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April 12, 2014 8:49 AM   Subscribe

On April 9th, Dropbox announced that Condoleezza Rice will be joining their Board of Directors. Some folks aren't happy about that decision.
posted by Fuzzypumper (128 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
What, they couldn't get Rumsfeld?
posted by Sys Rq at 8:52 AM on April 12, 2014 [30 favorites]


This is great if it means they'll have the benefit of her husband's wisdom as well.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:01 AM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Like Eich, I would be happy to have her on the board if she merely apologizes for her past mistakes. Of course, those mistakes include a mountain of dead Iraqis, so it should be a lengthy affair.
posted by munchingzombie at 9:03 AM on April 12, 2014 [11 favorites]


And, war crimes aside, I just don't see how, given her stance on surveillance, it makes any logical sense for Dropbox to hire her. It's like putting Roy Cohn on the board of Grindr.
posted by Sys Rq at 9:06 AM on April 12, 2014 [53 favorites]


This is great if it means they'll have the benefit of her husband's wisdom as well.

Oh jeez, that's like calling your second-grade teacher "Mommy" in front of the whole class. That's horrible. That's tailor-made for spreading around, too, but it's also completely beside any possible substantive point, and it's all just... ick.

You've made me feel some sort of sympathy for some part of the Bush administration! Curse you Spiggott! /shakes fist
posted by Western Infidels at 9:10 AM on April 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


When looking to grow our board, we sought out a leader who could help us expand our global footprint.
So basically a networking appointment, not necessarily a leadership appointment. This is how a company makes connections in the big leagues.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:24 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Maybe they'll name a server farm after her.
posted by asterix at 9:37 AM on April 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


This is deeply disturbing, and anyone — or any business — who values ethics should be concerned.

Which businesses are those?
posted by juiceCake at 9:38 AM on April 12, 2014 [29 favorites]


And, war crimes aside, I just don't see how, given her stance on surveillance, it makes any logical sense for Dropbox to hire her. It's like putting Roy Cohn on the board of Grindr.

So basically a networking appointment, not necessarily a leadership appointment. This is how a company makes connections in the big leagues.

Makes perfect sense if what they're looking for is closer relations to assuredly lucrative NSA spying deals.

Dropbox is turning over everything to the NSA already, they probably want to get paid more for it.
posted by T.D. Strange at 9:48 AM on April 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


I just don't see how, given her stance on surveillance, it makes any logical sense for Dropbox to hire her.

This is the wrong logic.

This is how a company makes connections in the big leagues.

Crony capitalism needs cronies and the best crony of them all is the government. Having a government insider to help you get government assistance is sine qua non of capitalism nowadays.

Sorry Dr. Rice. You coulda been a contender. You made your bed now you get to lie in it. The pity for the rest of us it is so nicely feathered.
posted by three blind mice at 9:52 AM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


Is was confusingly mistaken that Dropbox were the good Guys, the Underdogs of Cloud Storage, those who would not be evil.

Boy was I wrong.

Not only have recent Acquisitions shown that Dropbox wants to be as intrusive as Google, but that it's Owners are equally dumb & greedy when it comes to getting their Way and Influencing Politics.

Madame Rice's "Expertise" is Connections. She has nothing to do with the digital Industry or even Business. It's all about Politics and Connections.

All I want is a Data Storage Service that is run by a "responsible" Company. But by hiring irresponsible Power Player I have my Doubts that Dropbox even know what Responsibility means ...
posted by homodigitalis at 9:54 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Dropbox are the Microsoft of cloud storage. SpiderOak and the Tahoe-LAFS project are the underdogs, what with caring about your actual privacy and appearing to administer to that care.
posted by introp at 9:56 AM on April 12, 2014 [19 favorites]


Rice was Provost of Stanford in the late 90s and 2000. I think you'll find her Silicon Valley human capital quotient to be quite fine, her prior and subsequent diplomatic work quite aside.
posted by MattD at 10:11 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Wonderful! She will be able to help them expand into the vast untapped markets of the USSR.
posted by monotreme at 10:15 AM on April 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


Are there any cloud storage services other than Dropbox which work with iOS-based note-taking/text-editing apps? Or, for that matter, any such apps which will sync to git/ssh/svn? Because not having notes synced between my UNIX home directory and my iPhone is the one thing keeping me from nuking my Dropbox account.
posted by acb at 10:17 AM on April 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


I was confusingly mistaken that Dropbox were the good Guys, the Underdogs of Cloud Storage, those who would not be evil.

Speaking as a regular Dropbox user who doesn't plan to stop, there was no reason to think that. It's a lovely little service that introduced file syncing to people who wouldn't have otherwise done it, and it's convenient, but they planned to make a lot of money the conventional way from day one. The 'underdog' things they did like turn down Apple were because they wanted to make much more than they were offered at the time. Again, that's okay, and if you would have never used them had you known that, that is also okay, but if the perceived change in direction bothers you, then you needn't worry about it.
posted by michaelh at 10:19 AM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is A Modest Proposal that has probably been made by someone before, but why doesn't the NSA offer cloud storage directly and cut out the middleman? It'd be a lot cheaper -- in some sense free as we're paying for it already, and they're expanding into facilities that would make Google+Amazon drool with envy. Rather than make them face the overhead and hassle of surreptitiously copying our data, we should just use a published NSA API and store our data there directly.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:24 AM on April 12, 2014 [27 favorites]


NSA Cloud Storage, from the hierarchy of government contractors who brought you healthcare.gov.
posted by lkc at 10:26 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


I was confusingly mistaken that Dropbox were the good Guys, the Underdogs of Cloud Storage, those who would not be evil.

Nope, they are one of the poster boys of YCombinator, along with reddit and airbnb. Its never been about anything other than making as much money for a few people quickly. If you're curious you should review the history of violentacrez and the kinds of things reddit did to bring in and sustain traffic in the early days, and remember that their founders had the same pedigree and the same advisors.
posted by lkc at 10:32 AM on April 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


I initially sent them Dropbox a stiff message. They didn't reply to me, but they did reply publicly with some of the worst bullshit I've ever seen, focusing on "your data is safe" and not mentioning one word of her infamous record?


> Speaking as a regular Dropbox user who doesn't plan to stop,

Why would anyone with a conscience stick with this company?

This is the woman behind the US's torture program. (And writing that phrase still makes me feel a little sick, years later.) Because of her actions, innocent men have been tortured to death by the United States. She's on of the architects of the Iraq War - which killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of Americans, and drained about $2 trillion from the US Treasury.

