The Starbucks I am sat in right now is the model of the modern internet cafe.
There is coffee, free WiFi, chairs(!), they are happy for you to sit there all
day if you order an over priced drink every so often. And other than me there
are people in here using laptops, they might even be working.
In the 90's an internet cafe was a different thing, there might have been
coffee and drinks, but the main feature that drew people in were the rows and
rows of computers. Laptops had weedy specs and were really over priced. Many
people probably visited just to use the computers, it might have been there
only way to get online.
Internet cafes did not last in the west, the pc market had to make laptops
affordable to live. With disposable income and infrastructure that had to appear
to be world leading it quickly became expected to have a computer at home.
There is an impression in the western mindset, driven by the media, that
internet cafes are still a big thing in poorer parts of the world. If you show
a user in India or China using a computer from an internet cafe no one will bat
an eye. Both
For the Win
and
Reamde
feature
Gold Farmers
playing
MMO's from internet cafes.
Unfortunately Internet cafes aren't a myth, there are still many places you
can find desktop computers set up for general public access. University
computer rooms, public libraries, airports and hotel lobbies are some common
culprits. As in the 90's and 2000's public machines are a security nightmare.
You can never be safe using someone else's computer, that is why the cloud is
such a joke. General public machines are a potential goldmine to a malicious
actor and maybe worse, are a breeding ground for malware that will be around
even when the host isn't actively malicious.
== Can We Build An Internet Cafe in 2016? ==
People are going to no matter what, can we build something that is reasonably
safe for a user? I think we first have to assume that the machines we are going
to use are not actively malicious, there is very little we can do to stop
someone that is actively coming after you. Active attacks are rare, most people
are only targeted when they stand out from the crowd.
I think there are two ways we can do this:
1. User provides the computing and storage
In this case the user has their own computing power, but they need access to a
larger screen and more capable peripherals. The venue operator just have to
provide a standard interface, lets say HDMI ports on large monitors, and the
keyboard and mouse.
You could carry a some sort of HDMI stick pc, a raspberry pi, or something
else. This idea is the basic of
Ubuntu's Convergence computing
, the phone
you carry around all day is already a capable enough computer. With a little
hardware to connect a screen, keyboard and mouse, the convergence device goes
from phone OS to full desktop OS.
The convergence idea is really interesting, but Ubuntu is starting it up very
slowly. One day soon, hopefully.
2. User provides storage
The second idea is that the venue provides
normal
desktop computers of some
sort we would expect, but they don't have a hard drive or operating system
installed.
Instead the user brings a bootable USB stick with a proactively secure
operating system like
tails
installed. The user is able to take the USB
stick wherever they go and manage to maintain a session between boots.
This is possible now.
Reading:
Abaddon's Gate, Reamde
The subtitle text for Neal Stevenson's website is excellent
