Day: 13 May 2011

In This Article, a Feature That Allows for Speedy Uploads is Shown to Be Technically At Odds With the Terms of Service ⇥

From Wired:

The FTC complaint charges Dropbox with telling users that their files were totally encrypted and even Dropbox employees could not see the contents of the file. Ph.D. student Christopher Soghoian published data last month showing that Dropbox could indeed see the contents of files, putting users at risk of government searches, rogue Dropbox employees, and even companies trying to bring mass copyright-infringement suits.

This is probably overblown. In a nut, Dropbox promised that private files were inaccessible by other users, or by Dropbox. This is technically untrue: private files must be accessed by Dropbox in cases involving a subpoena, and the service’s deduplication backend is technically allowing access to private files. This is potentially a far-reaching claim.

The man who filed the FTC complaint is Chris Soghoian, who previously created a Northwest Airlines boarding pass generator, and recently published a series of emails exposing a smear campaign conducted on behalf of Facebook.

I Don’t Work in a Museum ⇥

How tightly organized should I be? Enough to pass a white glove test? No. That’s not going to happen, and imposing that ideal on myself is actually counter-productive. So, I stay organized enough to achieve my goals.

I’m similar, but I clean on a constant basis. At the end of the day, it looks like I’ve accomplished barely anything, but I know that the work I’ve produced has been carefully filed away.

It’s interesting to see how others work. I fall into the clean-workspace-clean-mind kind of flow. There’s nothing wrong with a messy desk, but if I see receipts from years ago, I start to get twitchy. That’s not right.