Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

I promise I'm not being dismissive.

My question is:

Ori is a distributed file system built for offline operation and empowers the user with control over synchronization operations and conflict resolution. We provide history through light weight snapshots and allow users to verify the history has not been tampered with. Through the use of replication instances can be resilient and recover damaged data from other nodes.

Does a user actually want to do any of these things? Not a techie user, but a user. Someone who cares about their photos, for example.

One big use case, which I often run into, is that Dropbox is very valuable because it serves your files through a website. Yes, that means Dropbox and governments have access to that data. On the other hand, it's fine for Dropbox and governments to access my "chatlog with my ISP where I complain about a late fee and ask for a refund" that I saved to Dropbox but need to pull up on my laptop which doesn't have Dropbox installed. That type of thing is where Dropbox really shines, so I'm not sure I'd want to put my docs into a system which doesn't have a web interface.

Those kinds of "casual documents" are extremely common. I'd say most of my stuff in Dropbox isn't actually sensitive, whereas a small percentage is highly sensitive. It'd be great to store the highly sensitive into a filesystem like this, since I could control it directly, but that involves quite a lot of effort to set Ori up and to understand it. And it's not entirely clear that it's more secure than, say, encrypting my Dropbox files directly.

In summary, what precisely is the value add that Ori brings to the user? I'm trying hard to see it, and I want to believe there is one.

I think there is definitely a growing segment of people who do not want to contribute to the growing surveillance of their lives, but nevertheless do want to have a way to share their data and details with whoever they want, with trust, at a personal level.

I know a few families, for example, who are now using their own social-media apps built by family members, and for which there is no outside access - yet they have their own network, trust system, shared media and data, and so on.

It is completely within their control.

So there are people out there for whom Ori and its peer technologies are very important. Not everybody wants to just genuflect in front of the ultra-corporate ruler(s). Its quite possible to continue using computers unhindered by third parties; tools like Ori assist that - technologically as well as culturally. Get all your friends on their own p2p networks.

Thank you for the explanation. That's very interesting. I see now that Ori would be vital for powering something like that.

Glad to help. I think it is very important to explain to people - in the now generation sense - right now that its dangerous to 'just give up and start using the Cloud', and that indeed the Cloud - and its issues - is not a new battle in computing, nor even a new and innovative feature in the candy-sense that it is coated now, but rather a continuation of a long-standing battle in the computer world about where data 'lives' and who 'owns' it. We swing back, forward, back and over again between the monolithic model, and the distributed model, in computing. The youngsters need to know that their iPhones are real computers and can do real computer things - un-impacted by outside/external entities. It is a real travesty that there are already new generations of kids who grow up thinking computers are something you need a credit card to use.

On the other hand, Synology NASes with new DSM already offer a better alternative - web access to data, sync with other computers and other services while you still own your data. In that case Ori doesn't bring all that much to the table :)

Synology NASes have had a number of security vulnerabilites and privacy breaches over the last several years.

Yes, and they were rather quickly patched. I'm not really sure what are you trying to say... to avoid security vulnerabilities, just upload all your data to a foreign datacenter?

check out the synology employee

> Through the use of replication instances can be resilient and recover damaged data from other nodes

I sure want this. Setting multiple nodes might be cumbersome, but it should be worth it for important data.

Also, the use case you are presenting is for overly casual cases. People just caring about their photos could use Flickr or just about any random photo service with a private setting.

Dropbox users are already a step or two further down the line, and there are files like password databases (keepass databases for instance), and other sensible things you'd want to synch seamlessly but wouldn't want to be accessible to anyone else, even with just a warrant [0]

[0] I think you still can refuse to give a password if I'm not wrong

> [0] I think you still can refuse to give a password if I'm not wrong

Can't speak for the US, but in the UK and Australia at least it's a crime to withhold a password. Seems the US varies depending on jurisdiction. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

I think forced password disclosure is sickening. In my opinion, they are forcing defendants to assist in their own prosecution.

I don't think that invalidates the presumption of innocence. It's the digital alternative of a search warrant. Imagine a world where prosecutors could not enter your house.

"Imagine a world where prosecutors could not enter your house"

I think I like this world.

It's not the presumption of innocence that's the problem, it's being forced to be a witness against yourself.

And what happens if you actually forget your password?

Offline is great for people living in the rest of the world where the internet can be extremely unreliable or inaccessible. For instance, all major cloud file services I've tried are blocked in China. If a new service isn't blocked today, it probably will be tomorrow because it allows easy sharing of information secure from censors. There isn't much hope of the web getting any more accessible in non-western countries but our home networks are still free.

It appears to be about the same service as Dropbox, except a bit less centralized. So it'll be faster because you don't have to go through a centralized server, e.g. your phone and computer can talk directly on WLAN instead of going through your slow internet connection

Dropbox already syncs on lan.

The beauty of software is: It could be built upon. Including a simpler setup/interface, and a web interface.

There has been several commercial ventures more recently building something along the lines of Ori (i.e. decentralized and secure dropbox alternatives). For companies and people's sensitive documents this can be big deal.

I agree use ability could be improved and I would really like getting more developers involved so we can finish a Windows port, iOS app, and a graphical interface to help make the whole system easier.

~ Ali

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