5 ms·

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 yo

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...
  - smaudet 4y ago
    Picking screen metrics from 4-5 years ago is a pretty terrible, metric - I have maybe 14 screens but only 2 or 3 of them see active use or are hooked up to anything. My oldest (working) devices are already all closing in on or past a decade. This metric is flawed in many ways...
    - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
      "Adults spend $1,200 a year on consumer electronics and own, on average, 25 CE products per household, according to a study by the CEA." [1] In a family of 4 [2], this can mean somewhere around $3÷4,000 per year, or $6÷8,000 every 2 years. [1] https://www.cnet.com/culture/study-u-s-adults-spend-1200-a-year-on-electronics https://www.cnet.com/culture/study-u-s-adults-spend-1200-a-y... [2] The average US family size is 2.51 [3] while average worldwide is 4.9 [4] [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h... [3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/31/with-billions-confined-to-their-homes-worldwide-which-living-arrangements-are-most-common/ft_2020-03-31_livingarrangements_01 https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/31/with-billio...
      - smaudet 4y ago
        "electronic gizmos" is not screens... I can think of quite a few electronics I spent money this year which did not include any screen device. Again, these stats are misleading, maybe dishonest. My "device" budget we'll call it has been less than 1000$ over the past 5 years, and that is with spending a fair amount on non-screen decives, which are electronic in nature but not investments in dedicated computing like you would have us beleive.
        ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
        "Consumer electronics" consist of "telephones, televisions, and calculators, then audio and video recorders and players, game consoles, mobile phones, personal computers and MP3 players", "GPS, automotive electronics (car stereos), video game consoles, electronic musical instruments (e.g., synthesizer keyboards), karaoke machines, digital cameras, and video players", "smart light fixtures and appliances, digital cameras, camcorders, cell phones, and smartphones", "virtual reality head-mounted display goggles, smart home devices that connect home devices to the Internet, streaming devices, and wearable technology." [1] Most of them have screens. As a general heuristic, one single person's decision tree is rather irrelevant in the long open game of average spending behaviours. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_electronics
- smaudet 4y ago
  I don't consider it normal at all. Seems like the words of an out-of-touch upper cruster. Most people make a 1k$ purchase last decades. Enthusiasts may be dropping 5-10k$ but not your average joe.
  - robocat 4y ago
    WTF? Mostly you can't even use consumer technology from "decades" ago - it's incompatible. In 2005 the average size of a TV was 30 inches. Two decades ago a TV had no HDMI, and it only received analog NTSC or PAL. A phone was 2G - 3G was the thing about to be but mostly not there yet. One decade ago the iPhone 5 was released. An Apple iBook cost $1200 with 128MB of ram and a PPC processor: https://apple-history.com/ibook_mid_2002 https://apple-history.com/ibook_mid_2002 Maybe a stereo is usable - although for midrange equipment the capacitors have probably dried out and you certainly won't be getting digital FM. You would need to be very poor if you can't get working hand-me-downs from a decade ago.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      My old gaming computer from 2013 still plays 2022 games on medium-high settings just fine. You can make computers run for a long time if you put in the effort.
      - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
        Precisely, the users, by definition, care only about the user interface. The matmul machine can be hidden in any box, just that so far it has been tied in same box with the screen. Hence why the greater point is that thin clients are relevant if the user owns the matmul box.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bombcar 4y ago
  Most people who upgrade on a cycle also sell on a cycle - if you buy the new hotness today, and sell it in two years, it'll still be relatively hot. The old one isn't thrown away, it's just sold to someone else. People do it with cars (even if they're not leasing, which is explicitly doing it).
- PebblesRox 4y ago
  And even among households that do have so many devices, aren't the kids' devices typically "replaced" with hand-me-downs from the grownups rather than with totally brand-new devices?
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    It was just a bit of napkin mathematics seasoned with some quickly searched statistics of averages. The greater point is that thin clients become truly relevant when the user also owns the rendering machine, think of self-cloud.
renewiltord 4y ago
That character is what I'd use for"x divided by y". Is it common use somewhere to use it for "between x and y inclusive"
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  The obelus, ÷ [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus
  - smaudet 4y ago
    Your own link states that this is primarily a division symbol, hard to take this seriously...
    - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
      "It also has other uses in a variety of specialist contexts." [1] Language is complex and signs often have more than one signification, but one must have curiosity and endeavour beyond what stands prima facie. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus#:~:text=It%20also%20has%20other%20uses%20in%20a%20variety%20of%20specialist%20contexts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus#:~:text=It%20also%20has....
  - renewiltord 4y ago
    I see, this is a novel use you have settled on. Thanks for naming the symbol for me.
    - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
      With this specific meaning of "range between"/"closed interval" it is often used in Eastern European italo-/franco-phone languages/texts. A short history of obelus on StackExchange [1]. [1] https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/9530 https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/9530
      - renewiltord 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
modeless 4y ago
I think something like this could make sense as a place to run large machine learning models locally. I don't need a server to run my browser or my apps, they run just fine locally. But a server to run large language models, Stable Diffusion, Whisper voice recognition, etc would be useful, as these types of models can run much faster at higher quality on a beefy GPU than they ever will on a phone. The endgame of these models is an agent that knows practically everything about me and can perform tasks on my behalf, which I would really prefer to live in my house running on hardware I own, rather than in a data center under someone else's control.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  Precisely, data will become the ultimate material, from chemputers [1] to neural laces, it's all data, and having the user be the true absolute owner of it, as in actually owning the database, is paramount for any sane future use and development of technology. More thoughts and some code on this [2]. After the user owns a server capable of storing the databases and the function execution contexts (see deserve functions) for all their services, having also pixels rendered there and sent to thin clients it's just a matter of convenience and security: no more worries that the device you carry all day can be broken or stolen, it's just a low-cost piece of glass with an uplink to your server. [1] http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/news/cronin-group-builds-chemputer-to-chemify-chemical-space http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/news/cronin-group-builds-ch... [2] https://github.com/plurid/deserve https://github.com/plurid/deserve

