4 ms·

Files don't make as much sense on the web as on the desktop. I'm not sure we really need the concept of a 'file system' in the coming web era. As long as you

by axod 16y ago

Files don't make as much sense on the web as on the desktop. I'm not sure we really need the concept of a 'file system' in the coming web era. As long as you have the ability to move your data around, eg 'export photos from flickr to facebook', adding some file system only complicates matters.

stcredzero 16y ago
Right now, I am in a bit of a personal computing utopia. I've maxed out the ram of my 2 year old Macbook and installed an SSD. Now, the only wait I have that's longer than 1 second is for network stuff and most things are instant. This gets me wondering: what if we made everything orthogonally persistent in the cloud and used the 200 GB of local storage as a cache? There wouldn't be any notion of a hard disk. Instead, I'd have 200GB of persistent RAM (simulated by about 8GB of dynamic RAM, backed by 200GB of MLC Flash) directly synced with the cloud. I would never have to think about saving anything to disk. I'd just have "My Apps" and "My Data." They'd just always be there, forever. If I ever lost my laptop, so long as I have network, they'd still be there, just everything would run slower for a few days. This is a far cry, even from the Cr-48. Such a machine wouldn't even need to boot. [1] Everything would just always be there. (Apps would have to be rewritten to eliminate the notion of the disk.) Clearly, we already have the hardware and software to support this. At this point, it's just a matter of putting it all together. This would take some serious engineering, but whoever succeeded would basically be the next Microsoft. [1] - An easier way to accomplish this would be to maintain a small boot partition, but use the majority of the SSD for 200GB of swap. The kernel would have to be changed so that local swap is treated as a cache for pages stored in the cloud. This prevents us from having to engineer error correction directly in RAM. This would only be a stopgap, however, as eliminating the notion of a hard disk entirely would have significant benefits.
- pyre 16y ago
  > If I ever lost my laptop, so long as I have network, they'd still > be there, just everything would run slower for a few days. * It would also always be there for governments and corporations to spy on. * It would also always be there to some extent even if you tried to delete the data (archived by design or by request of government/corporation). * It would also make it that much easier for governments/corporations to secretly data-mine everyone's data for suspicion of subversive thoughts ... etc
  - axod 16y ago
    Those are pretty much the same point - privacy. Which most people aren't too worried about.
    - mdwrigh2 16y ago
      And if you're really concerned with this, haven't we generally solved this problem? Pass the information back and forth completely encrypted and only store the key locally. I mean, obviously the problem is far more difficult than that, but there's no reason we can't have data stored "in the cloud", while maintaining some privacy of information. I suppose what I really should say instead of "we've solved this" is that storing things "in the cloud" doesn't necessarily mean you give up all rights to privacy. There has to be some middle ground here.
orangecat 16y ago
The existence of user-visible files is orthogonal to local vs network. Dropbox gives you a network-accessible filesystem, and iOS stores data locally with no visible filesystem. As long as you have the ability to move your data around, eg 'export photos from flickr to facebook', adding some file system only complicates matters. I'm not convinced that having to learn how a dozen different websites import and export data is an improvement over having a file that I can do whatever I want with. That seems like a step back to the 90s where every app had a unique format and your options for manipulating and moving data around were limited to what each app explicitly supported.

by axod 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago

Right now, I am in a bit of a personal computing utopia. I've maxed out the ram of my 2 year old Macbook and installed an SSD. Now, the only wait I have that's longer than 1 second is for network stuff and most things are instant. This gets me wondering: what if we made everything orthogonally persistent in the cloud and used the 200 GB of local storage as a cache? There wouldn't be any notion of a hard disk. Instead, I'd have 200GB of persistent RAM (simulated by about 8GB of dynamic RAM, backed by 200GB of MLC Flash) directly synced with the cloud. I would never have to think about saving anything to disk. I'd just have "My Apps" and "My Data." They'd just always be there, forever. If I ever lost my laptop, so long as I have network, they'd still be there, just everything would run slower for a few days. This is a far cry, even from the Cr-48. Such a machine wouldn't even need to boot. [1] Everything would just always be there. (Apps would have to be rewritten to eliminate the notion of the disk.) Clearly, we already have the hardware and software to support this. At this point, it's just a matter of putting it all together. This would take some serious engineering, but whoever succeeded would basically be the next Microsoft. [1] - An easier way to accomplish this would be to maintain a small boot partition, but use the majority of the SSD for 200GB of swap. The kernel would have to be changed so that local swap is treated as a cache for pages stored in the cloud. This prevents us from having to engineer error correction directly in RAM. This would only be a stopgap, however, as eliminating the notion of a hard disk entirely would have significant benefits.

pyre 16y ago
> If I ever lost my laptop, so long as I have network, they'd still > be there, just everything would run slower for a few days. * It would also always be there for governments and corporations to spy on. * It would also always be there to some extent even if you tried to delete the data (archived by design or by request of government/corporation). * It would also make it that much easier for governments/corporations to secretly data-mine everyone's data for suspicion of subversive thoughts ... etc
- axod 16y ago
  Those are pretty much the same point - privacy. Which most people aren't too worried about.
  - mdwrigh2 16y ago
    And if you're really concerned with this, haven't we generally solved this problem? Pass the information back and forth completely encrypted and only store the key locally. I mean, obviously the problem is far more difficult than that, but there's no reason we can't have data stored "in the cloud", while maintaining some privacy of information. I suppose what I really should say instead of "we've solved this" is that storing things "in the cloud" doesn't necessarily mean you give up all rights to privacy. There has to be some middle ground here.

orangecat 16y ago

The existence of user-visible files is orthogonal to local vs network. Dropbox gives you a network-accessible filesystem, and iOS stores data locally with no visible filesystem. As long as you have the ability to move your data around, eg 'export photos from flickr to facebook', adding some file system only complicates matters. I'm not convinced that having to learn how a dozen different websites import and export data is an improvement over having a file that I can do whatever I want with. That seems like a step back to the 90s where every app had a unique format and your options for manipulating and moving data around were limited to what each app explicitly supported.