5 ms·
Provenance and trust are relevant for a remote KVM. But I can't find any information on their Web site about who runs the JetKVM company, not even a partial na
by neilv 1y ago
Provenance and trust are relevant for a remote KVM.
But I can't find any information on their Web site about who runs the JetKVM company, not even a partial name or handle of anyone, nor even what country they are in. Which seems odd for how much this product needs to be trusted.
Searching elsewhere, other than the company Web site... Crunchbase for JetKVM shows 2 people, who it says are based in Berlin, and who also share a principal company, BuildJet, which Crunchbase says is based in Estonia. The product reportedly ships from Shenzhen. BuildJet apparently is a YC company, but BuildJet's Web site has very similar lack of info identifying anyone or their location, again despite the high level of trust required for this product.
Are corporate customers who are putting these products into positions of serious trust -- into their CI, and remote access to inside their infrastructure -- doing any kind of vetting? When the official Web sites have zero information about who this is, are the customers getting the information some other way, before purchasing and deploying?
If these people are still running the companies, why aren't they or anyone else mentioned on the company Web sites? That would be helpful first step for trust for corporate use. So its absence is odd.
- delusional 1y agoI don't think this is nearly at the stage of "corporate customers putting into serious trust" Buildjet (the parent company) looks to be a pretty small company with currently modest revenue[1]. I agree that the absence of people on both webpages is sort of odd. I think it make more sense for their original service (CI workers) than it does for a hardware product. https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/16075023/Buildjet-O%C3%9C?search_id=eb52dc5&pos=1 https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/16075023/Buildjet-O%C...
- trenchpilgrim 1y agoI think products like JetKVM are targeting hobbyists and small outfits; corporations who aren't on a public cloud are using stuff like idrac, ilo, or dedicated rackmount KVM hardware.
- echo7394 1y agoIDrac often demands that the PC connecting to it be on the same network however, an rkvm like this let's you skip the pc-in-the-middle step.
- trenchpilgrim 1y agoFine for one or two machines, but if you're dealing with a rack or more, an extra machine for management tools is no big deal.
- neilv 1y agoTrue. Small outfits can be a pretty big category of companies that don't have a fully locked-down enterprise security environment with clout who can insist that everything like that racked and put under their control. Homelabbers tend to like rackmount. (I've owned multiple servers with such dedicated remote management/access hardware built in.) JetKVM seems designed to be more a shadow IT at individual desks solution, for use at companies that don't prohibit and actively police that.
- pseudalopex 1y agoHome lab is a subset of hobbyists. And many of them like mini PCs.
- wkat4242 1y agoYes me too. A lot of my stuff is NUCs and similar. Several of those nice ultra-cheap N100s. Amazing stuff
- fukka42 1y agoI have a "server" at home. It's just an old desktop. I use a PiKVM (similar to JetKVM) to manage it remotely when the kernel crashes or I fuck up the boot. It happens rarely, but it's nice I can just fix things remotely. The PiKVM runs wireguard so it's reasonably secure. I assume JetKVM can do the same.
- 1y ago
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoIt does share similarity to a rebranded Sipeed NanoKVM model already sold in China. Would have to dump the flash with proper tooling, and load up a clean OS on a blank chip to even begin checking for issues. Mostly, these gadgets are purposely built like garbage for a number of reasons. If I needed a DIY KVM install for a home-theater, I'd just setup a https://pikvm.org/ https://pikvm.org/ install. =) https://github.com/pikvm/pikvm/ https://github.com/pikvm/pikvm/
- trenchpilgrim 1y agoFor those prices I could buy an old PC to do out of band management and have over half the money left over. The appeal of JetKVM/NanoKVM is they're price competitive with an extra PC for a tiny fraction of the physical and power footprint.
- gcommer 1y agoFor feature parity, the old PC will require USB OTG, HDMI input, wiring for ATX control, and a software stack.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoSipeed makes a PCIe KVM card for around $80 that drops into standard PC cases. I'd assume it runs off the 5v standby power when the primary ATX supply is sleeping. =3 https://github.com/sipeed/NanoKVM?tab=readme-ov-file https://github.com/sipeed/NanoKVM?tab=readme-ov-file
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoA pi4 is $35 + parts, and can do a PXE server as well... but it is the OS/kernel upkeep that always hits proprietary devices. Small recycled PCs can certainly work too, and reminds me of the https://guacamole.apache.org/ https://guacamole.apache.org/ project. =3
- philjohn 1y agoThe firmware is open source and you can compile and flash your own. You can even run your own version of their cloud access offering https://github.com/jetkvm https://github.com/jetkvm
- brasizecalc123 1y ago[dead]
- XiS 1y agoThis guy on YouTube made several videos reviewing these and also doing some WireShark analysis, also on NanoKVM. Personally I'd never use these on an interned facing network. But they can still be handy for local only. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yHhdTRVvDFU&pp=0gcJCQYKAYcqIYzv https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yHhdTRVvDFU&pp=0gcJCQYKAYcqIYz...