And it's not like there aren't other perfectly good alternatives to Dropbox - Google Drive, Box, a host of others. It's not like there's any significant lock-in to their program, or that you can't get the same services for a cheaper price.

So why are you sticking with this morally bankrupt company?
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:34 AM on April 12, 2014 [21 favorites]


Switched to Box yesterday. It was pretty painless -- has the same kind of integration on PC and Android that Dropbox does. Maybe a bit cleaner actually. And I have more space.
posted by Foosnark at 10:45 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


This could be their new slogan:

Dropbox: We want you to move a lot of important and valuable stuff to a very insecure location. However, you should expect that our search won't ever turn up anything.
posted by 4ster at 10:48 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


I was very vocal wrt. Eich, and I think it was right that he stepped down.

I'm more conflicted about Rice. Yes, she's a nasty piece of work, and I don't think there's anyone who takes a more bleak view of BushCo than me, but a case can be made that her ability to work in that position is not affected by her evil history. More troubling is her connection to the whole surveillance police-state apparatus, especially for a service like Dropbox, but that's a practical issue that needs to be explored.

I don't use Dropbox, but in the "willing to bend over backwards to the breaking point" spirit, I'm not going to leap to calling for her head in this case. It's an individual decision, and I respect those who feel otherwise.
posted by VikingSword at 10:49 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


So what's as seamless on OS X as Dropbox? I really like that it syncs a folder in the Finder so that all your files just appear as normal on the local filesystem, but I really don't like Condoleeza Rice.

This roundup lists some comparable services, but mentions a desktop client for each.
posted by Devils Rancher at 11:04 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Bittorrent Sync is so much better anyway.
posted by pashdown at 11:10 AM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


> I was very vocal wrt. Eich, and I think it was right that he stepped down.

Let me get this straight. You're saying that donating to a political campaign you disapprove of is worse than organizing to have people tortured?

> a case can be made that her ability to work in that position is not affected by her evil history.

Unless you are actually willing to make such a case, arguing that it "can be made" is vacuous.

> I don't use Dropbox, but in the "willing to bend over backwards to the breaking point" spirit, I'm not going to leap to calling for her head in this case.

If organizing to have people tortured won't do it, what would? Oh, we answered that one in the first sentence.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:11 AM on April 12, 2014 [11 favorites]


So what's as seamless on OS X as Dropbox?

I played around with SparkleShare, which is self-hosted but presumably there are hosting providers that can/do offer compatible services. Seems to work fine on OSX. Decided I didn't like the implementation of the client; it runs as a daemon, checking periodically for updates that need to be synced. I'm not massively experienced in OSX development but I refuse to believe that it can't be implemented as an event-based service; i.e. be notified by the OS when something in the monitored folders changes rather than polling like that.
posted by George_Spiggott at 11:12 AM on April 12, 2014


I don't think you need outside sources to shift the alignment chart of your IT company's board into the Neutral Evil direction. Just get in touch with Larry Ellison.

The main difference between Rice and Eich's situation is that Dropbox is a for-profit startup, not a place that aims to make the web/world a better place. They did seem like comparatively nice guys, though. Hired the creator of the Python language just recently.

Oops, does this mean I have to stick with Perl now?
posted by pseudocode at 11:17 AM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


> So what's as seamless on OS X as Dropbox? I really like that it syncs a folder in the Finder so that all your files just appear as normal on the local filesystem, but I really don't like Condoleeza Rice.

> This roundup lists some comparable services, but mentions a desktop client for each.

Dropbox also has a "desktop client". Those files don't appear on your desktop on their own!

I honestly turned off the Dropbox client almost immediately. I really don't want something that I might not use in any given day running all the time; I particularly don't want something that has complete access to my filesystem and my network running constantly.

I never found the additional step of opening a web page to be a big deal. You could just leave that page open if it bothered you.

But if you're determined to give some untrusted third party unlimited access to your desktop, all of Dropbox's competitors do much the same thing. I use Google Drive, works fine for me - though I don't turn their client on, it seemed to work much the same as Dropbox's when I experimented.

Even more exciting - if you're a technical type - is git annex.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:17 AM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


Let me get this straight. You're saying that donating to a political campaign you disapprove of is worse than organizing to have people tortured?

To be clear, it would be easy enough to make a case for Rice to step down, and if that were not to happen, concurrently make the point that asking Eich to step down was relatively speaking a meritless hit job. That's how stupid this appointment is. I'm parting ways with Dropbox. Fuck centralized cloud sharing. You don't need a corporation to do that for you, anyways.
posted by phaedon at 11:18 AM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


phaedon: I wasn't referring to you, I was answering this comment.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:20 AM on April 12, 2014


So why are you sticking with this morally bankrupt company?

I don't spend any money on it, every competitor employs some sort of objectionable person, and I wouldn't be able to migrate all the shared folders and public links before the hate laser targets the next company and my cancellation stops meaning something.
posted by michaelh at 11:23 AM on April 12, 2014 [5 favorites]


phaedon: I wasn't referring to you, I was answering this comment.

I know, I'm only amplifying how correct your sentiments are. People shouldn't be conflicted about this decision. And this should be a bigger deal than it is. As if the previous slaps in the face weren't bad enough.
posted by phaedon at 11:24 AM on April 12, 2014


> a case can be made that her ability to work in that position is not affected by her evil history.

Unless you are actually willing to make such a case, arguing that it "can be made" is vacuous.

Eich contributed to a law being passed the explicit aim of which was to take away the civil rights of gay people. He has expressed no regret over that, which means he doesn't even understand that what he did was homophobic. As such, it is no surprise that he would be a poor leader of gay people as CEO, regardless of his pledges of fairness, because he demonstrated that he doesn't understand what homophobia is to this day. Gay people - and their straight allies - would not accept his leadership. He could not be an effective CEO.

Rice was not going to lead anyone, nor be in charge of people who were tortured, nor in a position to torture Dropbox users or employees.

Understand, that Rice stands at the polar opposite of my views politically. On a personal level, I would not shake her hand nor even associate with her. I find her and that whole gang despicable. But if we cannot see the value of, even in the case of our very worst enemies (as Rice would be to me) "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it", then any pledges to allow even our worst enemies to live in our society - and hold jobs - ring a bit hollow.

