29 ms·

Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

390 points by rerapp 6y ago

laurentdc 6y ago
I think the pricing section has a few mistakes under Monthly $1343 / hour $1.84 effective hourly price
- dkobran 6y ago
  Nice catch, typo (the values are correct but the text said "/hour" instead of "/month"). Disclosure: I work on Workstream
  - Legogris 6y ago
    I really wish that the monthly flat rates were included when hourly prices are quoted on the pricing page and with "only pay for what you use" on the front page. Right now it's very easy to get a first impression of feeling misled.
CJefferson 6y ago
Was going to try their Free account, until I signed up and the discovered the big black "Free" had a tiny light grey "+ Machine Utilization Charges" beneath it. Everything is "Free + Charges".
- _jal 6y ago
  Their next hire should offer to work for free + Human Utilization Charges.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  I have a pet theory that some of the managers that set up the "free - just pay shipping and handling" type businesses found a new home in e-commerce. I obviously dislike it.
- hnCensorFreedum 6y ago
  I'm waiting for my honest business practices to pay off. No cookies, no ads, donations only. It hasn't paid off aside from about 1k per year in revenue and lots of thank you emails.
  - thawaway1837 6y ago
    There’s nothing dishonest about just straight up charging, as long as you’re honest about what you’re charging.
    - hnCensorFreedum 6y ago
      I agree. I tried selling books, but it felt like the articles were just marketing funnels to the books. Still, I didn't do real copywriting. After a while I changed to donations Because the idea was to help people. And my day job pays 6 figs.
      - third_I 6y ago
        We need more people like you in this world. Please breed if you can ;-) Hum, I mean, transmit who you are to other, infect them with greatness, however you can (books is a great idea, teaching and mentoring as well). FWIW I think there's an ethical way to profit, but we have to be willing to wait for the value we created to actually materialize in the real world. A not-so-rare case, I think, is people donating large amounts to their mentors, once they "get there", once they're established and earning enough (likely 2-5 years after the mentorship or transmission took place; sometimes way more). You certainly can't live from those returns. Some of them might be fabulous though, if what you transmitted was really life-changing. I guess. Never been on that side of things (gave, did not receive) but I'm thinking putting out the value is the mission, and anything else is a secondary concern (just keep that day job to pay the bills). Have a great one.
  - purerandomness 6y ago
    Charge, and double the money you charge. But don't be sneaky about it. Say what you charge, and then charge exactly what you said you'd charge.
- pyr0hu 6y ago
  I don't understand your problem, the Paperspace account is free. You have to pay for the machine you use.
  - ethbro 6y ago
    What does a Paperspace account get me without a machine?
    - serf 6y ago
      it looks like it runs jupyter notebooks on a VM of modest resources. there does not appear to be any free rdp/streaming services, but the jupyter playback seems to function. agreed that the pricing methods are somewhat sneaky -- email harvesting with sleight of tongue.
    - lelector 6y ago
      A free GPU on Gradient.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    If you can’t use something without paying someone, is it really free?
    - jsilence 6y ago
      Free of value it is.
      - stpedgwdgfhgdd 6y ago
        You mean, without value it is
- icoder 6y ago
  When I opened the pricing page I was 'afraid' the hourly prices would come with the caveat of a monthly subscription (or separate fee). Seeing Free + Charges immediately answered that for me. But yeah, I also see your point.
- geocrasher 6y ago
  Yeah, I signed up for free but it wouldn't even let me create a machine. If they're going to expect to sell it, then at least make it possible to put together a machine and then charge to launch it. So far all I know now is tha they have 3 DC's to choose from. The rest, no idea. Can't get that far.
- cscurmudgeon 6y ago
  https://www.paperspace.com/pricing https://www.paperspace.com/pricing Dark UI pattern. More annoyingly, they don't see what those charges are.
- lelector 6y ago
  They have free GPUs, and the account is free. Doing fast.ai currently on a free GPU. The extra charges are if you want to upgrade, like needing more storage.
cocktailpeanuts 6y ago
This looks like a consumer targeted product. If so, they should use a "per month" pricing instead of the per hour pricing which only caters to nerds who will go through the trouble to calculate. I hope it's actually an affordable option overall compared to any other options out there.
- hedgehog 6y ago
  Based on SAML sign-in I'm guessing they're targeting businesses.
- mistersys 6y ago
  Clearly this is a product targeted to professionals, designed for using heavy application while mobile. Gaming is a also a use case, but gamers that run heavy games tend to be nerds anyway. Per month pricing would make it very hard to price competitively for users who work 6+ hours a day vs. users who need to work with CAD files a couple of times per month. I don't know what kind of every-day consumers need to to run heavy CAD software.
  - Legogris 6y ago
    I get mixed messages. The front page says > Moving your workflow into the cloud gives you the best hardware and networking performance possible, and helps you work on the tough stuff a normal computer just won’t do. This is then followed by their "Advanced" specs @ 6vCPUs, 16GB RAM and 2GB VRAM. That's a mid-range laptop.
- Onawa 6y ago
  They do have per month pricing on the pricing page.
- snazz 6y ago
  You can choose between per hour and per month pricing. The per hour pricing only runs when you're using the machine (only the cost of storage when it's off) and the per month pricing is a flat rate. They should offer a calculator for estimated usage costs.
RIMR 6y ago
I've been using Paperspace Air machine since they first launched (still paying early bird prices too) and their basic Windows VM is pretty amazing. I'm mostly a Linux/Mac guy, but I spend a few hundred hours per year logged into my Paperspace machine and almost always have it doing something for me. It's perfect for getting access to your own toolchain on any computer. And it's got plenty of resource to give it time-consuming jobs to do. It has just enough GPU to give it an edge over some of my cheap VPS options. It was perfect when I was contracted out to a highly restrictive corporation and couldn't access my own employer's tools due to firewall policy. The browser-based remote desktop always worked.
6510 6y ago
Maybe some benchmarks?
- dkobran 6y ago
  Great idea. What do you recommend as a good standard/tool we could use to publish benchmarks? We have some CPU/memory-centric instances but our primary focus is on GPUs.
- downerending 6y ago
  Well, "super fast" would seem to imply at least 10 terahertz...
hedgehog 6y ago
It doesn't look like this is launched yet, at least I don't see it when I log in. I've been happy with their notebook product Gradient though, and it will be interesting to see if latency is good enough for this to replace some local desktop usage.
- dkobran 6y ago
  Sorry for the confusion here, we are in the midst of separating out the two products and this is not reflected everywhere yet. Under the CORE section of the interface, you'll find these instances and you can download the desktop app here: https://paperspace.com/download https://paperspace.com/download
  - tone 6y ago
    I get a message that reads: "Paperspace.app" can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software. This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more information. It's not the normal open security settings and allow message. I am on a MacBook pro running Catalina 10.15.3.
  - hedgehog 6y ago
    Aha, yes Core is there. Thanks. FYI it looks like there's a bug where the instance type picker doesn't show storage capacity (just "GB").
  - raywu 6y ago
    How's native peripheral support? I've been looking for a cloud solution that would act as a virtual rig for VR. However, from everything I read there's hardware limitation on memory to support meaningful peripheral throughput. I'm curious about what you and DTE have come across!
    - bonezie 6y ago
      What kind of VR hardware are you using? I'm working on a cloud based virtual computer solution that leverges google's additive GPUs (You can add as many as you want to facilitate what you need to do).
jsumrall 6y ago
Not a heavy user, but I've been using Paperspace a few times for gaming. They make it really easy. They have a "template" you spawn a new instance from, or use a blank windows install. Their template is handy since it has Steam and Parsec already installed. What they seem to be doing here is saying you don't need Parsec and can just use their browser implementation instead. Sounds great!
- ShamelessC 6y ago
  Is gaming well supported with controllers working over the air?
  - hedora 6y ago
    I’ve had good luck. The biggest hiccup was that you need to pay extra for a public IP. Super Meat Boy is about as twitchy as I get, and the latency for that is fine (at least in the SF bay area). Obviously, the GPU can do more than that, but I haven’t tried pushing in that direction.
  - jplayer01 6y ago
    You'd want to install Parsec on the server, then controllers work automatically (generally). It works pretty well (though I had to stop using Paperspace because I couldn't afford the cost).
- y7 6y ago
  I'm assuming this works by streaming your keyboard/mouse inputs to the VM, then it runs the game and then streams high-res video and audio back to you. What's the total latency with this approach? And the required bandwidth for the video stream?
tone 6y ago
Looks quite interesting. I could really use a Windows box that I could use for a few games while I'm isolated not at home with only my Macbook Pro.
- dudul 6y ago
  Why use this over GeForce Now? Really curious, I don't see a lot of advantages.
  - al_chemist 6y ago
    Paperspace supports* Linux client, GeForce Now does not. * allegedly. Tried to set up Paperspace and Parsec without result.
    - dudul 6y ago
      The comment I replied to mentioned a MBP, not a linux machine.
    - naravara 6y ago
      If your use case is gaming, does Linux support matter much? If anything I would think this would be for someone who has a Linux setup but wants to access games that aren't available.
      - pmoriarty 6y ago
        "If your use case is gaming, does Linux support matter much?" It really depends on the game. For instance, Factorio, which is enormously popular on HN, has a perfectly functioning Linux version. Many other games do too, and some games even perform better on Linux than on Windows, not to mention having a better user experience on Linux (especially if you are technical and know what you're doing). I have an old Linux laptop, and Factorio performs well enough in single player, but I run in to serious performance issues on multiplayer. It's be nice to be able to run this Linux game on a more performant Linux machine, without shelling out the $$$ for a new gaming rig. Further, I'd like to avoid Windows as much as possible, where it can be avoided.
TimTheTinker 6y ago
Do Workstream VMs come pre-installed with the pro software they mention in the blurb? If so, this sounds compelling.
taigi100 6y ago
I've used perforce in the past both for work & gaming. Gotta say, awesome experience!
sjapps 6y ago
No mac option :(
isthisnametaken 6y ago
"How does pricing work? For hourly plans you are charged a flat rate(depending on machine type) per month to cover storage and access. Am I charged when my machine is off? For hourly plans, if your machine is powered off, you will only be billed for your storage." Are those charges listed anywhere? They don't seem to be on the Workstream pricing page.
- jermaustin1 6y ago
  I had to dig around, but found them in the help desk: https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003804333 https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000380433...
- TheKnack 6y ago
  Here's a link to the storage pricing. There are links on that page to pricing details for just about any scenario. https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003804333-Storage-Pricing https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000380433... The lowest level is 50GB for $5 per month
  - hedora 6y ago
