What happens when your cloud service just pulls the plug - Insteon gone

[ebastler]

Remember, almost all consumer CLOUD junk is hosted in China.

Is that so? I would have assumed that the major consumer brands predominantly use Amazon, Google and Microsoft cloud services, and that these are hosted in the US and in Europe.

Would you have examples of consumer-brand IoT systems which have their servers based in China?

[cdev]

Nothing, because corporations just go out of business without any accountability. Thats a thing they do. take their money and run. Thats why corporations are set up. To insulate debtors from creditors.

[cdev]

a single EMP attack could kill all cloud, internet and devices over an entire continent or country

Back to,1950, vacuum tubes will still  work fine..

Checkout Starfish Prime Pacific nuclear test in 1952

Jon

Remember, almost all consumer CLOUD junk is hosted in China.
They may close the door any time.

Its not true that "almost all cloud junk is hosted in China"  Thats untrue of US cloud services. There are lots of hosting farms in several areas  Because, there.. Its cheap... to host services in the US. It costs very little. Huge buildings filled with servers. Some areas, like Dallas, Tx. have a lot of servers. Probably because its cheap there.. hosting and power?
[/quote]

[madires]

Not really IoT, but a lot of bloatware apps preinstalled on Android phones from Chinese brands send data/telemetry back home to servers in China. And the major cloud hosters have datacenters in China too. A small IoT service might run its platform only at a specifc datacenter/location. Larger platforms are usually distributed across multiple locations for lower network latency and resiliency. If you live in Europe your IoT device would most likely talk to a server in Europe (nearest datacenter = lowest latency). When you're in China it would be a server in China. Same for US east coast, west coast and so on.

[cdev]

There seems to be a lot of them here in NJ. As of fairly recently. This is because we have fat pipes here in NJ and large hosting centers. After 9-11.

 I remember back when there was only one hosting farm and it was in a big building south of Market in San Francisco that hosted lots and lots of servers.. Ebay was located there, for example. They had extension cords going to the server rooms which were down in the basement... it was a storage building. Some parts of the building were dark, mostly. Very funky. I went there for a few job interviews. At the time I was doing a lot of job hopping.

Dice was always sending me to the same few addresses. I grew to dread going to certain addresses that I viewed as guaranteed to be wastes of my time. Because they always were.

[cdev]

"Blue" brand cell phones, for example.

Of course governments cannot regulate oil prices, which they equate with quartering troops in houses in the US. Poor people can pay up or clear out. There are lots of warm countries.

Not really IoT, but a lot of bloatware apps preinstalled on Android phones from Chinese brands send data/telemetry back home to servers in China. And the major cloud hosters have datacenters in China too. A small IoT service might run its platform only at a specifc datacenter/location. Larger platforms are usually distributed across multiple locations for lower network latency and resiliency. If you live in Europe your IoT device would most likely talk to a server in Europe (nearest datacenter = lowest latency). When you're in China it would be a server in China. Same for US east coast, west coast and so on.

How much latency is "too much"? In ms. ?  What is the effect of NUMA configuration on server latency ?

[Zero999]

Gotta love how even the clocks are starting to be moved back to blame everything on the virus and erase history.

I am hearing this talk quite recently:
Local GP surgery - no GP's available due to COVID as they were told.
Lost parcel and refusing to refund due to COVID

Then I see this a couple of days ago:
https://www.btwholesale.com/contact-us.html

COVID-19 and Openreach
All solutions that rely on new installations, modifications or repairs of key access products will be affected.
As the situation develops, we’re updating our websites with as much information as we possibly can.

Joke: Then they start talking about self driving cars where the drivers can lounge about in them and watch television whilst it self drives. - No COVID in the way for that one.

Some users who already reset their hubs while troubleshooting report being able to access the hub with the default username and password that is printed on it; however, changing login info or network settings is no longer possible.

I wonder if that is just due to just the site it depends on no longer being contactable or is it that they put these restrictions in place in an update before they shut down but didn't reach every hub?

Which is all a load of bollocks. COVID-19 didn't do any of that. At first is was the panic policies put in place and now it's just an excuse, as they've been revoked for some weeks at this point.

[madires]

How much latency is "too much"? In ms. ?  What is the effect of NUMA configuration on server latency ?

There's no simple answer, it depends on the requirements of each service. A local datacenter is roughly 30-50 ms, US-EU 100 ms and EU-Asia about 250/300 ms. The difference can be an order of magnitude. Server latency doesn't play an important role in this context as long as it's within reasonable limits. So I don't see any point in discussing memory access methods.

[cdev]

The former Clinton Administration signed the papers approving the Act enabling the WTO on December 8, 1994 So governments already agreed to this long ago. We traded our jobs for intellectual property laws.

  " “War is too important a matter to be left to the military.” it was once said.  This is to give corporations the final say, the real power.

Now its a crime to violate "patents". The owners make lots of money.

[ve7xen]

This kind of thing highlights why what we really need is more (open) standards and federation, and fewer silos.

Back in the day, the Internet operated on agreed protocols like SMTP, where anyone can stand up a server that can interoperate with everyone else's to deliver mail, and any device that wants to originate mail can connect as a user agent. All you need is an IP address and the RFC in hand to guide your implementation. Everything works together. New developments are encouraged. The best products succeed.

For a while we even had this for instant messaging with most of the major providers implementing federated XMPP.

Then the corporations decided it was better to hold users hostage, and federation basically died for everything that was not already entrenched. I am not sure how to push back, but federation & standards is the way things should be. But then you could mix and match IoT vendors in the same ecosystem, and that would be good for you as a user and I guess bad for the company that didn't get all your business.

