Show HN: Send huge files, pause in the middle and continue | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Send huge files, pause in the middle and continue

dropjar.com

40 pointsoron28 comments

Pretty Cool Stuff :)

Here are some observations & Questions :

1. Looks like you decide the number of chunks the file is divided into before you start uploading. How do you decide this ? (ie) the algorithm used ..is the chunk size a function of network's bandwidth & throughput . Or is it a standard chunk size ?

flowChunkNumber:6 flowChunkSize:512000 <<===== This one here flowCurrentChunkSize:512000 flowTotalSize:5005687 flowIdentifier:5005687-emc_celera__Command_Reference_Manualpdf flowFilename:emc_celera__Command_Reference_Manual.pdf flowRelativePath:emc_celera__Command_Reference_Manual.pdf flowTotalChunks:9

2. How do you generate the random file name ? I suppose this is one the standard algorithms. Curious

http://dropjar.com/#"3MaYQK4"

3.I suppose you are using statcounter & google analytics. What are some of the parameters you are looking at your end? (like #of files uploaded etc., )

4. Even if I change the name of the file (or) move the file to another location when the upload is inflight ; it still sucessfully continues to upload the originally intended file.Are you precaching this somewhere ? Is there a copy stored in the temp folder ?

5. What are you using to compress the files before they start upload ?

Thnak you, here are some answers :

1. Right now just chose something that made sense, need to test more 2. just randomly choose 7 chars a..zA..Z0..9 3. yes using both. right now still not looking into metrics 4. not sure, i'm using flowjs which is a library that supports this need to test further 5. I don't think files are compressed before upload.

Very similar to MinBox which I've used a bit. Minbox is cool because it works on your desktop and allows the recipient to trigger the donwnload while its being sent. Haven't used it in a while though https://minbox.com/

Looks very slick, nice design.

Nice app. Plupload (https://github.com/moxiecode/plupload ) is an open source library that also allows you to upload large files. I've used it in projects before, such as a file explorer for Cloud Storage services (Box, Dropbox, etc.) that also allows for local file upload: http://jsfiddle.net/pseudonumos/PB565/embedded/result/

That's pretty nice. I recently slapped a (buggy) sharing application together for Android so my wife could "send" large(-ish) videos to friends and family directly from the Gallery/Photo app, via the "Share" option, since files of a certain size are disallowed from the e-mail service she uses.

I think this is far more useful for these kinds of "one-off" shares than going through a series of third-party gates like Dropbox for example, especially if the intended recipients don't have accounts on those sites.

What about privacy of the data? Where is it going? Is it stored encrypted?

No, it's not encrypted, although this can be added I guess on the client, I wouldn't trust anything that's not encrypted on the client side and claims to be encrypted. However for that you need a client app. However I do need to add a privacy statement... we aim more towards people who share their work with others not so much for extremely private media.

Also, how are you gonna protect yourself against people uploading copyrighted contents?

Hopefully this will be a small problem. It's not a file sharing service, files are deleted automatically after 7 days, and if we get specific complaints we will delete them immediately.

What do you mean by "It's not a file sharing service"? Isn't this a service for sharing files?

I think he means that the link to the file is not intended to be public but restricted to your contacts only. People might use it as a sharing platform if they want to tho, I don't see what could prevent them to do so and that's why I asked the question in the first place. I'm sure that A sending a pirated file to B won't have a huge legal impact. But if A put this link on a forum and 5000 B's are accessing it... I think you should enforce some kind of download throttling to limit the access to the files. Or figure out something! I really do hope only right minded people will use it for noble purposes but come on, we both know that if your tool get some traction (and it looks really good so I dont see why it shouldn't) people will start messing with it and you won't be able to handle all the delete requests yourself!

Great idea, and it's pretty easy to do, X downloads max per file or X number of ips per file etc. This is really aimed at private 1-1 sharing.

Yeah, that's what I figured. You probably don't want to throttle it too bad in case the same person got multiple computers (diff Ip's), but I think that something between a 100 and a 1000 could hit the right spot. And then depending on the feedback you get, you can work on implementing some better filtering. But at least it should dissuade people from making your tool the next megaupload :) I'd also work on throttling uploads of the same file, cause if you have a 100 DL limit per file then one can simply upload its file a thousand times and it will A) take a lot of space on your servers B) still be a pirate/sharing issue. Good luck and keep up the good work! :)

It's not a file sharing service as in one does not (hopefully) use it to share copyright material on a forum and spread it to thousands as it gets deleted after a few days.

Nice UI design, I really like the bottle theme! It's a well-implemented service, with value in its simplicity and singular function. I’ve seen a many, many similar services start the same exact way and they ultimately all add features and complexity, which takes them away from the simplicity that make them interesting.

Yes, I agree. My aim is not to get there and keep it very focused. Thank you for the feedback.

Shameless plug: I've created a library[0] that is similar in scope, but uploads to Amazon S3. If you find dropjar interesting you might want to check out this too.

[0] http://mule-uploader.com/

Nice work !

Odd, I upload a file and it doesn't seem to give me any sort of link.

http://imgur.com/LpwJ3Nn

Running Chrome 36.0.1985.143 on OS X

Still ironing out some bugs, we also had someone who abused it and finished all my mailgun credits, working on a fix to both.

Cool service. It fits a nice niche as I have coworkers who don't have Dropbox (or Drive, Box, etc.) installed, so I can just send them a link to this site instead. I'll test it with them and see how it goes.

Thanks, It works on mobile without any problems.

Sorry, should have tested it. I'll edit my comment.

Suggestion, after i drop something then ask me who to email it to and auto generate a link. save me a step if i want to just copy/paste a link.

the form is optional, you get a link at the end anyway ;-) or did I not read your comment right ?

Cool landing page. What's next after the the initial push? Are you going to make an API?

Good question, that's an option I didn't consider yet, I thought more on the option of forming some sort of pro account that you can use with your own backgrounds, password protection etc.

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