This company will pay for your heating - if you let it install a server in your house

Date:
Thu, 16 Feb 2023 19:01:52 +0000

Description:
To be clear, Heata is a legitimate UK company and your data and privacy are likely intact if you do this, but it paints a dreadful picture of the future.

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Those impatient to sell their soul neednt waste a second more: the ultimate Faustian bargain for our modern age has arrived, courtesy of UK green distributed compute network Heata .

The offer (via Toms Hardware ) is deceptively simple. You let Heata install a water-heating server unit next to your existing hot water cylinder, and itll provide up to 4.8kWh of free hot water a day (80% of a UK households daily use, apparently) for an entire year.

This is done simply by letting businesses use the server for cloud
computation while the unit scoops up waste heat. Dubious server installations

In theory, it sounds like a strong concept, given that it currently costs a pretty penny to heat a home. And so you may be tempted to let a company that claims to be committed to stamping out fuel poverty , and able to save you " up to 200 a year ", help out.

Except that the company began within, and still has investment links to, British Gas, which is hardly struggling to make ends meet right now.

As I write in February 2023, British Gas' parent company Centrica has
recorded record profits of 3bn for 2022 amid the ballooning cost of energy,
so maybe reconsider whether this is a totally selfless act.

But beyond this trifling 'critical thinking' business, the server has to connect to your router. And while most of the time it'll only be reporting monitoring information and performing speed tests, youre still taking Heatas word on that, and leaving an unfamiliar device constantly connected to your network.

Heata claims it will reimburse trial participants for electricity, but, for broadband, they may be out of luck in the short term. Its brochure claims that, eventually, the server will be capable of its own connections via 4G, 5G, or a fiber line. But for now, youll have to trust them when they say itll only use up a fraction of your bandwidth.

The company also gracefully assures prospective trial users that they wont be able to access or connect to the device to, say, mine cryptocurrency on it. That's all well and good, but like any server, it's theoretically not impossible that a persistent threat actor could gain access for themselves.

You also dont know what the businesses using Heatas servers are using them for, so it depends if youre a hear/see/speak no evil sort, really.

We've contacted Heata to get some clarification on these points, though, and will update this article if we hear back. Read more

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experts

Weve also listed the best budgeting software right now

Nothing will change that the offer comes with several caveats that you ought to be aware of and could make you the product, but the social and environmental benefits of the idea are theoretically sound: businesses are discouraged from using electricity-guzzling data centers, and you reap the benefits for (not quite) nothing.

Plus, times are hard, and help is even harder to come by, so, if you feel you're out of options for financial support for the cost of living, this
could be an option for you.

And although the Heata trial is backed by the UK government, its only currently available (per The Register ) to those in South East England with
an internet connection, leaving most of the country without direct financial support towards paying the bills, in the middle of a crisis that the government seems to be cheering on .

And that's just it: companies being left to test their (invariably) "novel", "innovative" and - this last one is Heata's - "groundbreaking" technology initiatives on the poorest in society, just so they can dare to live, is probably a Ray Bradbury story, and objectively bleak.

Get the landmass binned. Here's our list of the best apps for managing your money right now



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/this-company-will-pay-for-your-heating-if-you-l et-it-install-a-server-in-your-house


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