It's the Apple model - lock people in to your ecosystem so they are forced by your lack of interoperability to buy your stuff next time too. Problem for us is that 'users' seem to love it this way, as long as the corporation uses enough fancy product design and flashy marketing as lube. Defenders come out of the woodwork to crow about how awesome these companies are whenever any talk of regulating them or trying to force them to interoperate or reduce lock-in comes up. A pro-consumer solution seems untenable.

[xrunner]

" “War is too important a matter to be left to the military.” it was once said ...

Yes it was Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister of France during the First World War.

"“War is too important to be left to the generals”

I remember it from the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

[station240]

They have a french cafe in their building. They probably burned their last money on overpriced paintstripper

Yup, that and the rent of a building in SF.
Honestly these IT companies are their own worst enemy, they could setup this office just about anywhere in the world, yet they chose a city with insane, unsustainable property prices.
And then the vital part of the service (the server and the min 2 people who would be needed to keep it running), is not a separate entity ?

I'm just sick of the amount of e-waste this nonsense business model generates.

[madires]

I'm just sick of the amount of e-waste this nonsense business model generates.

It's called "after me, the deluge". A big problem in cases like Insteon is the legal protection of IP. Possibly it will be sold to some IP troll for monetization. Any alternative firmware/service may have a hard time to fend off a greedy IP troll. For that reason some campaigners already suggested that IP of an EOLed product should become public domain. IMHO, it's not possible to simply do this because part of the IP might live on in newer product. But it should be feasible to make the hardware public domain as one can reverse engineer it anyway, and to allow any use of the hardware without the fear of litigation by the IP owner.

[cdev]

That would create a big flood of corporations attem[pting to monetize all "abandoned" common property. The powers that be now dont recognize the concept of a public domain, in case you didnt notice..

This also happened during the great enclosure.. Everything that was shared was taken away...Thats basically its intent.

[cdev]

I used to know SF very well, lived there for 30 yrs. What building are you talking about?

I agree that it became insanely expensive at the end. The intent was to drive the peons out.  Even though they paid rent, it was never enough. IT didnt keep up with inflation. So ...

[cdev]

When a "cloud service" is unavailable you need to use others, or roll your own. Ive done this many times. Learn how the web works. No law ties you to any providers services.

[cdev]

Ive found it very easy to use the Zope toolkit to make simple cloud services. Just to give an example of how to do it.

Learn CGI.

[SiliconWizard]

As I already said though, the easiest path is just not to use a cloud service if it's actually not needed, and favor local solutions.

[cdev]

As I already said though, the easiest path is just not to use a cloud service if it's actually not needed, and favor local solutions.

In the world of today cloud services are ALWAYS needed.. it seems to me..  ??

[bson]

Should have just copied the other 2/3rd's of the text from the one-page pdf instead of making people look at it.

It basically says submit claims by Sept 18th if you want to chase whatever money you paid for their stuff.
Unwritten subtext is that the assets are insufficient, so expect pennies on the dollar if you get anything at all.

You won't get anything at all.  There's a schedule used for liquidations, and things like unpaid wages, taxes, government fees and outstanding loans are at the top.  Since the company is bankrupt (meaning it can't pay its obligations) and has little capital assets (no factories, warehouses of inventory, truck fleets, rail rolling stock, etc) and probably little or no IP, chances are once its outstanding taxes are paid the employees get some portion of their outstanding wages, and then that's it.

[themadhippy]

chances are once its outstanding taxes are paid the employees get some portion of their outstanding wages, and then that's it

Dont forget the sneaky trick of an outstanding invoice for a large sum to  a company  that just happens to be owned by one of the directors  relations

[SiliconWizard]

As I already said though, the easiest path is just not to use a cloud service if it's actually not needed, and favor local solutions.

In the world of today cloud services are ALWAYS needed.. it seems to me..  ??

Uh, no.
You certainly do not need cloud services to switch your lights on and off.
You do not need them for getting the temperature or RH inside your house.
You do not need them for using a fridge, an oven or whatever.
You do not even *need* them for storing your data.

The only cloud services you actually "need" is those services that you are forced to use and that are beyond your control. Fortunately, that's still the exception rather than the norm. (But let's not hold our breath...)

[EEVblog]

As I already said though, the easiest path is just not to use a cloud service if it's actually not needed, and favor local solutions.

In the world of today cloud services are ALWAYS needed.. it seems to me..  ??

Uh, no.
You certainly do not need cloud services to switch your lights on and off.
You do not need them for getting the temperature or RH inside your house.
You do not need them for using a fridge, an oven or whatever.
You do not even *need* them for storing your data.

The only cloud services you actually "need" is those services that you are forced to use and that are beyond your control. Fortunately, that's still the exception rather than the norm. (But let's not hold our breath...)

Home automation has existed long before the cloud or the internet/web as we know it.
Any decent home alarm system even allows home automation.

[cdev]

Just thank your self luck they just control your lights etc.  I have had a couple of customers on over the years, in a panic at the companies they used to host their back office (accounts, payroll, stock control etc) functions in the 'Cloud' suddenly decided to shut down.

You can make almost any computer, including a very lightweight machine like a raspberry pi into a web server and implement your personal cloud box.. Just make sure it stays cool. Thin clients work well.. and take very liottle power.. Plus no surveillance, no google..I can esily wak you through setting up apache or nginx or a database server..

[vk6zgo]

Should have just copied the other 2/3rd's of the text from the one-page pdf instead of making people look at it.

It basically says submit claims by Sept 18th if you want to chase whatever money you paid for their stuff.
Unwritten subtext is that the assets are insufficient, so expect pennies on the dollar if you get anything at all.

As we say in Oz, "Down the gurgler"!