Deta's Space OS Aims To Build the First 'Personal Cloud Computer' (theverge.com) 38
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Here's how your computer should work, according to Mustafa Abdelhai, the co-founder and CEO of a startup called Deta. Instead of a big empty screen full of icons, your desktop should be an infinite canvas on which you can take notes or watch movies or run full apps just by drawing a rectangle on the screen. Instead of logging in to a bunch of cloud services over which you ultimately have no control, you should be able to download software like PC users did 20 years ago, and the stuff you download should be completely yours. All your apps should talk to each other, so you can move data between them or even use multiple apps' features simultaneously. You should be able to use AI to accomplish almost anything. And it should all happen in a browser tab.
For the last couple of years, the Berlin-based Deta has been building what it calls "the personal cloud computer." The product Deta is launching today is called Space OS, and the way Abdelhai explains it, it's the first step in putting the personal back in the personal computer. "Personal computing took a dive at the turn of the century," he says, "when cloud computing became the big thing. We all moved to the cloud, moved our data, and we don't own it anymore. It's just somebody else's computer." Deta wants to give it back. [...]
Deta's idea is both a very new one and a very old one. It harkens back to the early days of computers when you bought software in a box at a store and installed it on your computer. The cloud era, of course, made computing vastly easier and more powerful but also systematically ate away at the idea that you could control anything on your devices. It's an interesting thought experiment, actually: if every cloud service shut down tomorrow, what would be left on your phone or your laptop? Odds are, not much. Deta's trying to undo that a bit, to embrace the cloud and the expansive universe of apps while giving you back the feeling that your computer -- and everything on it -- is yours and no one else's. Because your computer should be yours -- even if it's on somebody's server.
For the last couple of years, the Berlin-based Deta has been building what it calls "the personal cloud computer." The product Deta is launching today is called Space OS, and the way Abdelhai explains it, it's the first step in putting the personal back in the personal computer. "Personal computing took a dive at the turn of the century," he says, "when cloud computing became the big thing. We all moved to the cloud, moved our data, and we don't own it anymore. It's just somebody else's computer." Deta wants to give it back. [...]
Deta's idea is both a very new one and a very old one. It harkens back to the early days of computers when you bought software in a box at a store and installed it on your computer. The cloud era, of course, made computing vastly easier and more powerful but also systematically ate away at the idea that you could control anything on your devices. It's an interesting thought experiment, actually: if every cloud service shut down tomorrow, what would be left on your phone or your laptop? Odds are, not much. Deta's trying to undo that a bit, to embrace the cloud and the expansive universe of apps while giving you back the feeling that your computer -- and everything on it -- is yours and no one else's. Because your computer should be yours -- even if it's on somebody's server.
In what universe.... (Score:1)
...has the "cloud era, of course, made computing vastly easier" ? Must have been in one of the 32 MCU movies that I missed.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Did you ever get to run your own e-mail server? I mean the whole package, an SMTP server/mail router (e.g., sendmail), IMAP server, POP3 if you go back far enough in time, all of it. Now add SpamAssassin or something similar, RBLs, security software, and if you're working in a compliance regime, some sort of retention agent. Now consider all the hardware you need to provide high availability. Redundant physical paths for connectivity. Redundant power sources. A redundant geographical location for a me
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The title literally says "Personal Cloud Computer". I have run my own SMTP, HTTP/HTTPS, DNS and others over the years simply because I could. As a personal infrastructure I didn't give a rat's about massively parallel, redundant, 99.999% uptime, or any of the other 'advantages' of a cloud environment. I wanted the experience of knowing how things worked for myself rather than be dependent on another company.
For non-personal requirements, the cloud can quite often fit the bill very nicely. I own a telecom se
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I'm not sure what you're saying? I don't disagree with any of it really, I've run (and in some cases continue to run) all of those services myself too. It was a pretty foundational part of my career. If you're saying the up and comers don't know as much as they should, because they never had that experience, you'll brook no argument from me. I've had peers look at me like some sort of God because I've solved escalations via Wireshark. I don't regard that as being worthy of the praise I've received, *sh
No Thanks (Score:2, Funny)
you should be able to download software like PC users did 20 years ago
20 years ago I still had a 56k modem so no thank you, my current connection has ~20,000 times the bandwidth.
I think I've seen this "first" before (Score:2)
It was called OnLive
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No it was called newtonOS.
Apple ebvisioned all of that almost word for word. And then toased the ui concept out.
Microaoft tried it a decade later with longhorn. Which pro.ptly got gutted and turned into hasty las vista.
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Instead of a big empty screen full of icons, your desktop should be an infinite canvas on which you can take notes or watch movies or run full apps just by drawing a rectangle on the screen.
Actually, the description made me think of OpenDoc [fandom.com].
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"your desktop should be an infinite canvas on which you can take notes or watch movies or run full apps just by drawing a rectangle on the screen."
OpenDoc comes back?
As to the other question, if all the cloud services went down for good I wouldn't care. Given the price of hard drives why would I store anything in the cloud?
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"As to the other question, if all the cloud services went down for good I wouldn't care. Given the price of hard drives why would I store anything in the cloud?"
Access to data when you don't have your "hard drives" with you comes to mind -- as well as off-site back ups.