Again, I cannot express how much I am opposed to everything Rice stands for. But these two cases are not the same. In one, yes, I am opposed to the views of Eich, but I was/am fine with his being a CTO. Same for Rice. If she were put in charge of people she helped torture, I'd object too. Her being in an advisory role - well, I despise her, but I'll bend over backwards - let the Nazis march in Skokie.
posted by VikingSword at 11:39 AM on April 12, 2014 [5 favorites]


Gross. Uninstalled.
posted by mrcircles at 11:51 AM on April 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


> He has expressed no regret over that, which means he doesn't even understand that what he did was homophobic.

Rice set up a machine that ended up torturing innocent people tortured to death. She also helped start a war that killed vast numbers of people. This is far, far worse, and she has expressed no regret at all, which means that she's not aware that what she did was psychopathic.

> "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it", [...] let the Nazis march in Skokie.

I'm sorry - how is this possibly a free speech issue? Is anyone proposing silencing Rice? Not at all - she's quite free to express her unrepentant criminal viewpoint to anyone who cares to listen.

(I note that "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" doesn't seem for you to apply to some schlub who contributed cash to a political cause. Surely what Eich actually did was much closer to being "free speech" than starting a war based on lies, and setting up torture chambers?)

What we are saying is that we should not be giving her money - that we should not be supporting a company that's so morally blind that they can hire someone with blood on her hands.

The idea that we have to let bygones be bygones for someone who committed what most moral people consider war crimes, and one who, far from expressing regret, would no doubt do it again if given a second chance, is palpably ridiculous. Decent people should shun her, and avoid any enterprise which has her bloody fingerprints on it - and in a just society, she'd be in a jail cell right now.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:58 AM on April 12, 2014 [12 favorites]


lupus_yonderboy, I respect the views and actions of anyone who feels s/he doesn't want to have anything to do with Dropbox because of Rice. Any company is going to have people with objectionable - including the very worst - views and pasts. The question is which positions in the workplace can such people occupy. It's all well and good to say "free speech", but it's a bit hollow if the price is starvation. People have to make a living in a society that allows free speech not merely theoretically. They cannot be the faces of companies - such as CEO, as opposed to some advisory board position - or in charge of employees directly impacted by such views and pasts, simply because they won't be effective and nobody has the guaranteed right to a leadership or position of representation regardless of qualifications. Eich is welcome to be CTO and earn a very good living, no matter how objectionable I find his views.

I have explained what I see as the differences between the cases of Rice and Eich in previous comments - and it has nothing to do with the scale of the crimes in each case. Apparently I am not eloquent enough to make myself understood to you, and I regret that. I'm going to drop this, because I don't want to be repetitive, and I accept that it is my fault for not explaining my points better.
posted by VikingSword at 12:14 PM on April 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


You should never have used DropBox anyways because they were always stooges for the FBI, GCHQ, your competitors, etc. Use SpiderOak if you need a "just works" cloud storage tool. Yeah, the NSA has owned their closed-source clients, but at least that's more highly classified so they'll be tighter lipped with your data.

All these torturers like Rice, the Bush Six, Michael Hayden, etc. belong in prison, or preferably in front of a firing squad, VikingSword. I'd love it if we could play up this news item to damage an actively harmful cloud service provider, damage a torturer's career prospects, and weaken the career prospects for others in the intelligence community.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:21 PM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


The question is which positions in the workplace can such people occupy.

Redemptive ones. Not the even more influential and exploitative ones.
posted by polymodus at 12:21 PM on April 12, 2014


You should never have used DropBox anyways because they were always stooges for the FBI, GCHQ, your competitors, etc. Use SpiderOak if

DropBox was the company that came to my previous school's top-tier engineering department to give a "talk", officially, a departmental seminar. Which to me was a little odd, because in all my years there there was no other such talk that was headed by* the name of a company, rather than the name of an individual researcher from a company or from academia. At that time, all my peers were using it. I was using it to share papers and for personal files. It's amazing how marketing can work. "SpiderOak? Who's that?"

*There's a small possibility that technically the poster had a seminar speaker's name, but at the very least everyone was referring to the upcoming talk as by "Dropbox", not by a human being.
posted by polymodus at 12:30 PM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


From her wikipedia bio:

Because she would have been ineligible for tenure at Stanford if she had been absent for more than two years, she returned there in 1991. She was taken under the wing of George P. Shultz (Ronald Reagan's Secretary of State from 1982–1989), who was a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Shultz included Rice in a "luncheon club" of intellectuals who met every few weeks to discuss foreign affairs.[21] In 1992, Shultz, who was a board member of Chevron Corporation, recommended Rice for a spot on the Chevron board. Chevron was pursuing a $10 billion development project in Kazakhstan and, as a Soviet specialist, Rice knew the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. She traveled to Kazakhstan on Chevron's behalf and, in honor of her work, in 1993, Chevron named a 129,000-ton supertanker SS Condoleezza Rice.[21] During this period, Rice was also appointed to the boards of Transamerica Corporation (1991) and Hewlett-Packard (1992).

Compared to Chevron, Transamerica, and HP (not to mention having a petroleum supertanker named after you) dropbox seems like shockingly small potatoes.
posted by jfuller at 12:31 PM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


I honestly don't know what to make of the point that Eich was fine as CTO. With regards to Dropbox, from a purely user standpoint, the mere association with Condoleezza Rice is enough. It's bad enough the NSA is going through my files, I don't need former top dogs sitting on the board.

It should also be noted that Rice was a political appointment for the Bush Administration. She was presumably as much an adviser/executive in that situation as she will be for Dropbox. She was certainly the public face that sold the war to the American people. I am assuming you are buying the interpretation that Rice will be more of a behind-closed-doors player at Dropbox and hence not responsible for policy or operations.

I suppose the most charitable thing I can say is that Dropbox acknowledges how much of a challenge privacy and government intervention will be in the future of their business model. Of all the government insiders you could pick, you couldn't do better than Rice. She is still relatively likable and has a resume and credibility that extends beyond the "let's not talk about it" Bush shit-show.

It should also be pointed out that Eich apparently stepped down due to pressure from within his own company as well as other tech entities. Let's not pretend like a Mozilla user cabal pulled this off. So what the people in charge perceive as "political sensitivities" or "political realities" is definitely a contributing factor. Which is to say, the reality is we have no way of knowing if Eich would have made for an excellent CEO, or if at this early stage Rice will change her colors. All we're talking about is living in a world where some people are afforded redemption, and others are not. It's a political math that often doesnt make sense and is disproportionate and comes down to who yells the loudest. If a case can successfully be made that the risks outweighs the benefits, you're out. The idea that our former administration was composed of war criminals never totally cemented itself into our culture, so those players can still be spun to appear employable. As far as what makes Dropbox different from what happened at Mozilla, this appears to be user-level disgust.
posted by phaedon at 12:32 PM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


So glad I moved on to the guilt-free online storage of OneDrive!
posted by charred husk at 12:34 PM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


It's weird that Dropbox would do anything even slightly controversial considering all the competition they're facing.

