10 ms·
Blip: Peer-to-peer massive file sharing
- ryandotsmith 1y agoDoes anyone have an idea of how this is built? I wonder if they are using QUIC with relay servers or something like Tailscale's DERP.
- realsdx 1y agoIf it's truly p2p, some relay would be there in case the client cannot be reached through NAT. Not sure how they would bear the cost of the bandwidth for unlimited transfers in that case
- wongarsu 1y agoTraffic is pretty cheap outside the big clouds. For example Hetzner charges $1/TB on a 10Gbit connection
- throwawayffffas 1y agoTheir 1Gbit connections are unmetered.
- iamcalledrob 1y agoIt's something closer to Tailscale DERP. We evaluated QUIC (and many other approaches). Turns out it's a lot harder than you might think to move traffic at high speed across the world, over residential-grade internet, and not drain your battery.
- binary132 1y agoDid you consider Iroh and if you chose not to use it, why not?
- 2color 1y agoI wouldn't be surprised if it's built with Iroh https://www.iroh.computer/ https://www.iroh.computer/
- greener_grass 1y agoIs this AirDrop but cross-platform?
- kjksf 1y agoNo. AirDrop is for people who are physically nearby. This allows to send files between any computers anywhere. The other person must be a known contact but it doesn't have to be on the same local network like in AirDrop.
- dewey 1y agoThere’s a new AirDrop feature that also transfers over the internet: https://allthings.how/how-airdrop-over-internet-works-on-iphone-in-ios-17-1/ https://allthings.how/how-airdrop-over-internet-works-on-iph...
- thejazzman 1y ago> To start AirDrop over the Internet, initiate the AirDrop as you normally would ... this is hardly the same thing?
- FabHK 1y agoAddressed in the FAQ: > How is Blip different to nearby sharing like AirDrop? Apple’s “AirDrop” and Google’s “Nearby Share” can be really handy. However, they aren’t compatible with each other and require devices to be physically next to each other. They are also unreliable when transferring large files, and will often lose your progress. > Blip doesn’t need devices to be nearby, so it’s much more reliable. Blip works wherever your internet connected devices are in the world, and works regardless of what kind of device you own. You can transfer from Android to Mac, Windows to iPhone, iPad to Android—you name it!
- miksak 1y agoI wonder how widely usable is file sharing nowadays when most of the non tech people just use cloud services for their data, be it google docs or some cloud photo storage
- supportengineer 1y agoNon-tech people couldn't tell you what a "file" is.
- ryandrake 1y agoI think non-tech people used to be able to, but tech companies have been on a 10+ year long crusade against the concept of a "file" and where that file is "stored" and trying to blur once-sharp lines so that people forget. Tech really wants you to think of your data as an amorphous blob vaguely "in their app" and not worry about crisp delineations like files, whose hard drive those files are on, and whose machine that hard drive is in.
- nrmitchi 1y agoMost non-tech people do not just use cloud services for their data. Really not sure where you got that from, but even if it was true, most non-tech people will still shy away from putting a 250G file in a cloud service once they get prompted to upgrade their plan because they don't have enough space.
- thehappypm 1y agoCloud is kinda the default now. Most Americans just take pictures with their iPhones and it ends up in icloud.
- throwawayffffas 1y agoThat's different from getting a Dropbox account or manually uploading stuff to Google drive in order to share it with someone.
- abcd_f 1y agoThis is a minor OCD nitpick, but > at super fast speeds Fast speeds aren't a thing, just like cheap prices and wet waters aren't.
- Tokumei-no-hito 1y agonit-nit, what's wrong with cheap prices? price doesnt infer magnitude.
- abcd_f 1y agoCheap means "low in price". Price can't be "low in price", it can be just "low".
- gnabgib 1y agoCheap has many more meanings than that. It can mean comparatively inexpensive (a cheap Lamborghini), of inferior quality (cheap paperclip), miserly (he's too cheap to buy better), gained with little effort (cheap win).
- FabHK 1y agoSo what's a cheap price? A price of inferior quality? A miserly price? A price obtained with little effort? Or is after all a low price what's meant?
- abcd_f 1y agoSure. Still doesn't make "cheap price" a valid combo.
