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Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

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Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#51

Post by 086421357909764 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #13
timdorr wrote: post #3

If you want to see the actual hardware used at the restaurant, check out the previous blog post: https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at... Spoiler: It's a stack of Intel NUCs.

NUCs are surprisingly well-built little machines. I have one in my car, and I give them my absolute seal of approval. I've heard of people running little VMware clusters on them too.

It's actually suprising that people think they're not "normal" computers. I provisioned a few of them and they're little beasts. Most in use are I7, 16-32gb ram, Dual NVME. The Skulltrail nucs are extremely powerfull and on the lower end the atom based units are solid too. I also ran a nuc in my car for a while, mostly stumbling radio / wifi spectrum as I drove around, but it was perfect with its relatively low power requirements.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#52

Post by tomatotomato37 »

Aloha wrote: post #7
RandallBrown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Nordstrom for several years and whenever I describe their technology department to another developer they're always pretty shocked. It was pretty shocking to me when I started there too.

I'm curious about Nordstrom, I know nothing of their infrastructure.

To add to the curiosity, how is Nordstrom doing anyway, compared to other mall-type retail? I'm wondering if this forward-thinking in tech is allowing them to successfully fight "new" ecommerce such as Amazon

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#53

Post by factsaresacred »

stickfigure wrote: post #35
unit91 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is essentially "the owners hold certain values I disagree with regarding sexuality, therefore I'm surprised their technical team is any good." I don't see how that follows.

Political values are important to point out. Companies create these tech blogs as a recruitment vehicle. You should know if the company you're considering applying to is funding bigotry (or "wholesome family values" if that's your angle).

> 'Bigotry'. noun : intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself.

Surely castigating the owner of Chick-fil-A for advocating his personal beliefs is the truest example of bigotry here.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#54

Post by sincerely »

ve55 wrote: post #44
sincerely wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, regardless of my personal thoughts on the topic, the ethics of eating animals are a lot more controversial among the HN crowd than LGBTQ rights.

Chik-Fil-A is not an arbiter of LGBTQ rights. Their small 6-figure donations to organizations that focus on other issues do very little in the grand scheme of things. Do you really think Chik-Fil-A is directly causing more suffering by donating to a few charities in amounts this small than by raising in captivity and then killing billions of chickens? I see no way to reasonably argue that.

Again, regardless of my personal beliefs:

If I thought Chick-Fil-A shouldn't be supported for either their treatment of animals or for their anti-LGBTQ corporate giving, and wanted other people to stop supporting the business, I would focus on the latter in my messaging, because I suspect it would be more effective on the audience. Attempting to draw conclusions about which of their behaviors I personally think cause more suffering from this is not a good use of your time.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#55

Post by djhworld »

walrus01 wrote: post #40
trhway wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting as it seemed that smarter edge/iot nodes would be like ARM/RaspPi, yet it seems it may get even as high as (or just straight to) Intel nuc.

Raspi cannot be used for a semi serious server application due to microsd card write wear issues. All other methods of attaching external storage by USB bus to an rpi are not reliable or suitable for this sort of purpose. Nowhere near the longevity of something with a native sata or m.2 SSD interface and a real SSD.

There's also the added complication of the fact it's an ARM based device so in some cases you might run into compatability issues, or testing your container locally becomes problematic.

It's definitely getting better though

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#56

Post by monocasa »

Bizarro wrote: post #45
behringer wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company themselves chose this political stance, not the community around them.

No, the grandparent's political stance is to be outraged at anybody he/she disagrees with and has an unhealthy obsession to blurt it out on discussions that aren't political.

All discussions are political. The only question is whether or not the politics at hand affect you.

And to quote Chick-fil-a's CEO: "Jesus had a lot of things to say about people who work and live in the business community … Our work should be an act of worship. Our work should be our mission field." So he sees everything they do as political as well.

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#57

Post by gervase »

walrus01 wrote: post #37

One thing I question is what kind of WAN link a single chicken fast food restaurant can get, or is economical. A lot are in places where the only last mile ISP options will be adsl2+ over copper or docsis cablemodem. I don't see it being a good use of money to spend $600/mo to pay some local ISP for a dedicated 100Mbps line on a 5 year contract. But then again it's highly likely that what they do is not bandwidth int…

It's difficult to estimate what value the described systems add to a location, but in the grand scheme of a location's expenses, even $600/mo is a drop in the bucket. Align those contracts with the lease on the building itself - no more problems!

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#58

Post by chris_mc »

gammatrigono wrote: post #43

What data does CFA actually /need/ to collect in their restaurants? Orders and supply chain metadata? Store traffic statistics? Cleanliness and user ratings? I hope it isn't Bluetooth or WiFi (or worse yet, GSM/LTE) metadata from their customers.

Did you RTFA? Did they say anything about collecting customer data? Why the heck did you bring this up, even?

Re: Edge Computing at Chick-fil-A

#59

Post by arthurcolle »

Aloha wrote: post #7
RandallBrown wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Nordstrom for several years and whenever I describe their technology department to another developer they're always pretty shocked. It was pretty shocking to me when I started there too.

I'm curious about Nordstrom, I know nothing of their infrastructure.

What's interesting to think about is how, in the lead up to the dotcom bubble/bust, I would think execs at tons of traditional retail/brick and mortar/consumer brands would have probably been like shit shit and then put more IT-focused organizational architecture components in place, which probably lead to many interesting technical solutions to many of the problems they faced (if they did it the right way). It would be cool to see different branching that lead to different technical solutions for common problems.

Unfortunately, as this was before the OSS boom that came later, we probably will never see these solutions out in the open.

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