    I wish there was a way to automatically nuke the image on shutdown, and then spend 15 minutes to have a script auto-populate a few games in my steam library at next boot. It’d save $5/month, and also solve the OS update problem.
    - jedieaston 6y ago
      You can use the CLI to create/destroy instances, so what you could do is write a script that has Chocolatey (or boxstarter, which is a bit more for this purpose) install Steam, run it when you login, and then have another script destroy the instance using the cli command. A bit fiddly, but it'd work.
fao_ 6y ago
This actually seems like a game changer. Access to machine learning / developer rigs at incredibly cheap prices?
netcraft 6y ago
I've looked around the site but im still confused - It looks like its a windows OS? Is there an iPad client?
- preya2k 6y ago
  You can use it in the browser, or install any RDP/VNC Server you want on the Windows system. So yes, there are probably multiple iPad clients.
  - netcraft 6y ago
    oh yeah, I didnt consider youd connect to it through standard RDP clients. Thanks!
b1gtuna 6y ago
I only see Gradient and Core. Where is Workstream? Neat idea!
- andy47 6y ago
  Same here, signed up but the only choices are Gradient or Core. What is, or where is, Workstream?
dsalzman 6y ago
I’m relishing the switch back to the thin client / main frame model, but I want to own my main frame. Even if it physically sits in a company’s data center. With 5G we are getting closer to disposable glass thin client interfaces.
deegles 6y ago
What's the AWS equivalent to their biggest instance?
- dpau 6y ago
  I'd like to see a cost comparison across different providers. A comparable v100 machine on Google Cloud is $2.015/hr, while Paperspace seems to charge 2.30/hr for a dedicated v100 (https://www.paperspace.com/pricing https://www.paperspace.com/pricing)
  - dkobran 6y ago
    Google Cloud is very sneaky with their pricing as they don't include the instance itself in the advertised GPU pricing. Here's an instance very comparable in specs (8 vCPU, 30GB RAM, 1 V100, 50 GB SSD): https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=a9fbcab5-cbce-4a2c-b2a4-765a2bafd92a https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=a9fbcab5-cb... It's $3.19/hr. The Linux version is $2.87/hr.
    - dpau 6y ago
      Thanks for this link, I've been going by the estimated cost on the Google Cloud VM deployment page which seems to give significantly lower prices than your link. With GC I always seem to end up paying a lot more than I planned to...
Brajeshwar 6y ago
Vagon[1] is another interesting solution tackling to solve a similar problem. 1. https://www.vagon.io https://www.vagon.io
newfeatureok 6y ago
Is there something like this that's self-hosted? My ideal scenario is something like this that's $20/month for unlimited usage, with the caveat that you have to have the server in your own house with your own internet, but the service is that it provisions your machine and proxies it for fast speeds everywhere.
- VikingCoder 6y ago
  It's not exactly what you're asking for, but maybe Sandstorm.io might be useful.
- vermilingua 6y ago
  Unless I’m missing something, that’s a hypervisor + VPN + RDP? If you’re technical enough to need that, you’re technical enough to set it up.
- ccmcarey 6y ago
  Use Parsec for the streaming part.
- vageli 6y ago
  If the goal is gaming, GeForce Now and Moonlight are amazing. You can also get a remote desktop via GeForce Now but probably better just to use remote desktop.
e12e 6y ago
> How does pricing work? > For hourly plans you are charged a flat rate(depending on machine type) per month to cover storage and access. Additionally, you are charged an hourly rate when the machine is running. Monthly plans are offered at a flat rate for unlimited access. Then the pricing page doesn't list the flat rate, when looking at hourly pricing - but does show an hourly price for monthly billing? Possibly monthly/(30 * 24)? Ed: looks like hourly for monthly plan is calculated as monthly/(365÷12×24)
corenting_ 6y ago
Another interesting solution for this is : https://shop.shadow.tech/usen/pre-order https://shop.shadow.tech/usen/pre-order . They are currently expanding to some countries including the US.
- ec822 6y ago
  +1 on Shadow!! - I would definitely recommend Shadow. You get a full instance of Windows 10 to do anything you want (I primarily game). I wrote a quick review of it, including 3dmark scores for the base version here: https://medium.com/@ec822/playing-in-the-cloud-d0c023b77bdd https://medium.com/@ec822/playing-in-the-cloud-d0c023b77bdd
- Jiger104 6y ago
  I've had great experience with shadow. I am pretty close to one of their servers (Dallas) so get around 8ms ping, but even up to 40ms ping it works very well.
- jedieaston 6y ago
  That's a better deal, since you get a GTX 1080 and 12 GB of RAM for $15 per month, whereas Paperspace is more like $60 per month for the same box. Is Paperspace overpriced or is Shadow burning cash? I'd think of the latter.
chrismckleroy 6y ago
What is the min mbps upload speed required for success here?
VikingCoder 6y ago
I'm just going to state again what I want, which is only tangentially related to the topic... 1) I go on Github and configure a service 2) I make a wallet that people can donate to 3) I start up a virtual machine, aimed at the Github, using the wallet to pay for the time on the machine. The virtual machine host guarantees that the code at that Github is what's really running. I can imagine lots of other things I want, too, but this is the bare minimum. I think it'd be really useful in a lot of scenarios.
- t0astbread 6y ago
  Agreed, something like "Netlify for virtual machines" would be useful. You could probably get close by auto-deploying from GitHub Actions but you wouldn't get the main benefit of a service like that (having ops done in a clean way without having to think much about it). Without having any experience in the field, aren't lambda functions supposed to provide something like that?
  - kim0 6y ago
    Sorry I'm not getting the main value prop from this. I'm mainly an ops person. Can you please explain what that service would look like?
    - jedieaston 6y ago
      The host would prove that the source available online is the exact same code running on the instance, so you know that it wasn't modified by the developer/bad-guy before it went into production.
    - t0astbread 6y ago
      Netlify (primarily) takes a git repo containing a program to generate a static site and turns that into a live running website that automatically updates when the generator repo changes. You don't have to think about configuration or security or updates and you don't have to maintain a server. Ideally this would be a service with the same ergonomics but the outcome isn't a hosted static website but a machine (somewhere in the cloud) running whatever the user wants. "Tedious" tasks like hardening, monitoring and upgrading (and redeploys) would be handled by the service provider, as opposed to the user. For people who like doing ops this might not sound appealing but developers (especially single devs and small teams) often just wanna focus on their app, not their ops, even more so when it comes to continous maintenance. Addendum: I think Laravel has some of this covered in their ecosystem with tools like Forge and Envoyer. But I've never tried any of them so I can't judge.
ComodoHacker 6y ago
What about software licensing? Today I need Office, tomorrow I might need 3DStudio.
soulnothing 6y ago
I used paper space for remote gaming via Parsec. I also purchased one of their machines for remote development purposes. While I was waiting for parts to fix my laptop. The service was really good. The machine was fast, with RDP it felt close to local. They also offered very powerful hard ware. I moved on because it was a bit pricey at that point. This was about a year, year and a half ago. I think it was about 50 a month for me. I moved onto a dedicated server that I used KVM and LibVirt to manage. That worked but it's obviously a lot of over head.
- scrumper 6y ago
  Signing up right now for this - glad to hear it worked well. I have a Mac at home (not ideal for games) and at most a couple hours a week to do any gaming (so it's not worth buying a PC). For the absolute best machine they have, my outlay will be less than ten bucks a month. An easy sell.
  - azinman2 6y ago
    But won’t the latency kill gaming tasks?
    - soulnothing 6y ago
      It's not much different than stadia or nvidia geforce(?). I played online multi player games. If you have a 144hz gsync/freesync monitor. Then this isn't meant for that. But it was totally playable. The weak portion is you're beholden to your internet. Traveling for work it didn't work at all. Most places I stayed had very slow internet and then the latency became unplayable. I see this as a completely viable option if you're on Linux, or Mac and want to game every now and then. Or if you're waiting for a new GPU to come out and still want to game.
    - scrumper 6y ago
      On the off chance you see this, I'm pleased to report that the answer is, no! It works brilliantly as long as you use the free "Parsec" service's client to access the desktop and your games. Browser access to the Paperspace desktop is fine for normal app use but no good for gaming. Setup wasn't quite push-button but I got it up and running by dumbly following the instructions. Parsec was the most confusing part. Trust the docs, and it'll work.
nodesocket 6y ago
Does it support snapshotting a machine after you configure it and install all your custom software then create a new machine from the snapshot?
- gnade 6y ago
  Yes! Sorry this isn't more obvious: https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/236402867-Templates https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/236402867-T...
blatchcorn 6y ago
I already have a fast computer
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
With all those websites preventing you to use tor, you can use tor to connect to this, and this to connect to whatever you need.
- snazz 6y ago
  You can also set up a SOCKS proxy on a much cheaper basic VPS as well, giving you the advantage of using a web browser on your local computer instead of dealing with the overhead of a completely virtualized desktop.
woah 6y ago
I've used Paperspace's Gradient product (hosted Jupyter notebooks), and while it is cheaper than most other options, I can't recommend it. The service has a very janky feel. When I first started, there was an issue where my instance was was stuck "shutting down" for half an hour or more and I couldn't access my code. Then there was a weird issue where some kind of geographical split between different types of instances resulted in my code getting lost (I think it happened twice). It has the feel of a product held together by duct tape and chewing gum with a thin veneer of slick graphic design. I recently tried using their CORE product (GPU heavy VMs), but for some reason instances with GPU's are not enabled until you write them a message (I did, and they haven't responded in a week). My advice would be to use the cheap, high performance machines (VC subsidized?) if it makes sense, but never ever store data with them without backing up to a different service (git or Dropbox maybe?)
- atian 6y ago
  I also can't recommend them. Service is operational when working, but the times it isn't working as expected I don't have the patience to message support. Things just aren't straightforward. This was 2 years ago when I used them to run a couple of Windows apps for work.
  - techntoke 6y ago
    Same here, except I did message support and just as you'd expect they gave me the run around.
  - JPKab 6y ago
    Just saying that on Paperspace, it's all about using the storage folder. Had some challenges before, but definitely getting a lot of value out of it now. I think the product has a ton of potential, but certainly has warts to iron out. I've so far just used gradient, and haven't experimented with the core APIs feature yet, but looking forward to seeing what can be done there.
  - rvnx 6y ago
    I had issues with Paperspace too, switched over to Shadow. I pay +/- 14 USD per month for a computer with 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz, 12 GB RAM, GTX 1080, 256 GB SSD. No commitment. I'm not sure where is the good deal with Workstream ?
preya2k 6y ago
Can somebody highlight the difference between this new "workstream" product, and their regular "core" VMs?
bransonf 6y ago
