Remember why we were able to use Skype for this?
Pepperidge farm remembers!
Joke aside I transfered a lot of files inside instant messengers and they worked quite well. Nearly everyone had at least a yahoo/messenger/skype/icq account, which made this rather simple, and, because nobody had the capacity/wasn't insterested/was actually p2p, it was perfectly fine. A bummer if the modem connection went down or you had to hang up because the family wanted to make a call, but hey, it was glorious. (no, this is not sarcasm, it really did work.)
I recently tried to send a file to a small group of friends on Facebook. After uploading, it rejected the file because it was a video with a copyrighted song playing in the background.
Apple mail has this really cool feature that when you email someone a file that is too large, it uploads it to Icloud automatically and then sends that a person a downloadable link from Icloud that expires in 30 days
I remember all the disconnects with ICQ file transfers. I think they added a recovery mechanism eventually.
Some friends even ran their own ftp (I think most people used War ftp) before ISPs started blocking ports.
Now it's all about uploading to "the cloud" or use sneakernet. My friend uses mega.nz, which seems decent for file sharing. I, personally, never underestimate the bandwidth of a sedan, driving down the highway with a single USB key.
One thing I used to do when I wanted to send files to people outside of the context of a chat was just drop them in a directory on the web server that was running on my machine. Sharing files with folks in a private IRC channel was incredibly easy this way.
Our tool lets you use the same P2P method for Remote Desktop access and link sharing (mblok.io). I saw a lot of these tools come up when WebRTC started out, however, they are limited by file size and are really unstable.
I dread using Skype on my Windows 10 laptop. The application crashes half the time, logs me out for no reason, and takes a ridiculous amount of time to load up.
I haven't seen a app more ignored than Skype. This should have been what Whatsapp is today. But MS just killed it
Neat. It uses client-side crypto (AES-128-GCM) to secure the file; the key is in the fragment portion of the URL so it doesn't automatically hit the server (assuming you trust the server JS).
The protocol is a little bit strange, though. The file metadata is transmitted as an X-File-Metadata header on upload, and includes the SHA256 hash of the original (unencrypted) file (as the "aad" parameter to the X-File-Metadata upload parameter). This is a little concerning for privacy; while the filename is easy to disguise, hiding the SHA256 sum requires modifying the file in some way. Of course, this might only be a concern for uploading known files, but it's still a bit of an infoleak.
It's also strange in that the key isn't checked in any way (even for sanity) before initiating a download, so if you mess up and leave it off (or corrupt some bits), you won't find out until the end of the download that you can't get the file. Worse, the file will be deleted, forcing you to ask your sender for another copy.
The client-side crypto has one other downside: there doesn't seem to be a standard way in JavaScript to stream a POST request yet. You could emulate it with e.g. WebSockets, but those are a lot more heavyweight and CPU-intensive (for the server) than simple POST requests. So, the current implementation just encrypts the entire file as one giant block, and then uploads it - placing the whole file in memory. Hence the 1GB soft-limit. Downloads are similarly limited.
Luckily, non-browser clients can do whatever they like, so I wrote a Python client that's compatible with the server, but uses streaming POST and on-the-fly en/decryption to save memory. Check it out at https://github.com/nneonneo/ffsend - feedback welcome!
If we still paid for software like we did 15 years ago, we'd probably have a perfect solution by now. Instead we have a bunch of "free" options that all want to harvest our data.
Email attachments are the lowest common denominator despite the 25MB cap, occasional diversion into a spam folder, no sender authentication, no encryption, poor suitability of email clients and servers for bulk file transfers, etc. Whatever can hope to replace it must be as popular (network effect), as easy to use, and free. Sharing very large files (hundreds of MB to multi-GB) is too costly for a free service. People will not setup or maintain a server, an always on PC is less reliable and has a slower uplink than data centers, and smartphones have limited data quotas, storage and batteries. Slow IPv6 deployment, middleboxes (firewalls, home CPEs) makes efficient p2p connections difficult.
If it's free there's little incentive for a company to spend the money developing the easy UI and marketing it to critical mass. Even simple to use Dropbox has not made a significant dent. BitTorrent never became mainstream at the level of email but it did incentivize people to seed with the prospect of pirated content. The MPAA/RIAA have deputized any websites that accepts user content as copyright police and demonize non-enterprise file hosting services.
In a way the success of Facebook is a reflection of the spammy, phishing/malware filled, and slow nature of email and difficulty making your own website; if email continued to improve there wouldn't be demand for a modern solution. File syncing and sharing should be integrated into the operating system. However Microsoft's OneDrive and Apple's iCloud are inferior to Dropbox so a third party solution is still relevant.
