Dropbox fuckery

Dropbox is vile and I want no part of it in my life. However, one particular tool I work with has no way of getting its data to me except via Dropbox, and I can't fix that.

I have one of those anonymous "share" links for the folder in which my data materializes (the "dropbox.com/sh/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/YYYYYYYYYYYYYY_ZZZZZZZZZZ" kind) and I have a script that has been just scraping the HTML and mirroring the files directly. It's slow and wasteful and irritating but it had been working for 5+ years... except recently the Dropbox web pages have begun shitting the bed, and half the time when I load and parse them, they return different, unparsable data. Maybe these are intermittent backend errors, or maybe they've changed their Javascript that be even more obscure and only some proxies have caught up to the new, more useless way. I dunno, I can't tell.

So I tried doing it the "official" way and creating and "app" and generating an OAuth token and using the official API, but after successfully authenticating, all it ever says is "missing_scope, required_scope: files.metadata.read". (That checkbox is among the many that are checked on my app's config page.)

Have any of you ever successfully used this API to list a folder and read a file?

Note: I am not asking for your anecdote about how you installed the Dropbox GUI on your machine. And even if it is possible to install a Dropbox file-system-impersonating rootkit daemon on a headless CentOS 7 server, I have no interest in doing that. I just want to mirror files out of this one URL, by polling from cron.

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Favorite tech innovation

adamkotsko:

What's your favorite tech innovation?
16%
Illegal cab company
12.2%
Illegal hotel chain
38%
Fake money for criminals
33.9%
Plagiarism machine
37,872 votes

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Today I learned that Church Molestation Liability Insurance is a thing that exists

Ministry Insured: Abuse and Molestation Liability Insurance:

No one likes to think about the possibility of a situation involving improper behavior or sexual misconduct against a parishioner, especially a minor. However, it is hard to escape the reality that these types of lawsuits are becoming more prevalent and more public. [...]

There is no other insurance policy or coverage that will protect an organization when a lawsuit for sexual misconduct is brought against it.

Bold choice of that insurance company to go with a stock photo of little kids for this product. Are we to assume that they are or will soon be rape victims?

Cry havoc and let slip the actuarials: Child Sexual Abuse Losses by Industry:

Religious organizations account for 30% of all child sexual abuse losses in Advisen's database. This is the second greatest frequency for all industries, behind only elementary and secondary schools at 39%. All other industries account for less than 10% of the total child sexual abuse losses.

Meanwhile in Texas: Houston's only lesbian bar denied insurance for hosting drag:

Ten years after launching what has become a pillar of queer nightlife in Houston, Mabry says the ongoing push by conservative lawmakers to restrict LGBTQ rights in Texas has jeopardized her business: for the first time since its doors opened in 2013, Pearl Bar was denied an insurance policy it needs to continue operations earlier this year, specifically because it hosts drag shows. [...]

Mabry's insurance agent shared the underwriter's explanation for denying Pearl Bar: "we will not consider this one due to the drag," the underwriter wrote. "We won't write this risk."

Previously, previously, previously.

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