Curious what folks think the outlook on this technology is. Rather, will there be any significant shift towards centralized compute in the next decade? Currently, a large institution/corporation has to manage thousands of individual machines. Say a physical component fails, now a technician must go to the location of the machine and give the user a temporary replacement. Alternatively, in a centralized compute environment, they could just allocate a new machine, and work entirely out of a data center. And what about software updates and upgrades? In the centralized model, both software updates and hardware upgrades can be managed more easily. Sure, we have good software tools to update all networked devices, but if that fails, the admin still sometimes needs physical access. One market I see this potentially taking off in is academia and hospitals. (Though I’m biased because I’m employed by a Medical School) Much of the record keeping is already done with a centralized infrastructure. Liberal use of active directory and low powered clients is the norm. And particularly for research, there’s the added benefit of being able to allocate more resources without any physical action. Say I’m trying to run a script to fold proteins on my lab workstation. Usually, I’d be limited to the hardware on hand, but in the centralized model I could request or allocate a more powerful machine. Sure, the current solution is to spin up your own VM and move your program. Often, academic institutions have their own on-prem compute for this purpose. However, both still require technical ability on part of the user. How close are we really to the model of giving all users a dummy client (think Chromebook) and centralizing The real compute? What challenges, disadvantages am I missing?
- formercoder 6y ago
  Depends on latency requirements. Data analysis? Yep. Creative pros? Nope.
  - Bombthecat 6y ago
    Why? People are ok to play online via stream. Why shouldnt for work also be ok?
- michaelmior 6y ago
  Even if there's "centralized" computing, everyone still needs a device they can use to access this central environment. Of course these devices can still fail and need repair. (The Chromebook in your example). At least in that case, these machines are fungible so a permanent replacement can just be given while the faulty device is repaired and used to replace another device the next time one fails.
runaway 6y ago
Would something like paperspace be a good platform for software development? My slow computer doesn't handle IntelliJ that well. Instead of buying a new PC I could rent this for a few hours at a time.
dalore 6y ago
I use Paperspace's core compute machines for my IDE and dev machines. It's great not having to run everything local, can use a cheap low end laptop locally but still have a beast dev machine. If I end up hosing my dev I can just start it from the last snapshot. Granted could probably do this with any host/cloud infrastructure. But I'm happy with it.
- blablabla123 6y ago
  That's also how I use it. I tried other hosters but for dev use, theirs is particularly nice because it's much cheaper. Also I like the user interface ;) Unfortunately I didn't try Gradient yet but Core already has so many possibilities...
pqdbr 6y ago
I created an account to try some gaming (I'm on a Mac), but they require writing a message to access any GPU enabled machines. Is https://www.paperspace.com/gaming https://www.paperspace.com/gaming deprecated?
stevefan1999 6y ago
It is nothing other than being a fat client that works in the browser.
andybak 6y ago
No RTX/Turing GPUs? My first thought was "Hey - I can try out Minecraft RTX!"
mleonard 6y ago
Hi. Developer and part-time computer science high school teacher here. Does Workstream support graphical desktop linux machines, or only terminal? Thanks!
dbish 6y ago
I think there is a market here. I don't use this service, but instead use an EC2 instance as my developer box (for personal projects) and I do like being able to easily move between multiple machines, no matter where I am and easily spin up another instance when I want to start fresh or try out other setups like having a more powerful machine or something with a GPU. At work (I work at AWS) most people do the same for their developer machines and don't have physical desktops, just using their laptops for access or lightweight local development. A service that makes setting up and managing those developer machines easier for folks who don't want to learn or fiddle with AWS options would be valuable.
- Aperocky 6y ago
  > learn or fiddle with AWS options AFAIK if you only want a box to act as a dev environment, that would not be much work beyond ec2:run-instance? Is there anything obvious that I'm missing?
  - rcxdude 6y ago
    Yeah, but even for fairly technical people, there's a lot more of a learning curve there than there needs to be (starting up an instance is easy, getting all the security stuff set up is more of a pain). Having something which is easier to manage without all the complexity of AWS seems reasonable.
  - dbish 6y ago
    standard installations (set yourself up with the tools you want running on the machine), keeping track of and managing the security parts (security keys/access credentials), mapping to any static IP or domain name you may want to use for ease of access, and other niceties could make the process smoother if you were purely focused on the developer workflow
    - dbish 6y ago
      also when you're testing things out on the machine you have to know how to change security settings for opening ports and providing access externally. These aren't too complicated to do, but just generally having simple tools/UI for making this simpler could be useful. for example, if you're a flask dev you may want to just run a site "locally" and make a few setting changes before being able to access your site. i've helped friends with how to do that before
localhost 6y ago
I'm curious what others here are paying for a cloud VM for dev tasks. My current favorite VM size on Azure is Standard_NC6_Promo that includes a K80 GPU, 56GB RAM with 8 vCPUs for $0.39/hour.
- vijaybritto 6y ago
  Which product is this? I cant seem to find it myself in Azure. Virtual Desktop? I can only see buttons asking to contact sales
  - localhost 6y ago
    It's just a Linux VM. Here's a link (search for NC6 Promo on the page): https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/linux/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-ma.... Once up and running you can ssh into it and install whatever you want onto it.
- azinman2 6y ago
  When you say dev tasks, are you talking about machine learning? What dev tasks do you need 56G of ram for? I’m trying to figure out who these products are for. 0.39/h * 8h = $3.20/day, or approx $70/working month. And that’s on top of buying the computer you have to connect to this, with the annoyance of extra latency in all tasks. I can see the use of occasional demanding tasks using very large VMs on inexpensive computers, but I don’t see how it works out in the long term if that’s your man machine that you always live out of.
  - localhost 6y ago
    Sorry - yes ML tasks. The pricing is on par with a D8v3 but offers more RAM and a GPU, but likely with slower CPU perf (though I haven't benchmarked the machine). My laptop doesn't have a discrete GPU, so I can't do any ML tasks on it so running a Jupyter server on a remote VM is my way of doing those tasks.
ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
Is this a look at our future? Everybody will just connect to a more powerful computer in the cloud?
- ship_it 6y ago
  Probably. I even saw Xbox being used as a cloud computer rather than console. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCloud
  - ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
    I actually play my playstation games online with PS Now.
paulpauper 6y ago
How is this different from virtual windows or Linux machine. You can run software remotely this way without having to buy a new computer
OkGoDoIt 6y ago
So I read through the whole landing page and I don’t really understand what this is. It sounds like it’s just another virtual private server? How is this different from getting a VPS on any hosting provider and remote desktoping into it? I guess since it’s paid by the hour rather than pay by month, but generally a service like this charges you for every hour your virtual machine exists, not just when it’s running. So unless you want all your data deleted you’re going to be paying longer-term anyway. Or maybe that’s not the case, they certainly don’t go into any detail to explain it one way or the other.
- 1023bytes 6y ago
  The benefit here is you pay a smaller fee for the storage and the machine itself is created on demand.
fataliss 6y ago
Anybody used it for gaming? I was a beta user of the Nvidia service which is dedicated to gaming and while overall acceptable, lag spikes would render the use of the platform really frustrating. Everything would be smooth for 30s and then "lag" or freeze for up to 1-2s and then resume. Fine if playing the sims, but when you are in a fight in fast paced games it's a deal breaker. To my knowledge, so far, no platform has figured out the proper streaming/input lag management to make the experience truly seamless. Is this one different?
- Aeolun 6y ago
  I have used it for gaming and I can’t say I ever had an issue like that. I haven’t used it for very long though.
- frodprefect 6y ago
  I just tried for the last couple hours. Installed Steam then Fallout 4 and Grand Theft Auto 5. I tried to get GTA to start 5 times but it never would. Just black screen with music playing. Fallout would start but I couldn't aim with my mouse. I could walk and shoot but it would register mouse movement. Then accidentally hitting ESC would stop full screen and eventually crash to the point I had to hard restart the system. I don't recommend for gaming.
  - mistahchris 6y ago
    It sounds like you were using Paperspace's remote desktop. I find that if you connect to it with Parsec, none of the issues that you're describing apply.
- Havoc 6y ago
  Pretty sure you’ll get far better results with actual cloud gaming providers
  - fataliss 6y ago
    My issue with "traditional" cloud gaming providers of the like of Nvidia (on top of non stellar perfs), is they they have a limited catalog and offer no system control. I like to play old games that only run on windows and could therefore use a service like workstream. (Currently playing Warhammer online which requires dx9 so unless you have a way to manually install old drivers etc you can't really play)
riazrizvi 6y ago
Better known as 'Desktop Virtualization'. Established competitors in this space are Citrix/XenDesktop, Microsoft/HyperV, Oracle/VirtualBox, VMware/HorizonView used in combination with remote desktop clients like X11 and Remote Desktop Connect. Is there an angle here that is new and interesting?
- lonelappde 6y ago
  Also, AWS and GCP
- djhworld 6y ago
  > Is there an angle here that is new and interesting? It seems like a turn key solution without much tinkering?
- jabroni_salad 6y ago
  This is specifically "desktop as a service" so while there may be Xen or Horizon in the mix it is abstracted away from the customer. The established competitors are Amazon Workspaces and Azure Virtual Desktop.
ChuckMcM 6y ago
First, that is a pretty nice web site. The notion of this sort of virtual computer goes back a ways, the one thing I keep expecting to see but haven't yet is a fully encrypted experience where the "cloud" bits don't work unless the user's local display has a security token attached. My first experience with type of architecture was in the 80's with something called an "X terminal". All the same elements, a machine with a display / keyboard /mouse that had a network protocol to talk to some hardware acting on my behalf in a machine room. I could sit down at any station and open up my desktop, just as I had left it. It is a pretty decent experience even with only a 10mbit Ethernet network. The second time I got to experience this architecture was in the Citrix days (late 90's early 2000's) Now the OS was always Windows and the network protocol was proprietary, but you could bring up an entire enterprise without all that pesky installing/rebooting that was the life of an early Window's system administrator. Also gave you control over employees trying to put bogus software on the computer. No Netscape Communicator for you! Work work work. :-) Somewhere after Citrix imploded with all the problems that come with a walled garden with razor wire on the walls, we started seeing deployments using virtual machines and VNC. That gave you the "what you see is what is happening" feel of Citrix but now you had a different choice of operating systems and better vendor flexibility. VNC over a SSH SOCKS proxy replaced X11 over SSH as a more "universal" way of implementing this architectural design pattern. Of course Google gave us "the browser is the computer" with ChromeOS and now the machine as a browser target where the browser is something more standard. I like the architecture but in the previous iterations there was always some big problem it was addressing, X terminals addressed mobility, Citrix addressed enterprise configuration management, VNC/VM addressed multiple OSes other than Windows while retaining enterprise configuration management, and ChromeOS went for a better security model, mode-less configuration, and minimal cost of entry. What problem does Workstream address either better or differently than what the above solutions address/addressed?