Moving everything over to Google Drive right now. I've been meaning to switch anyway. I get way more storage for a free account even though I've got tons of bonuses on Dropbox.
posted by zixyer at 12:36 PM on April 12, 2014


I use dropbox extensively at work. It is used to store pictures of houses I do biweekly inspections of along with pictures of repairs, etc.

The government is welcome to look at them all they like (seeing as most of these are VA owned houses anyway.)

If I had anything that needed to be kept secure why would I put it on something like Dropbox to start with?
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 12:56 PM on April 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


I was very vocal wrt. Eich, and I think it was right that he stepped down.

I'm more conflicted about Rice. Yes, she's a nasty piece of work, and I don't think there's anyone who takes a more bleak view of BushCo than me, but a case can be made that her ability to work in that position is not affected by her evil history


Look at it this way, VikingSword: would Rice risk her career by sitting on the board of a cloud storage corp. that WASN'T allowing the NSA complete access?

Because if she did take that risk, and they turned out in retrospect to have hosted the data of terrorists who made a big strike somewhere, and the corp. had denied the NSA access to that data, she would be toast.
posted by jamjam at 12:58 PM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


Yes, her connection to the surveillance complex is the one issue for me in this particular case that might push me to the "unqualified for the job" side. But that might be self-corrective to some degree in that users might avoid Dropbox on that account, so then it's up to the company to evaluate again the benefits/cost of keeping her. I don't use Dropbox, but I'm sure the NSA et al have access to all my data anyhow so I don't know how much difference Rice makes at this point to anyone in that regard, Dropbox or not - but I do agree, it's the principle that's worth fighting for.
posted by VikingSword at 1:07 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


I have had DropBox for years. Now I don't

(in my best Donny Rum voice) Because as we know, DropBox has hired Condolezza Rice, there are now known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know like who else from the Bush administration will be hired. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know like what the hell is DropBox doing with my data.

At least I know this: I closed my account. There are plenty of other transfer sites that do not have people on the BoD with a vested interest in boogy-man justified privacy abuses.

cya l8er db
posted by lampshade at 1:15 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Dropping Dropbox is giving me headaches when it comes to syncing 1Password data with a Windows computer. Anyone have any ideas for getting 1Password to work across Mac, iOS, and Windows without resorting to Dropbox?
posted by Phatty Lumpkin at 1:23 PM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Uninstalled Dropbox, Trying out Spider Oak. Already have Google Drive. I'll have to do some researching to see how I will proceed.
posted by scottymac at 1:27 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Anyone have any ideas for getting 1Password to work across Mac, iOS, and Windows without resorting to Dropbox?

I wonder if there's a way to fake out requests on the operating system level, to rewrite them to go to alternative file storage services without having to change 1Password. In general, dependency on Dropbox is a pretty frustrating phenomenon — the popular iOS/OS X app Papers does this very same thing.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:30 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


This is really difficult for iOS users, because Dropbox has become a de facto filesystem on a platform that has no filesystem. Lots of apps integrate with Dropbox in a way that they don't integrate with anything else.

Box.com is lovely and arguably really superior, but Dropbox has lots of lock-in on iOS.

For a long time I was supplementing Dropbox with a roll-my-own system called Git-Annex Assistant, but it became slightly inconvenient to keep a PC running Linux permanently online and ssh-accessible on the internet and I stopped.

Switching to Google Drive on ethical grounds would be kinda silly, since Google is a massively exploitative, surveilling company *as a business model*.
posted by edheil at 1:41 PM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


Phatty Lumpkin, just realized I will have the same problem as you with 1Password. Does wifi sync not work on the Windows version? I really don't want to have to change password managers as well.
posted by mrcircles at 1:58 PM on April 12, 2014


> I have explained what I see as the differences between the cases of Rice and Eich in previous comments

The only comment I can see that fits the bill is this one.

It seems to me that you make two arguments, both of which I think are completely illogical.

1. Rice won't do it again, at least not at Dropbox - "Rice was not going to lead anyone, nor be in charge of people who were tortured, nor in a position to torture Dropbox users or employees."

2. It's a free-speech issue. "I'll defend to the death your right to say it [...] let the Nazis march in Skokie."

The first argument baffles me. She proudly organized torture, but it's fine, because she won't organize torture at Dropbox? Would you buy, "He's an unrepentant child molester, but no children work at Dropbox"? "He proudly organizes dog fights, but there are no dogs at Dropbox"?

And in fact she helped organize illegal surveillance of Americans - and has never repented from that. Why exactly wouldn't she continue doing this at Dropbox?

She's committed extremely evil acts, and she'd do it again in a heartbeat in another Republican administration. The magnitude of her evil far outweighs the badness of Eich's making a $1000 contribution to a homophobic political cause - another way to see that $1000 donation is "less than 1 penny for each Iraqi killed in the Iraq War".

The second argument is, if anything, even more baffling. How, precisely, is this a "free speech" issue? Is anyone preventing her speaking out, or trying to?

But what's baffling is that you put forward that argument, and yet think Eich should have been ousted. It is the law of the land that donating money to political causes is free speech. Eich didn't actually DO anything except contribute money, yes?

If you really believed your second argument, it strikes me that you'd have to support Eich over Rice.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 2:01 PM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


re: 1Password syncing without Dropbox:

Does wifi sync not work on the Windows version?

Looks like it doesn't.
posted by Phatty Lumpkin at 2:06 PM on April 12, 2014


> This is really difficult for iOS users

Within my lifetime in the US, people protesting against government wrong-doing were hit with water cannons, doused with tear gas, had dogs sicced on them, and of course have been jailed for prolonged periods.

Those things are "difficult". Having to take an extra step when synching your iOS consumer device is not of that same magnitude.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 2:07 PM on April 12, 2014 [11 favorites]


She's committed extremely evil acts, and she'd do it again in a heartbeat in another Republican administration. The magnitude of her evil far outweighs the badness of Eich's making a $1000 contribution to a homophobic political cause - another way to see that $1000 donation is "less than 1 penny for each Iraqi killed in the Iraq War".

