Man HN was a different place back then. People sharing ideas and getting constructive (even if comically wrong) feedback. It reads more like founders and hackers helping each other. The discussions lately are more like folks armchair analyzing or speculating companies that are already incumbent tech giants.

Or maybe I just click those headlines at a higher rate..

I was user 315, back when it was possible to determine your user number via the public url feature.

Is there anything this simple now? What I miss is being able to right click on an item, click "copy public URL", paste it into the browser, and get an exact copy of that item (with nothing else; no image overlays, no ads, nothing).

In the limit case you should be able to use it as a webhosting service for static files, since visiting an html page in a browser serves that file and relative links are preserved.

I guess it's a losing value proposition, but it sure would be nice.

It's unfortunate the original demo video was lost to time. I remember how astounding it was.

It was quite a stupid and expensive ride, but they were vindicated, especially on point 3:

>Our business is in a stronger position than it's been in years

>What’s energized me most since joining Dropbox is the connection people have with our brand

>It gives me a lot of confidence in what’s ahead for Dropbox

All corporate fluff, no actual content.

It is a darn shame, if the major OS providers didn't roll their own cloud storage, Dropbox could have been the default go-to across the board, and any other competitors that would have risen.

i didn't expect to laugh when i enter news today :)

Wow cool to see.