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Comment by vdaniuk | Hacker News Reader

Sooo, will we be seeing a repeat of the Eich-like public outcry?

Though I may understand the business rationale for this hire, I certainly wont trust founders, board or anyone else at Dropbox who is OK working with a person that is partially responsible for deaths of thousands(arguably hundreds of thousands) people in the Iraq war based on false premises about "WMD".

Oh, and we shouldn't forget about her role in "enhanced interrogation techniques", too.

EDIT: Thinking a little more about this I will be cancelling my Dropbox subscription.

EDIT2: Yes, we are seeing an outcry. I am incredibly happy that coolness factor in tech is now more connected to ethical behavior of its top management and board members.

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Your forgetting she's not only on the record supporting anonymous bulk data collection, AND warrentless wiretapping. She was a key figure of the administration that created such legislation to start with.

Oh, right, forgot about that. What the fuck is going at Dropbox? How did they even come to the conclusion that this is a good idea?

I don't understand the business rationale anymore for Dropbox anymore.

Well she is a prominent figure in America. Just not for a lot of good reasons. The bet is likely that future government business she could bring is larger then the major exodus of people who supported them early on.

Yeah, that may be their calculation. I don't think this will sit well with german users or french users, for example though. Could really hurt their international b2c business.

I don't see how it'll sit well with anyone in the tech community, other then people who prioritize sexual equality above data integrity. The problem isn't her race, or her sex. Its her opinions, and political past. Its very damning to the company and their goals.

>The bet is likely that future government business she could bring is larger then the major exodus of people who supported them early on.

Well good for them and their stakeholders!

She is colored, she is a woman and she is in league with the demographic techies have hard time reaching out to (conservatives).

As politically correct and pro equal opportunity crowd as HN should be able to grok that.

An outside explanation is that political and corporate powers tend to cross-pollinate and operate with revolving doors.

Think of what doors have opened for Dropbox now that they've got Condi. Any door that Condi could open (which is quite a few) could now be opened by them.

Hey, it's not like they're storing people's data or anything. Privacy just shouldn't be that relevant to them.

Sounds like Drew has reached the big leagues.

Damn.. I'd forgotten about that.

I'll definitely consider hosting my truecrypt volume elsewhere once my two years of free 50gb is up..

BTsync is free as in beer, its a bit better.

Mega offers 50GB of sync for free.

Both are -okay-, if you have a spare server owncloud exists.

That seems directly counter to the goal of her helping them expand internationally. The person behind that legislation doesn't seem like the person who'd talk China etc. into opening up.

Also there is no way the person who helped destroy relations with the EU will help build business in the EU.

I am also considering cancelling my Dropbox account. However several of my clients use it to share designs with me making that tricky. Can you suggest anyway around this other than asking the clients to use Google Drive/Box instead?

I think there is no drop-in solution. Truecrypt paired with owncloud.org hosted on DO may work. Spideroak seems good too.

Nope. At this point, people have either forgotten about Iraq or just come to accept it.

The gay marriage issue is a current one. It's a fight that's being fought right now. Protesting someone who is against gay rights has an actual impact in today's politics. Protesting against someone who supported going into Iraq over 10 years ago does not.

Yes, there will be public outcry, because many people view her as a deceiver, and others will think she is a tool of the NSA. But the outcry will not be the same as it was for Eich.

I feel just like you but rely on Dropbox so much. What serious alternatives are they? (preferably, non-US-based?)

I will be looking into personal open-source clouds, like http://owncloud.org/ hosted at DO Amsterdam location.

I know of box.com, but that's US based. I would also like to hear of alternatives.

Their S-1 filing doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

They literally wrote under "Risk Factor":

    We have a history of cumulative losses, and we do not
    expect to be profitable for the foreseeable future.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1372612/0001193125141...

How is that any different than most SV startups? Not making money seems to be SOP.

Besides, with cloud storage, you should plan for and expect that they could disappear tomorrow. That goes for every provider.

I've been looking at MEO Cloud[1]. It's by Sapo.pt, a part of Portugal Telecom. I first saw it recommended by Rui Carmo of Tao of Mac[2], who I've generally thought offers good advice. (He also is Portuguese...) And, they offer a Linux download unlike most other alternatives.

