6 ms·

Is this really solving performance issues by streaming a video over the internet ? Solving problems caused by overengineering with overengineering ? Isn't thi

by pjerem 6y ago

Is this really solving performance issues by streaming a video over the internet ? Solving problems caused by overengineering with overengineering ? Isn't this just insane ? If you have performance issues because you use a lots of tabs, just use a browser which is able to pause background tabs ?

aeontech 6y ago
I thought you were being sarcastic or joking but then I opened the link… truly this is not the future I thought we would be living in
- threevox 6y ago
  On one hand, you can pay ~$30/mo to have somebody else do your web browsing for you. On the other hand, you can use an adblocker (free), Brave Browser (free), and just not have 8 quintillion tabs open. I'm trying to be open minded here but this seems really over-engineered to me
  - kzrdude 6y ago
    I have 8 quintillion tabs but with auto tab suspend (firefox addon). More or less a garbage collector..
  - astrange 6y ago
    Is there evidence that adblockers reduce browser memory use?
edhelas 6y ago
Basically reinventing the mainframe in 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer. Or the Minitel for the French folks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel Compressing and streaming pages was kind of the idea behind Opera Mini as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini So nothing really new…
- lacker 6y ago
  To me the interesting difference with mainframes is that you were generally taking advantage of the extra processing power available on the mainframe. Whereas this is more like taking advantage of the extra RAM available on the cloud machines. But yeah the spirit of it is very similar.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    There is a recurrent pattern where systems are rebalanced where resources allow for 'more'. Centralized comes first because concentration obviously helps having more resources then market distributes capabilities (desktops/laptops). And now people are going the other way, maybe because local resources are not growing fast enough.
- pradn 6y ago
  Amazon's Silk browser for its Fire devices also offload processing to remote machines. I'm unsure if they are still doing that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Silk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Silk
  - w0mbat 6y ago
    WebTV did this in the 90s. Web pages were reformatted and rendered on the server, then sent down to the WebTV box (originally over modem). Microsoft bought the company, called it MSN TV.
nr2x 6y ago
Hey, if we want to push past 4 degrees global warming in the next decade we'll need to get creative.
- edhelas 6y ago
  Some will tell you "yes but here you group together computers" so it's energy saving… Are we also mentioning the fact that the whole browser navigation goes through a third party service ? GDPR will be fun on that one.
  - nr2x 6y ago
    Jokingly meant that instead of reducing useless CPU overhead from adtech/inefficient scripts, we're building yet another layer of waste on top.
nutek 6y ago
I don't think they stream video back. It could make more sense to take over memory consumption and CPU/GPU heavy threads in a compressed binary format, especially from background tabs and restore them on demand.
klohto 6y ago
What's the problem though? The market clearly exists (right now), so I don't why blame the company trying to get a share and help with this issue. It's clear that Google isn't going to optimize Chrome and people aren't going to switch to Firefox with Tree Tabs / Sidebery with background suspension.
- pjerem 6y ago
  > The market clearly exists Lots of browsers are implementing background suspension. Even if Google decided that they'll never implement this, it will be hard to convice potential customers to pay x$/month to solve a problem already solved by others browsers. And my issue was not about wether the market exists or not. It's about an unreasonable solution to an unreasonable problem. Market clearly exists if you are able to mass product diesel-powered personal jetpacks for $49.99. But it says nothing positive about our future. (but i'd be glad to try it at least once anyway :D )
  - klohto 6y ago
    Ha! Try to pray people away from their Chrome browsers, good luck :) They would rather pay than switch. But yes, I agree on the sustainability future. Afraid there isn't a solution other than Chrome losing market share or Google implementing the feature.
    - pjerem 6y ago
      Yep, so they are not going to switch to Mighty either ;)
    - Jiejeing 6y ago
      Who is "people"? The only people I know who are dead-set on using chrome are front-end developers who work hard at making it the new IE6
- michaelt 6y ago
  Well, it sounds like a parody product because browsers are supposed to be the lightweight, fast clients for the things we've offloaded to cloud servers. By tradition, web browsing is the quintessential lightweight task, letting laptop vendors report "10 hours of web browsing" and the budget-conscious to say "8GB of RAM is more than enough for everyday tasks like browsing facebook" Hearing that someone runs their web browser on a cloud server is like hearing someone has hired a personal assistant for their personal assistant.
lacker 6y ago
It isn't insane, it's just an engineering tradeoff. Streaming a browser takes more of some resources, probably bandwidth, processing power for video decoding, and the cost of the remote hardware. But it takes less RAM on your local machine. If you are running out of RAM and not running out of the other resources, this tradeoff makes complete sense.
- arghwhat 6y ago
  If you were talking about heavy CAD stuff, maybe. Streaming your web browser and thereby exposing all information accessed and sent, including passwords, to a third-party company because you had too many unused tabs open is insane nonsense.
  - nix0n 6y ago
    > exposing all information accessed and sent, including passwords, to a third-party company They're marketing it to people whose _Google Chrome_ is running too slow. That's already being exposed to Google.
    - alex_smart 6y ago
      Do you have any evidence that Chrome shares all the passwords/authentication tokens/cookies of the user with Google?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - arghwhat 6y ago
      Yeah, chrome sucks and logs your every move, but it's not live streaming passwords and giving a third party the ability to just... Take over the session while you were logged in to online banking.
agotterer 6y ago
This reminds me of blade computing from the 90s!

