The Danish Cloud Standoff
eFor those unaware of it, things in the cloud business are heating up here in the Northern part of Europe. It seems to be finally dawning on the EU, that “the cloud” is not some minor issue that should be handled as an afterthought after all the “real” market issues like industry, agriculture, fishing, oil, banking, etc. have been handled. The reality is, that the cloud is one of the most important and most pressing issues of our time, and the EU is very late to the game. Today, the cloud is how we place phone calls, discuss political issues, maintain personal relations, find information, stay updated, communicate and perhaps even more importantly, how our companies do all of their communication, financial transactions, in short all of their business. Cloud fiefdoms, search engines and social networks have replaced markets. All communication, commerce and finance today depends on the cloud. By extension, those who control the cloud, control our societies.
Can AI fix your mental health?
Of course not, don’t be absurd. Chatting with an algorithm that is designed to parrot back a simulation of human understanding, compassion and insight is obviously not the answer to the current mental health crisis.
Nevertheless, when an old aquintance approached me with a software development project, an AI-based mental health companion (think “Her“) is exactly what I agreed to try to build. I could use the money, what can I say? Besides, learning a bit about large language models and playing around with some shiny new tech didn’t sound too bad. Back-end, web app, iPhone app, Android app, all in 5 months. The development, architechture, UI, design and platform team was me. Just my kind of project.
Read MoreEdit your documents in your own space
Having a word processor, a spreadsheet and a presentation tool available in a web browser is very, very cool – especially for collaborative work.
Storing your documents in some tech giants’ cloud without the slightest idea about where your data is being stored and what your data is used for, and editing your documents using tools made available for you without access to the source code, in short, simply handing over all your personal documents to a giant, foreign entity outside your country’s rule of law, is not so cool.
To the Cloud (and Back)
To the Cloud
Recently I agreed to help a start-up that had lost their lead developer and were in quite a pickle. This gave me an opportunity to dig into some of the more obscure corners of Amazon’s offerings. Their stuff was built on, and ran in AWS. The task at hand: Process audio from players on a sports team recorded during a game or a training session, transcribe it to text, do some statistics on the words found and present the results in a UI. The idea: to analyze and improve team performance through improved communication. I took over their existing code and tech stack which tried to do all of that.
Read MoreWe’re retiring Northcloud
The Northcloud project did not receive funding from Innovation Fund Denmark. As a consequence we’re retiring the project and the Northcloud brand. Existing accounts have been migrated to origo.io.
We should have a plan for when Russia cuts our Internet
Here in DK that is. Just saying…
Looking For an Alternative to Google Analytics?
Matomo is a great alternative to Google Analytics, and we just released a one-click Matomo stack, so you can install your own powerful analytics platform to Origo Cloud in a couple of minutes.
2-Factor Authentication
You can now protect your Origo Cloud account using Gooogle Authenticator or Authy. All you have to do is enable it in your profile e.g. on Northcloud.dk og on Stabile.io, scan the QR code and you’re good to go.
Origo Cloud has always supported IP-based access control, which we strongly encourage everyone to use in addition to, of course, use strong passwords. We have now also implemented 2-factor authentication using TOTP / RFC 6238 for an added layer of security. This is handy if you would like to access your Origo Cloud account on the go, and don’t have access to e.g. corporate VPN.
One Click MongoDB Sharded Cluster
We just rolled a new stack for Stabile for those who use MongoDB and are tired of paying big bucks for using a managed DB service in the cloud and can’t be bothered to spend a weekend installing it. Install the stack as any of our other stacks, and you have a multi-node MongoDB sharded cluster up and running in about a minute with a nice managment UI. Add more shard nodes by simply adding servers to the stack.
Check it out here.
Introducing Origo DNS Services
Stabile installations that are linked with the Stabile Registry like, of course, Stabile Cloud, have always had basic DNS functionality built in, available through the API. Whenever you create a new network connection an A record is created in the default domain using the format “xx.xx.xx.xx.yyyyyyyy.default.domain”, where the x’s represent the connections public IPv4 address, and the y’s are the first 8 letters of yours engine’s uuid. For Stabile Cloud and new Stabile installations, the default domain is “uncloud.co”. This can be configured in /etc/stabile/config.cfg. Changing the default value requires that your domain zone is created on the Stabile name servers. Until now this was a manual process, where clients would ask us to create the zone.
