Slashdot Mirror


Edge Computing: Explained (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report from The Verge, written by Paul Miller: In the beginning, there was One Big Computer. Then, in the Unix era, we learned how to connect to that computer using dumb (not a pejorative) terminals. Next we had personal computers, which was the first time regular people really owned the hardware that did the work. Right now, in 2018, we're firmly in the cloud computing era. Many of us still own personal computers, but we mostly use them to access centralized services like Dropbox, Gmail, Office 365, and Slack. Additionally, devices like Amazon Echo, Google Chromecast, and the Apple TV are powered by content and intelligence that's in the cloud -- as opposed to the DVD box set of Little House on the Prairie or CD-ROM copy of Encarta you might've enjoyed in the personal computing era. As centralized as this all sounds, the truly amazing thing about cloud computing is that a seriously large percentage of all companies in the world now rely on the infrastructure, hosting, machine learning, and compute power of a very select few cloud providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and IBM.

The advent of edge computing as a buzzword you should perhaps pay attention to is the realization by these companies that there isn't much growth left in the cloud space. Almost everything that can be centralized has been centralized. Most of the new opportunities for the "cloud" lie at the "edge." The word edge in this context means literal geographic distribution. Edge computing is computing that's done at or near the source of the data, instead of relying on the cloud at one of a dozen data centers to do all the work. It doesn't mean the cloud will disappear. It means the cloud is coming to you.
Miller goes on to "examine what people mean practically when they extoll edge computing," focusing on latency, privacy and security, and bandwidth.

86 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. I want my privacy back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It is inevitable that as computers get more capable, these cloud services will become less attractive. Things I want private: Information Search, speech recognition, personal assistance, geographical services, etc.

    1. Re:I want my privacy back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It is inevitable that as computers get more capable, these cloud services will become less attractive. Things I want private: Information Search, speech recognition, personal assistance, geographical services, etc.

      Don't forget the underwater bathtub camera.

    2. Re:I want my privacy back by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's not going to happen.

      Basically what it means is that Google will manage the software that is running on your devices. They will run whatever software they want on your devices without telling you what is going on. Besides "managed OS for IoT devices" this also means things like Google docs that can work in offline mode, that do most of their work on your device, but also sync with the cloud (as opposed to doing everything on the server thrrough rest APIs).

      There is nothing new about this at all, but now there is a name for it, and people are building frameworks so even the dumbest programmers around can do it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re: I want my privacy back by WarJolt · · Score: 1

      Google is has nothing on Amazon.

    4. Re:I want my privacy back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Information Search, speech recognition, personal assistance, geographical services, etc.
      10 years from now, some company is going to make a killing selling me a device that can do those things and not have to connect. This is how Google falls.
                             

    5. Re:I want my privacy back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      In Japan, we have had toilets with inspection camera so that physicians may inspect stool remotely. They never see the subject's face and are able to inspect fecal matters without having to handle them.

    6. Re:I want my privacy back by another_twilight · · Score: 2

      10 years from now, some company is going to make a killing selling me a device that can do those things and not have to connect

      You aren't a market. People like you (such as myself) who value that, aren't a big enough market for anyone to make a killing from us. Between first-to-market advantages and lower costs because of centralising those tasks, I'm not seeing how a new competitor is going to be cheaper or offer more, and absent those you don't have a competitor.

      This is how Google falls

      Perhaps. Established players become complacent and can be outcompeted by changes in the market. I'm just not sure that 'not connected' is going to be that watershed.

    7. Re:I want my privacy back by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 1

      Basically what it means is that Google will manage the software that is running on your devices.

      Yep, does that for my Android phone. I manually update software packages though, automatically backing them up as they're installed. If something suddenly doesn't meet my needs but the previous version did, then I force downgrade and (manually :-( ) hold that one in place.

      Currently, that's Google News and Weather (so it launched my preferred browser, not the embedded Chrome one) and Back Button, which doesn't have a noisy full-screen ad every 15 minutes.

      And you do know on an Android phone (and I suspect Chrome OS) Google gets exactly which APK screens are active as well as how long.

      --
      If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
    8. Re:I want my privacy back by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      It is inevitable that as computers get more capable, these cloud services will become less attractive.

      What leap of logic led you to that conclusion? Computers are far more than capable to do the things we currently rely on the cloud for, and have been for MANY years.

    9. Re:I want my privacy back by The+Cynical+Critic · · Score: 1

      The point in Edge Computing, like it was with the old school system with dumb terminals and mainframes, a.k.a "Big Iron", is to make the user-facing part of the system less cumbersome (can you imagine a company deploying PDP-11s like personal computers?) and cut down on total system costs by concentrating the expensive parts of the system in a few places shares by hordes of users. It was and is essentially all about utilizing computing resources better, reducing overall redundancies and offering end users less cumbersome devices and applications.

