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Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

mjg59.dreamwidth.org

461–470 of 479 posts

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#461
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wonder what happens when every dev environment is just a docker pull away They learn later, when/if they actually need it. And for those who turn out to be unwilling or unable, well, there wasn't much chance they'd have taken the same path as you, anyway. Speaking of paths, specifically path dependence, autotools and friends really are monstrosities and should rightfully be relegated to history. I hope that simpler…

In my experience, it would become "You're not allowed to deviate from the standard environment" lol.

If they're so helpless they can't figure out how to even get to an environment other than their corporate standard one, then they have, again, already exited the pipeline before this conversation becomes relevant. Someone incapable of setting up a linux vm was never going to do original ops work, regardless of what the computing ecosystem around them looks like.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#462
post #452
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it happened. OVH announced the EOL about a year before the system was shut down. pCloud is a replacement I choose, nothing to do with old OVH service.

Do you imply that the change was fully transparent to you, except for a config change?

I had to remove the old client and install the new one. Login in the different account.

In all devices.

Apart from that, yes.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#463
post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like syncthing. Dunno about phones and tablets, but I have that functionality among my computers.

Syncthing doesn't solve the problem OP is talking about. It's amazing software that works as long as you don't have to sync the same file edited on two machines before they have a chance to sync. There is no logic, besides something using CRDTs, that can reliably resolve the conflicts in every situation when you just have two sets of bytes and nothing else. Even if you maintain "last synced" copies + the current late…

But that's pretty much a fundamental issue - you can't create information about the system that just isn't there.

I think the only way around that limitation is to have a node that's always on - make sure it's always known what order the changes were made in.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#464
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sadly, the job of a CISO typically isn't "make the most pragmatic decisions possible to keep our infrastructure secure and running smoothly". In many industries, it's more lke "join as many compliance programs as possible to expand the ability to capture revenue from regulated markets". The CISO didn't make the decision to enforce password rotation- the compliance programs your sales team asked for did

> The CISO didn't make the decision to enforce password rotation- the compliance programs your sales team asked for did And it's the CISO job to resist unnecessary overcompliance which is just for the happiness of the sales team.

You don’t make the company lose business just because compliance is unnecessary. You’ll (rightly) get overruled every time.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#465
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if learning X beforehand required learning Y, then we might be expecting the value of learning X to be the combined value of learning X + Y. It should be noted when adopting this approach, that you're lowering the expected value from the people who make it through the funnel. This may be counteracted by more people making it through the funnel, or it may not. The delta in total value is completely unknown.

I think the problem here is ordering. At the end we probably want them to know X and Y but we would rather they learn X then Y. But to learn X they need to do some steps from Y. If we can remove those steps we can make more people learn both. But also in practice I don't think anyone struggling to set up their env before writing a line of code is learning much. They are just following arcane instructions until it wor…

Learn how to deploy your app before you write it or learn how to write your app before you deploy it...

Guess what, if there is nothing to deploy then learning how to deploy is just a waste of time.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, employment costs out-compete costs for hardware very quickly. If your employee takes 10 minutes per day waiting on tasks because the system is too slow, you can instead buy a pretty decent rig every year.

How do you truly report that in a corporation? I haven't seen a way to disclose that a good amount of my time in a project is waiting on thr crappy system they've constructed. It's almost like the just assume the costs or pretend like it doesn't exist.

Don't make the problem be about people or process, just show the exact problem and how you could get more done if you had a way to continue working during a build. Put the problem on trial, and not people (don't call anyone in IT stupid, don't blame anyone for sucky processes, and do not under any circumstance indict the choice of tooling).

Take your slow laptop to lunch with your manager. Explain that you are starting a task you have to do three-four times a day that prevents you from working because your computer is maxed, compiling. At the end of lunch, let the manager know when the build stopped, and then discuss getting a faster or a second machine so you can work while building.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'd much rather deal with a local desktop and a remote filesystem, for sure.

I'd like that too, but can you give me a working example that is not based around using a VPN, or editing documents on the browser? (which are both viable, but there is a different number of drawbacks to each)

A remote filesystem over a VPN ought to be reasonable. I can't think of another reasonable way to do it.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#468
post #13

Nothing beats working directly on a fast but quiet workstation sitting next to my table. At least for me, the productivity gains associated with quicker builds, IDE resyncs (CLion, looking at you) or just being able to have email, chat, calendar and an active video conference running without making the system crawl to a halt or long latency spikes are huge. 3-4k for a machine that will likely last 2-3 years is nothin…

What type of laptop are you use to using where that would make your computer crawl? I have none of those issues with my current M1 MacBook Pro 16inch. I have never heard the fan on my current MacBook. Now my older x86 one is a different story.

I have the 2019 16-inch i9 MBP for work, and even that has served me pretty well for almost 2.5 years. I'm fairly conscious about what I have running at any given time, I force-quit out of apps that I only open occasionally to free up resources. Sometimes the fans will get going quick if I'm doing a lot (running Java services, in a Teams call, etc - on top of whatever the hell processes are being used by jamf, VPN, and zscaler) but I can't recall it ever "slowing to a crawl." It mainly just gets hot until I'm done with one of the big tasks the laptop is currently doing.

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#469
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of laptop are you use to using where that would make your computer crawl? I have none of those issues with my current M1 MacBook Pro 16inch. I have never heard the fan on my current MacBook. Now my older x86 one is a different story.

I have the 2019 16-inch i9 MBP for work, and even that has served me pretty well for almost 2.5 years. I'm fairly conscious about what I have running at any given time, I force-quit out of apps that I only open occasionally to free up resources. Sometimes the fans will get going quick if I'm doing a lot (running Java services, in a Teams call, etc - on top of whatever the hell processes are being used by jamf, VPN, a…

So the issue is the corporate mandated malware. I usually lay the blame of performance issues on corporate malware for any modern Mac or Windows PC.

But all video conferencing software sucks. I have to use them all on occasion depending on the client and usually the only one I actually keep installed instead of using the web version is Chime (yeah I know how do you say where you work without saying where you work).

Oh I just notice you said you had an x86 Mac, yeah they all suck when it comes to fan noise and throttling

Re: Cloud desktops aren't as good as you'd think

#470

Try working in banking for 20 years, stuck behind at least 1 layer of citrix living in citrix inception. Latency for every keystroke, your brain starts to add latency to latency that is not there to compensate for a life lived wearing citrix latency goggles.

I was a "Citrix consultant" for about two decades. I'd walk into customer sites for the first time, meet people, and within minutes they would start ranting about how bad Citrix is. I suspect only dentists get this kind of feedback from customers before a procedure. Having said that, 99% of the time the problem boils down to this: The guy (and it is a guy) signing the cheques either doesn't use Citrix OR uses it from…

> Don't blame Citrix. Blame the bastard in the head office that doesn't give a f%@$ about anyone not him.

> The guy (and it is a guy) signing the cheques either doesn't use Citrix OR uses it from the head office with the 10 Gbps link.

If you were sure about this you could have as the consultant told this sentence or made this entire comment as your 'first page' of powerpoint/PDF (to make sure other hn-ers are happy!)

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