[1]: https://meocloud.pt/ [2]: http://the.taoofmac.com/

[Edited for clarity and fixed links.]

A few more things to add:

(A) the app is in English, even though the website is in Portuguese.

(B) the cli client is open source and on Github:

http://oss.sapo.pt/#!meocloud-cli-architecture https://github.com/sapo/meocloud-cli

Spideroak

http://www.younited.com/why.html Based in Finland, but no Linux client at the moment.

Hypothetically:

File Manager -> Settings -> Remote storage -> add remote

Choose from:

dropbox, google drive, skydrive, others..., other (some open api)

Select > Authenticate > Mount points > Bring online

Something like that would be nice.

Other musings....

Remote options:

* Connect on demand * Low bandwidth mode * Offline mode

* Share file/directory (and some kind of authentication mechanism) * Resource uris * Show public shares * One time downloads * Expiring downloads

Version control:

* View log/history * Retrieve older version / Roll-back

Git based SparkleShare: http://sparkleshare.org

hubiC.

They give 25GB and are French.

Wuala is run by LaCie and based in Switzerland.

http://wuala.com/en/

Its servers are in CH, FR and DE.

It encrypts the data on your client before it is uploaded.

The free plan offers 5GB.

Hopefully won't affect anything, but Seagate is in the process of buying LaCie...

JottaCloud[0] is based in Norway. 5 GB free, supports win, osx, ios and android currently. Linux client development starts Q2 2014 (now) according to their user forum [1].

They sorely lack an API though. Hopefully they will adress this soon.

[0]: http://www.jottacloud.com/ [1]: http://forum.jotta.no/jotta/topics/jottacloud_in_linux

I'm certainly thinking about cancelling mine. Will give them a few days to put out a rationale first.

Since this is HN is it possible to limit ourselves to how CR will help Dropbox to market itself in countries where governments are hostile?

Does anyone know how Rice’s firm RiceHadleyGates would help DropBox do that?

I would assume that her elevation from consultant to board member means that she has been tried and tested.

Why would it help? ELI5 it for me. American influence is at a low ebb, and adding figures from a disgraced and frankly laughing-stock administration seems a horrible PR move. Will this help with domestic US government contracts?

Oh please. Are we really going to do this to every normal person who tries to enter the tech industry? "Excuse me, sir/madam, you were a Republican recently. Please publicly disavow all past actions, thoughts, beliefs, and interests, donate to the HRC three times, throw salt over your shoulder five times, and take out an Obamacare-Approved® Health Insurance Policy(TM) before you even think about helping these pimply-faced 25-year-olds run their companies."

Eich was worse just because of his background and the immense debt that we all owe to him, and that we betrayed him because we're idiots, but you guys really need to get it together.

WTF? She is not a "normal person" by a long shot. She is arguably a war criminal, a proponent of dragnet surveillance and was partial to implementation of torture, oh sorry, "enhanced interrogation".

Comparing Eich and Rice is misleading. By any sensible rationale, their "past actions", both positive and negative, aren't in the same ballpark, zip code or measurement scale.

Your right, people should stop having personal opinions and do what they're told.

She's a war criminal. That's enough reason to put up with the inconvenience of switching to a different cloud storage solution, I think.

Innocent until proven guilty, as long as you didn't work for the government?

You think anyone with that much power will ever be proven guilty in our country? Fat chance.

She is? Has she been indicted by any international courts? Has she stood trial and been convicted? Or do you just have a hunch?

> Has she been indicted by any international courts? Has she stood trial and been convicted?

No, but that's not really the standard for an individual human making a personal moral judgement.

Your argument is irrelevant since the United States doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the ICJ nor the ICC.

> [Condoleeza Rice]... normal person

Her close involvement with the current state of US national security is enough to disqualify her for a role in a company like Dropbox.

You're overreacting. Rice is not a "normal person" whose political beliefs I disagree with.

She was one of the architects of a useless war that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. I understand that in large organizations individuals may not be able to stop the machine, but they can always choose not to be part of it.

She is one of only a few people in history who have had that much influence, and who have used it to such devastating effect.

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