- catblast 6y ago
  Citrix imploded? That’s news to me. It’s pretty much an industry standard in US healthcare.
  - third_I 6y ago
ajiang 6y ago
Anything?
pizza 6y ago
Any chance for more zones for paperspace? Wanted to use them for a cloud gaming host, but they don't have any regions in Los Angeles
ugh123 6y ago
Whats not clear is do I still pay for it when i'm not using it, but can restore processes and provisioned apps when I need to get back on?
sabujp 6y ago
this works out to ~$375/yr for their advanced plan if you figure 8 hr work days and 261 working days per year (https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+work+days+per+year https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+work+days+per+year). How does this compare vs an equivalent instance with some kind of remote desktop running on a cloud service?
rodolphoarruda 6y ago
Is there a service like this for Linux desktop users?
- thekyle 6y ago
  AWS Workspaces supports both Windows and Linux desktops.
rubatuga 6y ago
Signed up for a paper space account about a year and a half ago, they had a dark UI pattern to stop people from deleting their VMs, and it kept charging me every month with no method to stop it. After a month or too, they changed their UI to allow deleting the VM.
delgaudm 6y ago
This is a new world to me... I'm looking to learn a GPU intensive application like Davinci Resolve before committing to a new machine to run it locally -- would this be an appropriate solution, and would it obviate the need for the local machine, i.e. can I do everything on this that I could do locally?
the_arun 6y ago
Why do you need to use a Virtual Computer when you already have a laptop/desktop you use to connect to this Virtual Computer? What am I missing? Is it only for folks connecting from Chromebooks?
- 32gbsd 6y ago
  Its a subscription service. People want subscriptions.
ffhhj 6y ago
Are there solutions that don't care about user location? Getting "not available in your country" from Shadow and Nvidia Now.
zelly 6y ago
Back to the future.
betoharres 6y ago
laughs in tmux
quadrature 6y ago
this looks awesome. I wish i could rent machines preloaded with the applications i use. but i guess the incentives for the licensers aren't aligned there.
- d23 6y ago
  My thoughts exactly. If I could just rent photoshop for a few hours that would serve my needs perfectly. But it looks like I'd need to buy a license, load it on, and pay monthly for storage, so I might as well just pay for just the application and use it locally.
vinaynadig 6y ago
I use Paperspace for running Fusion360 which is a CAD application. I use a Linux laptop and there are no really good CAD applications in Linux space(I tried FreeCAD but Fusion 360 is so much easier to use though). Works like a charm and extremely light on the wallet(I bill roughly 15 ~ 20 USD per month with around 40 to 60 hours of usage). It's been a godsend so far.
rock_artist 6y ago
While interesting, it would’ve been great if they had a simple test no signup instance to evaluate responsiveness.
pkos98 6y ago
I have to recommend https://shadow.tech https://shadow.tech! It is a Windows VM intended specifically for (but not limited to) gaming! And it works extremely well, I am playing games on it for ~ 2 years by using their client app on Linux.
- jplayer01 6y ago
  I only recently got mine last week and I love it. The CPU is a bit underpowered but the GPU is so much better than what I have in my PC and I’ve been able to play a bunch of more recent games that I wasn’t able to before. Also much prefer the freedom to install what I want over services like GFN or Stadia.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Sir_Substance 6y ago
I'm curious about something because I'm working on a side project that's "in the area". How does workstream, or indeed any remote computing provider, handle the possibility of people using their service to attack other computers, or to store/transfer extremely illegal data? They're not exactly running KYC identification.
- Havoc 6y ago
  There are probably easier and cheaper way to do that. All sorts of player offer storage without kyc and for attacks this isn’t really what you’d want either
jcrawfordor 6y ago
I was pretty excited to give this a try because it might be a good fit for some frustrations I've had with running a GPU-dependent task on my laptop without discrete graphics. Onboarding experience is terrible. Registered for an account from the Workstream page linked here, and was taken to a console with absolutely no mention of Workstream. Went back and forth a few times trying to figure out if auth provider had redirected to the wrong page after registration only. Ultimately searched through comments here to find out that Workstream is a variant of the CORE product. Having figured that out, went to the Core product, was rejected on creating an instance due to no payment on file. Not a huge issue, but would have been nice if I was prompted up front to complete this. Once I'm past that hurdle, I go back to the CORE product and find out that I'm not allowed to create GPU instances until I put in a ticket. I'm hoping that this was some accident where this landing page ended up on HN when it wasn't supposed to be public knowledge yet, otherwise the lack of thought on just the setup process here is pretty concerning. I'm also pretty confused at the requirement that I put in a ticket to have GPU instances enabled when they've already taken payment info, and it seems like a test auth would be a better anti-fraud measure than the half-sentence I typed in. Man, my excitement here sure was short lived. Edit: got an email that I had been enabled. went to look. Three of the GPU types still show as locked but one no longer shows the lock icon, so I guess approvals are per-type? But I can't select the "unlocked" GPU type, it's disabled. There's no explanation of why. A couple of minutes of trying different combinations and I find out that it's due to the DC, if I choose a different DC I can select it. So I guess they're only available in one DC, at least right now? It would have been nice to be told that. Edit: got the machine to provision, installed the client from another HN comment. I logged into Paperspace using a Google account. The client does not list this as an option. Only email, github, AD, and SAML. I give up. Except for the machine is still provisioning and I have paid $10 for storage. Great.
- fred123 6y ago
  A few weeks ago I tried to subscribe to their machine learning product but their payment processor only accepts US credit cards and I’m Europe based. While support says it will work with non-US credit cards as well, I could not get it to work. Tried about 20 suggestions made by their support over the course of 1 week what to put into the payment form; nothing worked. I gave up and chose Google Colab.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
As a computer-savvy dev, i feel like its hard to beat building your own given how cheap & powerful desktops are today, and how good software is. Workstream specs are - 6 CPU, 16GB RAM, 2GB graphics card, 256GB SSD. You could build a desktop beating that for around $800 today - including a Ryzen 3600, motherboard, case, better GPU etc. At $0.18/hr for Workstream, that means after just 44 hours you breakeven on building your own machine. With a little extra work on setting up VNC/RDP/Parsec you can then access this desktop from anywhere. I already do this and it works great for the most part. The streaming app/protocol is key, and thanks to teams like Parsec and Moonlight we have high quality software doing this for free. ---- But given their target market, this does look really cool. Amazon Workspaces costs 3x-4x more for comparable machines with Windows. Paperspace looks like its offering OSX and some good bundled software for designers, VFX etc.
- marbogast40 6y ago
  $800 / $0.18 per hour = 4444.4 hours I think you did: $800 / $18 per hour = 44 hours Pretty big difference! Curious, does this change your value assessment?
  - zaptheimpaler 6y ago
    Oh good catch! That works out to 185 days so it won't change anything, my pc will last a lot longer than that. But then again, even a much lower cost wouldn't change things for me. For one I completely own my pc and can do anything I want on it, second I know it's secure & private and my data won't be used in ways i might not know about, and third there's no internet latency on input/output which is nice for gaming etc. I could go on but yeah I feel like it's clear owning is generally better than renting for many reasons
    - stevens32 6y ago
      185 days of continuous use.. for many 4000 hours is easily a decade worth of gaming
jasonlingx 6y ago
Are there services like these that also “rent” the software (aside from the OS) licenses to you? I wouldn’t mind paying a pro-rated license for sharing photo or video editing software for example.
MR4D 6y ago
Can someone clarify something for me please? Is this (and others like it) just a new Citrix-type system? Or is this actually something new that changes the game?
TACIXAT 6y ago
I really like the idea of Paperspace and I've tried to get going a few times on the free plan but I hate notebooks. I didn't fully understand the server + gpu offerings, which is what I want. I would love it if I could just get an IP to scp some scripts to, then ssh in and run them. I don't think it's possible to get billed only for GPU time when you're running it this way though, so it would be pricey to keep the server up.
RMPR 6y ago
There's no cloud it's literally someone else's computer
fxtentacle 6y ago
Lots of red flags. These guys apparently have very little clue what they're talking about. I mean "fast + virtual" already makes me doubtful. And I'm sure that with the internet being overloaded by everyone working from home, using remote desktop is going to be even more painful than usual. But when they claim "Get a new computer in less than 5 minutes, zero configuration required." and then mention 3ds max, I am 100% convinced that they are clueless. Pretty much nobody uses the stock 3ds renderer, so you'll need to install something like Redshift or V-Ray, too. And setting up the plugin licensing alone will take you hours. Plus you have to re-do it every time the underlying hardware of your virtual instance changes. Oh, and then there's pricing. "P6000 For extreme 3D apps, rendering" starts at 50GB SSD? WTF? I have a 8TB storage raid here to keep the scene files around. And then "Only pay for what you use" but "For hourly plans, if your machine is powered off, you will only be billed for your storage." OK, so you pretend to cater to 3D professionals, but you fail to mention licensing, the number 1 cloud issue, you provide too little storage to load even a hobby-sized rendering project, and your on-demand service will bill me for storage unless I download and re-upload terabytes of data every time I switch projects. I'd say you can greatly improve your pitch by NOT promoting it as a professional solution. It's probably great for hobbyists and gamers, so I would focus on them with the marketing. Oh and how are you going to be "Delivering every frame in less than 16.6 ms" when there's 50ms of latency (due to speed of light) between me and your closest server?
- ktpsns 6y ago
  This is so true. I've done GPU heavy High performance rendering on remote VNC-like connections, something which requires lot's of preparation time -- and evventually you will be frustrated by working remotely.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
What I wonder, is there a special cloud service for compilation? Compilation is a spike in IO and CPU and most of the time nothing (and I don't mean a build server, but an exported file system I can edit on my computer and compile very fast in the cloud).
dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago
For people who have used it: is credit card the only payment option?
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
This is a really great idea! I wish you a lot of luck in this endeavor! Any plans for a free, ultra-lightweight tier of service? You might be able to get more paid subscribers over time that way...