Having 32 cheap hard drives with multiple copies of your stuff does you no good if you don't have access to it when you are away from your storage -- or if your storage went off line while you were away.
Now. If all my storage went up in a fi
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Shhhh! Don't tell Linux.
Well the term 'Personal Cloud' is an oxymoron... (Score:5, Funny)
Or you're just dumb. (Score:2)
Personal as in 'not publicly available to everyone, or managed by someone else'. Cloud as in 'lots of parts that just work together invisibly'.
And if you're farting often enough to create a permanent cloud that follows you, please warn people from a distance.
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"Personalized Cloud" is a more accurate description for Deta's offering.
Nostalgic buzzword salad (Score:3)
"It's a mix of old and new, but with AI in a browser tab! Is blockchain not a thing anymore? Invest in my startup!" - TFS, basically
All I can say is it must be nice to be in a position where you can pitch shit like this and people actually open their wallets. Seriously, I'd be up on stage with a damned AI toilet that can predict your next bowel movement and uploads that to the cloud. It's also 100% vegan, carbon neutral*, and you'd be supporting a LGBTQ-owned business.
* Promise I'll buy myself a really nice EV with your investment money. That counts as a carbon offset, right?
Sounds like snake oil... (Score:5, Interesting)
Deta's trying to undo that a bit, to embrace the cloud and the expansive universe of apps while giving you back the feeling that your computer -- and everything on it -- is yours and no one else's. (Emphasis mine).
I don't want the feeling of ownership, I want actual possession. I pretty much have that, thanks to Linux.
...your computer should be yours -- even if it's on somebody's server.
Erm, no. Again, if it's not on my server, then it's not mine. This reminds me of fake shutters placed on houses as decoration. It's an illusion and a lie, and I'm betting it's just another way of fleecing suckers.
BTW, where does this BS of making a browser serve as an OS come from? If all you have is a browser, everything looks like a web page. Is this really what we want and need?
Are we getting into philosophy here? (Score:2)
1. If you don't feel you own something then does it matter if you actually do? If I assume any cloud company will sell every bit of data I pass through them, then I'm going to hate them no matter how good they are.
What if you feel you own something (because it has Linux on it), but you're wrong? That it's not perfectly secure just because it's called Linux (or has visible source code, etc). Is that worse? [ security by stupidity? Or security by hope/trust? ]
2. And encrypted data could exist on another
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Thanks for a very well-thought-out and considerate reply. I either agree with or concede the validity of much of what you said, but I have a few quibbles:
3. Just because you have no imagination for a new user interface doesn't mean everyone else is happy with where we are. How would you change the paradigm for interacting with computers, for the better? Ignore whatever tech is under the hood (like a browser vs. whatever)...
It's not that I "have no imagination for a new user interface". I've experienced those. Some I've liked immediately, even better than ones I've used for years and am comfortable with. With most, I grumbled about them until I got used to them and admitted that they were as good as or better than their predecessors. With others, I still shake my head and say
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Deta actually had a decent offering called "Deta Cloud", which was kind of like a competitor to Heroku. But they pivoted to Deta Space and stopped offering Deta Cloud, which was probably the more useful service of the two.
Wrong link in article (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the correct link: https://deta.space/ [deta.space]
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Thank you for the correct link. The other web site made me go WTF as it looked like a giant scheduling app.
Ouch... But thx! (Score:2)
And I think where people get twisted on the "happiness" issue is the difference between "not unhappy or neutral" vs. "blissed out". What makes one person mildly happy might trigger bliss in another. And the blissed out person thinks the first is just a junkie, when they can't feel happy otherwise.
Blame the victim is so much easier than understanding or helping. But I have high hopes for progress there, assuming the old white guys in charge will get out of the way. And start to fund studies for natural s
Yeah! They are right! (Score:3)
Not everything is "cloud based" (Score:1)
if every cloud service shut down tomorrow, what would be left on your phone or your laptop?
Quite a bit actually.
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It's a silly hypothetical anyway. You're gonna wave a magic bomb and eliminate the entire "cloud" but leave the Internet itself intact? The cellular network without which your phone is a paperweight? That's a really precise EMP you got there, lol
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That's a really precise EMP you got there, lol
Doesn't have to be. Just knock out a few data centers. The same job gets done, most of the cell network is still intact, and a good number of sheep are suddenly without their Sheppard. You'd be surprised at just how much people have become dependent on cloud services.
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The control plane for the cell network lives in the cloud, lol
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I don't actually need a cellular connection to use MOST of the functions on my cellphone. If the cell network is down, I'm still connecting to my bluetooth speaker and listening to my mp3s that are locally on the phone. I can still take pictures. I can still use the calendar, the calculator, some other random apps that don't need network connectivity.
Sure, I can't use it as a communications device if the cell network is down, but that's only one aspect of the device.
Having the Internet go offline for a week
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if every cloud service shut down tomorrow, what would be left on your phone or your laptop?
All of it actually.
Oxymorons (Score:4, Insightful)
> Instead of a big empty screen full of icons,
If it's full of icons, it's not empty, is it?
I knew a guy ... (Score:3)
Nothing New (Score:2)
Your link to company is wrong (Score:1)
Operating Systems (Score:2)