8 ms·

Looking at tweets like [1] it seems like their original bet was that server single core performance would dramatically outpace client single core performance. H

Looking at tweets like [1] it seems like their original bet was that server single core performance would dramatically outpace client single core performance. Honestly even if that had happened I still don't think their product would have made sense. The hosting cost and bandwidth/latency requirements would still have killed it. The death of this product is a good sign for computing overall. The more of computing that happens on the client the better. Clients are (at least sometimes) under user control. When stuff moves to the cloud users give up control and that's a bad thing. Long live fat clients! [1] https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1588906086459150337?s=20&t=3QU-o-xTD4nS9k2eog9U9A https://twitter.com/Suhail/status/1588906086459150337?s=20&t...

aslilac 4y ago
yes! this is the same reason I’m glad Stadia died. “cool demo” does not equal “practical business”, and local compute will always be superior to cloud compute.
- liuliu 4y ago
  "always" is not given. But yes, glad more computing on clients. More power to the people.
- andrewvc 4y ago
  What? Stadia worked great (I say this as a user). What didn’t work was the business model, the lack of games, and the lack of trust in google to invest to fix those other things. It worked flawlessly for me for years over Wi-Fi. GeForce now which I currently use is rockier due to being more bandwidth sensitive and not as controller friendly since you’re really using a PC, not a console as stadia was.
- Kiro 4y ago
  Stadia was amazing and worked great even for games that required semi-high latency. The problem was the business model.
  - bloody-crow 4y ago
    Even under ideal conditions where most people were claiming it's working great, I never found the latency even remotely acceptable. Maybe it's due to my preference to esports titles that requires all the responsiveness possible, but the point stands. Remote rendering would never be able to achieve anything even close to acceptable performance to be competitive with on-client rendering.
  - smaudet 4y ago
    Agree with co-commenter, I have never seen anyone who used it for low latency apps say it was sufficient. The target market for displacing e.g. gpus is heavily geared towards low latency. It might have been OK for mobile games, but then they were just competing with themselves, with an arguably inferior product (if I can't play my mobile game anywhere, only in the vicinity of my house where I already have my high powered rig, what's the point?) I do think it was an attempt to defeat a very legit, widespread use case to try tk justify pushing thin clients on everyone, glad it failed.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
My primary feeling is that I think technical people drastically overestimate the pain that most "normal" people experience when it comes to browser performance. I see it all the time on HN, e.g. people bitching about the amount of RAM Electron apps take and the like. Who cares? The average user certainly doesn't. If anything, 98% of the time when I experience browser performance issues it's network-latency related, or the fact that some page is loading 300 ad-tracking scripts and one of them is accidentally blocking. The only time I really notice client-side execution performance is when someone posts a cool 3D browser example on HN and things slightly slow down a bit on my phone when there are a couple million polygons or whatever. Even then, things are fine on my laptop.
- kaesar14 4y ago
  100% - people cared about browser performance and usability until Firefox and Chrome solved 99% of the problems users would ever face (tabbing, consistent rendering, security, beauty(!)) and now it’s a market that’s immune to change.
  - iopq 4y ago
    Wait until adblockers stop working, and see many people start seeing YouTube ads again. Will they agree to stay on Chrome?
    - beebeepka 4y ago
      My only use for chromium is youtube. I only watch a handful of channels but things are getting ridiculous. Sometimes I get ads every minute. Every minute! Just the other day I got served 5 ads in a row after a simple fast forward. I gave up TV more than 20 years ago and this crap is way worse. What can I do without letting them in my actual browser? These people are crazy.
      - dmarcos 4y ago
        I highly recommend Youtube Premium. Also heard from creators that they get paid more from Premium views than from free accounts.
ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
The product, "compute pixels on powerful machine -> render on thin client", makes much more sense if you don't try to monetize by being a cloud landlord, but you let the users own that powerful machine, make money through hardware, and help them with the software, make money through support, no subscriptions, no rent-seeking. Think at the level of a family: 2 parents, 2 children which means: 4 smartphones, 2÷3 laptops, 1÷2 desktops, 1÷2 tablets, each of them $1,000+ which means around $8,000+ and $11,000+, replaced every 2÷4 years. Instead of 8÷11 screens, each with it's own beefy CPU/GPU/RAM, you could have 8÷11 thin clients (at the most $200 each, for fancy cameras and larger batteries) and a powerful machine, somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000, dual CPU, dual GPU, etc., which can last 10+ years (thinking of all those refurbished servers with 2012 Xeon E5-2620s which work great even today, and have no reason not to work perfectly fine even in 2032). Bandwidth/latency is an issue but as we are advancing in 5G+ technologies it's just a wait game. Long live thin clients where the user owns the upgradeable fat server rendering the thin client!
- Zopieux 4y ago
  I find it deeply unsettling that you'd consider it normal/common to upgrade 4 digit (is that all Apple?) devices every 2 years, or that folks would need so many different form factors in the first place. Just thinking of the literal mountains of ewaste gives me goosebumps.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    It's pretty much what happens in the regular household with median and around income [1] [2]. Yes, we are currently generating way beyond ridiculous levels of waste, electronic and beyond: we throw away globally 1.4 billion tons of food per year [3] in a world with 822 million people suffering from undernourishment [4]. If we are this bad with something as vital as food, of course we are worse with devices. [1] (2017) Average U.S. household now has 7 screens, report finds https://www.fiercevideo.com/cable/average-u-s-household-now-has-seven-screens-reportlinker-finds https://www.fiercevideo.com/cable/average-u-s-household-now-... [2] (2019) U.S. Households Have an Average of 11 Connected Devices — And 5G Should Push That Even Higher https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/u-s-households-have-an-average-of-11-connected-devices-and-5g-should-push-that-even-higher-1203431225/ https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/u-s-households-have-an... [3] https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america [4] https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty...