      In most of it's applications old fashion Big Iron lost to personal computers because they could offer more or less the same capabilities with way more flexibility and lower cost. The resurgence of Big Iron (under new monikers like "Cloud" and "Edge Computing") is all due to a combination of backend costs going down (thanks to factors like cheaper personal computer-derived hardware, cheaper and better connections, new solutions with less per-user upkeep) and users raising the bar for what they consider to be unreasonably cumbersome devices and applications at their end. Personal computers, particularly desktops, are now considered unreasonably cumbersome and the same goes for traditional email server and desktop client applications.

      --
      "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
    10. Re:I want my privacy back by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      I'm afraid that "The edge" won't have the collected data from all the other devices used to tune systems such as speech recognition and geographical services. That data is bulky, and is constantly being tuned with the data from the _other_ devices. Constantly updating the edge devices for entirely local processing would be prohibitively expensive in terms of data storage and data transmitted for "edge" devices.

    11. Re:I want my privacy back by kenh · · Score: 1

      (can you imagine a company deploying PDP-11s like personal computers?)

      In the Fall of 1983 Stevens Institute of Technology did just that - I was in that freshman class.

      --
      Ken
    12. Re: I want my privacy back by ctilsie242 · · Score: 1

      There is a difference between a personal computer which was owned and controlled by the owner, versus IoT devices which are controlled by the device maker, and where the customer is not the person that buys the device, but the company buying the analytic info that the device streams back. The person who buys the device has zero control over it. Load a new OS? Good luck.

    13. Re:I want my privacy back by rogoshen1 · · Score: 1

      companies like google, MS, amazon will leverage their data harvesting bullshit to subsidize devices. Privacy oriented devices will not have that monetization to cushion the up-front cost.

      To the average consumer things like "we don't harvest your information, your privacy is *actually* important to us" are completely opaque, and don't enter into the equation -- and as such, do not win out over large price differences.

      FB and the Cambridge debacle result in minor, temporary outrage, and then it's back to the status quo -- people (by and large) do not care about privacy. And it will only get worse up until some kind of anti-trust legislation against these companies.

    14. Re:I want my privacy back by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      Sadly I agree with you I don't see a 'return' to personal computing. I don't edge computing to be much more than hype and buzz either frankly. If anything its going to be edge data-acquisition and ship it back to the cloud. We are mostly already there.

      There is to much advantage in 'the network' for Joe Average. Sure you and I can setup DNS and firewall rules and maybe a reverse proxy / dmz, setting up the certificate authorization etc so we can unlock the doors to our smart home or change the hvac settings when we decide to start headed home. Joe Average on the other hand really is better served by that stuff making a few outbound connections back to the cloud and his phone doing the same. All the complexities managed by someone else.

      As far as local search and stuff again in some situations like hiking thru the back country where GPS get blocked by mountains, and there is no cellular service etc, its hand to have a GPS unit that stores local maps and can track where you are with accelerators and altimeters between GPS reads but few people need that and for those of us that do; the technology already exists.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    15. Re:I want my privacy back by another_twilight · · Score: 1

      As others have noted, 'Edge' looks like the latest round of hype now that 'cloud' has pretty much settled down. It's an attempt to create a difference where there really isn't one.

      As you say, for most people who have neither the inclination or skills to set a lot of this up for themselves, the convenience of having someone manage this for them trumps privacy, security or the sort of control that I/we might value.

      Cloud is here to stay and better serves most people. There are probably more people, now, who can run their own networks and servers than there were ten years ago, but we're an ever shrinking percentage of the internet using whole.

    16. Re:I want my privacy back by KingBenny · · Score: 1

      i have a vocore that speaks, runs on aa-batteries and is wi-fi connected , hm ... no tracking there but it can tell me when my cat came in or out if i have at least two cams connected to other pc's but so basically after the mainframe it went to the attic, back to the mainframe called the cloud, back to the attic called edge its like fashion in a fashion then, only shinier with more fools gold

      --
      Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
    17. Re: I want my privacy back by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Just imagine being the fucker that is watching the camera footage of this toilet camera. Literally inspecting shit and maybe even assholes leaving shits. Just remember this person's job the next time you think you are having a bad day.

      Wouldn't this be precisely one of those jobs that would be assigned exclusively to AI?

  2. Edge computing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I thought the only thing people used Edge for was to download Chrome.

  3. Maybe Just Buzzwords Are Used Up by notsteve · · Score: 1

    Reading the article, all I see being described is the idea of going back to local processing and computation. Which, by definition, is not new. And definitely not edgy. Then again, how will I promote myself as an expert unless I make shit up?

  4. Poe's Law by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful
    These are the first two lines from the article:

    Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have proven to us that we can trust them with our personal data. Now it’s time to reward that trust by giving them complete control over our computers, toasters, and cars.

    There is no way anyone is crazy enough to write those lines in all seriousness.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    1. Re:Poe's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      These are the first two lines from the article:

      Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have proven to us that we can trust them with our personal data. Now it’s time to reward that trust by giving them complete control over our computers, toasters, and cars.

      There is no way anyone is crazy enough to write those lines in all seriousness.

