Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonpurdy | Hacker News Reader

Title sucks, but I did enjoy reading the review.

I'm a Dropbox user since 2009 who recently switched to iCloud Drive. I miss the old Dropbox that just worked and stayed out of the way. Once Dropbox rebranded (2017?) I knew it was the beginning of the end. I cancelled my subscription a couple of years ago and just kept it around for syncing preferences, which I ditched a couple of months ago.

iCloud Drive works well enough, but it doesn't indicate whether files are synced (with a checkmark like Dropbox used to do). I typically avoid Apple software because in trying to simplify it they end up making it vastly overcomplicated.

I've heard good things about NextCloud but didn't want to self-host. I've tried SpiderOak and Google Drive before and both were just too slow (and Google Drive was very flakey).

View on HN

I was looking for seamless sync between multiple desktops and phones, but nothing fit the bill. Tried all the cloud providers, syncthing, etc (Syncthing was great though). I want to have my calendar, my password manager db, my desktop config, my dev files, and my personal files accessible everywhere.

In the end I bought a Synology NAS and placed it at home.

Though SynologyDrive does have some issues, it works well on every OS I've tested including Android, and does have decent blacklisting features. I use synology drive for all my personal files and anything that's not under version control (git)

I installed gitea and use that to sync my source code. I just need to write a small command line utility that gives me easy access to the repos locally.

Using a password manager with webdav support (I use Enpass and I heartily recommend it) makes password sync easy, since Synology natively supports webdav.

For Contacts and Calendar you also have to use a client that supports CalDAV & CardAV, and I haven't found a good unified client for Tasks, CalDAV and WebDAV, so you'll likely have a mishmash of applications on different OSes, but it works well enough.

Other things I have installed are a local plex server and automated backups.

In the end it is a good solution if you like tinkering and are willing to try to build out something that fits your needs.

Syncthing is amazing but I remember I had issues with the Android client and that's why I tried the NAS route. Maybe the Iphone client is better.

I've heard great things about NextCloud, SeaFile and OwnCloud, and you could run those in a VPS if your traffic is light.

So, if I might ask, what people are looking for (in simplest terms):

a cloud synching platform that is cross platform, with a decent (or better) UI and a good indicator, that has end to end encryption.

To be honest, given the proper team, that doesn't seem like the hardest bill to fill. I will admit, though, finding a tech company that is willing to spend money decent interface and graphic designers is sometimes difficult, but not impossible.

> with a decent (or better) UI

I want no UI. It should transparently work like any other filesystem.

I believe this already exists in the form of 'rclone'[1] and I believe that we[2] are the only cloud storage provider that explicitly supports it[3].

Which is to say, we built the 'rclone' binary into our environment such that you can run it remotely:

  ssh user@rsync.net rclone s3:/bucket/blah /rsync/dir

[1] https://rclone.org/

[2] https://www.rsync.net/products/universal.html

[3] https://www.rsync.net/products/rclone.html

I use rclone to sync a onedrive with an ubuntu host and it works. It is also a single binary, with one configuration file, which allows you to sync on your terms.

Either no UI, or using system standard frameworks and APIs (no custom UI stuff, and absolutely no Electron garbage).

If Dropbox had remained the same as it did back in the early days and focused on continuing to only update the product to be faster and more reliable and not adding additional features, it would have still been great. (Unrealistic considering that the investors need to get their ROI.)

I mean, they used to be about the only game in town. Now you have monsters like MS and Google and Apple in the game. Cloud storage used to be value in and of itself, that's less so the case now, especially when there isn't system integration the way there is with OneDrive, GDrive or iCloud.

Google's offer of free 15GB is also pretty ridiculously generous compared to the competition (Dropbox 2GB, OneDrive/iCloud 5GB). MS and Apple have some ecosystem stuff to drive sales, but Dropbox, eh...

I think features like smart sync and ignore are actually really useful. There’s stuff I don’t need (like Paper), but I don’t feel it is getting on my way.

And seems to be they have been also working with the core product. On the blog they mention rewriting the sync engine (with Rust): https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-o...

I've used sync.com for several years with no issues, it just works and stays out of my way. I don't use it for syncing between computers though just to have a backup online

I use sync.com Canadian, so five eyes. Not end to end encypted, so probably the same level of security as Dropbox or iCloud.

Sync.com claims to be end-to-end encrypted [0]. Is there any indication they are not?

[0] https://www.sync.com/your-privacy/

JS gets loaded from a sync server, no verifiable open source client, no documentation explaining security architecture.

It may or may not be E2E encrypted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com