5 ms·

If I had two computers I'd consider this. I'd probably want a KVM to swap the keyboard and mouse

• backtoyoujim 3y ago
  Ah the ol' 'no internet access but internet access' type of no internet access.
• skybrian 3y ago
  You'd still have your phone, I presume? "No internet access" isn't what it used to be.
  • TillE 3y ago
    A phone is fine for brief communication, but awful for eg, searching/reading documentation.
    • Gigachad 3y ago
      Google can easily just replicate all docs and a copy of SO inside their network. As well as the future of LLMs all internal.
• galkk 3y ago
  Usually disposable vm is enough, like windows sandbox. Googlers by default, though, aren’t allowed to run vms (VMware/virtualbox style) on their desktops/workstations.
  • xnx 3y ago
    I thought most Googler's main machine was virtual. Maybe not for developers? https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioners/googles-virtual-desktop-future https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/developers-practitioner...
    • UncleMeat 3y ago
      A huge number of people now do most of their dev work on cloud machines. I'm one of them. I don't even have a workstation anymore. Just ssh into the cloud box to build and run code. Eliminating general access to the internet on my cloud machine wouldn't affect me at all.
      • lopkeny12ko 3y ago
        I have never in my career seen a good implementation of cloud development. At every company I've ever worked for, "cloud development" is nothing but a Linux VM that gets provisioned for you in AWS, a file watcher that syncs your local files to the VM, and some extra CLI tools to run builds and tests on the VM. And every time I've used this, the overhead of verifying the syncing is up to date, the environment is consistent between my laptop and VM is the same, all this other mess...every time I end up just abandoning "cloud dev" and doing things on my laptop. God forbid you change a file in your cloud VM and forget to sync in the reverse direction. Not only is local development more reliable, but it's also faster (no remote network hop in the critical path of building things).
        • s1gnp0st 3y ago
          Why would you need files locally when most IDEs support a session over SSH that doesn't even involve a remote desktop tool? Just edit the files over there.
          • lopkeny12ko 3y ago
            Like an sshfs mount? Those are painfully slow and unreliable.
            • leetcrew 3y ago
              idk how it's implemented, but vs code server works just fine for me. there's something to be said for building and running tests in the same environment your service targets. that's usually not going to be macOS or your favorite linux distro.
  • kobalsky 3y ago
    that's really interesting. is there any public document or manual describing their workstations and policies? like the SRE manual
    • galkk 3y ago
      https://research.google/pubs/pub47055/ https://research.google/pubs/pub47055/
• Maxious 3y ago
  It's now considered safe enough to use something like a Linux/Xen hypervisor to access multiple security domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Independent_Levels_of_Security https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Independent_Levels_of... eg. https://www.ainfosec.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AIS-SecureView-Overview.pdf https://www.ainfosec.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/AIS-Secu... https://www.ainfosec.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/SecureView_Overview_Master_PA_Cleared_7Oct13.pdf https://www.ainfosec.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/SecureVi...
• amf12 3y ago
  Every Software role employee at Google has two computers, a laptop and a cloudtop. I have no idea what this pilot is about but I suspect it affects the instance you ssh into and not the laptop, which is perfectly acceptable. The VM does not require "internet" access for the work done.