I'm <i>really</i> into home Cloud stuff. This answers none of my questions.<p>1) Where will my files be stored?<p>2) Does Duple store a copy?<p>3) What does Duple do with my meta data? What do they do with usage stats?<p>4) Does Duple have any third party contracts or contractors with access to my data?<p>5) How does putting Duple software on an RPI make my files available from anywhere? How do you enable access to my device from anywhere?<p>These guys are asking for an awful lot of faith from users who are looking to potentially store their entire lives on their service. We deserve to know how it <i>really</i> works.
> No server needed. No expensive hardware required... You can use your Router, NAS, Raspberry Pi, Smart TV.<p>So... it turns those things into servers then (many of which already run servers by default)? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but a device running server software is still a server, even if it isn't dedicated to only that task.
From what I can gather from the FAQ, this won't work for routers behind a NAT, which is the case for me and I assume many others too, this should probably be mentioned somewhere.<p>A bit worrying that it'll be forever closed source, especially since it needs to expose your router to the internet and that it's written in C and also this sentence from the FAQ:<p>> Everything was built from scratch
This is the offer:<p>"The beta version of Duple is now available. You can download it and use it for free. However if you’d like to participate in the Duple beta program, and get a lifetime discount as a reward, click here."<p>But I don't understand what we are paying for going forward. Presumably you pay for the software once. Is there a recurring charge of some sort? What for? If the software is on premise, you can't really turn it off or stop it from working.<p>Does duple, the company, ever touch the data?<p>If privacy is the killer feature, it seems that an open source version will ultimately displace this.
They have some fairly hefty competition:<p><a href="https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/drive" rel="nofollow">https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/drive</a><p><a href="https://www.drobo.com/homeoffice/#file" rel="nofollow">https://www.drobo.com/homeoffice/#file</a><p>I'm pretty sure that most NAS vendors have some variation on "Home Cloud."<p>I think most folks that want to set something like this up, will want a turnkey solution.
<a href="https://doc.duple.io/duplecli-documentation/" rel="nofollow">https://doc.duple.io/duplecli-documentation/</a>
<a href="https://doc.duple.io/faq/" rel="nofollow">https://doc.duple.io/faq/</a><p>So basically Dropbox but with an SFTP server or network/local filesystem for hosting.
When someone says "modern day snake oil", this is what I think of. A "cloud" that isn't the cloud <i>at all</i>, pretends to be more reliable and secure than it is, and over-sells basic features like replication. "This USB stick will solve all your problems for a low, low price!"
I'm sorry but Nextcloud is getting a bit of an unfair shake here. I recently got a raspberry pi 4 and installing nextcloud on there wasn't rocket science: <a href="https://smalldata.tech/blog/2019/07/12/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-4-home-server" rel="nofollow">https://smalldata.tech/blog/2019/07/12/setting-up-a-raspberr...</a><p>In fact the biggest issue that I faced was that my router did not support NAT loopback which led me to using the pi for DNS in order to be able to use my "private" cloud.<p>Nextcloud is an open-source dropbox and is written in PHP. It can be very easily installed via docker and is quite mature at this point with a rich ecosystem of 3rd party apps for functionality other than file sync. Big props to the folks working on it!
It's not open source and it's not for sale, even though it's a business, so beware about what it's future may be.<p>However it might be reusable with an alternate core:<p>> Q: Do you plan to open-source it later?
A: We'll open source everything (server, interface, etc...), except from the C Library. Reason being that the library is what gives us our technical competitive advantage (being that you get the full private cloud experience with no need for a server). It's also important to note that you can't patent your code/algorithm in Europe, so there's no other way to protect it. But everything else expect from the library will be open-source.
How is this different from syncthing - <a href="https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/syncthing/syncthing/</a> ? I am still trying to figure out
A bit offtopic, but does anybody know a micro server the size of an Intel NUC or Mac Mini, but with 100+W desktop/server (real, not cloud) hardware for use as CI server?
So how does this thing work? Does the private cloud only exist when the storage device is plugged in?<p>I see "smart TV" as a host option, does that mean the storage devices can use unaware USB hosts to be a communication mechanism?<p>Interesting idea, I'll have to try it @home. Whitepaper on how the tech works would be nice.
"You have one repository folder and one folder Duple on each device where you can access your cloud. This Duple folder works like a Dropbox folder, and everything is synchronized in multidirectional way between all the devices (all the Duple folders) and the repository folder which contains the totality of the private cloud."<p>So, here I am, exposing my 36TB nas using this new duple thing. Because every client needs the repository folder which contains the totality of the privace cloud, how is this going to work?
I finally ditched SpiderOak for SyncThing about a month ago - and I haven't looked back. It solves all of these issues, I fully host it myself, and I can access everything, exactly the way I want to based on shares.<p>I have a machine in my office, a shared folder on my mobile, two machines at home, and my wife has her office, and her work laptop. It's everything these things should be, other than the lack of an iOS app for her.
Apart from all the other stuff, it seems suspicious that they would use Serpent for encryption, rather than using AES or another more well-known cipher suite (also, no talk about AEAD).<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(cipher)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(cipher)</a>
I see <a href="https://www.duple.io/en/blocked.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.duple.io/en/blocked.html</a> when I click <i>Try Duple</i> What countries do they intend to not sell their software in and why? A FAQ would be nice.
I found the FAQ[0] to be the most informative.<p>[0] <a href="https://doc.duple.io/faq/" rel="nofollow">https://doc.duple.io/faq/</a>
Somewhat related- I've gotten a lot of mileage out of using Cryptomator (no affiliation) with iCloud to have access to encrypted documents across devices without having to worry about the pain of self-hosting. Here's a blog post I wrote about it <a href="https://karlshouler.com/posts/2019-05-31-secure-cloud-storage" rel="nofollow">https://karlshouler.com/posts/2019-05-31-secure-cloud-storag...</a>
tl;dr:<p>It's an easier to install and use Nextcloud alternative, with open source components (to be released in the future) but closed source core.
>How does it work?<p>>Just turn it on!<p>That’s not an explanation of how it works, that’s an explanation of how to use it.<p>(I mean, you just know something stupid like that is coming the moment you see a loading progress bar for a static page. It’s not surprising, just disappointing.)