4 ms·

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 dis

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 7y 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.
pta 7y ago
I don't know if it has anything to do with this announcement (e.g. some malicious actor taking advantage of a dormant vulnerability), but just a few days ago someone managed to almost invade my Paperspace account. Fortunately the system detected it as suspicious, but it seems they managed to get the password right. The weird thing is I haven't used this thing since years ago when I registered and used it, like, twice? And I used a unique, secure password which I'm pretty sure I've never shared with anyone or typed anywhere else or in any unsafe devices. No Google login either (but I've logged out of all devices and removed authorization for all external services just to be sure). So I emailed them asking what happened and how I could cancel my account (because there's no way to do it via the website). They didn't give any detail except say someone did manage to "semi" sign in, more than once, in a few separate days recently. At least they responded quickly and deleted my account.
- glial 7y ago
  I had the exact same experience.
igneo676 7y ago
I've used Paperspace pretty extensively for cloud-gaming without the lock-in. Unless you're pretty familiar with their UI, it can be an extremely frustrating experience I've had problems where I've been locked out of GPU types with little to no explanation from their staff. Instances have also gone completely unresponsive and essentially "bricked" from my end. At some point I reached a decently stable state and haven't mucked around with instances. Sad to see things haven't improved for new customers
lelector 7y ago
I don't think it's strange to have to write a ticket to get a GPU auth. Google Cloud Platform requires the same, can take days to approve, and is more expensive and WAY less intuitive. Plus I've had ton of glitches working with GCP where they said they approved my request but didn't -- multiple times.

fred123 7y 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.

pta 7y ago

I don't know if it has anything to do with this announcement (e.g. some malicious actor taking advantage of a dormant vulnerability), but just a few days ago someone managed to almost invade my Paperspace account. Fortunately the system detected it as suspicious, but it seems they managed to get the password right. The weird thing is I haven't used this thing since years ago when I registered and used it, like, twice? And I used a unique, secure password which I'm pretty sure I've never shared with anyone or typed anywhere else or in any unsafe devices. No Google login either (but I've logged out of all devices and removed authorization for all external services just to be sure). So I emailed them asking what happened and how I could cancel my account (because there's no way to do it via the website). They didn't give any detail except say someone did manage to "semi" sign in, more than once, in a few separate days recently. At least they responded quickly and deleted my account.

glial 7y ago
I had the exact same experience.

igneo676 7y ago

I've used Paperspace pretty extensively for cloud-gaming without the lock-in. Unless you're pretty familiar with their UI, it can be an extremely frustrating experience I've had problems where I've been locked out of GPU types with little to no explanation from their staff. Instances have also gone completely unresponsive and essentially "bricked" from my end. At some point I reached a decently stable state and haven't mucked around with instances. Sad to see things haven't improved for new customers

lelector 7y ago

I don't think it's strange to have to write a ticket to get a GPU auth. Google Cloud Platform requires the same, can take days to approve, and is more expensive and WAY less intuitive. Plus I've had ton of glitches working with GCP where they said they approved my request but didn't -- multiple times.