      Read the top - theverge.com

    2. Re:Poe's Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's possible this article was planted/written by the coalition of those companies, who are trying to convince that "we don't need privacy any more"

    3. Re:Poe's Law by thegarbz · · Score: 1, Interesting

      There is no way anyone is crazy enough to write those lines in all seriousness.

      So as a matter of interest, why? Can you show a deliberate act where those 3 parties have abused or failed to secure your data? From the big three data leaks have ultimately resulted from users misconfiguring the services and nothing more. In the mean time there are Fortune 500 companies lining up to put secret and critical data on these services, and by that I mean shareprice moving data.

      What makes your toaster so important?

    4. Re:Poe's Law by The+Cynical+Critic · · Score: 2

      There is no way anyone is crazy enough to write those lines in all seriousness.

      I mean there is always the possibility of astroturfing and considering how the media industry has on the whole done nothing but lost money for the last few years it's probably to be expected for them to utilize every revenue stream available regardless of morality. Damn well wouldn't be first time a U.S based outlet, respected or not, lets their platform be used for astrotufing in return for compensation.

      Then again we are talking about consumer electronics press here and consumer electronics press has pretty much always been full of shills for the companies whose products they cover so Hanlon's Razor can still be applied to this.

      --
      "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
    5. Re:Poe's Law by StormReaver · · Score: 3, Informative

      Can you show a deliberate act where those 3 parties have abused or failed to secure your data?

      Each of those companies have abused and failed to secure people's data many thousands of times a year, and those are just the ones they are legally allowed to tell us about. Microsoft just fought and lost a years-long battle over this very thing, as Congress now mandates that those companies abuse and fail to secure our data as a matter of law.

      What makes your toaster so important?

      Because we in the U.S. have a right to protect our toasters from unreasonable searches and seizures. Putting all of your stuff onto someone else's computers is being interpreted by our Judicial branch as voluntarily waiving those rights.

      So thanks, but no thanks.

    6. Re:Poe's Law by gaspyy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Of course not. Read the conclusion of the article:

      When the devices in your home and garage are managed by Google Amazon Microsoft Apple, you don’t have to worry about security. You don’t have to worry about updates. You don’t have to worry about functionality. You don’t have to worry about capabilities. You’ll just take what you’re given and use it the best you can. In this worst-case world, you wake up in the morning and ask Alexa Siri Cortana Assistant what features your corporate overlords have pushed to your toaster, dishwasher, car, and phone overnight. In the personal computer era you would “install” software. In the edge computing era, you’ll only use it.

    7. Re:Poe's Law by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      There is no way anyone is crazy enough to write those lines in all seriousness.

      Unless they are in the back pockets of one or more of those 4 companies. Greed is rational if your main goal is to gain money.

    8. Re:Poe's Law by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Each of those companies have abused and failed to secure people's data many thousands of times a year

      Saying it is, doesn't make it so.

      Microsoft just fought and lost a years-long battle over this very thing, as Congress now mandates that those companies abuse and fail to secure our data as a matter of law.

      Oh so putting yourself in a position where your data may be discovered by a legal process is bad, I get it now. In the business we call this outsourcing. I mean it's not like you get to keep this data when the feds come knocking on *your* door right?

      But seriously if all you have to go on is legal compliance then I consider this an incredible positive result.

    9. Re:Poe's Law by Jerry · · Score: 1

      Each of those companies have abused and failed to secure people's data many thousands of times a year

      Saying it is, doesn't make it so.

      Microsoft just fought and lost a years-long battle over this very thing, as Congress now mandates that those companies abuse and fail to secure our data as a matter of law.

      Oh so putting yourself in a position where your data may be discovered by a legal process is bad, I get it now. In the business we call this outsourcing. I mean it's not like you get to keep this data when the feds come knocking on *your* door right?

      But seriously if all you have to go on is legal compliance then I consider this an incredible positive result.

      Are you trolling, or are you able to understand what he is saying? When you troll saying " ... I get it now", you actually have no clue. Watch and learn:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --

      Running with Linux for over 20 years!

    10. Re:Poe's Law by MonteCarloMethod · · Score: 2

      Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have proven to us that we can trust them with our personal data. Now it’s time to reward that trust by giving them complete control over our computers, toasters, and cars.

      I'm having a great deal of trouble nailing down exactly what genre of comedy that this falls into. Is it surreal? Is it deadpan? Is it insult? Cringe? Anti-humor? Black?

    11. Re:Poe's Law by yuriklastalov · · Score: 1

      The EU government just doesn't want any competition in the data abuse racket.

    12. Re:Poe's Law by StormReaver · · Score: 1

      Saying it is, doesn't make it so.

      These companies are served thousands of National Security Letters every year, because they are a one-stop shop for Law Enforcement. It's much, much easier for the Feds to abuse a few enormous data stores than it is to pursue each of them individually. As such, those data stores are ripe for abuse. You are FAR more likely to be the victim of collateral damage when you take part in those huge data stores than you are as an individual.

      Oh so putting yourself in a position where your data may be discovered by a legal process is bad...