Invoking Eich's name is a derail, but that's a horrendously poor analogy given how many millions of law-abiding Americans that Eich worked — successfully — to make into second-class citizens. His crimes against humanity are just as pernicious and odious as Rice's, even as they are of a different nature.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:09 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Darn. And there is still no Opera extension for 1Password on Windows (I switched from Firefox). Guess I'm switching password software too.
posted by mrcircles at 2:16 PM on April 12, 2014


> His crimes against humanity are just as pernicious and odious as Rice's, even as they are of a different nature.

You think a purely financial contribution of $1000 against a gay marriage bill is "just as pernicious and odious" as setting up a torture program that tortured innocent people to death, and being involved in starting a war based on lies that killed hundreds of thousands of people including thousands of Americans??

My jaw literally dropped when I read this. I really can't find anything to say.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 2:18 PM on April 12, 2014 [12 favorites]


Just try out SpiderOak guys. In theory, SpiderOak uses end-to-end encryption, meaning SpiderOak cannot access your data, not even when subpoenaed, unlike DropBox, iCloud, etc. In practice, we haven't yet seen an open source client for SpiderOak, so who knows if the above is true, and an adversary could still hack your system through any application's update procedure, but I'd wager that SpiderOak is much better. At least they aren't Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, or a company that hires war criminals.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:22 PM on April 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


Rice's crimes are unequivocally worse than Eich's improprieties, well conspiring to not let people marry is not even a crime, much less a crime against humanity like torture. Also Eich isn't a derail because we want all the people standing up against him to help us kill DropBox too.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:27 PM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


The 1password thing is a real pain. I'll have to switch password managers, though, because there is no way I'm leaving Dropbox on my machine, despite years of use. Anyone like Lastpass?
posted by The Bellman at 2:32 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


You think a purely financial contribution of $1000 against a gay marriage bill is "just as pernicious and odious" as setting up a torture program that tortured innocent people to death, and being involved in starting a war based on lies that killed hundreds of thousands of people including thousands of Americans??

Motivations for both acts come from the same evil intent to deny people their humanity, so, yes they are both equally wrong.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:34 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Watch me do the Nopetopus outta there. Uninstalled, deleted my account. Toodles!
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:42 PM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Within my lifetime in the US, people protesting against government wrong-doing were hit with water cannons, doused with tear gas, had dogs sicced on them, and of course have been jailed for prolonged periods.

Those things are "difficult". Having to take an extra step when synching your iOS consumer device is not of that same magnitude.
And likewise, protesting over whether or not we are in a war in Vietnam and whether or not we are systematically discriminating against black people in the south is not of the same magnitude as protesting whether or not a former government official is associated with an internet company that syncs your files.

Or maybe government officials in the future are going to think twice about going to war when they consider that maybe in the future it might make a comparatively minor tech company think twice about putting them on its board of directors? Cause if that's the case maybe it would be worth the inconvenience after all.
posted by edheil at 2:46 PM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


Anyone know if the Spider Oak mac client can be run on a keychain?
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 2:59 PM on April 12, 2014


There are open-source KeePass clients for most systems, including three Android clients and an iOS clients, probably solve your 1Password problems.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:09 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Boy this late-stage capitalism is something else
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:11 PM on April 12, 2014 [17 favorites]


Just once, I wouldn't mind seeing someone from this tier of the de facto US class system fall into such desperate circumstances they have to take an actual ordinary work-a-day job. Like working at a restaurant or something else where they don't get to enjoy the luxury of being treated as respected peers by their bosses. Why do more ordinary working people have to endure being treated as juvenilized social inferiors and dispensible machine-cogs every working day, while the well-connected inevitably get to be treated as human beings and skate gracefully from one well-paying gig to the next.

Hell, I recently got laid off but landed a new gig within a couple of weeks on the strength of my reputation for doing good work alone, and I was shocked how many people made comments assuming I'd gotten new work so quickly due to being well-connected, as if that's the most important criterion. I mean, the reality is, it often is the most important factor these days. But this kind of thing only helps increase normal people's resentment of our social elite, because it's plainly obvious to most of us by now that people above a certain tier of our society simply cannot meaningfully fail anymore because they're all covering each other's backs.
posted by saulgoodman at 3:15 PM on April 12, 2014 [8 favorites]


Account . . .

DELETED.

/StrongBad
posted by petebest at 3:20 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


If I owned a 7-11, I wouldn't let Kissinger run a night shift unsupervised.

Judge me as you may, but I don't have much trust in war criminals.
posted by el io at 3:20 PM on April 12, 2014 [6 favorites]


jeffburdges: "Just try out SpiderOak guys. In theory, SpiderOak uses end-to-end encryption, meaning SpiderOak cannot access your data, not even when subpoenaed."

Just to be clear, end-to-end encryption means that data in transit cannot be spied upon. What you're referring to would be client-side encryption, where private key management happens on the user's machine. SpiderOak claims to have this capability, which is what they mean by their "zero-knowledge" approach.
posted by tybeet at 3:35 PM on April 12, 2014 [3 favorites]


It's all well and good to say "free speech", but it's a bit hollow if the price is starvation.

You seem to think Voltaire said "I may not like what you say, but I will fund to the death your ability to say it and continue to buy from you". Freedom of speech is not and never should be freedom from consequences. ("Starvation" is a bit strong, but possibly apt for a right-wing US politician whose party continues to shout down a welfare state).

Dropbox also uninstalled here.
posted by bonaldi at 4:10 PM on April 12, 2014 [4 favorites]




I uninstalled Dropbox when Google upped their space on Drive but this makes me even happier to have done it.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 4:22 PM on April 12, 2014


And ynab only syncs with Dropbox.

Just to be clear, when I said I'm leaving Dropbox I meant I was going to discontinue my $99/year premium service with them, but the fact that they are tied in with so many other companies for online syncing makes it really tempting to continue using their free service.

Which is even more pernicious, especially when you consider the relatively small amount of Dropbox space that is essential for highly sensitive apps like 1Password and YNAB. Not to mention the automatic backup of my camera uploads. What a clusterfuck. Seriously, I'm a new to YNAB, and the other day I had the thought that I can't believe my brain tells me that it's easier to do this on a computer than with pen and paper.

