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Comment by meling | Hacker News Reader

Totally agree… I wish I could buy Dropbox’s minimal feature set: syncing files. And that they’d improve that feature rather than adding features I don’t use or want.

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I'll happily recommend https://syncthing.net/, it's open source, end to end encrypted, and peer to peer (your machines send files directly to each other).

Searched for the iOS client, first hit answer by the maintainer

>I remain unconvinced of the usefulness of the Syncthing sync model on iOS

https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-for-ios/16045/4

So basically it's not an alternative at all to Dropbox

well to those of us, not using iPhone it is*

And to be honest, most of the files I sync, I never access on a phone anyway. So it would still be useful even without Android support.

Not sure how common my setup is, But I have desktop both at home and at work. And I use git and synching, to sync most of the stuff seamlessly. That said I mostly work from home nowadays, so I mostly use my work comp to speed up compilation, or run tests, dockers, databases, etc.

* Not trying to be an asshole. There are plenty of iPhone only app, that I sometimes** wish I could use, so I know how you feel.

** But not too much, otherwise I would switch by now :))

I actually want a central server, because the main thing I'm worried about is a fire or flood taking out both my computers at once, in which case the sync to a central server works as a backup.

(I don't have proper backups beyond Dropbox, because I'm pretty happy for stuff I've actually deleted to stay deleted. Just, in case of a hard drive failure or something similar, I can sync back from Dropbox. That's all I feel I need. Maybe there's something better?)

Syncthing is not end-to-end encrypted. It's peer to peer TLS encrypted.

With end-to-end encryption you can transfer data with an untrusted server as intermediary, which syncthing doesn't support.

Syncthing supports transferring data via untrusted relays (used when two nodes cannot communicate directly) and also supports storing data encrypted on untrusted nodes (those nodes cannot decrypt the data)

Second this. I De-Googled/De-Dropboxed my life about 15 months ago with the help of Syncthing, and a third-party cloud backup provider (the '1' in my 3-2-1) strategy, and I haven't looked back.

I can’t recommend it enough. Install your own directory servers, and you’ll have true invisible infrastructure.

I prefer seafile because it actually scans immediately and has a functioning android client.

There's always rsync, you know...

What if I told you you could replicate all of that with proven battle tested technology… for free.

"you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

It’s a testament to the Unix philosophy that after all these years, Dropbox has grown and morphed into something that people no longer enjoy, and yet if you simply followed that advice years ago, you would still have a system today that works exactly as you intended, and in 50 years when Dropbox is long gone as a company, that system will still be working as built, and even after you die, that system can be inherited by your children and grandchildren and still work as well as it did on day one. This is the timeless way of building.

I wish I shared your optimism that any kind of server I set up in 2007 would still be fully functional today without any kind of maintenance, let alone that it will still be around to serve my grandchildren.

An FTP server already wouldn't serve my needs given that there's no such thing as mobile sync to an FTP server.

That's a fair criticism of the approach but I also think it's one of the strengths - protocols never change. So today with new requirements you'd need to figure out a new way to do it, but the old way still works, even if it doesn't meet your needs.

The irritating thing with a lot of software is that they start out like a hammer and in 10 years it's a multi-dimensional VR rangefinder with email. Well that's super cool but I want my hammer back.

And the iPod will fail because it doesn’t have wireless and has less space than the Nomad…

https://m.slashdot.org/story/21026

what if i told you i know that, but i don't want to do the work or ongoing management of that myself. i just want somebody else to do it for me. for money that i pay them, and not for money that some VC or data broker pays them

Then I’d tell you I have a very particular set of skills, skills that could keep your files stored safely for a very long time. For money you would pay directly to me, in perpetuity.

iCloud

iCloud is perfect if all your machines are made by Apple.

It really isn’t.

The time macOS changed my default to having all my files in the cloud rather than local was a truely scarring experience.

The price is high and ‘family sharing’ is a minefield.

That’s a small sacrifice to make.

They are now

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