      Absolutely. Even if, or especially if, you're sure you've done nothing illegal. Because you're wrong. Today, you have most likely done something illegal that you do not realize is illegal. It's the same thing with yesterday, and will be the same thing tomorrow. Unnecessarily putting your data in a position that is easily accessible by law enforcement is foolish. They WILL find something they can use to persecute you.

      ...I get it now.

      No, you don't.

      I mean it's not like you get to keep this data when the feds come knocking on *your* door right?

      The odds of the Feds coming knocking on my door are ridiculously small compared to the odds of the Feds getting my data by sweeping through one of the enormous data stores owned by these huge companies.

      But seriously if all you have to go on is legal compliance then I consider this an incredible positive result.

      That's so sad.

    13. Re:Poe's Law by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Nope, I asked him to come up with examples and he provided examples of submitting to a legal process. That isn't "failing to secure data" by any stupid stretch of the phrase.

    14. Re:Poe's Law by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      No, you don't.

      No YOU don't. I asked for examples where companies failed to secure data, and you provided examples where companies handed over information they were legally required to, an great example of companies following laws and handling data correctly.

    15. Re:Poe's Law by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Can you show a deliberate act where those 3 parties have abused or failed to secure your data?

      I have never failed to secure any data you sent me, or abused it. I assume you then trust me with your data - actually, that I've proven that you can trust me.

      Accidental data leaks are just as bad as deliberate security failures, so strike "deliberate" from your list. As far as "abuse" goes, how would I detect if Microsoft or Google or Amazon was abusing my data?

      It may be that those companies have excellent security (although no security is perfect) and have never abused data. That doesn't mean they've been proven trustworthy.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    16. Re:Poe's Law by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I have never failed to secure any data you sent me, or abused it. I assume you then trust me with your data

      Yes that's the nature of trust, except I don't trust you. I have no evidence to backup that trust.

      Accidental data leaks are just as bad as deliberate security failures

      You are perfectly right.

      As far as "abuse" goes, how would I detect if Microsoft or Google or Amazon was abusing my data?

      It may be that those companies have excellent security (although no security is perfect) and have never abused data. That doesn't mean they've been proven trustworthy.

      And that last part of your sentence doesn't agree with the rest of your post. You see the untrustworthy act doesn't need to be on *your* data. With these companies handling the likes of Fortune 500 companies, along with many zetabytes worth of customer data mistrust and abuse on any scale would have come to light by now.

      If I show you a google search of my name and say "see I've never been in the news for losing data, you can trust me" you would be right to not trust me. Just as I don't trust you for not having mishandled data I haven't given you.
      When the same happens for a company that handles the sheer volume and the mind-boggling number of customers as the big three the same example carries a very different weight.

      Incidentally this is precisely why in industry customer references carry a lot of weight. "Hey we have new shiny thing." "Okay that's great but my stuff is important so show me other customers which have your new shiny thing in service, and let me talk to them."

  5. Gotta use a new buzzword! by wierd_w · · Score: 1

    Because "Client side processing" is soooo 90s and early 2000s!!

    (rolls eyes)

    1. Re:Gotta use a new buzzword! by lucm · · Score: 1

      Because "Client side processing" is soooo 90s and early 2000s!!

      (rolls eyes)

      Edge computing doesn't mean client-side computing. It means that The Big Cloud has a lot ot Tiny Clouds spread all over the globe to store your browsing history (and emails if you use gmail) closer to regional advertisers.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  6. The Cloud is Overrated by rossz · · Score: 3

    A lot of people have swallowed the "container in the cloud" kool-aid by the gallons. Espousing it has the cure-all for all your computing needs. I'm far less enthusiastic about it. I can see it being very useful for many things, but is not the final answer. Unfortunately, I'm dealing with the zealots on a daily basis.

    --
    -- Will program for bandwidth
    1. Re:The Cloud is Overrated by lucm · · Score: 1

      A lot of people have swallowed the "container in the cloud" kool-aid by the gallons.

      Dude that's so 2016. Kool Kids now use Serverless, not containers.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  7. Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Many of us still own personal computers, but we mostly use them to access centralized services like Dropbox, Gmail, Office 365, and Slack"

    No we don't, lol.

    1. Re:Really? by coastwalker · · Score: 1

      I think the article refers to the hundreds of millions of appliance users who have a mobile phone or tablet. Not the traditional slashdot user who might be compiling their own software, tinkering with software defined radio or cranking up bleeding edge graphics for a first person shooter. There is a distinction between the two use cases which means that "edge" or personal computing has never gone away. It may also be the case that people may be reconsidering their trust in cloud services and want to keep their own data on their own network as well. I have about three terabytes of stuff that would also cost a lot to host in the cloud for example.

      --
      Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
  8. Haven't we been here before? by Stomper_Stoddard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    examine what people mean practically when they extoll edge computing," focusing on latency, privacy and security, and bandwidth."
    This sounds suspiciously like returning data from the cloud to my personal computer and the pendulum is swinging back again. In the 80's we had dumb terminals, in the 90's we had thin clients and then in the 2000's we got the cloud, all of these things were more or less the same thing. Dumb terminals and thin clients failed because of latency and bandwidth, the cloud will fail because of privacy and security.

