Will XKCD 949 be solved before 2040?
3
100Ṁ36
2040
61%
chance

It's been 14 years since https://xkcd.com/949/ came out and we still don't have a convenient way to send large files to other people. Will it happen in the next 14 years?

Resolution will be subjective, as per my judgement of whether it feels like "the email of file transfers" has been achieved. Some particular features that I will be looking for (does not need to have all, should at least have most):

  • Easy to set up. It can take a few minutes, but must be doable by the average internet user, not just the technically-inclined.

  • Easy to use. I shouldn't need to mess around with config files or troubleshoot errors; I should be able to send the file to something akin to an email address, or provide the recipient with a private key that lets them download the file, or some other method that Just Works™.

  • Widely adopted. I should be able to send/receive files to/from almost anyone who might want to do so, without needing to convince them to use a particular method or waiting for them to set it up.

  • Cheap or free. It shouldn't cost significantly more than any other usage of my internet bandwidth.

  • Robust. A disruption in internet connection or a power-off of the computer should not require any manual intervention to resume the transfer, and it must be able to continue from where it left off.

  • Public domain. It should be a general internet standard, not something owned by a particular company.

  • Efficient. It should be peer-to-peer, not an upload to a central server followed by a separate download.

  • Secure. It can't be open to the whole internet like a Pastebin link, the files must be accessible to only the person I want to send them to. And they should be automatically encrypted in transit, via TLS or similar.

  • Supports streaming. I should be able to view the first part of a file while the rest of it is still downloading, at least if it's a file format that supports that.

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What's wrong with MEGA? The other person doesn't have to set up an account I don't think

@MingCat ....All of the bullet points I set out above that it violates? It is not widely adopted (I hadn't heard of it before today), it costs $13 a month for 2TB of storage and more for higher amounts, it's a private company, it's not peer-to-peer, and there's no indication whether it can gracefully handle interruptions. This appears to just be another cloud hosting service, not significantly different from Google Drive. And a rather sketchy one at that, using nonsense marketing speak to describe basic encryption as though it's some revolutionary technology that competitors don't have.

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