- lame-lexem 1y agocould be a contraction of cheap at the price https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheap_at_the_price https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheap_at_the_price
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- Saris 1y agoInteresting that it says "Internet sending may be slower during peak times to keep things fair" even though it's supposed to be P2P? Maybe they just mean if you end up with a relayed connection due to NAT issues? Because lower down it says "Send as fast as your connection"
- tantalor 1y ago> When a direct connection isn’t possible, files travel through our servers.
- bilbo0s 1y agoThat's what actually made it a hard pass for me.
- SquirrelOnFire 1y agoWhy's that, given that files are encrypted?
- throwawayffffas 1y agoWith whose key? I am not saying the service is not trust worthy, just that there is trust involved. Trust not only they are not malicious, but also they won't have some kind of vulnerability. Plus if it's encrypted how is the other party going to read the file? The key will have to take the same path.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- actionfromafar 1y agoHopefully it's a privpub negotiation. But yes, you have to trust the code.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
- poisonborz 1y agoFree open source alternative: https://pairdrop.net https://pairdrop.net
- dhruvmittal 1y agoMagic Wormhole [1] also exists. [1] https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- rickydroll 1y agoSyncthing [1] also exists [1] https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/
- jjcob 1y agoSyncthing is for syncing folders like Dropbox It's not a good solution to send individual large files.
- rickydroll 1y agoSyncing files is only one of its capabilities. It is best suited for use between two individuals/organizations that need to transfer files between themselves more than a few times. Its main advantage for me is that it doesn't require a central storage system, such as Dropbox, to hold the files. It's just you and me and a rendezvous server. In a previous life, I used Syncthing to transfer terabytes of files from the company I worked for to a third-party printer. It was delightfully reliable, and easy to set up. If it's a one-off, yeah, you're right that it's not wonderful. I've used Magic Wormhole successfully for that use case.
- xeonmc 1y agoSo it’s the GPG of file sharing?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lagniappe 1y agoI have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them somewhere online to be able to perform presentations, but they still carry a USB drive in case there are connectivity problems. This does not solve the connectivity issue. 3. It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?
- jcalx 1y agoContext, for the above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 It worked out the first time!
- muppetman 1y agoThanks for this - I thought the OP was insane...
- bestouff 1y agoHey isn't this the same famous reply as the one the Dropbox founder got here in HN ?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rising-sky 1y agoinfamous* but yes, sure sounds like it!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- otterley 1y ago
- mbrumlow 1y agoSo airdrop… Not sure why this needs to be a service. Or why data needs to go through their servers.
- abcd_f 1y agoIt appears that the data is relayed as a fallback, if there's no p2p connection possible. This is a classic transfer model for mediated transfers.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- givemeethekeys 1y agoIt looks like this lets you share files with people using a different operating system than MacOS. Does AirDrop let you do that?
- subarctic 1y agoHis point is about it being a service vs just a peer to peer app
- kjksf 1y agoSo you run the app. The other person runs the app. How do those 2 programs find out about each other? Well, they need to use some server that will connect all users, allow you to find the other person in order to send them a file. Even BitTorrent needs tracker servers to connect downloaders to uploaders. Now, you could try to make it run without a company behind it, like BitTorrent. I guess it's an exercise for the reader. Someone still needs to run those connecting servers out of the goodness of their heart. You would need to degrade the usability (the first thing a user would need to do is to configure the app with the address of at least one connecting server). BitTorrent is anonymous but for sending files you need to connect to a person you know. If you enable contacting via the protocol, it'll be a phishing nightmare. So you'll have to degrade usability some more and use a side channel (e.g. an email) to exchange identities with people you want to send file to (or receive files from). By having a service and a company behind it, they are able to perfect the UX and run the necessary servers to implement that UX.
- api 1y agoWait... you're telling me it's 2025 and we can finally conveniently send files?
- BoredPositron 1y agoLooks not really convenient...
- supportengineer 1y agoIt's like YouSendIt!
- system2 1y agoWho else needs to share files bigger than 1 TB? Most cloud services, such as Google Drive or OneDrive, are more than sufficient for managing massive files. I don't see the appeal of this new service.
- unquietwiki 1y agoGoogle Drive throttles uploads over 5GB, and not everyone has a storage plan that could fit that.
- supertrope 1y agoIt would save you the time to upload first, effectively halving the time required.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoOddly enough, I would argue the exact opposite direction; really big files are exactly where I want to do a direct p2p transfer without paying to store it in the cloud.
- timc3 1y agoDon't see any mention of an API.
- tomazsh 1y agoWe don't have the API yet, but are exploring use cases for it. Send me an email at tomaz@blip.net -- would love to chat.