390 points by rerapp 6y ago

laurentdc 6y ago

I think the pricing section has a few mistakes under Monthly $1343 / hour $1.84 effective hourly price

dkobran 6y ago
Nice catch, typo (the values are correct but the text said "/hour" instead of "/month"). Disclosure: I work on Workstream
- Legogris 6y ago
  I really wish that the monthly flat rates were included when hourly prices are quoted on the pricing page and with "only pay for what you use" on the front page. Right now it's very easy to get a first impression of feeling misled.

CJefferson 6y ago

Was going to try their Free account, until I signed up and the discovered the big black "Free" had a tiny light grey "+ Machine Utilization Charges" beneath it. Everything is "Free + Charges".

_jal 6y ago
Their next hire should offer to work for free + Human Utilization Charges.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
I have a pet theory that some of the managers that set up the "free - just pay shipping and handling" type businesses found a new home in e-commerce. I obviously dislike it.
hnCensorFreedum 6y ago
I'm waiting for my honest business practices to pay off. No cookies, no ads, donations only. It hasn't paid off aside from about 1k per year in revenue and lots of thank you emails.
- thawaway1837 6y ago
  There’s nothing dishonest about just straight up charging, as long as you’re honest about what you’re charging.
  - hnCensorFreedum 6y ago
    I agree. I tried selling books, but it felt like the articles were just marketing funnels to the books. Still, I didn't do real copywriting. After a while I changed to donations Because the idea was to help people. And my day job pays 6 figs.
    - third_I 6y ago
      We need more people like you in this world. Please breed if you can ;-) Hum, I mean, transmit who you are to other, infect them with greatness, however you can (books is a great idea, teaching and mentoring as well). FWIW I think there's an ethical way to profit, but we have to be willing to wait for the value we created to actually materialize in the real world. A not-so-rare case, I think, is people donating large amounts to their mentors, once they "get there", once they're established and earning enough (likely 2-5 years after the mentorship or transmission took place; sometimes way more). You certainly can't live from those returns. Some of them might be fabulous though, if what you transmitted was really life-changing. I guess. Never been on that side of things (gave, did not receive) but I'm thinking putting out the value is the mission, and anything else is a secondary concern (just keep that day job to pay the bills). Have a great one.
- purerandomness 6y ago
  Charge, and double the money you charge. But don't be sneaky about it. Say what you charge, and then charge exactly what you said you'd charge.
pyr0hu 6y ago
I don't understand your problem, the Paperspace account is free. You have to pay for the machine you use.
- ethbro 6y ago
  What does a Paperspace account get me without a machine?
  - serf 6y ago
    it looks like it runs jupyter notebooks on a VM of modest resources. there does not appear to be any free rdp/streaming services, but the jupyter playback seems to function. agreed that the pricing methods are somewhat sneaky -- email harvesting with sleight of tongue.
  - lelector 6y ago
    A free GPU on Gradient.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  If you can’t use something without paying someone, is it really free?
  - jsilence 6y ago
    Free of value it is.
    - stpedgwdgfhgdd 6y ago
      You mean, without value it is
icoder 6y ago
When I opened the pricing page I was 'afraid' the hourly prices would come with the caveat of a monthly subscription (or separate fee). Seeing Free + Charges immediately answered that for me. But yeah, I also see your point.
geocrasher 6y ago
Yeah, I signed up for free but it wouldn't even let me create a machine. If they're going to expect to sell it, then at least make it possible to put together a machine and then charge to launch it. So far all I know now is tha they have 3 DC's to choose from. The rest, no idea. Can't get that far.
cscurmudgeon 6y ago
https://www.paperspace.com/pricing https://www.paperspace.com/pricing Dark UI pattern. More annoyingly, they don't see what those charges are.
lelector 6y ago
They have free GPUs, and the account is free. Doing fast.ai currently on a free GPU. The extra charges are if you want to upgrade, like needing more storage.

cocktailpeanuts 6y ago

This looks like a consumer targeted product. If so, they should use a "per month" pricing instead of the per hour pricing which only caters to nerds who will go through the trouble to calculate. I hope it's actually an affordable option overall compared to any other options out there.

hedgehog 6y ago
Based on SAML sign-in I'm guessing they're targeting businesses.
mistersys 6y ago
Clearly this is a product targeted to professionals, designed for using heavy application while mobile. Gaming is a also a use case, but gamers that run heavy games tend to be nerds anyway. Per month pricing would make it very hard to price competitively for users who work 6+ hours a day vs. users who need to work with CAD files a couple of times per month. I don't know what kind of every-day consumers need to to run heavy CAD software.
- Legogris 6y ago
  I get mixed messages. The front page says > Moving your workflow into the cloud gives you the best hardware and networking performance possible, and helps you work on the tough stuff a normal computer just won’t do. This is then followed by their "Advanced" specs @ 6vCPUs, 16GB RAM and 2GB VRAM. That's a mid-range laptop.
Onawa 6y ago
They do have per month pricing on the pricing page.
snazz 6y ago
You can choose between per hour and per month pricing. The per hour pricing only runs when you're using the machine (only the cost of storage when it's off) and the per month pricing is a flat rate. They should offer a calculator for estimated usage costs.

RIMR 6y ago

I've been using Paperspace Air machine since they first launched (still paying early bird prices too) and their basic Windows VM is pretty amazing. I'm mostly a Linux/Mac guy, but I spend a few hundred hours per year logged into my Paperspace machine and almost always have it doing something for me. It's perfect for getting access to your own toolchain on any computer. And it's got plenty of resource to give it time-consuming jobs to do. It has just enough GPU to give it an edge over some of my cheap VPS options. It was perfect when I was contracted out to a highly restrictive corporation and couldn't access my own employer's tools due to firewall policy. The browser-based remote desktop always worked.

6510 6y ago

Maybe some benchmarks?

dkobran 6y ago
Great idea. What do you recommend as a good standard/tool we could use to publish benchmarks? We have some CPU/memory-centric instances but our primary focus is on GPUs.
downerending 6y ago
Well, "super fast" would seem to imply at least 10 terahertz...

hedgehog 6y ago

It doesn't look like this is launched yet, at least I don't see it when I log in. I've been happy with their notebook product Gradient though, and it will be interesting to see if latency is good enough for this to replace some local desktop usage.

dkobran 6y ago
Sorry for the confusion here, we are in the midst of separating out the two products and this is not reflected everywhere yet. Under the CORE section of the interface, you'll find these instances and you can download the desktop app here: https://paperspace.com/download https://paperspace.com/download
- tone 6y ago
  I get a message that reads: "Paperspace.app" can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software. This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more information. It's not the normal open security settings and allow message. I am on a MacBook pro running Catalina 10.15.3.
- hedgehog 6y ago
  Aha, yes Core is there. Thanks. FYI it looks like there's a bug where the instance type picker doesn't show storage capacity (just "GB").
- raywu 6y ago
  How's native peripheral support? I've been looking for a cloud solution that would act as a virtual rig for VR. However, from everything I read there's hardware limitation on memory to support meaningful peripheral throughput. I'm curious about what you and DTE have come across!
  - bonezie 6y ago
    What kind of VR hardware are you using? I'm working on a cloud based virtual computer solution that leverges google's additive GPUs (You can add as many as you want to facilitate what you need to do).

jsumrall 6y ago

Not a heavy user, but I've been using Paperspace a few times for gaming. They make it really easy. They have a "template" you spawn a new instance from, or use a blank windows install. Their template is handy since it has Steam and Parsec already installed. What they seem to be doing here is saying you don't need Parsec and can just use their browser implementation instead. Sounds great!

ShamelessC 6y ago
Is gaming well supported with controllers working over the air?
- hedora 6y ago
  I’ve had good luck. The biggest hiccup was that you need to pay extra for a public IP. Super Meat Boy is about as twitchy as I get, and the latency for that is fine (at least in the SF bay area). Obviously, the GPU can do more than that, but I haven’t tried pushing in that direction.
- jplayer01 6y ago
  You'd want to install Parsec on the server, then controllers work automatically (generally). It works pretty well (though I had to stop using Paperspace because I couldn't afford the cost).
y7 6y ago
I'm assuming this works by streaming your keyboard/mouse inputs to the VM, then it runs the game and then streams high-res video and audio back to you. What's the total latency with this approach? And the required bandwidth for the video stream?

tone 6y ago

Looks quite interesting. I could really use a Windows box that I could use for a few games while I'm isolated not at home with only my Macbook Pro.

dudul 6y ago
Why use this over GeForce Now? Really curious, I don't see a lot of advantages.
- al_chemist 6y ago
  Paperspace supports* Linux client, GeForce Now does not. * allegedly. Tried to set up Paperspace and Parsec without result.
  - dudul 6y ago
    The comment I replied to mentioned a MBP, not a linux machine.
  - naravara 6y ago
    If your use case is gaming, does Linux support matter much? If anything I would think this would be for someone who has a Linux setup but wants to access games that aren't available.
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      "If your use case is gaming, does Linux support matter much?" It really depends on the game. For instance, Factorio, which is enormously popular on HN, has a perfectly functioning Linux version. Many other games do too, and some games even perform better on Linux than on Windows, not to mention having a better user experience on Linux (especially if you are technical and know what you're doing). I have an old Linux laptop, and Factorio performs well enough in single player, but I run in to serious performance issues on multiplayer. It's be nice to be able to run this Linux game on a more performant Linux machine, without shelling out the $$$ for a new gaming rig. Further, I'd like to avoid Windows as much as possible, where it can be avoided.