The corporatization of technology is totally insidious. I fully expect it to become even harder to stay out of the cloud in the future. And throttled bandwidth, well that's already a reality, isn't it. BitTorrent Sync is totally the way to go, but who knows, maybe even that will present a national security threat in the future.
posted by phaedon at 4:43 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Anyone know anything about BitCasa? I get a TB for the same price as dropbox. Unfortunately, I am on 1Password so will be looking for a new password manager. Going from dropbox will take more time since I have completely integrated dropbox in my workflow.

My students will also be warned about sketchy cloud vendors as well as other staff/faculty at my university.
posted by jadepearl at 4:52 PM on April 12, 2014


As a former 1Password user, I now love LastPass to death. Works great in all my systems, including Android and Linux.

I'm very conflicted about this. I think it's pretty certain that I'll be dropping Dropbox, but finding an alternative that works as well across Linux and Android will be a bit of a chore, and I won't be leaving Dropbox until I find something that works.
posted by lhauser at 5:16 PM on April 12, 2014


Currently moving all of my data to Spideroak. I may be forced to use Dropbox for a while to collaborate with other people, but I will talk to them about switching as well.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 5:19 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


On the one hand, Condoleeza Rice, gross. On the other hand, in terms of spying on me, I had already figured out that I needed to not put anything I didn't want read by Dropbox (and presumably the NSA) into the Dropbox folder.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread to figure out where to go next A.D. (After Dropbox).
posted by immlass at 6:01 PM on April 12, 2014


I've been using SpiderOak since they first started offering their services to public. I used to take part in a Tahoe-LAFS cloud here at the university, but it wasn't sustainable for me in the long run. So SpiderOak works great on Linux (I mostly use the headless client on my home server, though some desktop use on my main machine); I use it occasionally on Windows and Android and it seems to be just as good. The one time I had to contact customer support over the client taking forever to index some files on an NFS mount, they got back to me within a couple hours and kept talking to me until my problem was resolved. Apparent zero-knowledge encryption cloud storage with good folder sync, web access (if you're willing to send the server your key for the session, which you might not be), file versioning, no penalties for multi-computer access, etc. ... what's not to like?
posted by introp at 6:03 PM on April 12, 2014


Bittorrent Sync is so much better anyway.

Except that the iOS client is very rudimentary. For example, it lacks the option of editing text files altogether, making it useless as a plain-text-notes-in-the-cloud service.
posted by acb at 6:06 PM on April 12, 2014


[Some quotes from research I did years and years ago ...]

Condoleezza Rice ... worked on Chevron’s board of directors for ten years. But before departing Chevron and becoming National Security Advisor, Chevron named a 129,000 ton oil tanker after her. [From a McClellan press briefing ...]
Q. Can I ask about Condoleezza Rice? Before she became National Security Advisor, she was on the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation. And Chevron, before she left, named an oil tanker after her. There's an oil tanker named the Condoleezza Rice. And I'm wondering if -- it's 136-ton oil tanker that carries oil around the world. And given that Chevron has been accused of human rights abuses with the Nigerian Mobile Police against civilians in Nigeria, I'm wondering whether the President thinks it's wise to have this close a relationship with Chevron.

Mr. McClellan. I think that issue has already been addressed by Dr. Rice, and she will uphold the highest ethical standards in office and that issue --

Q. Should the President call the President of Chevron and say, take the name off the tanker?

Mr. McClellan. That issue has been addressed. I think the issue has been addressed.
The American press devoured this, especially because at the time Chevron was involved in human rights abuses in Nigeria. Once the tanker's name was revealed in mid-April, by early May it was renamed. In May 2001, the SF Gate reported the ship was renamed the Altair Voyager, a star:
Leaving a wave of controversy in its wake, one of the most visible reminders of the Bush administration's ties to big oil - the 129,000-ton Chevron tanker Condoleezza Rice - has quietly been renamed, Chevron officials acknowledged yesterday.

'We made the change to eliminate the unnecessary attention caused by the vessel's original name,' said Chevron spokesman Fred Gorell.

The double-hulled, Bahamian-registered oil tanker carrying the moniker of Bush's national security adviser was renamed the Altair Voyager, after a star, Gorell said.
posted by josephtate at 6:08 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


Add me to the list. My wife and I, as well as the church I pastor have cancelled our accounts with Dropbox.
posted by 4ster at 6:20 PM on April 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


It's pretty sad to see Dropbox rise from startup darling to... this. They were always very scrupulous with image. Lot's of savvy bonus space initiatives to retain users even when it was pretty obvious they could afford to compete on consumer plans, and focused on businesses instead. I guess not owning datacenters and leasing S3 doesn't leave much options in the long run but to embrace the NSA. They must have some pretty juicy stuff on file form all the business accounts, not to millions of International university/college accounts they have from the space race drive. China was wise to block them early. I'm mostly annoyed at audiogalaxy though.
posted by dirtyid at 6:32 PM on April 12, 2014


It's rare for women and minorities to be able to serve on the BOD of corporations so past missteps aside, I think this is a positive development.
posted by Renoroc at 6:35 PM on April 12, 2014


Bailing out right now. I'll give Bittorrent Sync and maybe git annex a try.
posted by Hello Dad, I'm in Jail at 6:36 PM on April 12, 2014


Way back in the day, IBM (I think? I feel like maybe it was in conjunction with a university - or maybe I downloaded it off a university website at the time) had a tool to do drive syncing of some sort that was super easy. I thought it was called xdrive, but I can't find it under that name, now. I *think* you had to set it up on your own host (i.e. it was not a service/cloud thing). I almost feel like it was a WebDAV folder, but I'm not sure. This was, perhaps early 2000s? Anybody remember that? It wasn't really easy to find, but it felt like a godsend at the time. No need to open an FTP client, I could just drag/drop and there it was, and it looked like a drive on my computer.

Eventually after a few OS reinstalls I ended up losing it and couldn't find a copy, and just did manual shit, then dropbox came along and I used them and just closed the account telling them why, and said to the person reading that I'm sorry, I hope they have a conscience and if not that they grow one, and they can get out. As if anyone reads that shit anyways.

Not that it matters, as I'm sure they have plenty of backups, and not that I had anything that important on there, but I made sure to delete the files/folders I had on there before closing my account. Real fucking shame, that. And this, just after I told a friend that I had a dropbox so he could send shit to me.
posted by symbioid at 6:48 PM on April 12, 2014


Maybe it's time to get that home server set up finally.
posted by Celsius1414 at 6:50 PM on April 12, 2014 [2 favorites]


After waking up to this news I did this with a spare Raspberry Pi and a external USB drive. It only took about a hour and so far no complaints.
posted by johnpowell at 6:56 PM on April 12, 2014 [5 favorites]


Ah, perfect johnpowell -- I've been meaning to finish my Pi research for that very purpose. Thanks.
posted by Celsius1414 at 6:58 PM on April 12, 2014




> Motivations for both acts come from the same evil intent to deny people their humanity, so, yes they are both equally wrong.

