Via comment on an article on tweakers.net, concerning Dropbox I think.
I was searching for a good backup strategy for my brother (he went for a cheap NAS).
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Growing up in Kenya has made corruption / money / power into problems that are constantly on my mind, and I have always been looking for a sustainable solution to these seemingly permanent problems
MaidSafe / freedom of all data (books, research, videos, source materials etc) / currency truly by the people is what I believe to be the only thing that can solve these things and improve all our lives forever 
EDIT: and I think it was this one IDK 
Someone commented MaidSafe as a solution
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Although I had seen MaidSafe mentioned before, I first really took notice in July 2014 after reading a CoinDesk article featuring interviewed explanations by David. I was intrigued by the idea of decentralized technology inspired by patterns in nature, and began searching for more information about the project after that.
The values behind the project (freedom, privacy) seemed to align very well with my own, and it also reflected my long-held interest in free/open-source technology/culture, and digital preservation. I’ve been following the project and forum daily (and posting occasionally) ever since.
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Heard David Irvine interview by Ernie Hancock on Declare Your Independence radio/podcast.
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I had this idea of a robust (lots of FEC), globally distributed, encrypted storage network of random untrusted nodes; it would’ve cached the users’ data on their own devices first (home network, laptop, car computer; I’m not sure smartphones were big enough a thing yet), but also on other devices with addresses close enough in XOR space. The zeros in front of the XOR addresses would’ve signified how much is own data and how much is for global use (e.g. smaller numbers => fewer nodes, but with more public storage space.) It was a neat idea but I was (am) nowhere near to actually build something like that 
Google led me to Lifestuff.
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Thanks for everybody who shared their story.
Would love to hear more.
I was looking for a maid, typed “maid” into Google. Guess it knew I liked Bitcoin.
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Stumbleupon under Futurism
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wow, the chances…
fate
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I heard about MaidSafe when a YouTube link to “MaidSafe Technology Overview” ( MaidSafe Technology Overview - Short - YouTube ) was sent to me. I believe it was ForbiddenKnowledgeTV.net that sent it.
I was immediately intrigued with the scope and idea of the concept, but it was not until I listened to David that I was convinced of the real potential for it to become a reality.
There is something about the way David speaks that strips away pretense and embodies a deep selfless humility.
I am not knowledgeable at all when it comes to understanding computer systems or code, so it was the reaction and comments of others that helped to cement the possibility for me that this was real. The genuine caring nature of a lot of the people on this forum also lends credibility and support to the project, creating an inviting atmosphere where even those of us that are not very technologically savvy feel welcome.
Of course, nothing is going to create a wave of excitement like the release of the MVP to give people a hands-on experience, but, for me, the more exposure we can get of David explaining the vision, speaking and interacting with highly intelligent interviewers, the better.
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I first heard about MaidSafe from a forum post on Bitcointalk that linked to their Google group. Read about it there and ended up participating in the crowdsale. Still have all those coins in a paper wallet.
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Was scimming my usual IT sites friday night and on Techcrunch it revealed!
https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/12/after-a-decade-of-rd-maidsafes-decentralized-network-opens-for-alpha-testing/
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I first heard about it from an article that someone posted on diaspora*, but I didn’t look into it much then. About a year later I remembered it again but I couldn’t remember what it was called; however, I was eventually able to hunt it down through some searching. I was following the RSS feed for a while before I figured out how much more active the forums are, though, so it took me a while to really find out what was going on with the project.
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I first heard about it from a podcast on the LTB Network. Been playing with the alpha and am looking forward seeing what the devs make for it. Exiting times ahead! 
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Feels like I’m late to the party here 
Found it via Hacker News and the TechCrunch “after a decade of research” article.
Really excited to see how it develops.
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Hi all
I’ve done a quick count of the above responses here are the results:
BY GROUP / CATEGORY
Breaking it down further
Not much data to work with but you can see clearly videos and articles faired best with people saying they could not really remember or not a good enough description coming into the unknown category (if @nicklambert and marketing crew do something like this again tip would be to ask people to be very precise).
What’s also interesting is many people came in via forums, social networks, chat and article comments with a collective of 13. This shows that we as the community who are telling others about it are just as powerful at spreading this information as the big video sites and tech news websites.
If people are interested. Let @maidsafe know and ask them to create a poll. Would be great data for marketing especially at launch IMHO.
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Read about a mystery coin called ethereum that went from $0.50ish cents to over $250 in a short space of time.
Returned to crypto after a long while and fired up my core bitcoin wallet - crashed my Mac.
Discovered crypto had moved beyond money and imitation coins and services are now being built on crypto. Bit like once electricity (crypto) was discovered, essential services (maid) start popping up.
Started to scan all the cheap coins, left all the clone coins aside, read about maid. Watched the videos - coin conference, the animated intro to maid and the max keiser one. Haven’t looked back. Put all my bitcoin dust in to maid.
History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes. SAFE is an early telecoms company running on the invention of crypto, similar to the first telecoms company Bell running on electricity.
Alexander Graham Bell - another Scottish telecom and data sharing pioneer. Do I have to say any more?
SAFE is so exciting. I’m all in.
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I believe the first time I heard about it was at one of the Rust programming language meetups in San Francisco, where someone from MaidSafe did a presentation talking about how they were adopting Rust and porting some code that had previously been written in C++.
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From comments at Geektimes (Habrahabr):
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Had recently discovered BitNation, which let me to BTC and Eth in mid 2015 and was playing on poloniex and chatting to my newfound crypto friends. The trollbox was much quieter back then, just 1500 or so users online. BTC pumped in Nov 2015 and Alts all came crashing down. I was looking for the most undervalued assets to invest in and someone in the polo chat box mentioned that Maid was under the crowdsale price of 2c, so thought I’d try to do some research to find out why. I discovered people were talking about an ‘mvp’ coming soon and realised I’d stumbled on an opportunity. I had only planned to invest a few BTC to trade the crypto tide. I decided I should invest more heavily with the upcoming release, but that meant doing more DD and really getting into it to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake.
I think it took about a month before I really realised that I had broken the cardinal rule of crypto trading, ‘never fall in love with a coin’. I stopped trading and just kept on reading, I haven’t stopped since.
After 2 years I still get my mind blown with a clearer understanding of some feature, function or implication every few weeks. This project is like nothing else that I have ever come across, SAFE is the true ‘black swan’ hidden in the crypto mess imo.
I would probably already be very rich if I had not discovered Maidsafe 
(I was a big Eth fanboy), but as it is I wouldn’t change it for anything! I feel very lucky and grateful to be here.
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