TimTheTinker 6y ago

Do Workstream VMs come pre-installed with the pro software they mention in the blurb? If so, this sounds compelling.

taigi100 6y ago

I've used perforce in the past both for work & gaming. Gotta say, awesome experience!

sjapps 6y ago

No mac option :(

isthisnametaken 6y ago

"How does pricing work? For hourly plans you are charged a flat rate(depending on machine type) per month to cover storage and access. Am I charged when my machine is off? For hourly plans, if your machine is powered off, you will only be billed for your storage." Are those charges listed anywhere? They don't seem to be on the Workstream pricing page.

jermaustin1 6y ago
I had to dig around, but found them in the help desk: https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003804333 https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000380433...
TheKnack 6y ago
Here's a link to the storage pricing. There are links on that page to pricing details for just about any scenario. https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003804333-Storage-Pricing https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000380433... The lowest level is 50GB for $5 per month
- hedora 6y ago
  I wish there was a way to automatically nuke the image on shutdown, and then spend 15 minutes to have a script auto-populate a few games in my steam library at next boot. It’d save $5/month, and also solve the OS update problem.
  - jedieaston 6y ago
    You can use the CLI to create/destroy instances, so what you could do is write a script that has Chocolatey (or boxstarter, which is a bit more for this purpose) install Steam, run it when you login, and then have another script destroy the instance using the cli command. A bit fiddly, but it'd work.

fao_ 6y ago

This actually seems like a game changer. Access to machine learning / developer rigs at incredibly cheap prices?

netcraft 6y ago

I've looked around the site but im still confused - It looks like its a windows OS? Is there an iPad client?

preya2k 6y ago
You can use it in the browser, or install any RDP/VNC Server you want on the Windows system. So yes, there are probably multiple iPad clients.
- netcraft 6y ago
  oh yeah, I didnt consider youd connect to it through standard RDP clients. Thanks!

b1gtuna 6y ago

I only see Gradient and Core. Where is Workstream? Neat idea!

andy47 6y ago
Same here, signed up but the only choices are Gradient or Core. What is, or where is, Workstream?

dsalzman 6y ago

I’m relishing the switch back to the thin client / main frame model, but I want to own my main frame. Even if it physically sits in a company’s data center. With 5G we are getting closer to disposable glass thin client interfaces.

deegles 6y ago

What's the AWS equivalent to their biggest instance?

dpau 6y ago
I'd like to see a cost comparison across different providers. A comparable v100 machine on Google Cloud is $2.015/hr, while Paperspace seems to charge 2.30/hr for a dedicated v100 (https://www.paperspace.com/pricing https://www.paperspace.com/pricing)
- dkobran 6y ago
  Google Cloud is very sneaky with their pricing as they don't include the instance itself in the advertised GPU pricing. Here's an instance very comparable in specs (8 vCPU, 30GB RAM, 1 V100, 50 GB SSD): https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=a9fbcab5-cbce-4a2c-b2a4-765a2bafd92a https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=a9fbcab5-cb... It's $3.19/hr. The Linux version is $2.87/hr.
  - dpau 6y ago
    Thanks for this link, I've been going by the estimated cost on the Google Cloud VM deployment page which seems to give significantly lower prices than your link. With GC I always seem to end up paying a lot more than I planned to...

Brajeshwar 6y ago

Vagon[1] is another interesting solution tackling to solve a similar problem. 1. https://www.vagon.io https://www.vagon.io

newfeatureok 6y ago

Is there something like this that's self-hosted? My ideal scenario is something like this that's $20/month for unlimited usage, with the caveat that you have to have the server in your own house with your own internet, but the service is that it provisions your machine and proxies it for fast speeds everywhere.

VikingCoder 6y ago
It's not exactly what you're asking for, but maybe Sandstorm.io might be useful.
vermilingua 6y ago
Unless I’m missing something, that’s a hypervisor + VPN + RDP? If you’re technical enough to need that, you’re technical enough to set it up.
ccmcarey 6y ago
Use Parsec for the streaming part.
vageli 6y ago
If the goal is gaming, GeForce Now and Moonlight are amazing. You can also get a remote desktop via GeForce Now but probably better just to use remote desktop.

e12e 6y ago

> How does pricing work? > For hourly plans you are charged a flat rate(depending on machine type) per month to cover storage and access. Additionally, you are charged an hourly rate when the machine is running. Monthly plans are offered at a flat rate for unlimited access. Then the pricing page doesn't list the flat rate, when looking at hourly pricing - but does show an hourly price for monthly billing? Possibly monthly/(30 * 24)? Ed: looks like hourly for monthly plan is calculated as monthly/(365÷12×24)

corenting_ 6y ago

Another interesting solution for this is : https://shop.shadow.tech/usen/pre-order https://shop.shadow.tech/usen/pre-order . They are currently expanding to some countries including the US.

ec822 6y ago
+1 on Shadow!! - I would definitely recommend Shadow. You get a full instance of Windows 10 to do anything you want (I primarily game). I wrote a quick review of it, including 3dmark scores for the base version here: https://medium.com/@ec822/playing-in-the-cloud-d0c023b77bdd https://medium.com/@ec822/playing-in-the-cloud-d0c023b77bdd
Jiger104 6y ago
I've had great experience with shadow. I am pretty close to one of their servers (Dallas) so get around 8ms ping, but even up to 40ms ping it works very well.
jedieaston 6y ago
That's a better deal, since you get a GTX 1080 and 12 GB of RAM for $15 per month, whereas Paperspace is more like $60 per month for the same box. Is Paperspace overpriced or is Shadow burning cash? I'd think of the latter.

chrismckleroy 6y ago

What is the min mbps upload speed required for success here?

VikingCoder 6y ago

I'm just going to state again what I want, which is only tangentially related to the topic... 1) I go on Github and configure a service 2) I make a wallet that people can donate to 3) I start up a virtual machine, aimed at the Github, using the wallet to pay for the time on the machine. The virtual machine host guarantees that the code at that Github is what's really running. I can imagine lots of other things I want, too, but this is the bare minimum. I think it'd be really useful in a lot of scenarios.

t0astbread 6y ago
Agreed, something like "Netlify for virtual machines" would be useful. You could probably get close by auto-deploying from GitHub Actions but you wouldn't get the main benefit of a service like that (having ops done in a clean way without having to think much about it). Without having any experience in the field, aren't lambda functions supposed to provide something like that?
- kim0 6y ago
  Sorry I'm not getting the main value prop from this. I'm mainly an ops person. Can you please explain what that service would look like?
  - jedieaston 6y ago
    The host would prove that the source available online is the exact same code running on the instance, so you know that it wasn't modified by the developer/bad-guy before it went into production.
  - t0astbread 6y ago
    Netlify (primarily) takes a git repo containing a program to generate a static site and turns that into a live running website that automatically updates when the generator repo changes. You don't have to think about configuration or security or updates and you don't have to maintain a server. Ideally this would be a service with the same ergonomics but the outcome isn't a hosted static website but a machine (somewhere in the cloud) running whatever the user wants. "Tedious" tasks like hardening, monitoring and upgrading (and redeploys) would be handled by the service provider, as opposed to the user. For people who like doing ops this might not sound appealing but developers (especially single devs and small teams) often just wanna focus on their app, not their ops, even more so when it comes to continous maintenance. Addendum: I think Laravel has some of this covered in their ecosystem with tools like Forge and Envoyer. But I've never tried any of them so I can't judge.

ComodoHacker 6y ago

What about software licensing? Today I need Office, tomorrow I might need 3DStudio.

soulnothing 6y ago

I used paper space for remote gaming via Parsec. I also purchased one of their machines for remote development purposes. While I was waiting for parts to fix my laptop. The service was really good. The machine was fast, with RDP it felt close to local. They also offered very powerful hard ware. I moved on because it was a bit pricey at that point. This was about a year, year and a half ago. I think it was about 50 a month for me. I moved onto a dedicated server that I used KVM and LibVirt to manage. That worked but it's obviously a lot of over head.

scrumper 6y ago
Signing up right now for this - glad to hear it worked well. I have a Mac at home (not ideal for games) and at most a couple hours a week to do any gaming (so it's not worth buying a PC). For the absolute best machine they have, my outlay will be less than ten bucks a month. An easy sell.
- azinman2 6y ago
  But won’t the latency kill gaming tasks?
  - soulnothing 6y ago
    It's not much different than stadia or nvidia geforce(?). I played online multi player games. If you have a 144hz gsync/freesync monitor. Then this isn't meant for that. But it was totally playable. The weak portion is you're beholden to your internet. Traveling for work it didn't work at all. Most places I stayed had very slow internet and then the latency became unplayable. I see this as a completely viable option if you're on Linux, or Mac and want to game every now and then. Or if you're waiting for a new GPU to come out and still want to game.
  - scrumper 6y ago
    On the off chance you see this, I'm pleased to report that the answer is, no! It works brilliantly as long as you use the free "Parsec" service's client to access the desktop and your games. Browser access to the Paperspace desktop is fine for normal app use but no good for gaming. Setup wasn't quite push-button but I got it up and running by dumbly following the instructions. Parsec was the most confusing part. Trust the docs, and it'll work.

nodesocket 6y ago

Does it support snapshotting a machine after you configure it and install all your custom software then create a new machine from the snapshot?

gnade 6y ago
Yes! Sorry this isn't more obvious: https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/236402867-Templates https://support.paperspace.com/hc/en-us/articles/236402867-T...

blatchcorn 6y ago

I already have a fast computer

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

With all those websites preventing you to use tor, you can use tor to connect to this, and this to connect to whatever you need.

snazz 6y ago
You can also set up a SOCKS proxy on a much cheaper basic VPS as well, giving you the advantage of using a web browser on your local computer instead of dealing with the overhead of a completely virtualized desktop.

woah 6y ago

I've used Paperspace's Gradient product (hosted Jupyter notebooks), and while it is cheaper than most other options, I can't recommend it. The service has a very janky feel. When I first started, there was an issue where my instance was was stuck "shutting down" for half an hour or more and I couldn't access my code. Then there was a weird issue where some kind of geographical split between different types of instances resulted in my code getting lost (I think it happened twice). It has the feel of a product held together by duct tape and chewing gum with a thin veneer of slick graphic design. I recently tried using their CORE product (GPU heavy VMs), but for some reason instances with GPU's are not enabled until you write them a message (I did, and they haven't responded in a week). My advice would be to use the cheap, high performance machines (VC subsidized?) if it makes sense, but never ever store data with them without backing up to a different service (git or Dropbox maybe?)

atian 6y ago
I also can't recommend them. Service is operational when working, but the times it isn't working as expected I don't have the patience to message support. Things just aren't straightforward. This was 2 years ago when I used them to run a couple of Windows apps for work.
- techntoke 6y ago
  Same here, except I did message support and just as you'd expect they gave me the run around.
- JPKab 6y ago
  Just saying that on Paperspace, it's all about using the storage folder. Had some challenges before, but definitely getting a lot of value out of it now. I think the product has a ton of potential, but certainly has warts to iron out. I've so far just used gradient, and haven't experimented with the core APIs feature yet, but looking forward to seeing what can be done there.
- rvnx 6y ago
  I had issues with Paperspace too, switched over to Shadow. I pay +/- 14 USD per month for a computer with 4 cores @ 3.4 GHz, 12 GB RAM, GTX 1080, 256 GB SSD. No commitment. I'm not sure where is the good deal with Workstream ?