Jaw-dropping, yet again.

By your argument, if one homophobe contributes money towards an anti-gay marriage campaign, and another one hunts down gay people and kills them, then these actions "are both equally wrong".

Can you identify any legal or ethical system in the world other than yours where your actual actions are completely irrelevant, only the motivation is? You appear to have made an ethical innovation here...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 7:27 PM on April 12, 2014 [4 favorites]


> Adding Condoleezza Rice To Dropbox's Board Seems Incredibly Tone Deaf Following NSA Concerns

A perfectly-phrased headline, so much so that you wonder what the actual article could add to it. But in fact it's worth reading.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:28 PM on April 12, 2014


Oops, does this mean I have to stick with Perl now?

And Flash for client-side scripting, if you want to remain pure.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 7:46 PM on April 12, 2014


Or you can use VBScript if you want to make an IE-only site.
posted by zixyer at 8:50 PM on April 12, 2014


Jaw-dropping, yet again.

If you want some people to yell at about your support for Eich's attacks on civil rights, there's a thread already open. I'd prefer reading a thread about how to move away from Dropbox.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:01 PM on April 12, 2014


Ugh. Damn it. The only thing I use dropbox for is synching 1password, and it works effortlessly.
posted by lovecrafty at 9:36 PM on April 12, 2014


Compared to Chevron, Transamerica, and HP (not to mention having a petroleum supertanker named after you) dropbox seems like shockingly small potatoes.

That's not even the half of it. According to her bio at Stanford U and her bio at the George W. Bush White House website, she's also served on the boards of:


  • C3, an energy software company
  • Makena Capital
  • Commonwealth Club
  • The Aspen Institute
  • The John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts
  • The Boys and Girls Clubs of America
  • Charles Schwab Corporation
  • The University of Notre Dame
  • The San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors
  • The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
  • JP Morgan
  • The Carnegie Corporation
  • The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  • RAND Corporation
  • The National Council for Soviet and East European Studies
  • KQED


  • posted by FJT at 9:51 PM on April 12, 2014 [1 favorite]


    SpiderOak seems pretty nice for syncing between machines and as cloud backup space, though sharing isn't anywhere near as simple as Dropbox. You apparently have to set up a new share in the client software for every file you want to share, unless you don't mind people browsing an entire directory of shared files, unlike just right-clicking a file in your Dropbox folder, & choosing "get url…" Also, you apparently can't use it as defacto webspace, like the dropbox public folder (It wants to download jpegs & gifs instead of displaying them in a browser window, even when you copy/paste the link).

    At first glance, opening Transmit & dropping a file on my web server looks substantially easier than using SpiderOak to share files, which is still a fair step backwards from Dropbox.

    I have no idea whatsoever how to invite someone to use a shared folder for shared docs, like dropbox, though I guess there's a way.

    I think it'll do for the stuff I use Dropbox for most, except PlainText on the phone & iPad. That & Dropbox were the first & second things I put on my iPhone the day I bought it, and I'll miss that drop-dead simplicity for note-taking or retrieving on the go.

    I like the security, but am a little underwhelmed with the ease of use.
    posted by Devils Rancher at 10:47 PM on April 12, 2014


    Wait I live kqe lo she's a board member? Fuck.
    posted by Carillon at 12:14 AM on April 13, 2014


    This is somewhat of a derail, but SpiderOak is not reliable in extended use, with files simply disappearing from time to time, and the support is not much better.
    posted by Grinder at 1:22 AM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


    I use, for instance, an iOS word processor (Textilus) that has a Dropbox interface. I don't immediately have a good alternative for that (spent a long time looking for a word processor with a very specific feature set.) I can lobby Texilus, I can lobby Dropbox itself, but I'm not willing to change my tools halfway through writing a novel and I certainly don't think I'm qualified to roll my own solution. Suggestions?
    posted by newdaddy at 3:13 AM on April 13, 2014


    Devils Rancher: "SpiderOak seems pretty nice for syncing between machines and as cloud backup space, though sharing isn't anywhere near as simple as Dropbox. You apparently have to set up a new share in the client software for every file you want to share, unless you don't mind people browsing an entire directory of shared files, unlike just right-clicking a file in your Dropbox folder, & choosing "get url…" "

    There is a similar function in SpiderOak's Windows Client. You can right-click a file in your SpiderOak folder, and then go to SpiderOak->Make Shared File Link.
    posted by tybeet at 6:38 AM on April 13, 2014


    Suggestions?

    Don't drop everything immediately. Wait to see if the objectionable persons who are board members or employees of company x, y, or z, remain employees after public outcry.
    posted by juiceCake at 8:05 AM on April 13, 2014


    Seriously, please take the Eich vs. Rice thing to MeMail if you want to argue about who's worse.

    Also, I sure hope that all of you are boycotting every corporation that supported Bush's 2004 campaign. It's a long list.
    posted by schmod at 8:19 AM on April 13, 2014 [1 favorite]


    Quick update, just tested BitCasa. Yeah, no. So, it does not consider certain filetypes as documents such as, epub so I had to hunt for it on the main drive instead of documents folder in the iOS app. Before finding it, I thought the sync had failed. Now the app does read PDFs and will offer to send it to your PDF app of choice, however for epub it will not offer the correct apps to send the file so, if you are hoping to use BitCasa for ebook storage, then you are out of luck. The irony was it was willing to send the files to gDrive or Dropbox to open.

    The plus side: iOS app, web site to access files, virtual drive on desktop that does not suck away storage, links to files to send to other folks to access.

    Negative: Does not handle files seamlessly in iOS mobile environment; slow on the upload (it could be my service provider so YMMV) and I was testing a single PDF, 2 MP3s (less than 200 MB) and one epub.

    At this time, it is not a complete dropbox replacement and definitely not for someone who needs more rapid syncing. It has great potential, if they get some core things working.
    posted by jadepearl at 8:20 AM on April 13, 2014


    Ain't so easy to boycott oil companies, schmod, but frankly costing either Rice or DropBox rocks. And merely the idea that startups could kill themselves off by hiring somoene like Rice should do good.
    posted by jeffburdges at 8:29 AM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]


    > Can you identify any legal or ethical system in the world other than yours where your actual actions are completely irrelevant, only the motivation is?

    tumblr
    posted by jfuller at 9:52 AM on April 13, 2014 [6 favorites]


    If I owned a 7-11, I wouldn't let Kissinger run a night shift unsupervised.

