German Cloud Company Offering Free Heat If You Have Room for Some of Its Servers

[hrnnnnnn]

Excerpts from the contract:

"We install The Device in your house, free of charge. You receive heat. Do not ask about the function of The Device."

"You may hear a human voice coming from inside The Device. Ignore it."

"Some customers report having recurring dreams about The Device, this is normal."

"The Device comes in one colour: Impenetrable Blackness."

"Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it."

[mhurron]

It's good to see a contract written in clear, understandable language.

[S_A_P]

Who says Germans have no sense of humor????

[dmix]

If HN had a bitcoin tip system, I would have most definitely have given it to you.

[ntaso]

Munich - In the night of Saturday to Sunday, a special unit of the police raided the home of retired gardener Heinz S. to seize several cloud computers. Heinz S. allegedly participated as a volunteer to hide Piratecloud servers in Germany.

"I just wanted some heat from the thing, I don’t even know what it really is", is the unlikely claim of Heinz S., who turned 76 this year.

On Tuesday, he has to state his case in court, together with 22 other people who surprisingly tell a very similar story.

[bengali3]

virtual drug mules

[yc1010]

What about the noise? Servers can be extremely noisy, in a home environment they would drive the occupier insane (well unless they are deaf)

[trvz]

Reading C&H's site, I think the living room reference in the article is false. The rack is supposed to be in the basement to add heat to your water heating system.

[aaron695]

Heat pump heating is loud too, but people make it work.

It doesn't have to be inside.

[adam12]

My furnace is pretty loud. I find it to be comforting.

[sauere]

> Security is a concern with these setups, because anyone’s data could be in anyone else’s house at a given time, but Cloud&Heat claims that since all of its data is encrypted and only its employees can open the cabinets that everyone’s information is safe.

Ladies and Gentlemen, i present: Bullshit. I wish companies with no clue about encryption would stop making these insane claims.

[Xylakant]

There's a lot of data where that kind of security is acceptable, for example all the video content on youtube. You don't want random people to tampler with it, but it's not high security.

I wouldn't want my bank to store my account data on one of those, but I wouldn't mind if website assets were served from there.

[justinsb]

What is the attack you're envisaging?

Presumably they detect unauthorized case-intrusion and immediately delete the keys. This isn't foolproof, but it's probably good enough to stop anyone except the people that are going to get the data no matter what you do.

[Retric]

Depends on usage patterns.

If there simply storing encrypted data then these servers might be unable to decrypt the stored information and reading their contents would be pointless.

If on the other hand these servers decrypt the data then encryption is of limited value.

[ion201]

Care to elaborate about that? I don't see the security concern if the data is encrypted on disk and both ways over the network. I doubt they would just leave the private keys to hang out on the server for anyone to take.

[mikkom]

Doesn't sound very secure to be but if it's just public web sites that are mirrored on multiple locations it might sound reasonable..

[drivingmenuts]

"So, you'd like a CloudenHeatenDevicenGlaven in your haus, ja?"

"Yep."

"That ... does not sound German to me."

"Yeah, well, ... "

"I think you are a spy. Looking to take advantage of our generosity, ja? Und maybe in ze middle of the nacht you installen the spying thing on our box, mit your little NSA spying thing?"

"Haha! Those don't exist. The NSA? That actually stands for No Such Agency, dude. I mean, freund ... fraud ... you know, ich bin ein jelly donut and all that."

"You are sure you are not this spy?"

"Yep, er ... ja."

[api]

I could see actually this working at a larger scale -- e.g. put a server room in the basement of a low-income housing project in a place with cold winters like Chicago or Toronto and heat the building with waste heat during the chilly months. It'd also be worth it at that scale to wire the building for multi-homed fiber.

Can't see it being practical at small house scale, and there's also some big security issues.

[kriro]

They only mention that the company pays for the internet service but I'd assume traffic/speed from a home could also be an issue. I mean the average home network connections aren't exactly amazing so what can be hosted on these servers (I doubt it's cost efficient to provide new infrastructure for every home)?

[johnbaum1968]

> A prerequisite for the use of Cloud&Heat is [...] an Internet connection of at least 50 Mbit/s

https://www.cloudandheat.com/en/index.html#heat-three

[siddarthd2919]

So.. who is going to cool these in the summer?

[buro9]

Do we get to turn the servers off in the summer when there is a heatwave?

[DanBC]

> If the servers do heavy data processing when no one needs the heat, the system stores hot water in a “buffering tank.” And the Cloud&Heat cabinets can also vent outside in the spring and summer.

[thraxil]

> Security is a concern with these setups, because anyone’s data could be in anyone else’s house at a given time, but Cloud&Heat claims that since all of its data is encrypted and only its employees can open the cabinets that everyone’s information is safe.

Unless they've cracked the problem of practical fully homomorphic encryption, that data is still going to be unencrypted at some point in those units and vulnerable if the physical security of the cabinet is compromised.

[justinsb]

Rather than cracking the problem of practical fully homomorphic encryption, I think they're probably cracked the problem of deleting the keys when the physical security of the cabinet is compromised.

[xwintermutex]

Reminds me of a Dutch startup that is doing about the same: http://nerdalize.com/

[justinsb]

I think distributed backup (of encrypted files) could be a great use case. But (like the CDN case mentioned elsewhere) this is also more demanding of bandwidth than CPU, which isn't really what you want here if your goal is to produce heat.

Distributed rendering of video content could maybe be a good use case - moderate bandwidth requirements, heavy CPU/GPU utilization, data not overly sensitive.

[Xylakant]

Distributed backup is actually a good case. It's usually bandwith taxing in terms of upload speed and most internet connections in Germany are asymmetric in favor of download speed (which would be the right direction if the server is in your home). My connection has 50MBit/sec download and only 8 Mbit/sec upload.

[kordless]

> Still, it's more reassuring to think that your data is stored in a remote server farm than in someone’s house.

That depends entirely on your use cases. Making comments like this without mentioning the wide range of trust levels with different use cases is short sighted.

[Tepix]

You need to pay 12,000€ up front for 15 years of heating. Unless they go bankrupt of course...

[johnbaum1968]

That is my major concern. I live in a fairly new average sized house in Germany with a modern heating system (heating pump) and pay about 1200€/year for heating. If I knew for sure that they exist in 15 years I would really consider it.

[cfstras]

The question would be what the safeties are you get for the 12K. If the cabinet is, you wouldn't have to fear a lot of damages from a bankrupt.

[drivingmenuts]

If they go bankrupt, hey, free box!

[pjc50]

Well that's a non-starter.

[marknadal]

This is hilarious and great marketing, despite the fact I hate ads! Well done.

[hollerith]

You seem to think that this is a publicity stunt (rather than a sincere offer of heating services).

I don't think it is.

[reduce]

So now what happens when law enforcement shows up to the hosting company and tells them they're raiding some servers?

Will this be seen as a way to impede and slow down large scale raids?

[k__]

This is not possible here in germany.

Even if they want to "raid" my flat-mate, they can't go to my rooms while doing it.

[tadpoleonenter]

What about insurance? Fire? Theft?

[sesqu]

The initial setup fee covers fireproofing and insurance.

[jqm]

I wish I could sign up for this. I still use dial up. Is that going to be a problem?

[toxican]

Not in '96 it won't be!

[kordless]

I just signed up.

[mappu]

No mention of how noisy rack servers can be?