For buisness file sharing it has been solved dozens of times. The problem is that the solution tends to turn file sharing into a managment problem. You end up with file structures, naming conventions, permissions. Yuck! It is vital to have a way of sharing large files that just requires a social interaction between two people and always just works.
Your browser is not supported.
Unfortunately this browser does not support the web technology that powers Firefox Send. You’ll need to try another browser. We recommend Firefox!
It would be nice to know what web tech they are using that isn't supported. Whatever it is, Chrome works.
EDIT: It requires support for the AES-GCM key type, with a size of 128.
From user eridius a couple days ago: "It's checking for window.crypto.subtle. Looks like Safari TP supports this. I believe the problem with Safari 10 is that it implemented an older version of the web cryptography standard." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14904307
Otherwise technically illiterate people used to be able to do this with AIM direct connect over 15 years ago. It still blows my mind that AOL had a near monopoly in this space, and lost it by continually making the user experience worse.
I always wonder how Opera Unite (in 12.x) versions would have fared had it gained traction. The sender had absolute control over what files were shared and how long they could be without needing to rely on a 3rd party to host content or setting up a complex service on localhost. Opera did kill it off the Unite service even before they migrated to Webkit/Blink, but it is something I remember fondly.
One issue with the experiment is it has such a narrow use case. Disappearing after one download / 24hrs makes sending a file to multiple people--or just one person who drags their feet on the DL-- makes it really inconvenient to use. Even offering "1 download -OR- 24hrs" would make it far more useful.
Hmm... it seems like most of the time when I want to transfer a large file to someone (or to another one of my own devices), I just want to do it immediately and only once, so there's no need to upload it to a third, temporary location.
Unfortunately it seems like most of the time a physical USB flash drive is the most efficient way to accomplish this. Seems absurd to me that in 2017 there's not a common, user-friendly way to just establish a direct connection between two web browsers and directly push files through.
A really needed service, but I doubt it will last for long, because it's far from the core business and because it will potentially cost more than Mozilla is willing to dedicate.
I did a quick scan of the article but is there any difference with wetranfser? The only things I found is encryption and it is 1gb less. But since Wetransfer is a dutch company they are not allowed by law to look in those files you send if I am correct.
I really don't get why people are criticizing and saying that there are better alternatives to this. Of course there is. This was not built to be the best way to send files, just to be the most practical one. Some people don't even know there is life outside of Facebook, they will never know about alternatives to send a file they could not send using email or messager. And this shows that Mozilla is starting building services layers on Firefox.
It would be nice to be able to self-host this on a small home server for friends and family. That way, even if they shut down their server, you could still share files with your friends.
I find "burn after reading" downloads for a number of reasons, but generally, they often don't work as intended.
For example, modern email services (Google, MS, etc.) accessing links in emails and download the content and check it for malware. They probably mitigated this but its caveats like this that cause messages to be burned before the intended reading.
How is Mozilla going to keep this viable? Since they're using S3, it likely costs them roughly $.08/GB moved between users in bandwidth costs plus whatever fraction of a month the file is left there of the $.025 GB/month storage costs.
My personal preference are browser agnostic methods[1] and giving the sender the choice to use whatever method of encryption they wish. I prefer the simplicity of 7-zip / p7zip, but others may prefer PGP.
[+] [-] pmlnr|8 years ago|reply
Joke aside I transfered a lot of files inside instant messengers and they worked quite well. Nearly everyone had at least a yahoo/messenger/skype/icq account, which made this rather simple, and, because nobody had the capacity/wasn't insterested/was actually p2p, it was perfectly fine. A bummer if the modem connection went down or you had to hang up because the family wanted to make a call, but hey, it was glorious. (no, this is not sarcasm, it really did work.)
[+] [-] amelius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kpourdeilami|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chocolatebunny|8 years ago|reply
Some friends even ran their own ftp (I think most people used War ftp) before ISPs started blocking ports.
Now it's all about uploading to "the cloud" or use sneakernet. My friend uses mega.nz, which seems decent for file sharing. I, personally, never underestimate the bandwidth of a sedan, driving down the highway with a single USB key.
[+] [-] bvda|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mister_Snuggles|8 years ago|reply
One thing I used to do when I wanted to send files to people outside of the context of a chat was just drop them in a directory on the web server that was running on my machine. Sharing files with folks in a private IRC channel was incredibly easy this way.
