I don't mean to support or refuse the author's main points or analysis, but you might like to know that the Chrome team is currently working towards shipping the Topics API. I have strong opinions about it but I will try not to editorialize.
My high-level understanding is that they're going to run an ML model over your browsing history (locally on your device) to build a list of "topics" that you care about. Sites you browse can use the Topics API to pull a set of these interests from the browser to show you "relevant" ads. Mozilla has taken a negative position against this standard.
In my experience with modest specifications, you can source servers from tier 1 vendors (Dell, HPE, etc) with 5 years of support for less than a 1 year commitment for the roughly equivalent AWS or GCE instances (without prepayment).
The monthly opex to house and power and cool those servers isn't _negligible_, but if you're doing back of napkin math comparing MRCs to Cloud you can just deduct the costs from their bandwidth charges that have been marked up 10,000%
Most of the stuff that makes the distribution different from Debian Testing is tightly coupled with Google's internal infrastructure and generally uninteresting (or unuseful) to users writ large. Just run Debian!
Based on the pictured bezel, it looks like they've got three rows 3.5" 14TB SATA drives up front in 14th generation carriers. Best guess would be something like an R740XD2 which has 26 total drive bays per 2U.
> Nobody at Google has a need to raise a ticket with some ops group in Bengaluru to partition a Kafka topic, renew a certificate, bridge two VPCs, or any of that type of thing.
Except when your team wanted to initially onboard with GOOPS and your request sat in Buganizer for 2 weeks waiting for someone to triage. Uh oh — we're turning down this service next quarter, you will need to go start this onboarding process again with its replacement.
Or when you needed quota in a cell where your product area didn't have Flex. Maybe you can set up a VC with your PARM? Does next week work for your launch plan? Hopefully they can do something for you!
Or when your logs access request sat in GUTS for a month because both of the approvers were on vacation and no, there's not an escalation path.
Or when you needed to change a firewall rule for a project your team inherited which for some reason runs on GCE. Make sure you bring your Ariane link when you open your request. Have ISE reviewed your code? No? ISE currently have a quarter-long backlog, so we're not sure we can grant your firewall exception.
None of these examples are contrived; the weight of the operational bureaucracy is staggering. It may well be that this stuff is felt more on the SRE/Security side around production launches than on the SWE side for experimentation or iterative development, but I struggle with the idea that Google is nimble.
I'm curious about what specific thing is signaling to you that your Steam password has been cracked. (I assume you mean brute forced?)
It's significantly more likely that you've been keylogged or phished if attackers are actually accessing your Steam account with passwords of that complexity.
This is likely aimed at $device_manufacturer that wants to put a cellular modem into their device for remote telemetry (uploading a tiny payload every 24 hours for the lifetime on the device). There's a lot of attention in the docs towards "fleets" — they aren't expecting you to just buy one.
Depending on how much stock you put into the Steam Hardware Survey, it's worth noting that Nvidia still controls 74% of the market relative to AMD's 15%: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
I also feel like graphics cards are one of those weird things that command a lot of brand loyalty, so it's probably going to take more than near-performance-parity to move the needle.
The iPhone 5C could be attacked this way because it didn't contain the Secure Enclave that shipped as part of the A7 chip. Attacks on devices with the A7 (or newer chips) would be novel.
The document shows in great detail that Kalanick and Levandowski were already working together closely before work on the truck even began.
2016-01-26 - Levandowski's last day at Google
2016-02-22 - iMessage chatter directly between Levandowski and Kalanick about poaching more Google employees
That certainly paints the "acquisition" of Ottomotto in August 2016 in a different light, no? It's also shown in the document that Levandowski was meeting with Kalanick and other Uber execs as early as June 2015, though it's harder to divine what was happening at that time.
Cloning? Nest has been shipping their basic outdoor camera since 2016 (which itself is not exactly innovative). The Ring device appears to have hit the market two months ago.
Agreed on the point that the deployment is only going to get easier over time.
Aside, your second point is incorrect. The SteamDB folks have a public write up on analysis of the preload system: https://steamdb.info/blog/steam-download-system/