preya2k 6y ago

Can somebody highlight the difference between this new "workstream" product, and their regular "core" VMs?

bransonf 6y ago

Curious what folks think the outlook on this technology is. Rather, will there be any significant shift towards centralized compute in the next decade? Currently, a large institution/corporation has to manage thousands of individual machines. Say a physical component fails, now a technician must go to the location of the machine and give the user a temporary replacement. Alternatively, in a centralized compute environment, they could just allocate a new machine, and work entirely out of a data center. And what about software updates and upgrades? In the centralized model, both software updates and hardware upgrades can be managed more easily. Sure, we have good software tools to update all networked devices, but if that fails, the admin still sometimes needs physical access. One market I see this potentially taking off in is academia and hospitals. (Though I’m biased because I’m employed by a Medical School) Much of the record keeping is already done with a centralized infrastructure. Liberal use of active directory and low powered clients is the norm. And particularly for research, there’s the added benefit of being able to allocate more resources without any physical action. Say I’m trying to run a script to fold proteins on my lab workstation. Usually, I’d be limited to the hardware on hand, but in the centralized model I could request or allocate a more powerful machine. Sure, the current solution is to spin up your own VM and move your program. Often, academic institutions have their own on-prem compute for this purpose. However, both still require technical ability on part of the user. How close are we really to the model of giving all users a dummy client (think Chromebook) and centralizing The real compute? What challenges, disadvantages am I missing?

formercoder 6y ago
Depends on latency requirements. Data analysis? Yep. Creative pros? Nope.
- Bombthecat 6y ago
  Why? People are ok to play online via stream. Why shouldnt for work also be ok?
michaelmior 6y ago
Even if there's "centralized" computing, everyone still needs a device they can use to access this central environment. Of course these devices can still fail and need repair. (The Chromebook in your example). At least in that case, these machines are fungible so a permanent replacement can just be given while the faulty device is repaired and used to replace another device the next time one fails.

runaway 6y ago

Would something like paperspace be a good platform for software development? My slow computer doesn't handle IntelliJ that well. Instead of buying a new PC I could rent this for a few hours at a time.

dalore 6y ago

I use Paperspace's core compute machines for my IDE and dev machines. It's great not having to run everything local, can use a cheap low end laptop locally but still have a beast dev machine. If I end up hosing my dev I can just start it from the last snapshot. Granted could probably do this with any host/cloud infrastructure. But I'm happy with it.

blablabla123 6y ago
That's also how I use it. I tried other hosters but for dev use, theirs is particularly nice because it's much cheaper. Also I like the user interface ;) Unfortunately I didn't try Gradient yet but Core already has so many possibilities...

pqdbr 6y ago

I created an account to try some gaming (I'm on a Mac), but they require writing a message to access any GPU enabled machines. Is https://www.paperspace.com/gaming https://www.paperspace.com/gaming deprecated?

stevefan1999 6y ago

It is nothing other than being a fat client that works in the browser.

andybak 6y ago

No RTX/Turing GPUs? My first thought was "Hey - I can try out Minecraft RTX!"

mleonard 6y ago

Hi. Developer and part-time computer science high school teacher here. Does Workstream support graphical desktop linux machines, or only terminal? Thanks!

dbish 6y ago

I think there is a market here. I don't use this service, but instead use an EC2 instance as my developer box (for personal projects) and I do like being able to easily move between multiple machines, no matter where I am and easily spin up another instance when I want to start fresh or try out other setups like having a more powerful machine or something with a GPU. At work (I work at AWS) most people do the same for their developer machines and don't have physical desktops, just using their laptops for access or lightweight local development. A service that makes setting up and managing those developer machines easier for folks who don't want to learn or fiddle with AWS options would be valuable.

Aperocky 6y ago
> learn or fiddle with AWS options AFAIK if you only want a box to act as a dev environment, that would not be much work beyond ec2:run-instance? Is there anything obvious that I'm missing?
- rcxdude 6y ago
  Yeah, but even for fairly technical people, there's a lot more of a learning curve there than there needs to be (starting up an instance is easy, getting all the security stuff set up is more of a pain). Having something which is easier to manage without all the complexity of AWS seems reasonable.
- dbish 6y ago
  standard installations (set yourself up with the tools you want running on the machine), keeping track of and managing the security parts (security keys/access credentials), mapping to any static IP or domain name you may want to use for ease of access, and other niceties could make the process smoother if you were purely focused on the developer workflow
  - dbish 6y ago
    also when you're testing things out on the machine you have to know how to change security settings for opening ports and providing access externally. These aren't too complicated to do, but just generally having simple tools/UI for making this simpler could be useful. for example, if you're a flask dev you may want to just run a site "locally" and make a few setting changes before being able to access your site. i've helped friends with how to do that before

localhost 6y ago

I'm curious what others here are paying for a cloud VM for dev tasks. My current favorite VM size on Azure is Standard_NC6_Promo that includes a K80 GPU, 56GB RAM with 8 vCPUs for $0.39/hour.

vijaybritto 6y ago
Which product is this? I cant seem to find it myself in Azure. Virtual Desktop? I can only see buttons asking to contact sales
- localhost 6y ago
  It's just a Linux VM. Here's a link (search for NC6 Promo on the page): https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-machines/linux/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/virtual-ma.... Once up and running you can ssh into it and install whatever you want onto it.
azinman2 6y ago
When you say dev tasks, are you talking about machine learning? What dev tasks do you need 56G of ram for? I’m trying to figure out who these products are for. 0.39/h * 8h = $3.20/day, or approx $70/working month. And that’s on top of buying the computer you have to connect to this, with the annoyance of extra latency in all tasks. I can see the use of occasional demanding tasks using very large VMs on inexpensive computers, but I don’t see how it works out in the long term if that’s your man machine that you always live out of.
- localhost 6y ago
  Sorry - yes ML tasks. The pricing is on par with a D8v3 but offers more RAM and a GPU, but likely with slower CPU perf (though I haven't benchmarked the machine). My laptop doesn't have a discrete GPU, so I can't do any ML tasks on it so running a Jupyter server on a remote VM is my way of doing those tasks.

ccktlmazeltov 6y ago

Is this a look at our future? Everybody will just connect to a more powerful computer in the cloud?

ship_it 6y ago
Probably. I even saw Xbox being used as a cloud computer rather than console. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCloud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCloud
- ccktlmazeltov 6y ago
  I actually play my playstation games online with PS Now.

paulpauper 6y ago

How is this different from virtual windows or Linux machine. You can run software remotely this way without having to buy a new computer

OkGoDoIt 6y ago

So I read through the whole landing page and I don’t really understand what this is. It sounds like it’s just another virtual private server? How is this different from getting a VPS on any hosting provider and remote desktoping into it? I guess since it’s paid by the hour rather than pay by month, but generally a service like this charges you for every hour your virtual machine exists, not just when it’s running. So unless you want all your data deleted you’re going to be paying longer-term anyway. Or maybe that’s not the case, they certainly don’t go into any detail to explain it one way or the other.

1023bytes 6y ago
The benefit here is you pay a smaller fee for the storage and the machine itself is created on demand.

fataliss 6y ago

Anybody used it for gaming? I was a beta user of the Nvidia service which is dedicated to gaming and while overall acceptable, lag spikes would render the use of the platform really frustrating. Everything would be smooth for 30s and then "lag" or freeze for up to 1-2s and then resume. Fine if playing the sims, but when you are in a fight in fast paced games it's a deal breaker. To my knowledge, so far, no platform has figured out the proper streaming/input lag management to make the experience truly seamless. Is this one different?

Aeolun 6y ago
I have used it for gaming and I can’t say I ever had an issue like that. I haven’t used it for very long though.
frodprefect 6y ago
I just tried for the last couple hours. Installed Steam then Fallout 4 and Grand Theft Auto 5. I tried to get GTA to start 5 times but it never would. Just black screen with music playing. Fallout would start but I couldn't aim with my mouse. I could walk and shoot but it would register mouse movement. Then accidentally hitting ESC would stop full screen and eventually crash to the point I had to hard restart the system. I don't recommend for gaming.
- mistahchris 6y ago
  It sounds like you were using Paperspace's remote desktop. I find that if you connect to it with Parsec, none of the issues that you're describing apply.
Havoc 6y ago
Pretty sure you’ll get far better results with actual cloud gaming providers
- fataliss 6y ago
  My issue with "traditional" cloud gaming providers of the like of Nvidia (on top of non stellar perfs), is they they have a limited catalog and offer no system control. I like to play old games that only run on windows and could therefore use a service like workstream. (Currently playing Warhammer online which requires dx9 so unless you have a way to manually install old drivers etc you can't really play)

riazrizvi 6y ago

Better known as 'Desktop Virtualization'. Established competitors in this space are Citrix/XenDesktop, Microsoft/HyperV, Oracle/VirtualBox, VMware/HorizonView used in combination with remote desktop clients like X11 and Remote Desktop Connect. Is there an angle here that is new and interesting?

lonelappde 6y ago
Also, AWS and GCP
djhworld 6y ago
> Is there an angle here that is new and interesting? It seems like a turn key solution without much tinkering?
jabroni_salad 6y ago
This is specifically "desktop as a service" so while there may be Xen or Horizon in the mix it is abstracted away from the customer. The established competitors are Amazon Workspaces and Azure Virtual Desktop.