- markasoftware 1y ago"former dropbox engineers" doesn't mean a whole lot -- it's a large company where tens of thousands of people have worked over the years. It's not like this is by the founders or anything.
- ryandrake 1y agoYea, "former [COMPANY] employee" could mean anything. I'm not sure it's really much of a flex. I'm a former Apple employee. Nobody gives a shit, and nobody should--That doesn't count for anything if I were to do a software startup. It wouldn't even bear mentioning in a press release.
- dang 1y agoOk, we've taken the former dropbox engineers out of the title now.
- rahimnathwani 1y agoThis looks awesome. For sending files between my phone (Android) and my son's iPad, I use: Android: Wormhole William (https://github.com/psanford/wormhole-william-mobile https://github.com/psanford/wormhole-william-mobile) iOS: Destiny (https://github.com/LeastAuthority/destiny https://github.com/LeastAuthority/destiny) Some drawbacks to my current approach: 1. Destiny needs to be configured to use the standard Magic Wormhole servers (just once, after installation): https://github.com/LeastAuthority/destiny/issues/259#issuecomment-2714527919 https://github.com/LeastAuthority/destiny/issues/259#issueco... 2. Initiating a transfer requires out of band communication and some copy+paste.
- leosanchez 1y agoAndroid app looks beautiful. Waiting for the Linux version.
- tomazsh 1y agoThanks. We put a lot of work into our apps.
- ceronman 1y agoThis looks really cool. I especially like the "Keep your progress, whatever happens" feature. The product looks polished and I definitely see myself using it. My only concern is: Are they taking VC money? Is this going to be enshittified to death trying to pursue a 1000x investment return?
- landl0rd 1y agoNo benchmark comparisons with Aspera or similar even though they compare pricing? Because my gut instinct is it's probably a good bit slower.
- satvikpendem 1y agoI wonder what tech stack they're using, given it supports all the major platforms. I like sendme [0] which uses iroh, a peer-to-peer library as well. [0] https://github.com/n0-computer/sendme https://github.com/n0-computer/sendme
- manoji 1y agoSurprised syncthing isn't mentioned yet. It has been the most stable sync tool for me over the years https://syncthing.net/ https://syncthing.net/ . Solid product . Great oboarding experience for Blip! Its just working!
- tomazsh 1y agoHey! Blip co-founder here. We didn't expect to show up on HN, but really grateful to OP for sharing Blip. Here's a little bit more about it. We've built Blip because it's still hard to send original quality photos, videos, and large files to your devices and to other people on the internet. We’re designers and engineers, so our goal has always been to keep the product super simple on the surface, but really fast and powerful underneath. Blip works in a peer-to-peer way at the UI level: you pick the device or person, and Blip takes care of the delivery. Transfers go directly over WAN whenever possible, and fall back to relays when needed. The idea is to send in one click, skipping the usual dance of moving files through cloud drives and managing shared links. Under the hood, Blip is optimized for large media and data transfers. It supports full-speed acceleration, resumable progress, and we're rolling out E2EE across all clients to ensure sensitive business data remains secure. Many creative pros and teams already use Blip in their daily media workflows. We don’t monetize data because it doesn't align with the values of our creative and technical users. Instead, we run on a simple donation and subscription model that lets you support the product and use it without limits, quotas, and frustrations. Our goal is to make file transfer feel invisible. Happy to answer any questions.
- mempko 1y agoLinux support please!
- tomazsh 1y agoWe hear you :)
- pizzathyme 1y agoLooks amazing! Maybe a dumb question: why isn't Dropbox doing this? Why did you all need to leave to make this a reality?
- tomazsh 1y agoThank you, and great question. In my experience, big companies have way more strategic priorities than two guys who just want to build something useful. We didn't leave to build exactly this, but a few things came together organically from past projects, including our work at Dropbox.
- packetlost 1y agoI'd be more inclined to use this if it were open source. Oh well.
- skyzyx 1y agoTeams have been building services like this for ~20 years. They very rarely stick. I agree that it’s still too hard, but the market has historically been too small. It’s at-best a hobby side project for a larger company that can afford to burn the cash. Like Apple offers this for email for iCloud users. I think Firefox Relay offered it too. There was another company in the late 00s that offered a P2P version. I mean _cool_, but I’ve not seen a company with this as its primary product last more than 18 months before. With that, _good luck_.