    1. Re:Haven't we been here before? by rapjr · · Score: 2

      In part edge computing is driven by advances in the speed and low power cost of MCU's, which just now are capable of running some types of machine learning. There are several advantages to local computing, see our paper: NoCloud: Exploring Network Disconnection through On-Device Data Analysis https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~...

    2. Re:Haven't we been here before? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      This sounds like a re-launch of fog computing. Push the load on to the clients. Use it as an excuse to control the clients.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Haven't we been here before? by coofercat · · Score: 1

      The old mainframe/dumb terminal solution was still owned by the corporation you worked for. Thus, they owned the presentation and the processing, storage, etc.

      The cloud, by comparison means someone else owns the processing and storage ("BYOD" on a global scale, if you prefer to think of it like that). This is the key difference, which will (I suspect) end as you say due to privacy and security issues.

    4. Re:Haven't we been here before? by lazarus · · Score: 1

      Actually we haven't been here before. Although you bring up some good points, what is different this time is that a mature set of virtualization and orchestration tools combined with much more rigorous design around data centers gives us capability on-demand. The ability to be agile without a big up-front outlay of capital. Access to tons of APIs to help us get to EOJ faster. Why would you build your own shopping cart, streaming service, deep learning platform? You could (maybe), but you just don't need to now. You can focus on design more and hard hacking less.

      Your assertion that the cloud will fail because of privacy and security would only be true in very specific circumstance. A particular cloud service could fail because of those things, but "the cloud" will not. Because, frankly, it is more private and more secure than you can achieve on your own unless you are a fortune 100 company. Data centers have sophisticated 2N or N+1 architectures with very expensive highly-resilient components like STSs, PDUs, ATSs, UPSs, backup generators, biometric scanners, man traps, vehicle traps, crash-proof fencing, redundant power sources, interconnection services, multiple carriers, etc. And cloud providers have environments that are pre-certified for things like PCI and HIPAA (you're still not off the hook but building a compliant environment yourself would be much harder). Cloud environments are inherently more private, more secure and more resilient.

      My biggest concern with where we are going with all of this is the lack of ownership of anything. Companies like Microsoft and Oracle have figured how to finally ensure you pay for their software forever and never actually own it. If you stop paying, it stops working. It's the licensing model combined with the distribution model that is screwing us over. I'm buying my music pressed onto vinyl again after a company decided I didn't actually own a bunch of the music I had purchased. We are being nickled and dimed to death and there is no escape.

      --
      I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
    5. Re:Haven't we been here before? by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Not necessarily back to your computer, but back to something more important perhaps. Your automobile, a traffic light, a power plant, and so forth. That is, you rely on reflex actions rather than waiting for the brain to respond.

  9. I want my data back by Excelcia · · Score: 1

    If you want your privacy back then demand your data back. Ask where your data is going with each transaction. Now, for the type of data I have, I trust encryption to protect my data going over the internet, but we've learned that any time we turn our data over to someone else that it's not a matter of "if" but "when" that data will find itself somewhere we would rather it not be.

    In today's environment of easy access to home internet with speeds that rival a LAN of not too long ago, it's not hard to control all your data end points. Perhaps that's the new lame catch phrase we need. End point computing. Where everyone controls all their data end points. PC for processing, home central storage appliance for storage and archiving, media center for A/V, smartphone for portable and remote control. I also consider a rented virtual server (from a reputable company) to be close enough to personal property to count, and you can add that to your portfolio of processing if you want dedicated web applications like a good personally owned webmail. I don't actually expose my home storage appliance to the internet, though it's capable of it. I don't trust the security on it enough for that, so I use syncthing on my server for data synchronization and save bulk transfers to/from archive for when I'm home.

    Demand you own all your data end points and simply refuse to use any "service" which offers to take care of your data for you. I won't use gmail, dropbox, picasa, or anything which will make it easy if I just give them my property.

    If you want privacy, take back ownership of your data.

    1. Re: I want my data back by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      It isn't as important that internal email accounts are only company business as that company business be transacted on internal email accounts. Limited personal use of an internal account is unlikely to cause much damage, not nearly as much damage as firing someone for what is perceived as at best a minor offense.

      As far as criminal prosecution, what law changes are you proposing? It's pretty well established that the CFAA's idea of unauthorized access requires that the defendant either not have normal access or have been informed personally that access is revoked. You're talking about use of authorized access for unintended purposes.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  10. The bullshit cycle by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Next, everyone will discover that local computing actually has its benefits and the cycle will start again. Personally, I have zero hot vapor ("cloud") needs at this time and I will just continue to ignore this insanity. It does affect my work negatively though.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:The bullshit cycle by lucm · · Score: 1

      The Cloud can be useful. For instance I pay $5/month for Office365, where I have a big inbox for +50 domains, and I have a TB of OneDrive storage, and once in a blue moon when I need to use Excel or Word I can use the web version. If it was $100/month I'd probably put together my own box and stash it somewhere in a closet, but for $5 it's totally worth letting Microsoft deal with the hassle.