ChuckMcM 6y ago

First, that is a pretty nice web site. The notion of this sort of virtual computer goes back a ways, the one thing I keep expecting to see but haven't yet is a fully encrypted experience where the "cloud" bits don't work unless the user's local display has a security token attached. My first experience with type of architecture was in the 80's with something called an "X terminal". All the same elements, a machine with a display / keyboard /mouse that had a network protocol to talk to some hardware acting on my behalf in a machine room. I could sit down at any station and open up my desktop, just as I had left it. It is a pretty decent experience even with only a 10mbit Ethernet network. The second time I got to experience this architecture was in the Citrix days (late 90's early 2000's) Now the OS was always Windows and the network protocol was proprietary, but you could bring up an entire enterprise without all that pesky installing/rebooting that was the life of an early Window's system administrator. Also gave you control over employees trying to put bogus software on the computer. No Netscape Communicator for you! Work work work. :-) Somewhere after Citrix imploded with all the problems that come with a walled garden with razor wire on the walls, we started seeing deployments using virtual machines and VNC. That gave you the "what you see is what is happening" feel of Citrix but now you had a different choice of operating systems and better vendor flexibility. VNC over a SSH SOCKS proxy replaced X11 over SSH as a more "universal" way of implementing this architectural design pattern. Of course Google gave us "the browser is the computer" with ChromeOS and now the machine as a browser target where the browser is something more standard. I like the architecture but in the previous iterations there was always some big problem it was addressing, X terminals addressed mobility, Citrix addressed enterprise configuration management, VNC/VM addressed multiple OSes other than Windows while retaining enterprise configuration management, and ChromeOS went for a better security model, mode-less configuration, and minimal cost of entry. What problem does Workstream address either better or differently than what the above solutions address/addressed?

catblast 6y ago
Citrix imploded? That’s news to me. It’s pretty much an industry standard in US healthcare.
- third_I 6y ago

ajiang 6y ago

Anything?

pizza 6y ago

Any chance for more zones for paperspace? Wanted to use them for a cloud gaming host, but they don't have any regions in Los Angeles

ugh123 6y ago

Whats not clear is do I still pay for it when i'm not using it, but can restore processes and provisioned apps when I need to get back on?

sabujp 6y ago

this works out to ~$375/yr for their advanced plan if you figure 8 hr work days and 261 working days per year (https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+work+days+per+year https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+work+days+per+year). How does this compare vs an equivalent instance with some kind of remote desktop running on a cloud service?

rodolphoarruda 6y ago

Is there a service like this for Linux desktop users?

thekyle 6y ago
AWS Workspaces supports both Windows and Linux desktops.

rubatuga 6y ago

Signed up for a paper space account about a year and a half ago, they had a dark UI pattern to stop people from deleting their VMs, and it kept charging me every month with no method to stop it. After a month or too, they changed their UI to allow deleting the VM.

delgaudm 6y ago

This is a new world to me... I'm looking to learn a GPU intensive application like Davinci Resolve before committing to a new machine to run it locally -- would this be an appropriate solution, and would it obviate the need for the local machine, i.e. can I do everything on this that I could do locally?

the_arun 6y ago

Why do you need to use a Virtual Computer when you already have a laptop/desktop you use to connect to this Virtual Computer? What am I missing? Is it only for folks connecting from Chromebooks?

32gbsd 6y ago
Its a subscription service. People want subscriptions.

ffhhj 6y ago

Are there solutions that don't care about user location? Getting "not available in your country" from Shadow and Nvidia Now.

zelly 6y ago

Back to the future.

betoharres 6y ago

laughs in tmux

quadrature 6y ago

this looks awesome. I wish i could rent machines preloaded with the applications i use. but i guess the incentives for the licensers aren't aligned there.

d23 6y ago
My thoughts exactly. If I could just rent photoshop for a few hours that would serve my needs perfectly. But it looks like I'd need to buy a license, load it on, and pay monthly for storage, so I might as well just pay for just the application and use it locally.

vinaynadig 6y ago

I use Paperspace for running Fusion360 which is a CAD application. I use a Linux laptop and there are no really good CAD applications in Linux space(I tried FreeCAD but Fusion 360 is so much easier to use though). Works like a charm and extremely light on the wallet(I bill roughly 15 ~ 20 USD per month with around 40 to 60 hours of usage). It's been a godsend so far.

rock_artist 6y ago

While interesting, it would’ve been great if they had a simple test no signup instance to evaluate responsiveness.

pkos98 6y ago

I have to recommend https://shadow.tech https://shadow.tech! It is a Windows VM intended specifically for (but not limited to) gaming! And it works extremely well, I am playing games on it for ~ 2 years by using their client app on Linux.

jplayer01 6y ago
I only recently got mine last week and I love it. The CPU is a bit underpowered but the GPU is so much better than what I have in my PC and I’ve been able to play a bunch of more recent games that I wasn’t able to before. Also much prefer the freedom to install what I want over services like GFN or Stadia.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Sir_Substance 6y ago

I'm curious about something because I'm working on a side project that's "in the area". How does workstream, or indeed any remote computing provider, handle the possibility of people using their service to attack other computers, or to store/transfer extremely illegal data? They're not exactly running KYC identification.

Havoc 6y ago
There are probably easier and cheaper way to do that. All sorts of player offer storage without kyc and for attacks this isn’t really what you’d want either

jcrawfordor 6y ago

I was pretty excited to give this a try because it might be a good fit for some frustrations I've had with running a GPU-dependent task on my laptop without discrete graphics. Onboarding experience is terrible. Registered for an account from the Workstream page linked here, and was taken to a console with absolutely no mention of Workstream. Went back and forth a few times trying to figure out if auth provider had redirected to the wrong page after registration only. Ultimately searched through comments here to find out that Workstream is a variant of the CORE product. Having figured that out, went to the Core product, was rejected on creating an instance due to no payment on file. Not a huge issue, but would have been nice if I was prompted up front to complete this. Once I'm past that hurdle, I go back to the CORE product and find out that I'm not allowed to create GPU instances until I put in a ticket. I'm hoping that this was some accident where this landing page ended up on HN when it wasn't supposed to be public knowledge yet, otherwise the lack of thought on just the setup process here is pretty concerning. I'm also pretty confused at the requirement that I put in a ticket to have GPU instances enabled when they've already taken payment info, and it seems like a test auth would be a better anti-fraud measure than the half-sentence I typed in. Man, my excitement here sure was short lived. Edit: got an email that I had been enabled. went to look. Three of the GPU types still show as locked but one no longer shows the lock icon, so I guess approvals are per-type? But I can't select the "unlocked" GPU type, it's disabled. There's no explanation of why. A couple of minutes of trying different combinations and I find out that it's due to the DC, if I choose a different DC I can select it. So I guess they're only available in one DC, at least right now? It would have been nice to be told that. Edit: got the machine to provision, installed the client from another HN comment. I logged into Paperspace using a Google account. The client does not list this as an option. Only email, github, AD, and SAML. I give up. Except for the machine is still provisioning and I have paid $10 for storage. Great.

fred123 6y ago
A few weeks ago I tried to subscribe to their machine learning product but their payment processor only accepts US credit cards and I’m Europe based. While support says it will work with non-US credit cards as well, I could not get it to work. Tried about 20 suggestions made by their support over the course of 1 week what to put into the payment form; nothing worked. I gave up and chose Google Colab.

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

As a computer-savvy dev, i feel like its hard to beat building your own given how cheap & powerful desktops are today, and how good software is. Workstream specs are - 6 CPU, 16GB RAM, 2GB graphics card, 256GB SSD. You could build a desktop beating that for around $800 today - including a Ryzen 3600, motherboard, case, better GPU etc. At $0.18/hr for Workstream, that means after just 44 hours you breakeven on building your own machine. With a little extra work on setting up VNC/RDP/Parsec you can then access this desktop from anywhere. I already do this and it works great for the most part. The streaming app/protocol is key, and thanks to teams like Parsec and Moonlight we have high quality software doing this for free. ---- But given their target market, this does look really cool. Amazon Workspaces costs 3x-4x more for comparable machines with Windows. Paperspace looks like its offering OSX and some good bundled software for designers, VFX etc.

marbogast40 6y ago
$800 / $0.18 per hour = 4444.4 hours I think you did: $800 / $18 per hour = 44 hours Pretty big difference! Curious, does this change your value assessment?
- zaptheimpaler 6y ago
  Oh good catch! That works out to 185 days so it won't change anything, my pc will last a lot longer than that. But then again, even a much lower cost wouldn't change things for me. For one I completely own my pc and can do anything I want on it, second I know it's secure & private and my data won't be used in ways i might not know about, and third there's no internet latency on input/output which is nice for gaming etc. I could go on but yeah I feel like it's clear owning is generally better than renting for many reasons
  - stevens32 6y ago
    185 days of continuous use.. for many 4000 hours is easily a decade worth of gaming

jasonlingx 6y ago

Are there services like these that also “rent” the software (aside from the OS) licenses to you? I wouldn’t mind paying a pro-rated license for sharing photo or video editing software for example.

MR4D 6y ago

Can someone clarify something for me please? Is this (and others like it) just a new Citrix-type system? Or is this actually something new that changes the game?

TACIXAT 6y ago

I really like the idea of Paperspace and I've tried to get going a few times on the free plan but I hate notebooks. I didn't fully understand the server + gpu offerings, which is what I want. I would love it if I could just get an IP to scp some scripts to, then ssh in and run them. I don't think it's possible to get billed only for GPU time when you're running it this way though, so it would be pricey to keep the server up.

RMPR 6y ago

There's no cloud it's literally someone else's computer

fxtentacle 6y ago

Lots of red flags. These guys apparently have very little clue what they're talking about. I mean "fast + virtual" already makes me doubtful. And I'm sure that with the internet being overloaded by everyone working from home, using remote desktop is going to be even more painful than usual. But when they claim "Get a new computer in less than 5 minutes, zero configuration required." and then mention 3ds max, I am 100% convinced that they are clueless. Pretty much nobody uses the stock 3ds renderer, so you'll need to install something like Redshift or V-Ray, too. And setting up the plugin licensing alone will take you hours. Plus you have to re-do it every time the underlying hardware of your virtual instance changes. Oh, and then there's pricing. "P6000 For extreme 3D apps, rendering" starts at 50GB SSD? WTF? I have a 8TB storage raid here to keep the scene files around. And then "Only pay for what you use" but "For hourly plans, if your machine is powered off, you will only be billed for your storage." OK, so you pretend to cater to 3D professionals, but you fail to mention licensing, the number 1 cloud issue, you provide too little storage to load even a hobby-sized rendering project, and your on-demand service will bill me for storage unless I download and re-upload terabytes of data every time I switch projects. I'd say you can greatly improve your pitch by NOT promoting it as a professional solution. It's probably great for hobbyists and gamers, so I would focus on them with the marketing. Oh and how are you going to be "Delivering every frame in less than 16.6 ms" when there's 50ms of latency (due to speed of light) between me and your closest server?

ktpsns 6y ago
This is so true. I've done GPU heavy High performance rendering on remote VNC-like connections, something which requires lot's of preparation time -- and evventually you will be frustrated by working remotely.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

What I wonder, is there a special cloud service for compilation? Compilation is a spike in IO and CPU and most of the time nothing (and I don't mean a build server, but an exported file system I can edit on my computer and compile very fast in the cloud).

dvfjsdhgfv 6y ago

For people who have used it: is credit card the only payment option?

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

This is a really great idea! I wish you a lot of luck in this endeavor! Any plans for a free, ultra-lightweight tier of service? You might be able to get more paid subscribers over time that way...