    Judge me as you may, but I don't have much trust in war criminals.


    But would you go to a baseball game with him?
    posted by homunculus at 2:13 PM on April 13, 2014


    I wish I could drop Dropbox unfortunately its my 1Password sync. Until Agile Bits provides alternative options to sync PC-Mac-iOS I'm stuck with trading moral stance with legitimate personal security issues (et al Heart Bleed).
    posted by MiltonRandKalman at 6:17 PM on April 13, 2014


    If you have a free account and are feeling vindictive, don't cancel it. Instead, fill it with garbage, then uninstall the client.
    posted by suetanvil at 8:53 PM on April 13, 2014 [2 favorites]


    If that's a serious suggestion, it's probably counterproductive. Their eventual goal is probably to be bought out, not to operate a profitable business. The most attractive metric for a buyer is how many users they can claim to have.
    posted by zixyer at 1:45 AM on April 14, 2014


    Comments are now closed on the Dropbox blog post linked above (and have been since Saturday morning, it looks like). In fact, comments now seem to be closed on all Dropbox blog posts.

    That must have been an uncomfortable weekend for Dropbox's leadership and staff.
    posted by notyou at 6:50 AM on April 14, 2014


    So, we've been supporting about 20 users on Dropbox for business and since we're a non-profit, we're looking to cut costs any way possible.

    Does anyone have any experience with Spideroak for business? Bitsync looks cool, but I can already hear the dread over teaching our board members to use any other clients. I had been pushing for just using an FTP server for all of this stuff, but have generally had to abandon that over technophobia.

    (I never liked dropbox because there was no way to integrate my work and personal accounts, and only one can run at a time without a reboot, so it was kinda obnoxious to switch back and forth.)
    posted by klangklangston at 1:40 PM on April 14, 2014


    There are open-source KeePass clients for most systems, including three Android clients and an iOS clients, probably solve your 1Password problems.

    I just switched from iOS to Android on Friday. I didn't want to pay yet another license to get a third copy of 1Password for my new phone, so I installed KeePass 2 Android. It seems to work just as well, though as far as I can tell there's no way to export entries from 1Password and import them into a KeePass format. Manually re-entering all my passwords is going to be a pain.
    posted by Thoughtcrime at 2:13 PM on April 14, 2014


    You try Jacob Singh's 1pass2keepassx program yet?
    Android.SE is good for such questions too.
    posted by jeffburdges at 2:54 PM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


    I found SpiderOak extremely slow today.
    posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 3:14 PM on April 14, 2014 [1 favorite]


    If I owned a 7-11, I wouldn't let Kissinger run a night shift unsupervised.

    Remember that old Charlotte Rampling vehicle The Night Porter?

    Kissinger would have done nicely in Dirk Bogarde's role.
    posted by jamjam at 6:36 PM on April 14, 2014


    can someone explain how deleting your account on their service is some actual meaningful act of protest, and not just on the same level as changing your facebook profile picture to the hrc logo?

    There's some big bold statements in here about the terrible things these people have done and such, but what is canceling a service you weren't even paying for(assuming you were on the free tier) going to do?

    This isn't "voting with your wallet".

    The most attractive metric for a buyer is how many users they can claim to have.

    I don't disagree with this, but they have millions of users. If say, 50 or 100k strident internet warriors cancel that won't change shit.

    Basically, do what you want to do. But don't think you're some monk lighting themselves on fire.
    posted by emptythought at 6:40 PM on April 14, 2014


    "can someone explain how deleting your account on their service is some actual meaningful act of protest, and not just on the same level as changing your facebook profile picture to the hrc logo?"

    That actually ended up being tremendously effective in shifting people toward marriage equality, and was the most widely-adopted social media campaign ever.

    (Sorry, like two months ago I went to a seminar on it; I agree about Facebook activism in general.)
    posted by klangklangston at 7:16 PM on April 14, 2014


    I don't know that those monks were very effective, either.

    That starving kid in North Africa did okay, though.

    If other dropbox droppers are like me, they think they're some post-adventure Candide, cultivating their gardens.
    posted by notyou at 7:19 PM on April 14, 2014


    can someone explain how deleting your account on their service is some actual meaningful act of protest

    That's not necessarily why people do it. Personally, I simply don't want anything to do with a company that I dislike this much. I don't expect this to bring Dropbox to its knees, but it makes me feel better. Cleaner, so to speak. Much in the way that not eating meat does.
    posted by Too-Ticky at 4:13 AM on April 15, 2014


    Is vegetarianism an effective protest against animal cruelty? I donno, but there are enough of them that restaurants that lack vegetarian options do suffer.

    If we build up a large enough group who refuse to use dropbox, then corporate customers would actually switch to other providers, like SpiderOak or whoever. Isn't DropBox is angling for an IPO now? If so, such public opinion could cost them real money.

    You're correct in that such a diffuse boycott would become far more effective if found their existing corporate customers and lobbied them to drop dropbox.
    posted by jeffburdges at 5:08 AM on April 15, 2014 [1 favorite]


    Ubuntu One will close shop on June 1. So a migration to services that offer client-side encryption (such as Wuala or Spider Oak) helps to create a userbase for those services and reduce the risk of them disappearing next year. So again, a boycott here is less about hurting Dropbox, and more about helping other services compete in the market with my admittedly limited patronage.
    posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 6:55 AM on April 15, 2014


    If say, 50 or 100k strident internet warriors cancel that won't change shit.

    You're right that most of the time boycotts don't work or have negative consequences. But sometimes they do.

    Dropbox partially relies the network effect to get new users. It's not just a matter of deleting your account. It's deleting your account, not recommending Dropbox, not sharing your Dropbox files with others. Even a small number of people can have a big impact if they're the power users. People who are engaged enough to know about changes on Dropbox's board might tend to be the power users.
    posted by zixyer at 12:11 PM on April 15, 2014 [2 favorites]


    I just deleted my account and moved to Box.
    posted by urbanwhaleshark at 1:09 PM on April 15, 2014


    Rice drops out as Rutgers commencement speaker following student protest.

    Good on them!
    posted by notyou at 10:44 AM on May 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


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