You are correct, but the problem was the PC only had 16 IRQs. That required using intelligent multi-port cards from Digi or Rocketport. They worked by aggregating all the ports to a single card IRQ, and managing all the hardware signals, echo.
I wrote the software for a breakout box that could handle 128 serial ports. It was an ISA backplane with an industrial 286 computer and multi-port serial cards. This was our solution for a MajorBBS system.
The BBS software would have to timeslice between all the cards handling each IRQ, then poll the card details to see which ports needed service.
GalactiComm eventually came out with their own around 1993 that could go out to 255 serial ports and did not require the 286 processor.
By the mid-90’s, Livingston PortMasters were the preferred way to aggregate serial connections, which quickly gave way to USR TotalControl.
You are not wrong, except at scale it gets complicated quickly. For starters, to support large user numbers, you’re going to have to process your own grib2 data for radar and turn them into tiles at zoom levels.
It takes about 24 cores with a GPU to do CONUS, Canada, Alaska, Pacific and Caribbean data. This should be 2x for redundancy. Even being cheap with main processing in my basement (gen power, backup internet) the cloud costs to serve it are $200 month plus data transfer. The standby grib machine spins up should it not see the cheap primary or the NOAAPort receiver is offline.
There is no money to be made without whoring out your user’s privacy. People just won’t pay for a privacy focused weather app. I keep this going as a hobby.
Fair enough. Things are always more complicated at scale.
But then again, we don't know whether this company is maintaining this infra themselves, or if they're paying for API access. Besides, if anything, running their own servers is often the more cost-effective option, so the details you mention might not matter in practice.
My incredulity has more to do with the profitability of this type of software, considering that the free options are good enough for the average person, and that the features promoted in the article are hardly innovative.
> There is no money to be made without whoring out your user’s privacy.
Well, I do object to that. It's certainly possible to sustain a profitable business without selling out your users' data. It may not be as profitable as the advertising model, which is often too enticing for companies to ignore. This company explicitly says that their income comes directly from customers, so apparently I'm underestimating the amount of people who find these features valuable enough to pay for them.
In my experience, most people with cancer that I know simply oscillate between having life-threatening active cancer/tumors and remission.
I don't know any case where people have detectable cancer and it's just being managed, I think that's more the exception than the rule.
For my girlfriend, when she was in her last stages they had to do that (try to slow down/manage the cancer instead of remove it), but that was already palliative care and she died soon after. Also, the only reason they didn't try removing the tumor is because the specific location in the brain (pons) is inoperable.
So both consent to sex and now one thinks they're entitled to marriage. That's where this inevitably leads, user/customer lock-in and control.
While the bank use case makes a compelling argument, device attestation won't be used for just banks. It's going to be every god damned thing on the internet. Why? Because why the hell not, it further pushes the costs of doing business of banks/MSPs/email providers/cloud services onto the customer and assigns more of the liabilities.
It will also further the digital divide as there will be zero support for devices that fail attestation at any service requiring it. I used to think that the friction against this technology was overblown, but over the last eighteen months I've come to the conclusion that it is going to be a horrible privacy sucking nightmare wrapped in the gold foil of security.
I've been involved in tech a long, long time. The first thing I'm going to do when I retire is start chucking devices. I'm checking-out, none of this is proving to be worth the financial and privacy costs.
"It's going to be every god damned thing on the internet. Why? Because why the hell not"
This is not a persuasive argument.
You are also ignoring the fact that YOU can use remote attestation to verify remote computers are running what they say they are.
"I've been involved in tech a long, long time. The first thing I'm going to do when I retire is start chucking devices. I'm checking-out, none of this is proving to be worth the financial and privacy costs."
You actually sound like you are having a nervous breakdown. Perhaps you should take a vacation.
Less maintenance on my own kit after spending a day maintaining some else’s kit.
Linux userspace is utter chaos. When I’m pricing out lumber or other personal projects, I don’t want that held up by any number of fresh in memory Linux what-the-fresh-hell-is-this moments.
That is it. Will pay nearly whatever Apple commands to avoid having my personal (desktop) time invaded by Linux and the never ending reinventing solved problems and discovering new ones.
Upside though, Linux by now may actually have an even dozen of methods to configure a wired ethernet device. I quit counting.
Have at it Meta, you broke it you most certainly bought it!
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