Hive: Free unlimited cloud storage for you and your friends | Hacker News Reader

Hive: Free unlimited cloud storage for you and your friends

hive.im

64 pointsrid52 comments

Is this a serious thing or are people always blinded by 'FREE'?

There is no way of getting information about the company on the company website, you have to go to the company web app.

So you get free unlimited storage, ad funded and to target you better with advertising they look at your content. This is hidden in the Terms of Service. https://beta.hive.im/terms/

At the company web app, there is no information about the company, the backers, the people etc. The 'about section' of the company is a bunch of marketing speak https://beta.hive.im/about/

There is an address if you look hard enough - in the Privacy section. https://beta.hive.im/privacy/ It is in Hong Kong. There is no information about team, backers etc.

Best of luck to anyone that tries this.

After a bit of digging I found the product is built by http://www.qvivo.com

Well spotted. Qvivo seems to have the same approach to transparency as Hive unless I missed something? Almost all the links you can click on the Qvivo page go to email addresses, not other pages.

I used to use Qvivo to store video in the cloud. According to their (now deleted) Twitter feed, Qvivo are also the creators of Hive.

However, Hive recently claimed (on their own Twitter feed) they don't know anything about Qvivo. Then, after some probing tweets, they backtracked and said they just use the same platform as Qvivo. All very suspicious.

Qvivo recently changed their business model to B2B and, without any communication, deleted all my media. I was gutted, but received no response from any support requests.

If Hive are anything to do with Qvivo, I'd beware.

If you have any concerns, here's their support page: http://support.qvivo.com/

Funny.

So here is a review from us about Hive unlimited cloud storage, what do you think ? http://www.crawlerguys.com/hive-unlimited-free-cloud-storage...

For the uses I have in mind they can pretty much do what they want with my data - including lose it without warning or send it the NSA.

But yes - not everyone is going to approach this with their eyes open.

As in all things there's a tradeoff. I am perfectly happy with the tradeoff Gmail offers me as long as I am kept informed and I'm happy with the tradeoff here - which is that I don't assume anything as I've never heard of the company.

So - I'm going to upload a huge directory of stuff that isn't personal and is already safely backed up. In return I get web access to it without paying a penny - and a 'sort-of' backup.

Yeah, this is what I was thinking. Though I do have backups of my photos/music, in a worse case scenario in which all my drives were lost/stolen/eaten simultaneously I would lose everything. (This would be unlikely, because one is stored in a safety deposit box.) But a service like this would allow for one extra layer of redundancy with minimal downsides.

Create a giant tar.gz file, encrypt it, and store the encrypted file.

Likewise, the biggest use I have for things like Dropbox or potentially Hive is to store my personal collection of guitar tabs that I've curated, so wherever I go I can still practice without having to remember to bring my tabs. I also keep a collection of educational PDFs and ebooks as well as some pictures I found on the Internet that I decided to keep for one reason or another in case I need to link to them on Reddit or send a funny gif to a friend. In college, I would put my notes there as well as homework assignments or group projects that I need to share with classmates. Hell, I don't even care if any of that were to be released to the public, let alone if the NSA or private companies are snooping on it.

Then again, I'm fully aware of the dangers of cloud solutions. Others are not. And that's the problem.

I have to admit they've got a nice enough name. But it's time services stop using the word "free" and instead admit to being "ad-supported" with clear upfront statements about how the business would survive. That kind of honesty would bring in better appreciation from users.

On a related note, free does not necessarily have to mean ad-supported if there are good backers, a good product and a good plan for the future (Trello is just one service I can think of that fits this description).

I wouldn't be surprised to see this happen at some point. Already we're seeing the common app stores show "In-app purchases" next to or instead of the word "Free" to indicate that it's not really free.

Won't let me drop a directory of files in, because one of them is a bittorrent file (why are you looking so carefully at the types of my files?)

mp3s don't seem to come back bit-identical, obviously some editting going on remotely.

So, don't trust this with files where you actually care about your data not getting "adjusted".

How about a zip file?

I don't care enough to do deep experiments, but it seems if I upload files Hive doesn't have "magic" for, they don't get changed. Also, another mp3 didn't get changed, so maybe they do some kind of cleanup on some?

Maybe it's slightly fuzzy deduplication?

Also, I'm pretty sure they aren't encrypting your content.

So this becomes "You are not paying, so you are the product" with a twist. As the premium plan gets cheaper, the more friends you invite, the saying goes something like this:

"If you are not paying, you sell your friend's data as a product?"

Sorry, but that is some twisted pyramid scheme imho.

I guess it's about marketing Hive to people. If you bring them 100 customers, and 5% of them will pay full price for Premium. Why shouldn't they give you smth in return?

I wonder what their game is here. Why is it free to share with 100 friends? I can't see that it would be any cheaper for them. Also, 100 friends? When would I ever want to share file storage with that many people?

I think that they're trying to create a viral loop in order to attract advertisers to their platform.

You're probably right. They expect you to join someone's free group and then decide to pay for your own.

