quite well. Nearly everyone had at least a yahoo/messenger/skype/icq account, which made this rather simple, and, because nobody had the capacity/wasn't insterested/was actually p2p, it was perfectly fine. A bummer if the modem connection went down or you had to hang up because the family wanted to make a call, but hey, it was glorious. (no, this is not sarcasm, it really did work.)

View on HN

I recently tried to send a file to a small group of friends on Facebook. After uploading, it rejected the file because it was a video with a copyrighted song playing in the background.

Next time I'll zip it :)

you probably need to add a password to the zip file or it will be scanned too.

"This file cannot be sent, since its content cannot be confirmed to be safe and virus-free". Maybe not today, but it's not an inconceivable next step...

Oh no, I've encountered this many times already. Sometimes, double-wrapping the archive satisfies a system that isn't recursively extracting archives. :/

Shall we try stenography next?

*steganography

Today I learned a new word from spellcheck. Stenography refers to taking notes or writing in shorthand form, not crypto.

Happened to me some years back during an interview :-/

You're kidding, but this is Google Mail today. I've pretty much given up on sending executables.

If you zip it and change the file extension, gmail will let it through. My friends and I occasionally send each other .googlesdumb files.

We send .renametozip files.

It will now also not allow sending .js files. Or zip files containing .js.

So much for emailing a draft of a web application to a colleague.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6590?hl=en

To protect you against potential viruses and harmful software, Gmail doesn't allow you to attach certain types of files, including:

> Certain file types (listed below), including their compressed form (like .gz or .bz2 files) or when found within archives (like .zip or .tgz files)

> Documents with malicious macros

> Archives whose listed file content is password protected

> Password protected archives whose content is an archive

File types you can't include as attachments:

.ADE, .ADP, .BAT, .CHM, .CMD, .COM, .CPL, .EXE, .HTA, .INS, .ISP, .JAR, .JS (NEW), .JSE, .LIB, .LNK, .MDE, .MSC, .MSI, .MSP, .MST, .NSH .PIF, .SCR, .SCT, .SHB, .SYS, .VB, .VBE, .VBS, .VXD, .WSC, .WSF, .WSH

I wouldn't blame them because there is so much "easy" bad things people do except that all the ad networks apparently allow an advertiser to run whatever JavaScript they want in a third party website. I would be in their side if they disallowed JavaScript in ads.

Why are you emailing source code around in 2017 anyway?

I tried to send a zipped archive of some code on Google the other week (old project), it rejected it, so I zipped it again with a password, it still rejected it.

In the end I had to throw it up on the web with a strong password.

Not sure if they the prior attempt unpassworded set a flat for the subsequent attempt but Google though is almost superhuman when it comes to blocking malicious stuff I do wonder what the false positive rate is like.

Perhaps because ZIP password do not encrypt header (file list?)

Format like 7z works well for this purpose as it has an option to encrypt header info.

You can also just rename a x.zip to x.piz (or any nonsense extension) and most services won't try to parse it as a zip.

It's a shit workaround but I have been adding the extension .txt onto the end then telling them to remove that

I usually upload to Stack and send a link to the file there.

Does that really work? I thought files on slack where only visible to the team members.

Not Slack, Stack. It's a Dutch cloud storage platform by TransIP, one of the bigger hosting providers. 1TB for free.

You guys are acting like it's such a big deal to steno it into a word document by base26-ing it into sentences as initialisms using markov chains. Facebook sends my 14 megabyte word files no problem (to transfer a 700 kb wav file). I mean sure it was easier on me or my recipients when I could just dump the base64 in there. And when it started rejecting that, adding the markov chains as initialisms was no walk in the park, you have to let your recipient know how to get it back out again (basically a perl one-liner). But at least there's lots of Gutenberg ebooks to train on and really it's just not that big of a deal. Anyone can do it in an hour or two in pretty much any language, just follow tutorials. Then just tell your recipients what to do and they'll jump through whatever hoops you want. I mean how else am I going to send a 700 kilobyte wav file? FedEx a custom-pressed CD under my own label?

So really Facebook is pretty reasonable.

Why word documents instead of powerpoint slides?

I'd suggest finding a service that doesn't examine and judge you at all times, but to each their own.

Messenger = MSN Messenger in this context, sorry if it was misleading.

Australians Remember

Censorship in action.

Apple mail has this really cool feature that when you email someone a file that is too large, it uploads it to Icloud automatically and then sends that a person a downloadable link from Icloud that expires in 30 days

And most people wouldn't even know that is happening in the background.

Until something break, because receiver is not in the Apple fold. And then it is the receivers fault for not walking in the grace of Jobs...

It doesn't matter if the receiver uses Apple products or not—so long as the sender has an iCloud account, it'll work. As far as the receiver cares, it's just a URL where the file is.

That’s a baseless complaint.

Thunderbird has/had this as well, you could even select a few providers, like Box and that Ubuntu cloud which is now deprecated. Probably a decent solution, but still needs a 3rd party server, which you didn't with the p2p im solutions.

I use it regularly and have self hosted webdav server for this reason. iirc, extension for custom server is required, but the functionality comes from Firefox.

Gmail does this as well, although I'm not sure about the expiration part

I can't tell if you're being serious or not.

I don’t know what wouldn’t be serious about this. A number of mail clients do the same thing, and it’s useful.

Sure, until you go back two months later to re-download the documentation out of your email, and the link has expired.

gmail does the same (to drive of course)

How large is too large?

Gmail adds files to Google Drive - permanently.

Unless your gdrive is full.

I remember all the disconnects with ICQ file transfers. I think they added a recovery mechanism eventually.

Some friends even ran their own ftp (I think most people used War ftp) before ISPs started blocking ports.

