Robin Harris writes about storage and other tech with a focus on the SOHO/SMB market. And fun stuff, too, like PS3 supercomputers and Google's technology.
With Everything-as-a-Service (EaaS) the big cloud vendors are using their breadth and pricing strategies to lock in customers. But there's a rebel alliance forming that intends to offer customers even better choices. Can you afford not to look?
Machine learning requires massive amounts of data to teach the model. But we're often uploading that data to machine learning cloud services run by folks like Amazon and Google, where it might be exposed to malicious actors. Can we use machine-learning-as-service and protect privacy?
Last September I wondered if an iPad - with iOS 11 and the Files app - might replace my MacBook. Since then I've acquired a 10.5-inch iPad Pro and Apple's Smart Keyboard. Any trade-offs? I was surprised.
Flash storage is fast and expensive, an issue for system designers: load individual servers with SSDs whose performance far exceeds server needs; or put flash in costly shared arrays? What's needed is a performant way to share individual SSDs across servers - and here's a solution.
Blockchain is the storage technology behind Bitcoin and many of the other non-sovereign currencies. But its applications are much broader. Here are two that may provide your next gig - or save democracy.
Cloud vendors make much of storage redundancy, but it takes more than multiple copies to protect data. Storage needs a reliable way to recover from corruption or loss - and current methods aren't reliable. Here's how to harden cloud storage.
Computer systems fail. Most failures are well-behaved: the system stops working. But there are bad failures too, where the systems works, but really s-l-o-w-l-y. What components are most likely to fail-slow? The answers may surprise you.
Hard drives are struggling to get to 14TB. Now Samsung is kicking sand - literally - into their faces with a new, 2.5-inch 31TB SSD. You and I will never buy one, but still, it's pretty amazing.
Google has changed many aspects of computer infrastructure, including power supplies and scale-out architectures. Now they're asking vendors to redesign disks for cloud use. How will that affect you?
AI will revolutionize the world, or so sayeth Silicon Valley. But there are some potholes on the road to AI nirvana -- starting with the people AI is supposed to help. Think Skynet. Here's research from the frontlines of artificial intelligence.
Seeing all the new storage ideas at CES - and some storage problems of my own - makes me rethink consumer storage. We have all the pieces, except one. Here's what I see coming.
Storage is the hardest problem in computer systems because it is the only part that is persistent. Without storage, your computer could be anyone's computer. Here's the cool storage I saw at CES 2018.
Even though CES is no longer the Consumer Electronics Show - it's just CES - there are still many startups with consumer gadgets. I spent 2 days in Eureka Park so you don't have to. Here's (some) of what I found.
I skip most of the high-end exhibits at CES in favor of Eureka Park, where little startups are getting their - often - first exposure. Here's some of the cool stuff I found on the show floor, in the first of a series.
Storage technology is evolving faster than any time in the last 40 years. Here are my picks for the best technologies to emerge in 2017.
Storage
Storage
Storage
Hardware
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is giving super resolution to images