Bringing back the PC | Hacker News Reader

Bringing back the PC

idiallo.com

41 pointsibrad13 comments

The personal cloud built on FOSS is a very nice idea. We need this real bad.

I think the technological complexity of implementing this is quite serious---setting this up for the average non-technical person would be an impossible task. If we can get past the Dynamic DNS + opening ports on the home router, this will be immediately useful. Then again maybe "my personal cloud" could be on AWS to begin with, see [1].

Are there any efforts for the "personal cloud" platforms that have traction? I'm interested particularly for easy-to-use ones---possibly focussing on a single application, e.g., share pictures with your family from the old PC in your closet.

[1] http://minireference.com/blog/a-scriptable-future-for-the-we...

I don't know that this is an ideal solution. For one, not all devices are switched on or in use at the same time. Another the security concerns you raise.

I think the solution is a server-based one, where the server is a zero-knowledge service that simply holds client-side encrypted data until a device connects to sync up. All clients (phone, tablet, laptop, PC and whatever we haven't invented yet) connects to that server only to pull down changes made on another device, and encrypts and then pushes it's own changes to the server as they happen. I should be able to run and/or host my own server anywhere, be that AWS, Heroku, Azure...

It's not rocket science. I built a database that does this, but obviously falls short of platform-level access, which is what's really needed to sync up everything from alarms, brightness settings and email/calendars to where I got to in the movie I'm busy watching.

It's not rocket science. I built a database that does this, but obviously falls short of platform-level access, which is what's really needed to sync up everything from alarms, brightness settings and email/calendars to where I got to in the movie I'm busy watching.

I used to have this; it was called NFS. I've still got my .bash_profile from well over a decade ago that sets timeouts for display dimming. Sadly, far too many software authors think that all configuration data needs to be kept in fs-locked binary formats, instead of, you know simple text files ("keep everything in plain text"), where it can be easily versioned or shared via a plethora of methods.

Granted, the central server and connecting to it takes more setup (I'm firmly of the opinion that the only real reason Google and Apple sync services are preferred is that they're the default; you don't have to answer any pesky questions about IP addresses, etc), but I think there could easily be a market for a pre-packaged "personal cloud" box that you plug in at home, install an app, and it finds the "cloud box" on wifi, then hooks everything to sync everything.

That cloud box at home is good, I think, as long as Joe Consumer knows to leave it switched on and plugged into the intertubes. So with you on config data.

For non-technical folks this is pretty difficult.

The average person can purchase an off the shelf personal cloud and probably get somewhere with storing and accessing files but going beyond that requires help.

As a test I set up owncloud and personal email on a digital ocean droplet just last night on their lowest tier. So far so good. But it needs some help on the user friendly aspects, like sharing a photo gallery.

Lookup Trovebox; it was on HN a while back.

I'm pretty non-savvy about servers, but I have been trying to learn ansible, and at the same time I wanted to consolidate some personal servers, so I used this to deploy more-or-less the same thing on DO the other day:

https://github.com/al3x/sovereign

My experience was that it wasn't impossible, and faster than spinning up a postfix/dovecot server by hand... but it was really buggy and lots of little problems. As far as I could tell, there were some problems using the encfs with the kernal DO uses, and that took a lot of troubleshooting.

I am thinking that at some point there will be a setup that is as easy as, say, spinning out a wordpress site on shared hosting.

> The personal cloud built on FOSS is a very nice idea. We need this real bad.

Okay, but can we please stop calling a computer "a cloud"? It's just a computer. A personal computer, if you will.

Here are some interesting projects to look out for:

http://freedomboxfoundation.org/

https://doc.yunohost.org/

https://arkos.io/

I had the fortune of watching a presentation by that last one, looks really promising.

I have a raspi with ArkOS as a home server, and it's good. Some minor stability bugs presently, but the user interface is beyond excellent compared to other home-hosting solutions.

Back in the late '90's I thought lots of aspiring computer scientists were already using Windows or Linux as they VPN'd from their remote laptop back to home so they could access their personal files and full desktop through VNC. Not much differently than people would do on a commercial scale to their company network when they were away. Mainly dial-up except for the few who had broadband.

I was too preoccupied with natural science, but by 2003 I got a cellphone containing a regular USB GSM modem and would use that plugged in to my laptop to log in to my own desktop PC network using dial-up my dang self. From anywhere having cellular service, no need for a wireless data plan which was not available in most coverage areas anyway. Was good to have a nationwide calling plan which most people did not have either, and it still used up minutes of your monthly allowance.

No FOSS on the laptop back then for me usually, but if you had broadband at a remote location too, Windows XP had everything you needed to VPN back to a regular home Linksys router which normally contained its own VPN endpoint in those days with a new service called DynDNS already preconfigured in the router's firmware. Too bad DynDNS is not free any more but with the router handling VPN, you could still access a home network that was barebones Windows9x, Linux, even DOS.

No need for software, just common hardware and regular Windows features.

Unless you wanted the automated "Assistant" type stuff like in the article, then you would need software, regular users would never call it apps.

Later once 3G wireless arrived, I got a phone supporting that and could get better speeds (when available) than dial-up, and without even needing the laptop when I just wanted convenient recreational use on the small-screen. Never did want to lose the regular dial-up cell modem from my toolbox though, but a number of years ago Tmobile walled it off. So much for Plan B when there is no 4G, which is still not everywhere. Plus, no faxing for you[1] directly from a laptop through a cellphone any more, without having to go through a web service. Clouds got in my way.

[1] I realize now the '80's called and they want their facsimile machine back, but I was out of tape on my telephone answering machine ;-)

I like the ideas in this article.

Rather than the big footprint whitebox/blackbox from PC 1.0, instead I imagine PC 2.0 being a very small board, no fans, no spinning drives but having very fast CPUs and GPUs driving big monitors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nettop Or, the very fast CPUs and GPUs with or without fans would hide quietly away in a closet but with a connector hub on my desk. It could draw a lot of power if required. It would be like an iMac, but with an open and modular PC 2.0 board that is separate from the big dumb monitor(s).

Rather than UEFI or UEFI-like so-called "secure" boot, instead PC 2.0 would be instantly on, and support virtual "smart" bootloaders as an option. So without a config card (swipe or whatever), it would default to turning on instantly. With a previously used config card it would turn on instantly using that previous configuration. For any new config card to would actually "boot" up the new configuration and create a new "instant on" configuration. There would be options to backup and remove old configurations, and to set the default instant on configuration. Sort of like Virtual Box snapshots, but using hardware for the snapshots to actually make the computer "instantly" turn on.

I am totally behind the spirit of your article. I also believe it's a travesty that we have so much power that can be attained so cheaply, yet we aren't using it at home.

Super nice article. In some ways a next step compared to 'The Mother Of All Demos', in some ways a step back. But still quite neat.

One thing all those 'always on' devices could use their unused cycles for is to create things like federated search engines, peer-to-peer encrypted backups (for instance, seed a torrent of your own encrypted data with a key only you know, boot your 'assistant' afresh and the first thing it could ask you is to restore from some torrent).

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