Now it's all about uploading to "the cloud" or use sneakernet. My friend uses mega.nz, which seems decent for file sharing. I, personally, never underestimate the bandwidth of a sedan, driving down the highway with a single USB key.

Jokes aside you should double check if it is the correct usb key before a cross-country ride.

Unfortunately, we've deprecated that interview question.

You may have deprecated it; Amazon implemented it. Moving petabytes around is still a challenge.

https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/

And now you aren't able to use Skype for anything anymore :p

Don't know if you're serious or not, but I'm pretty sure M$ stores the files if you manage to send anything, which, with the linux "client" is a struggle for certain.

Skype somehow gets worse with every update. I have given up on it all together, now I just use appear.in instead. It doesn't require signing in and supports screen-sharing

I'm lucky I set up call forwarding to my google number a while ago. I can't even receive calls anymore! If the skype gods are smiling, one of my associated phones will randomly ring if somebody tries to contact me on skype (Google voice I think tries to ring all your phones in hopes that you'll pick up one of them, but in practice it can be somewhat random what actually connects).

Sometimes it doesn't though, and then I have no idea you tried to contact me, because skype is so broken that it /never/ rings when you call me.

This makes matters worse when my skype number is listed as the contact number on some contracts I've signed (their computer system was set up to only accept Japanese phone numbers).

At home I have an obi hai box connected to a cordless phone on my google voice account, it rings every time... but my cell doesn't always ring.

I remember using ICQ for this!

One thing I used to do when I wanted to send files to people outside of the context of a chat was just drop them in a directory on the web server that was running on my machine. Sharing files with folks in a private IRC channel was incredibly easy this way.

uho

Man I miss ICQ! Is it weird I still have my number memorized?

No, it's not :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12957306

Miranda was awesome. Simple, light, native, and supported many protocols. I miss that kind of software on the desktop.

It will come back. When C++ becomes " retro cool", the current generation of JS rockstar ninjas will shout it from the rooftops: "I've reimplemented Atom in C++ and it's SO quick, man!"

I kind of doubt that. The current generation of JS rockstar ninjas does everything in their power to avoid learning a new language.

A simple, light, native desktop client for Skype, Slack, and many other protocols is being developed right now :)

https://eul.im

+1, So... I'm not the only one :-)

I thought I had forgotten it, but I could just recall it again.

I can still login to mine.

I remember my brother's, can't remember his password, though.

I can remember the number, but I've forgotten the password :-) I tried to get them to reset it a while back but it's tied to a long dead email address so I've no way to verify it's me and they won't help.

When I tried to reset my ICQ password they wanted me to message 5 friends and have them vouch for me, people with whom I haven't talked in 15 years.. otherwise they wouldn't unlock my account which is coincidentally, for some unapparent reason, in some sort of restricted mode where I can't send any messages. Support would not budge and unlock my account even after I provided ample proof.

Why is it more difficult to get back in to my 20 year old ICQ than it is to reset any other password I have, even "high security" sites like Bitcoin exchanges or Domain Name providers.

Same problem, and I had the password, but hadn't used it in forever... shame, 6-digit account iirc. But, realistically, haven't touched ICQ since around 2000 or so. I do wish a third party messenger not tied to a major social media chain could gain a hold again. Something that only acted as an exchange/email validation system... Actually, keybase could be a nice central verification tool for a distributed p2p client.

uho 5251730

116233417

IRC also allows you to send files by using DCC.

Not sure why this is downvoted, DCC is direct connection which bypasses the server, p2p.

Likely because it needs a IRC server to set up the handshake, and the exposure of IP addresses. Never mind that DCC and NAT don't mix well.

No different than hitting a webserver. IRC networks cloak your IP address.

I agree about NAT, but that doesn't negate the fact that it was peer to peer that worked for over a decade.

P2P is impossible without exposure of your IP address, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Complicated with NAT and IPv4/IPv6 mismatches.

Our tool lets you use the same P2P method for Remote Desktop access and link sharing (mblok.io). I saw a lot of these tools come up when WebRTC started out, however, they are limited by file size and are really unstable.

I posted this link in the other Mozilla thread a few days ago:

www.file.pizza

Let the p2p transfer commence

https://www.file.pizza does not connect

https://file.pizza/ does connect

I dread using Skype on my Windows 10 laptop. The application crashes half the time, logs me out for no reason, and takes a ridiculous amount of time to load up.

I haven't seen a app more ignored than Skype. This should have been what Whatsapp is today. But MS just killed it

They're probably putting all their energy into Skype for business (which is also a terrible product)

Best i can tell, this happened because shiny buzzwords and "ux" before feature retention.

Try Telegram, I use it like it was MSN Messenger back then <3

I think I'm going to have to settle for this or similar for non-phones (tablets, desktops). I kept looking for a simple messenging app (username, password... maybe email account) to avoid having to share my number, etc. The first thing Telegram did (like many others) was pull my contacts and display other users in my contacts (based on their number) that were also using telegram.

There just doesn't seem to be anything out there that's friendly, old-school messenging (except for complicated stuff that would be difficult for other users to get setup).

IM type apps seem to all go to shit after a while. Every one starts out good and then becomes feature encrusted bloated junk that barely works.

Most of them used to reliably support xmpp though, I miss being able to just run Pidgin (or Adium if on a Mac).

I miss that functionality too. It is stupid that direct transfer is more of a pain that it should be.

Wasn't microsofts version Groove become SkyDrive (now OneDrive)?

There is a whole market, managed file transfer, only focused on this. The industry is/was strongly oriented on integrating this offerings inside ubiquitous apps like Outlook. UX is the main issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com