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While the machines off it is a paid for resource that is unused. A cloud provider would lease that resource (so to speak) to someone else during that time, mea

While the machines off it is a paid for resource that is unused. A cloud provider would lease that resource (so to speak) to someone else during that time, meaning in theory they can provide lower cost than you will ever see unless you can somehow get the hardware cheaper than they can. Good providers will still allow you to run an accelerated VM inside the leased VPS, so you could still do your kernel hacking there. I'm simply saying there's something interesting here -- you care enough about owning (I use that term loosely) a machine to spend more on a local system, but not enough to obtain one that you can freely modify as desired. Clearly there is a threshold, and I'm curious where it lies. :)

floatboth 7y ago
The threshold is not spending all my savings on an additional computer "for science" :) > accelerated VM inside the leased VPS Does that work on POWER? > they can provide lower cost They can but they won't. They like having huge profits. Even if they offer the base VPS for cheap (Spot instances) they rip you off on storage, bandwidth, IP addresses, etc. Also, again, desktops. I like developing directly on a desktop workstation. I can't exactly insert my Radeon into a PCIe slot in the cloud and run a DisplayPort cable from the cloud to my monitor :)
- tpearson-raptor 7y ago
  Yeah, POWER has basically unlimited nested virt from POWER9 on. And unlike x86 you don't get the massive slowdowns past a level or two of nested virtualization. Stadia seems to think it can push a high resolution monitor like stream over a network interface. I'm playing devils advocate of course here but fundamentally if you don't have control of the hardware there's no long term advantage to local compute, at least not with current market trends etc. Everything points to a move back to dumb terminals for consumer use at this point -- in the past it would have at least been possible to hack those terminals to run some minimal (for the time) OS, but crypto locking of the terminal hardware stops that quite cold.

floatboth 7y ago

The threshold is not spending all my savings on an additional computer "for science" :) > accelerated VM inside the leased VPS Does that work on POWER? > they can provide lower cost They can but they won't. They like having huge profits. Even if they offer the base VPS for cheap (Spot instances) they rip you off on storage, bandwidth, IP addresses, etc. Also, again, desktops. I like developing directly on a desktop workstation. I can't exactly insert my Radeon into a PCIe slot in the cloud and run a DisplayPort cable from the cloud to my monitor :)

tpearson-raptor 7y ago
Yeah, POWER has basically unlimited nested virt from POWER9 on. And unlike x86 you don't get the massive slowdowns past a level or two of nested virtualization. Stadia seems to think it can push a high resolution monitor like stream over a network interface. I'm playing devils advocate of course here but fundamentally if you don't have control of the hardware there's no long term advantage to local compute, at least not with current market trends etc. Everything points to a move back to dumb terminals for consumer use at this point -- in the past it would have at least been possible to hack those terminals to run some minimal (for the time) OS, but crypto locking of the terminal hardware stops that quite cold.