by pjerem 6y ago

aeontech 6y ago

I thought you were being sarcastic or joking but then I opened the link… truly this is not the future I thought we would be living in

threevox 6y ago
On one hand, you can pay ~$30/mo to have somebody else do your web browsing for you. On the other hand, you can use an adblocker (free), Brave Browser (free), and just not have 8 quintillion tabs open. I'm trying to be open minded here but this seems really over-engineered to me
- kzrdude 6y ago
  I have 8 quintillion tabs but with auto tab suspend (firefox addon). More or less a garbage collector..
- astrange 6y ago
  Is there evidence that adblockers reduce browser memory use?

edhelas 6y ago

Basically reinventing the mainframe in 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainframe_computer. Or the Minitel for the French folks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel Compressing and streaming pages was kind of the idea behind Opera Mini as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini So nothing really new…

lacker 6y ago
To me the interesting difference with mainframes is that you were generally taking advantage of the extra processing power available on the mainframe. Whereas this is more like taking advantage of the extra RAM available on the cloud machines. But yeah the spirit of it is very similar.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  There is a recurrent pattern where systems are rebalanced where resources allow for 'more'. Centralized comes first because concentration obviously helps having more resources then market distributes capabilities (desktops/laptops). And now people are going the other way, maybe because local resources are not growing fast enough.
pradn 6y ago
Amazon's Silk browser for its Fire devices also offload processing to remote machines. I'm unsure if they are still doing that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Silk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Silk
- w0mbat 6y ago
  WebTV did this in the 90s. Web pages were reformatted and rendered on the server, then sent down to the WebTV box (originally over modem). Microsoft bought the company, called it MSN TV.

nr2x 6y ago

Hey, if we want to push past 4 degrees global warming in the next decade we'll need to get creative.

edhelas 6y ago
Some will tell you "yes but here you group together computers" so it's energy saving… Are we also mentioning the fact that the whole browser navigation goes through a third party service ? GDPR will be fun on that one.
- nr2x 6y ago
  Jokingly meant that instead of reducing useless CPU overhead from adtech/inefficient scripts, we're building yet another layer of waste on top.

nutek 6y ago

I don't think they stream video back. It could make more sense to take over memory consumption and CPU/GPU heavy threads in a compressed binary format, especially from background tabs and restore them on demand.

klohto 6y ago

What's the problem though? The market clearly exists (right now), so I don't why blame the company trying to get a share and help with this issue. It's clear that Google isn't going to optimize Chrome and people aren't going to switch to Firefox with Tree Tabs / Sidebery with background suspension.

pjerem 6y ago
> The market clearly exists Lots of browsers are implementing background suspension. Even if Google decided that they'll never implement this, it will be hard to convice potential customers to pay x$/month to solve a problem already solved by others browsers. And my issue was not about wether the market exists or not. It's about an unreasonable solution to an unreasonable problem. Market clearly exists if you are able to mass product diesel-powered personal jetpacks for $49.99. But it says nothing positive about our future. (but i'd be glad to try it at least once anyway :D )
- klohto 6y ago
  Ha! Try to pray people away from their Chrome browsers, good luck :) They would rather pay than switch. But yes, I agree on the sustainability future. Afraid there isn't a solution other than Chrome losing market share or Google implementing the feature.
  - pjerem 6y ago
    Yep, so they are not going to switch to Mighty either ;)
  - Jiejeing 6y ago
    Who is "people"? The only people I know who are dead-set on using chrome are front-end developers who work hard at making it the new IE6
michaelt 6y ago
Well, it sounds like a parody product because browsers are supposed to be the lightweight, fast clients for the things we've offloaded to cloud servers. By tradition, web browsing is the quintessential lightweight task, letting laptop vendors report "10 hours of web browsing" and the budget-conscious to say "8GB of RAM is more than enough for everyday tasks like browsing facebook" Hearing that someone runs their web browser on a cloud server is like hearing someone has hired a personal assistant for their personal assistant.

lacker 6y ago

It isn't insane, it's just an engineering tradeoff. Streaming a browser takes more of some resources, probably bandwidth, processing power for video decoding, and the cost of the remote hardware. But it takes less RAM on your local machine. If you are running out of RAM and not running out of the other resources, this tradeoff makes complete sense.

arghwhat 6y ago
If you were talking about heavy CAD stuff, maybe. Streaming your web browser and thereby exposing all information accessed and sent, including passwords, to a third-party company because you had too many unused tabs open is insane nonsense.
- nix0n 6y ago
  > exposing all information accessed and sent, including passwords, to a third-party company They're marketing it to people whose _Google Chrome_ is running too slow. That's already being exposed to Google.
  - alex_smart 6y ago
    Do you have any evidence that Chrome shares all the passwords/authentication tokens/cookies of the user with Google?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - arghwhat 6y ago
    Yeah, chrome sucks and logs your every move, but it's not live streaming passwords and giving a third party the ability to just... Take over the session while you were logged in to online banking.

agotterer 6y ago

This reminds me of blade computing from the 90s!