Servers and thin clients in every home is the future they stole from us | Hacker News Reader

Servers and thin clients in every home is the future they stole from us

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26 pointskkfx11 comments

I mostly just wish there was an open casting protocol that was in use. I want screens abound, and the ability to fast from my phone to the various devices about. But also for one of those screens to be a tablet that I can pick up and use to cast to a TV.

There's all these appliance-ifications on computing. Casting is from X types of computers to Y types of computers. The relationships are always weirdly specifically predicated.

I don't really want thin clients. I like the cast model where we can send web pages at screens, have them be remotely commanded thicker clients to wherever we want. I want home services too, want headless services. I think there's some roles for VDI, h264 (and newer) desktop streaming; I use sunshine/moonlight for game streaming! Maybe much more! But generally I don't want centralization, don't want a big pet; I want ubiquitous computing that can be orchestrated and controlled, I want mobile ambient code and agents that can go to the devices they are wanted on. The pool of resources a server can offer is great but it's the most uncreative most inflexible unambitious model; I want us getting good at expanding out (which we also don't do well in 99% of cases!!)

Also let's talk connectivity. With wifi 7 I think we're finally at the point where multiple devices can share the airwaves reasonably well (multi ru). This feels to me like a minimum start for this future we (might) want.

Since some years I bark that a perfectly possible future is a small machine room in remote workers homes, a distributed "cloud" for their employer, with domestic p.v. and aircon to complete the picture and in general a homeserver and a domain name per every home, a subdomain per device to access personal services.

Very happy than someone else essentially see something similar! Still curious about the many who still fails to see the rest, meaning the whole picture of such potentially current society.

I already give up way too much of my own home to an employer with a desk. I live in 700 square feet and I’m not giving up anymore!

It appears to me that the vision has transmuted into small Linux boxen running HomeAssistant and other services being accessible by any laptop, tablet, smartphone, etc around the home.

Tip note: instead of chucking old (Android) smartphones in a drawer to be forgotten, update Chrome on them, configure WiFi and use them as general purpose thin-clients.

Interestingly that was Microsoft’s vision for Windows where a Windows computer would serve as the home digital hub.

Ironically, it was open source operating systems that made it cost-effective to build the massive data centers that centralized the experience and killed that vision.

The problem with the Windows home computer vision was that it comprised of a bulky beige box with numerous power and data leads snaking out of it and a monstrous CRT based monitor (usually on top) and a huge clacky keyboard. Typically taking 6+ sq ft of table/bench space.

Today's tablets are far more convenient to locate where they are needed and portable as well.

Selling hardware since XT/286 days. For the last 3y I'm placing nothing but Lenovo M70q and M75q thin clients. For general purpose computing, they've been perfect.

I had been buying i5-12400 w/ 16GB for $300-$400 w/ 2yr onsite warranty. But the tariffs are taking their toll and now those same boxes are closer to $600

Aren't Lenovo M70q just small PCs? Or are you running some sort of thin client software on them?

> Aren't Lenovo M70q just small PCs?

Guilty as charged. They're deployed as thin clients all over but I don't know why. My son's employer runs M70q as TC's and cycles them out every 3 years.

No complaint here. I'm happy to pick them up for 25¢ on the dollar (45¢ now, thanks tariffs).

I guess we've outsourced that task to companies like Apple and Google. Your phone or tablet could be your thin client. You'd serve up the apps that you've bought directly from the developer, install and serve them from your own servers.

I don't think everyone wants this, techies and people interested in the topic definitely like the idea but the average person is much happier with a phone, laptop or table that they use to connect to the world and don't really need a whole damn server in the basement or wherever. What about apartments and things like that? Space is an issue.

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