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Mozilla's Send is Basically the Snapchat of File Sharing (theverge.com)
Mozilla has launched a new website that makes it really easy to send a file from one person to another. From a report: The site is called Send, and it's basically the Snapchat of file sharing: after a file has been downloaded once, it disappears for good. That might sound like a gimmick, but it underscores what the site is meant for. It's designed for quick and private sharing between two people -- not for long-term hosting or distributing files to a large group. It supports files up to 1GB, and after uploading something, it'll give you a link to send to someone else. That link will expire once they've downloaded it or once 24 hours have passed.
Won't someone think of the children!
I don't really see the point. We have had temperately file hosting services for years. Moreover I find the fact that it requires JS and multiple 3rd party resources in order to work properly extremely annoying (all the other services that I use to share videos of my wife of do not require that).
I think that it would be better if Mozilla focused more on their important projects, such as Firefox, Servo and Rust.
https://xkcd.com/949/
I know my parents want something like this.
Please fix Firefox Developer tools. and never mind this file sharing stuff. Thnx.
I can predict how the general public will hear the news. "Conspiracy aid for Terroriststs!". And people who normally argue, "if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns" will seriously take such news stories.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Here's an alternate idea for Mozilla:
- Fix the browser; get back to the original mission of a fast no-bloat browser
- Fire everyone but the five developers it takes to do that and donate any excess money left in the Foundation to the EFF
My first concern was that it'll actually do what they say, not keep logs, etc.
What's in it for Mozilla? Corporate altruism is extremely rare, or even logical from a business standpoint.
Maybe it's providing more PR visibility for Firefox since it uses that domain name? That seems weak though.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
With email, you send a message to someone else by uploading it to your email server. Your email server then contacts the recipient's email server, and transfers the message. The message then waits for the recipient to log in and check for email on the server, and it downloads so he can read it. With FTP, you have to upload the file to a server you both have access to. Why not use the same method as email? Upload the file to your server, and your server tracks down the recipients server and transfers the file. Never understood why FTP wasn't set up that way.
So, kind of like wetransfer.com?
It does the same thing, with AES-256. Email-link or web-link. Pay for a subscription and you can have control over how long your file lives on the server.
Well, you see Mr. Retard, If it's confidential/personal/whatever, you encrypt it yourself before sharing it, obviously.
The problem with that is that you have to use another type of service or method to share the key, in which case why not share the file too through other means?
or the next Facebook/Instagram update will include said functionality +stories.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
So, you zip your file and add some padding before sending it. Password protect it while you're at it if you really think they are going to waste cpu-cycles on extracting any archives on the fly to apply their checks. If you're really paranoid you can always pgp it.
Fat lot of good their hash and file size notations will do them.
I get...
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!
...when I try to access the service.
If Mozilla's strategy is to lure back old users with web based services like Send, they are going to have to ensure that the service works seamlessly for the people that I exchange files with, without trying to force them to change their browser first. Even if I eventually make the switch to Firefox, I can hardly expect everyone that I exchange files with to do the same in order to be able to receive the files that I send.
Why not a built in web interface for a upnp encrypted netcat or socat. Then you could serve pages, files, and chats; from your browser to another. If they absolutely must provide a service, they could be the web facing connection helper for those who cannot figure out firewalls or are not allowed direct connections (when upnp is not applicable). Then there is 50% less wasted bandwidth. Upload the file to the actual destination the first time. Allow extensive configurations for allowing resume, close service after completion, continue service until manually terminated, etc. You could even provide a plugin for configuring a central hub. If no one has a computer that is on all of the time, it could be another simple service they offer. Groups of peers connecting, without needing to use fackbook, DC++, Retroshare, etc. Instead lets host your files for you, and just because the link isn't accessible after some time, you can imagine that the file is deleted.
Where did they go wrong?
Simply put. Shortly after 2007 they lost serious focus. Back then the Web as a Desktop app was being touted around like the next big thing. The idea was floated around a lot in 2005 and Microsoft began working on Silverlight, the Unspeakable Horror (Flash) began "Air", Apple built a web browser that could do it called Safari (based on WebKit, which was based on KHTML/KJS which the KDE folks were blurring the lines between web and desktop to kind of mimic IE pre-lawsuit), JavaFX 1 was also there, and so on... Everyone thought turning a website into a desktop application was a good idea. Mozilla began Prism at that time and it basically wrecked the already poorly tossed together code base. Now, mind you this. Firefox was great when the only other game in town was IE back in 2004. But even in Firefox 1.0 the code base wasn't as modular as it is today and it ran not that great. However, since the majority of the web was the Unspeakable Horror, it was hard to notice. Additionally, HTML 4.01 wasn't all that complicated and JS engines that screamed weren't a thing.
Now when Apple took KHTML and KJS in 2001 and turned it into WebKit in 2003, Google took a whole lot of flippity, flip, flip notice about how quickly Apple did a turn around on that. When Firefox 1.0 hit, there were already rumors that Google was working on their own browser. The rate at which one could take the WebKit core and whip up a browser was insane. Firefox's Netscape code base could never be modified as quickly as WebKit could and it was all the rage.
Sometime in 2005, browser in the phone was the hotness in Silicon Valley. If web as a desktop application was big, being able to move those applications into a phone was bigger. Android was brought out by Google and Apple began working on iPhone. We know where that went, but a lot of folks think that smartphones began life as a means to push apps. It wasn't. Apple, Google, and Mozilla lit a fire under the W3C's ass to start on HTML5 to replace the Unspeakable Horror and all the other Sliverlights/AIRs/FXs out there. It helped that open source was also a hotness everywhere at that time.
Anyways, I'm babbling... Point being final call on HTML5 didn't begin till 2011. By that time app developers had already chosen a winner, native API over HTML5. The dragging of their feet basically doomed HTML5 from ever taking off big. Mozilla's investment in Prism was all for not. Their code base was a mess from all the things they kept doing to get Prism, plus playing catch up to Google who by 2011 was already halfway to Firefox. Firefox 4 is commonly cited as the downfall, but they had problems long before that, it's just that 3.5 used the old base and had minor fixes, while the base for Firefox 4 was, well a cluster fuck of ideas all unguided. Firefox 4 was bad, because Mozilla pushed it out in a rush in 2011 to try and get one last gasp for Prism and to do something about Chrome's rocketing usage. Massive failure, Firefox kills Prism a few months later.
When Mozilla saw that Prism was a waste they began on their next project Firefox OS. Unsurprisingly, that just made the entire code base even worse. Mozilla kept shifting their goals and trying to work with a code base that was nowhere as nimble as WebKit. IE saw the writing on the wall and that's where we get Edge, of course, they only saw it after smacking into the wall about 800 times, but they finally got the message. Firefox 57, is the first step Mozilla is taking to redoing the base. They've redone the JS engine, they've redone the rendering, they've redone a lot of bits and pieces since Firefox 4, but Firefox 57 is a more massive shift. Firefox 57 isn't a rewrite, but it is a serious step away from the old Netscape base, well it's not really fair to call it that since between 4 and 52 they've slowly shifted into something that's 10-15% Netscape, 20% ideas from Prism, 30% ideas from Firefox OS, and the rest is random crap to just make all those
slack_justyb has the comprehensive answer, but here's the tl;dr: they forgot what a browser is supposed to be.
I also blame rapid release (what software has that approach not made worse?), the desire to copy Chrome, and the incredibly stupid desire to turn the browser into an operating system.
At least for marketing firefox. It's also probably cheap to build as it doesn't keep the data forever, so there is a hard limit to the capacity required to build this service.