3 ms·

I don’t think the author was meaning to cut out hardware all together, more that he is becoming hardware agnostic. Upgrading his hardware means nothing since he

by prox 3y ago

I don’t think the author was meaning to cut out hardware all together, more that he is becoming hardware agnostic. Upgrading his hardware means nothing since he has virtualized everything and is probably pretty quick.

readthenotes1 3y ago
Well, the article says "My new computer has no hardware." What they has really done is just redefined the word "computer" from being the hardware on which we run our software to being the software that we run on someone else's hardware. I guess since a computer used to be someone who used computing machinery we are getting a little ouroboros here
noman-land 3y ago
The fatal flaw with this idea, which I haven't been able to get around, is that you now spend your life entering passwords and doing sensitive work on supremely untrusted hardware.
- ikurei 3y ago
  I don't think the assumption is you'd be doing that all the time. It's just good that you can do it if needed. If my laptop is stolen, I can just buy any linux-compatible laptop and run this, or I can borrow someone else's if I judge the risk acceptable. From the article: > When I switch from my work computer to my personal computer I just bring the USB stick with me; same thing next time I upgrade a computer.
- dncornholio 3y ago
  As long as you decide where you put your USB stick in, this is not a fatal flaw or a flaw at all.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Did he say he was using it on untrusted hardware he didn't own? I saw it as something he can run wherever he wants without having to migrate configs and data. Like you are flying in a different country, go to a store, buy a computer, start an hypervisor and you are done. I would still reinstall first that new computer with an OS of my choice, but an extension of his method could be to have that qemu image stored on a liveusb that already has qemu installed. Maybe that is what he does.
  - ekianjo 3y ago
    > I saw it as something he can run wherever he wants without having to migrate configs and data. Much more practical to use syncthing
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      Or not. To achieve the same with syncthing you'd need an aditionnal layer for the config like: git + stow, puppet, ansible, or using a distro like nix. + several GB of data may be moved faster from A to B using sneakernet than internet.
demondemidi 3y ago
But that’s pretty much what the cloud and distributed computing has been about for three decades. I was launching netbatch jobs in 1995 and never knew if they were running on HPUX, AIX, or SunOS. The OP has added an enormous amount of risk to their workflow by relying on incredibly unreliable flash storage. I wouldn’t touch this strategy with a ten foot pole. I can be hardware agnostic with five nines redundancy with cloud services.

by prox 3y ago

readthenotes1 3y ago

Well, the article says "My new computer has no hardware." What they has really done is just redefined the word "computer" from being the hardware on which we run our software to being the software that we run on someone else's hardware. I guess since a computer used to be someone who used computing machinery we are getting a little ouroboros here

noman-land 3y ago

The fatal flaw with this idea, which I haven't been able to get around, is that you now spend your life entering passwords and doing sensitive work on supremely untrusted hardware.

ikurei 3y ago
I don't think the assumption is you'd be doing that all the time. It's just good that you can do it if needed. If my laptop is stolen, I can just buy any linux-compatible laptop and run this, or I can borrow someone else's if I judge the risk acceptable. From the article: > When I switch from my work computer to my personal computer I just bring the USB stick with me; same thing next time I upgrade a computer.
dncornholio 3y ago
As long as you decide where you put your USB stick in, this is not a fatal flaw or a flaw at all.
prmoustache 3y ago
Did he say he was using it on untrusted hardware he didn't own? I saw it as something he can run wherever he wants without having to migrate configs and data. Like you are flying in a different country, go to a store, buy a computer, start an hypervisor and you are done. I would still reinstall first that new computer with an OS of my choice, but an extension of his method could be to have that qemu image stored on a liveusb that already has qemu installed. Maybe that is what he does.
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > I saw it as something he can run wherever he wants without having to migrate configs and data. Much more practical to use syncthing
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    Or not. To achieve the same with syncthing you'd need an aditionnal layer for the config like: git + stow, puppet, ansible, or using a distro like nix. + several GB of data may be moved faster from A to B using sneakernet than internet.

demondemidi 3y ago

But that’s pretty much what the cloud and distributed computing has been about for three decades. I was launching netbatch jobs in 1995 and never knew if they were running on HPUX, AIX, or SunOS. The OP has added an enormous amount of risk to their workflow by relying on incredibly unreliable flash storage. I wouldn’t touch this strategy with a ten foot pole. I can be hardware agnostic with five nines redundancy with cloud services.