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If you want to make a 3d rendering beyond 1990s Pixar's wildest dreams, the Cloud is fantastic for it. If you want to run protein folding simulations, or atmos
by MereInterest 4y ago
If you want to make a 3d rendering beyond 1990s Pixar's wildest dreams, the Cloud is fantastic for it. If you want to run protein folding simulations, or atmospheric modeling, it's fantastic. It's also effective if you want an always-on server for video analysis of home security cameras. Even if that could be done locally instead. As a developer, the Cloud is great, because you can rent a server farm instead of buying it. As a user, the Cloud is horrendous, because you are forced to rent software instead of buying it.
The Cloud has hasn't democratized super computing. It just expanded to a slightly larger oligarchy.
- pabs3 4y agoVMs as a service are a good tradeoff, since you control most of the software you run (except the hypervisor) and can move it to your local devices easily, which usually also have good hypervisors. Of course, with VMs you still have the problem of having to be a sysadmin and setup, configure and secure software. I guess that is why SaaSS is so popular.
- dagw 4y agoThe Cloud has hasn't democratized super computing. I, as a hobbyist anywhere in the world and with no company affiliation, can set up a 100 CPU compute cluster, run my own software on it and then shut it down again, all for less than the price of a movie ticket. How is that not democratisation.