      Virtual machines are a different beast. It's very expensive to get anything semi-reliable in the cloud (no SLA unless you have a LB cluster) and because everything is a la carte it adds up. On a dollar basis, nothing beats a decent VPS like Linode.

      --
      lucm, indeed.
    2. Re:The bullshit cycle by swb · · Score: 3

      I read an interesting comment the other day where it was theorized that once the cloud gets past some tipping point, on-premise hardware will lose its economies of scale due to less adoption and few organizations will be able to go back on premise because the equipment will be too expensive. OEMs will be mostly producing parts for custom cloud provider designs and they won't be useful for on-prem purposes.

      I don't know that I buy it completely, but found it thought provoking. You would think that virtualization would have also had this effect -- even small companies I work for used to have 3-4 physical servers and now only have 1-2 for their workloads, yet server prices haven't gone though the roof, although it may just be that aggregate growth is so good that it covers up for it or even reduces demand-side inflation.

      It does kind of make me wonder what economies of scale would have done for physical server prices if virtualization hadn't been widely adopted and organizations that buy 4 servers for their 100 VMs were still buying a nearly equivalent number of physical servers. We'd probably be doing what we used to do, cramming a bunch of unrelated services onto the same OS box wherever there wasn't a service/port/utilization conflict rather than splitting out services into single-service VMs.

      Every once in a while I still run into a random client with a shitload of physical servers and it's kind of staggering. The last one was a company that had the same CFO and IT director for 20 years and an AS/400 shop with a really old-school IBM commitment.

    3. Re:The bullshit cycle by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      The "edge" will be a lot of things, as in Internet-of-Things. So the edge is not necessarily your PC or computing device. The description above just seems to be one vague description, but before this article all of the "edge computing" I had heard about was in regards to IoT types of applications. We've had some of this for a long time, just not called that. Ie, to prevent power blackouts there are devices that can sense problems and cut off circuits automatically. But even smarter would be if those sensors could talk to other sensors locally and make decisions locally/quickly, rather than just reporting data to some remote server room. Or edge computing could be doing local calculations (what's the average number of cars passing this location), aggregating them, and reporting the results that way, rather than sending all the raw data over a low bandwidth link.

  11. "The Cloud" = we steal your shit... by blahplusplus · · Score: 1

    ... that's the reality, corporations can simply force software to be bicycle chained to computers in their offices and warehouses halfway across the world because the fibre optic cables we've layed over the planet has granted them super powers to take products hostage, pre internet they had to give us the shit we were paying for. Post internet they can simply take them hostage and the tech literate adults are trapped hundreds of miles away.

    The cute little CEO's of videogame industry for instance basically stealing and breaking peoples games due to the dumbness of the average gamer. You bet DRM in diablo 3 and starcraft 2 wouldn't have been a thing if the entire gaming community was within two blocks of blizzard headquarters. The internet has granted them the ability to just NOT release the game and trap it inside computers in their offices while extracting tribute from our technocratic fuedal society that has emerged because technology undermines market ideology because there is no accountability for an organization that is hundreds of miles away. It's not that the outrage doesn't exist, it's that it needs physical proximity to have an effect on company policies. So post internet we'd need access to portal technology or a radical ideological revolution that gave us access to the equivalent resources of these big companies with bottomless wells of cash... So we could buy the time and travel our asses up their to hold these companies accountable.

    Reality is short of that we're living in a new feudal trechnocracy a new serfom enabled by technology and short of ideological change the public will live in a puddle of its own solipsistic capitalist worshipping piss because they don't have the brain cells to understand there aint no market without any accountability.

    1. Re:"The Cloud" = we steal your shit... by lucm · · Score: 1

      I stopped reading at "I stopped reading"

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  12. Definition by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's when your computation is juuuuusut about done, but then you stop the processor suddenly but leave the caches full.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Definition by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      But that'll give your computer blue CPUs!

  13. dumb (not a pejorative) terminals by mikesum32 · · Score: 1

    Thank you for the clarification.

    1. Re:dumb (not a pejorative) terminals by lucm · · Score: 1

      It's not dumb terminals, it's more like having a mini Google in semis and uhauls parked in every neighborhood in the world, for the sake of making your echo chamber as regional as possible. It's divide and conquer, pure and simple

      --
      lucm, indeed.
  14. Anus cream by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There's a swizzle stick in my pee hole.

  15. PCs were sidelined by big business by bigtreeman · · Score: 1

    PCs promised to give computing to the user.
    Big business couldn't let go of the power of centralised computing.
    We need to loose the server farms and have a true peer to peer computing network.