I really dislike the fact that this is totally anti-privacy which is one of the hottest topics in cloud file storage today. Everyone is asking for things to be more secure, and people are willing to pay for storage and security when they need it. This is solving the wrong problem.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the privacy advocates are the target market for this site.

I also believe that the cloud has proven people are willing to forgo some privacy in exchange for the ease of use/access. I don't take part is such activities, but many seem to.

I think you're entirely right. Based off of what I saw, this isn't for secure file storage on the cloud. It's for storing photos and music collections that you'd like your friends and family to have access to.

Of course, it does mention documents and such as well, but I'm sure there are plenty of uses for "socially" sharing that type of thing too.

You're right on both counts. However, everyone, including members of younger generations, is becoming more aware of the potential harm from cloud providers not having sufficient security around our data. The market for services where this kind of cavalier "let your data be free" attitude prevails is shrinking. Look at the recent Snapchat and iCloud photo leaks. All the kids are seeing this.

> I also believe that the cloud has proven people are willing to forgo some privacy in exchange for the ease of use/access. I don't take part is such activities, but many seem to.

Or they don't understand exactly what they are trading away in exchange for the free service.

Which would be understandable, since it's not like any of those services go out of their way to explain it to them. It's just marketed as a free lunch.

Agreed. camlistore and sandstorm.io are far more interesting, to me.

I am a heavy user of Plex and have about 600GB of video in my Dropbox via Plex Cloud Sync. Hive has no desktop client as far as I can see which is already a deal breaker as the machine I browse on is not the machine my video is stored on. On top of all of this we have no clue how they plan to offer this free storage other than "Ads".

Don't get me wrong $9/mo for unlimited data sounds nice but there is no way I am using my upload pipe to move my 10-12TB of media into a cloud that I know nothing about and could shut down next month.

To be fair I doubt I am the user they are targeting. It's not a "All your media in the cloud" but rather "A way to share one-off video/picture/music in the cloud which is not something I am interested in at all.

I use plex and host all the content on my local HDD. You can buy 2x3GB Raid drives for under $200. Much more cost effective imo. I wonder why you use Dropbox to store all that data?

* I assume you mean 2x3TB :)

I use dropbox+drive for friends/family or if I'm not going to be at home. My upload connection is decent for where I am but it can't handle multiple HD streams (3+) so moving content I know people want into Dropbox means faster streaming for them and less congestion on my network. I have 4x3TB + 1x1TB drives currently (no raid, yes, yes, I know I need to do it) and those are about filled up and my media server has no more room in it for more drives so if I want to add more it would have to be external (I do have a couple eSata ports though).

I am currently looking for a replacement, I've considered buying one of those 20-drive server rack mounts [1] and filling it with 3TB drives which at Raid 6 (zRaid 2 really since I would just use ZFS soft-raid) would give me ~54TB of space. That should last me for a while yet :). At that point I would also start looking into colocation (That way I wouldn't need the Cloud Sync) but then I lose the VERY nice local speeds I get by having it all 10ft from my TV.

[1] Something like this http://smile.amazon.com/NORCO-Mount-Hot-Swappable-Server-RPC... (First result on google, I would look more before I decided of course)

"Download to mac"? Lemme know if they ever get out of the hipster startup phase http://i.imgur.com/DTKz15Z.png

Everything about this says creepy.

If only turning off the email notifications would turn off email notifications.

So it looks like the general consensus is people are not comfortable being the product. They would rather pay a nominal fee. So it's funny if Hive charged only like $0.99 / month or even $2 / mo I bet this launch would be received a little more graciously.

Young people may think differently.

Interestingly, the site breaks on vertical monitor orientation. Rather than attempt to render it complains and asks the user to maximize the already maximized window.

Where can i access my profile? http://i.imgur.com/9zbI6ac.png

I like the big sad "<your name> - NO FRIENDS" smiley on the right. Even facebook tried to be polite and avoided any "lol you have no fiends" situation, how ridiculous it ever may be - and those guys rub it in your face instead.

They must have some impressive social network analysis planned if they try so many different tactics to get you to build a large network quickly.

"Hive is the first free unlimited cloud service in the world."

Sure it is.

god knows where the hell our personal data will be residing .. better to use http://owncloud.org/

Owncloud is the simplest way to store your files, all you need is a web hosting account and just install the file its that simple, and here is guide http://www.crawlerguys.com/how-to-start-your-own-cloud-stora...

If it's free, you're the product.

HN is free, yet here you are.

HN is free but you as users are the product. HN is a fantastic marketing tool for Y-combinator. They do a pretty good job of keeping the balance right though.

If you scroll right the site breaks.

How are you scrolling right?

Drag over some text to highlight it, dragging your mouse all the way to the right of your monitor.

Middle click generally gives you a cursor which you can drag to scroll in any direction, not sure if it's limited to chrome.

I do it accidentally all the time when I multi-touch on my trackpad.

The logo looks a bit creepy to me.

Looks strangely reminiscent of the final panel here: http://pbfcomics.com/168/

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