aslilac 4y ago

yes! this is the same reason I’m glad Stadia died. “cool demo” does not equal “practical business”, and local compute will always be superior to cloud compute.

liuliu 4y ago
"always" is not given. But yes, glad more computing on clients. More power to the people.
andrewvc 4y ago
What? Stadia worked great (I say this as a user). What didn’t work was the business model, the lack of games, and the lack of trust in google to invest to fix those other things. It worked flawlessly for me for years over Wi-Fi. GeForce now which I currently use is rockier due to being more bandwidth sensitive and not as controller friendly since you’re really using a PC, not a console as stadia was.
Kiro 4y ago
Stadia was amazing and worked great even for games that required semi-high latency. The problem was the business model.
- bloody-crow 4y ago
  Even under ideal conditions where most people were claiming it's working great, I never found the latency even remotely acceptable. Maybe it's due to my preference to esports titles that requires all the responsiveness possible, but the point stands. Remote rendering would never be able to achieve anything even close to acceptable performance to be competitive with on-client rendering.
- smaudet 4y ago
  Agree with co-commenter, I have never seen anyone who used it for low latency apps say it was sufficient. The target market for displacing e.g. gpus is heavily geared towards low latency. It might have been OK for mobile games, but then they were just competing with themselves, with an arguably inferior product (if I can't play my mobile game anywhere, only in the vicinity of my house where I already have my high powered rig, what's the point?) I do think it was an attempt to defeat a very legit, widespread use case to try tk justify pushing thin clients on everyone, glad it failed.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

My primary feeling is that I think technical people drastically overestimate the pain that most "normal" people experience when it comes to browser performance. I see it all the time on HN, e.g. people bitching about the amount of RAM Electron apps take and the like. Who cares? The average user certainly doesn't. If anything, 98% of the time when I experience browser performance issues it's network-latency related, or the fact that some page is loading 300 ad-tracking scripts and one of them is accidentally blocking. The only time I really notice client-side execution performance is when someone posts a cool 3D browser example on HN and things slightly slow down a bit on my phone when there are a couple million polygons or whatever. Even then, things are fine on my laptop.

kaesar14 4y ago
100% - people cared about browser performance and usability until Firefox and Chrome solved 99% of the problems users would ever face (tabbing, consistent rendering, security, beauty(!)) and now it’s a market that’s immune to change.
- iopq 4y ago
  Wait until adblockers stop working, and see many people start seeing YouTube ads again. Will they agree to stay on Chrome?
  - beebeepka 4y ago
    My only use for chromium is youtube. I only watch a handful of channels but things are getting ridiculous. Sometimes I get ads every minute. Every minute! Just the other day I got served 5 ads in a row after a simple fast forward. I gave up TV more than 20 years ago and this crap is way worse. What can I do without letting them in my actual browser? These people are crazy.
    - dmarcos 4y ago
      I highly recommend Youtube Premium. Also heard from creators that they get paid more from Premium views than from free accounts.

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago

The product, "compute pixels on powerful machine -> render on thin client", makes much more sense if you don't try to monetize by being a cloud landlord, but you let the users own that powerful machine, make money through hardware, and help them with the software, make money through support, no subscriptions, no rent-seeking. Think at the level of a family: 2 parents, 2 children which means: 4 smartphones, 2÷3 laptops, 1÷2 desktops, 1÷2 tablets, each of them $1,000+ which means around $8,000+ and $11,000+, replaced every 2÷4 years. Instead of 8÷11 screens, each with it's own beefy CPU/GPU/RAM, you could have 8÷11 thin clients (at the most $200 each, for fancy cameras and larger batteries) and a powerful machine, somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000, dual CPU, dual GPU, etc., which can last 10+ years (thinking of all those refurbished servers with 2012 Xeon E5-2620s which work great even today, and have no reason not to work perfectly fine even in 2032). Bandwidth/latency is an issue but as we are advancing in 5G+ technologies it's just a wait game. Long live thin clients where the user owns the upgradeable fat server rendering the thin client!

Zopieux 4y ago
I find it deeply unsettling that you'd consider it normal/common to upgrade 4 digit (is that all Apple?) devices every 2 years, or that folks would need so many different form factors in the first place. Just thinking of the literal mountains of ewaste gives me goosebumps.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  It's pretty much what happens in the regular household with median and around income [1] [2]. Yes, we are currently generating way beyond ridiculous levels of waste, electronic and beyond: we throw away globally 1.4 billion tons of food per year [3] in a world with 822 million people suffering from undernourishment [4]. If we are this bad with something as vital as food, of course we are worse with devices. [1] (2017) Average U.S. household now has 7 screens, report finds https://www.fiercevideo.com/cable/average-u-s-household-now-has-seven-screens-reportlinker-finds https://www.fiercevideo.com/cable/average-u-s-household-now-... [2] (2019) U.S. Households Have an Average of 11 Connected Devices — And 5G Should Push That Even Higher https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/u-s-households-have-an-average-of-11-connected-devices-and-5g-should-push-that-even-higher-1203431225/ https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/u-s-households-have-an... [3] https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america [4] https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty/hunger-and-obesity/how-many-people-die-from-hunger-each-year https://www.theworldcounts.com/challenges/people-and-poverty...