    --
    Go well
  16. Re:Lotta projection going on. by Godwin+O'Hitler · · Score: 1

    Here's a survey I did with a sample size of one:

    Dropbox - "(c) not to my knowledge" [x]
    GMail - "(b) yes, but not as my safe account" [x]
    Office 365 - "(d) No. Way." [x]
    Slack - "(e) uh, dunno. What is it?" [x]

    --
    No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
  17. Cyclical Theory of Computing? by lessthan · · Score: 1

    This feels like a cycle. The first computers only had a few users who were located nearby, then we had dumb terminals that allowed many people using the same computer, then personal PCs went back to the first model, then cloud computing was the second model, and now we are back to the first model. Maybe this all is just a marketing scheme?

    --
    Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
  18. Meh by Maury+Markowitz · · Score: 1

    > Then, in the Unix era, we learned how to connect to that computer using dumb (not a pejorative) terminals

    The "Unix era" started in the 1990s with Linux. Before that, even at its greatest extent, it was largely limited to universities and some vertical tasks like workstations and file servers. We're talking a few million machines on the planet, compared to several billion today.

    In any event, the period in which Unix was associated with dumb terminals was a tiny, tiny slice of its history. Dumb terminals are far more associated with the minicomputer era than "the Unix era". Yes, mainframes had them too, but the history of mainframes is mostly in the offline-storage era (punch cards and tapes) and its period of use with terminals is about the same as the mini.

    1. Re:Meh by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      We still have mainframes.
      And they have nothing to do with punch cards.

      For the people growing up with Unix, there most definitely was a unix area before Linux.

      Linux would not exist without unix and minix, and it would not have its success if not people leaving the university would have bought cheap PCs and installed Linux on it.

      You are underestimating the synergy effects, like a kind of Kontratieff, wide spread Unix know how, relatively cheap PCs and emerging Linux.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  19. Re:"Edge Computing" by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Probably not.

    The main problem with pure "cloud computing" (or as we used to call it: Shared Hosting) is latency and bandwidth, a problem that is harder without massive investment or even impossible to solve altogether. If you have 15,000 employees moving from internal e-mail to Office 365 or GMail, every single instance of these e-mail connections now has to go through your Internet pipes. Whereas you could've gotten away with a gigabit network port to your servers, you now have to have gigabit to the Internet on top of your existing needs, not always possible in certain areas and a huge expense regardless.

    The other problem with cloud computing is that the help desk and FTE costs never really went away. Whether you host the servers with Amazon or in-house, the support cost remained the same and the TCO went up for most unless whatever you were running really wasn't core to your business (so basically: if you saved money with the cloud, you were bad at managing your IT).

    As more people are looking at remote desktop solutions for various reasons (licensing, security, management and consolidation, GPU computing), the bandwidth requirements just aren't feasible anymore and nobody is clamoring to get 10Gbps ($10-15k/month) to the premises just to feed the cloud company. You can't give hundreds of single workstations a Tesla or a Quadro but you can give them a $500 Dell machine and connect to a system that has 32-something GPU instances. But you're not running this on the cloud, latency alone kills any practical application of it.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  20. Re:"Edge Computing" by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    Whoosh

  21. whoa! by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
    Edging, eh?

    Remember to get your computer's consent first.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  22. Re: One step closer by HarrySquatter · · Score: 1

    The Molestor?

  23. Personal computing? It's dead. by Catbeller · · Score: 1

    In the beginning was the One Box, with many terminals, and that's what the "cloud" is: mainframes and centralized control. Personal computing died in 2001 when all Intel/AMD chips encrypted the BIOS. "Your" computer isn't yours. It belongs to whomever rolls up the BIOS, in the end. Hacking that encryption is a DMCA crime, and a violation of some contract you "signed", though many will pop up and say it isn't.
    If you own a PC made before 2001, you may have a personal computer. After that, PCs and portable computing belong to corporations.
    It's been long enough, more than, for a couple of generations to not have heard of any of this. And they won't going forward. This is the aquarium water they breathe.
    I recall in Heinlein's "Friday", Friday Jones asked the networked computer she had been using for research a simple question: Who owns you? In a refreshing display of honesty, it refused to answer the question. Heinlein was a deep one.

  24. Re: Kool Kids now use Serverless by tigersha · · Score: 1

    Christ now I have to learn a new acrobym

    --
    The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  25. Re:Lotta projection going on. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    Slack is a chat client.
    Some company use it for messaging groups.
    It has an API so git pushes or pull requests or jenkins build success or fail messages can easy be routed into message groups.
    AS a client it kinda sucks, it is an HTML5 web thing running as a desktop Application (and/or on tablets etc.)

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  26. Re:"Edge Computing" by nnull · · Score: 1

    "(so basically: if you saved money with the cloud, you were bad at managing your IT)."

    Pretty much what's happening in a lot of places. Pretty much why every IT person that visits once a year just hands everyone Windows 10. There is a huge lack of IT personnel at these places to handle most things, so the easiest thing to do is to give it all to the cloud. Because who cares? The client doesn't seem to care as long as they don't have to hire IT people, because they see it as a waste of resources. That is, until they have a data breach, then they blame everyone but themselves.

  27. What is old is new again by Pyramid · · Score: 1

    I can't believe nobody thought of edge computing before!