[+] [-] cdnsteve|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snakeanus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akabanov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wodenokoto|8 years ago|reply
www.file.pizza
Let the p2p transfer commence
[+] [-] puranjay|8 years ago|reply
I haven't seen a app more ignored than Skype. This should have been what Whatsapp is today. But MS just killed it
[+] [-] digi_owl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] la_oveja|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nneonneo|8 years ago|reply
The protocol is a little bit strange, though. The file metadata is transmitted as an X-File-Metadata header on upload, and includes the SHA256 hash of the original (unencrypted) file (as the "aad" parameter to the X-File-Metadata upload parameter). This is a little concerning for privacy; while the filename is easy to disguise, hiding the SHA256 sum requires modifying the file in some way. Of course, this might only be a concern for uploading known files, but it's still a bit of an infoleak.
It's also strange in that the key isn't checked in any way (even for sanity) before initiating a download, so if you mess up and leave it off (or corrupt some bits), you won't find out until the end of the download that you can't get the file. Worse, the file will be deleted, forcing you to ask your sender for another copy.
The client-side crypto has one other downside: there doesn't seem to be a standard way in JavaScript to stream a POST request yet. You could emulate it with e.g. WebSockets, but those are a lot more heavyweight and CPU-intensive (for the server) than simple POST requests. So, the current implementation just encrypts the entire file as one giant block, and then uploads it - placing the whole file in memory. Hence the 1GB soft-limit. Downloads are similarly limited.
Luckily, non-browser clients can do whatever they like, so I wrote a Python client that's compatible with the server, but uses streaming POST and on-the-fly en/decryption to save memory. Check it out at https://github.com/nneonneo/ffsend - feedback welcome!
[+] [-] supercanuck|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epicide|8 years ago|reply
We can send the shit out of some files... if you know what you're doing (browsers retrieve tons of files all the time, for example).
It's difficult creating a service that is accessible to people who barely understand what a file is in the first place.
[+] [-] DerfNet|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supertrope|8 years ago|reply
If it's free there's little incentive for a company to spend the money developing the easy UI and marketing it to critical mass. Even simple to use Dropbox has not made a significant dent. BitTorrent never became mainstream at the level of email but it did incentivize people to seed with the prospect of pirated content. The MPAA/RIAA have deputized any websites that accepts user content as copyright police and demonize non-enterprise file hosting services.
In a way the success of Facebook is a reflection of the spammy, phishing/malware filled, and slow nature of email and difficulty making your own website; if email continued to improve there wouldn't be demand for a modern solution. File syncing and sharing should be integrated into the operating system. However Microsoft's OneDrive and Apple's iCloud are inferior to Dropbox so a third party solution is still relevant.
[+] [-] reaperducer|8 years ago|reply
Unfortunately, it only works in small groups. If you're in a large office, or need to send something to someone outside the building, you're SOL.
[+] [-] jldugger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 7952|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] EugeneAZ|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] falcolas|8 years ago|reply
Your browser is not supported. Unfortunately this browser does not support the web technology that powers Firefox Send. You’ll need to try another browser. We recommend Firefox!
It would be nice to know what web tech they are using that isn't supported. Whatever it is, Chrome works.
EDIT: It requires support for the AES-GCM key type, with a size of 128.
[+] [-] sp332|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atonse|8 years ago|reply
Mozilla Send works in Safari Tech Preview.
[+] [-] nozzlegear|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perryprog|8 years ago|reply
[edit] Works in TP, lucky me.
[+] [-] dec0dedab0de|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mih|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] false-mirror|8 years ago|reply
One issue with the experiment is it has such a narrow use case. Disappearing after one download / 24hrs makes sending a file to multiple people--or just one person who drags their feet on the DL-- makes it really inconvenient to use. Even offering "1 download -OR- 24hrs" would make it far more useful.
[+] [-] dmart|8 years ago|reply
Unfortunately it seems like most of the time a physical USB flash drive is the most efficient way to accomplish this. Seems absurd to me that in 2017 there's not a common, user-friendly way to just establish a direct connection between two web browsers and directly push files through.
[+] [-] amq|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qqg3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sjenk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Markoff|8 years ago|reply
this Mozilla service seem really useless over tons of others like mega.nz, is it really that big deal to delete file manually?
[+] [-] vit05|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JD557|8 years ago|reply
It would be nice to be able to self-host this on a small home server for friends and family. That way, even if they shut down their server, you could still share files with your friends.
[+] [-] Sir_Cmpwn|8 years ago|reply
This uses WebRTC to transfer files peer-to-peer.
[+] [-] redm|8 years ago|reply
For example, modern email services (Google, MS, etc.) accessing links in emails and download the content and check it for malware. They probably mitigated this but its caveats like this that cause messages to be burned before the intended reading.
[+] [-] merpnderp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] option_greek|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rythie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deanclatworthy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://ipfs.io/
[+] [-] LinuxBender|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://tinyvpn.org/