- tguvot 1y agoi got nanokvm pro desktop a couple of days ago. looks like what was before is no more now. i run tcpdump for a while, the only outbound connections are ntp
- Y_Y 1y agoEstonia is (trying to be) the Delaware of the EU for companies. They make it deliberately convenient for any Europeans to incorporate there, so I wouldn't read much into that.
- gcommer 1y agoThis is why I recently went with a PiKVM. Pricier and clunkier but much more open and transparent.
- mfrye0 1y agoIf you do this sort of thing often, I'd love to chat further. I'm basically trying to automate this sort of manual research around companies with a library of deep research APIs. Had a show HN last week that seemed to go under the radar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45671087 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45671087 We launched corporate hierarchy research and working on UBO now. From the corporate hierarchy standpoint, it looks like the Delaware entity fully owns the Estonian entity. Auto generated mermaid diagram from the deep research: graph TD e1[BuildJet, Inc.]-->|100%, 2022-12-16|e2[Buildjet OÜ]
- embedding-shape 1y agoIf you want to feature a governance structure infamously hard to get right and impressive to use as an demo, IKEA/Ingka would be an good example.
- mfrye0 1y agoGood idea! I picked a random California Ikea entity (IKEA US RETAIL LLC) and ran it through the system. Here's the output - current goal is to get to ultimate parent. ## Summary IKEA US RETAIL LLC is a limited liability company. It is wholly owned by IKEA Holding U.S., Inc., and ultimately controlled by Stichting INGKA Foundation, a Dutch foundation that owns Ingka Group. ## Graph graph TD e2[IKEA Property, Inc.]-->e1[IKEA US RETAIL LLC] e3[IKEA Holding U.S., Inc.]-->e1[IKEA US RETAIL LLC] e4[Ingka Holding B.V.]-->e3[IKEA Holding U.S., Inc.] e4[Ingka Holding B.V.]-->e4[Ingka Holding B.V.] e5[Stichting INGKA Foundation]-->|100%, 1982|e4[Ingka Holding B.V.] This is the permalink to the deep research result: https://savvyiq.ai/playground/entity-hierarchy/siq_31ro4EDceEdlqkZOptNAL https://savvyiq.ai/playground/entity-hierarchy/siq_31ro4EDce...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jychang 1y agoLogin gated
- dangoodmanUT 1y agoJetKVM is a YC-funded company, and Jeff Geerling has done at least one video on them
- lloeki 1y agohttps://github.com/jetkvm/kvm/graphs/contributors https://github.com/jetkvm/kvm/graphs/contributors gives us top contributors @ym and @adamshiervani both being Berlin-based, plus @IDisposable in Saint Louis, MO. > Estonia Dunno if this is still the case now but Coinbase used to have an IBAN in Estonia (or maybe Latvia, can't recall). The three baltic states became quite the EU tech hub lately. > The product reportedly ships from Shenzhen This is not unusual for low-count (<10000) orders and "cut the middleman" when you can't recoup the logistics cost of having a local stock. Most products come out of Shenzen (or another) anyway, "shipped from" is quite a lousy indicator of anything. I would appreciate a bit more transparency regarding some provenance bits but hey it's a niche Kickstarter still, not a full-blown scaled-up enterprise.
- SR2Z 1y ago> Dunno if this is still the case now but Coinbase used to have an IBAN in Estonia (or maybe Latvia, can't recall). The three baltic states became quite the EU tech hub lately. They've all made doing business remarkably easy - you can get a digital ID and open a bank account without ever being present in the country, and their digital offerings are based on solid crypto and not just centralization. An incredible example of what modernizing government infrastructure and regulation can do. It's a shame that the cryptobros currently in charge of the US have basically nuked Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) so that they can continue to grift without supervision.
- theamk 1y agoThe website mentions Kickstarter, and Kickstarter page [0] has "Founders" section. It's pretty fuzzy, but at least there are founders' names. But the country of jurisdiction is not mentioned anywhere, and it is very important for remote KVMs. > Founder Team > Our founders and team work remotely, scattered across the world, including Germany, China, and New Zealand. We gathered experience from the field of design to software engineering & hardware development. We are the right blend of people, sharing expertise in our team. We're server enthusiasts and thriving to create products that also, literally, work for us. Co-Founders of JetKVM - Adam Shiervani(left), Lian Duan(right) > Lastly, we are not the only ones, who are dedicated and working full-time on this project. A number of contractors, specializing in various fields are helping us every day, to move forward and unfold the potential of our ideas. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jetkvm/jetkvm/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jetkvm/jetkvm/descripti...