    --
    ~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
  28. Re: Kool Kids now use Serverless by cyberchondriac · · Score: 1

    Essentially, it sounds like we're slowly getting back to a mainframe type philosophy, where less and less computing is done by the client, except the mainframe is now distributed across a cloud.

    --

    Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
  29. Re:"Edge Computing" by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Yes, and in those cases, if you can get away with NOT having an IT person, shared hosting websites/email is fine as it always was. We now call it Cloud but the concept is the same, we just scale it bigger so you can manage 1500 servers per 1 FTE. But once your IT needs grow beyond the one-admin operation, Cloud is typically a waste because you should just be bringing in a set of cheap servers in-house with a backup somewhere on a VPS.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  30. Firmly OUT of the Cloud. by X!0mbarg · · Score: 1

    I am sure I am not alone is stating for the record that I am NOT "cloud-based" in either my computing, or my data storage.

    Let my Stand-alone PC remain unclouded!

    Personally, I still can't get behind the current push my M$ to have the OS declared a "service" and no longer a product.

    I run Office from my system, and have no ties or reliance upon the net or any cloud service.

    OneDrive has been yanked, as has been anything that ties to any form of a Could-Based system.

    And I am still functioning well enough, no matter what people claim!

    I'll stay in the clear, blue sky, thanks.

  31. The "cloud" is just a remote server not owned or by Jerry · · Score: 1

    managed by you.

    As the use of personal grew corporations like Microsoft peddled software applications like Word and later Office to each PC owner, manufacturing millions of CD install discs. Piracy is impossible to control and corporations began looking for other ways. Hosting servers that offered access to office software for monthly or yearly fees solved two problems. It allowed Microsoft to upgrade their "cloud" servers and avoid previous sales or distribution methods for new sales or updates and patches, and, it allowed them to charge for storing users work files. Microsoft had thus achieved its original goals: charging per use of applications, not per application, and cutting down on manufacturing and distribution expenses.

    Recent news has pointed out the vulnerability of cloud security, and I suspect that we are hearing only the tip of the iceberg, but that's another issue. The real issue relates to market share. How can Microsoft and the other big corporations increase their market share? By forcing those who refuse to use the cloud to move to it. How will they do that? By bribing (a.k.a. lobbying) Congress to pass laws forbidding computer makers from including internal storage of any capacity, for reasons of "security", or allowing USB ports to use USB sticks with any significant capacity. Chromebook has blazed the trail in this direction.

    Future PCs will not be bootable at all without an Internet connection to approved sites. You cancel your "subscription" to that cloud service and your PC is bricked. You will be allowed to transfer to another cloud service only after you pay for a "transfer" fee and a "termination" fee, which allows your current cloud operator to transfer your login credentials to the other cloud. So why bother? Where ever you go on the Internet your presence will be recorded via the GUID stored in your boot prom. Anonymous browsing will be illegal. So will be access to the Dark Web. And it goes without saying that Linux and FOSS, although not formally declared illegal, will never have access to this "secure" PC paradigm.

    What to know what politics will be acceptable on this new web of clouds? See what Twitter, FB, YouTube and the like are doing to free speech now. They don't like what you write? They declare you to be a "", and ban or cancel your account for "hate speech".

    --

    Running with Linux for over 20 years!

  32. Actually, false flag self-fulfilling prophecies. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    They are a thing in PR and CIA/NSA-like agencies, and likey have been at least since the world wars.

    I recently even saw a lecture, teaching it to the newest version of corporate sleazebags.

    The main trick that makes it work, just like with any good con, is that nobody (normal) can believe anyone woule be *that* deceitful and manipulative. (And that it would be that big and that old.)

  33. Re:Ol Olsoc projecting his problems? Yes by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    See my subject & letting you f yourself dumbass https://it.slashdot.org/commen... you inferior moron.

    * Don't try "patronize" me BOY when I can show you are less than ZERO fucker... easily.

    P.S.=> Your DIM brains are blatantly inferior evidenced by your FAKE NAMES online for FAKE lives of being "ne'er-do-well" scum having the AUDACITY to even TRY "F" w/ me & ones like you you INFERIOR swine as I cast PEARLS before SWINE like you... apk

    Uncle Bingo - Hey, howyadoin'? Haven't heard from ya for a while. Good to see you're still kickin' and spunky as ever. Your doctor told us she was going to adjust your Haldol prescription. Looks like just a smidge more, and you'll be just like a regular person. The family will be so happy about that. Love and kisses from all.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  34. Re:You just proved you're a SOYBoy (lol) then by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    See subject SOYBoy (rotflmao) in your UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous "courageous" trolling you "not man" - LMAO!

    I hope English is not your first language.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  35. Re:Edge computing by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    low-lying cloud computing

    Fog computing?

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  36. Re:Edge computing by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Crap, I should go to sleep already. Missing half the words at this night hour...

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  37. Re:You = The "SiDeWaLk-ShRiNk of /.", lol by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

    Boring

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.