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...
- smaudet 4y ago
  Picking screen metrics from 4-5 years ago is a pretty terrible, metric - I have maybe 14 screens but only 2 or 3 of them see active use or are hooked up to anything. My oldest (working) devices are already all closing in on or past a decade. This metric is flawed in many ways...
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    "Adults spend $1,200 a year on consumer electronics and own, on average, 25 CE products per household, according to a study by the CEA." [1] In a family of 4 [2], this can mean somewhere around $3÷4,000 per year, or $6÷8,000 every 2 years. [1] https://www.cnet.com/culture/study-u-s-adults-spend-1200-a-year-on-electronics https://www.cnet.com/culture/study-u-s-adults-spend-1200-a-y... [2] The average US family size is 2.51 [3] while average worldwide is 4.9 [4] [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-households-in-the-us https://www.statista.com/statistics/183648/average-size-of-h... [3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/31/with-billions-confined-to-their-homes-worldwide-which-living-arrangements-are-most-common/ft_2020-03-31_livingarrangements_01 https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/31/with-billio...
    - smaudet 4y ago
      "electronic gizmos" is not screens... I can think of quite a few electronics I spent money this year which did not include any screen device. Again, these stats are misleading, maybe dishonest. My "device" budget we'll call it has been less than 1000$ over the past 5 years, and that is with spending a fair amount on non-screen decives, which are electronic in nature but not investments in dedicated computing like you would have us beleive.
      - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
        "Consumer electronics" consist of "telephones, televisions, and calculators, then audio and video recorders and players, game consoles, mobile phones, personal computers and MP3 players", "GPS, automotive electronics (car stereos), video game consoles, electronic musical instruments (e.g., synthesizer keyboards), karaoke machines, digital cameras, and video players", "smart light fixtures and appliances, digital cameras, camcorders, cell phones, and smartphones", "virtual reality head-mounted display goggles, smart home devices that connect home devices to the Internet, streaming devices, and wearable technology." [1] Most of them have screens. As a general heuristic, one single person's decision tree is rather irrelevant in the long open game of average spending behaviours. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_electronics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_electronics
smaudet 4y ago
I don't consider it normal at all. Seems like the words of an out-of-touch upper cruster. Most people make a 1k$ purchase last decades. Enthusiasts may be dropping 5-10k$ but not your average joe.
- robocat 4y ago
  WTF? Mostly you can't even use consumer technology from "decades" ago - it's incompatible. In 2005 the average size of a TV was 30 inches. Two decades ago a TV had no HDMI, and it only received analog NTSC or PAL. A phone was 2G - 3G was the thing about to be but mostly not there yet. One decade ago the iPhone 5 was released. An Apple iBook cost $1200 with 128MB of ram and a PPC processor: https://apple-history.com/ibook_mid_2002 https://apple-history.com/ibook_mid_2002 Maybe a stereo is usable - although for midrange equipment the capacitors have probably dried out and you certainly won't be getting digital FM. You would need to be very poor if you can't get working hand-me-downs from a decade ago.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    My old gaming computer from 2013 still plays 2022 games on medium-high settings just fine. You can make computers run for a long time if you put in the effort.
    - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
      Precisely, the users, by definition, care only about the user interface. The matmul machine can be hidden in any box, just that so far it has been tied in same box with the screen. Hence why the greater point is that thin clients are relevant if the user owns the matmul box.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bombcar 4y ago
Most people who upgrade on a cycle also sell on a cycle - if you buy the new hotness today, and sell it in two years, it'll still be relatively hot. The old one isn't thrown away, it's just sold to someone else. People do it with cars (even if they're not leasing, which is explicitly doing it).
PebblesRox 4y ago
And even among households that do have so many devices, aren't the kids' devices typically "replaced" with hand-me-downs from the grownups rather than with totally brand-new devices?
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  It was just a bit of napkin mathematics seasoned with some quickly searched statistics of averages. The greater point is that thin clients become truly relevant when the user also owns the rendering machine, think of self-cloud.

renewiltord 4y ago

That character is what I'd use for"x divided by y". Is it common use somewhere to use it for "between x and y inclusive"

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
The obelus, ÷ [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus
- smaudet 4y ago
  Your own link states that this is primarily a division symbol, hard to take this seriously...
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    "It also has other uses in a variety of specialist contexts." [1] Language is complex and signs often have more than one signification, but one must have curiosity and endeavour beyond what stands prima facie. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus#:~:text=It%20also%20has%20other%20uses%20in%20a%20variety%20of%20specialist%20contexts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelus#:~:text=It%20also%20has....
- renewiltord 4y ago
  I see, this is a novel use you have settled on. Thanks for naming the symbol for me.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    With this specific meaning of "range between"/"closed interval" it is often used in Eastern European italo-/franco-phone languages/texts. A short history of obelus on StackExchange [1]. [1] https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/9530 https://hsm.stackexchange.com/a/9530
    - renewiltord 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

modeless 4y ago

I think something like this could make sense as a place to run large machine learning models locally. I don't need a server to run my browser or my apps, they run just fine locally. But a server to run large language models, Stable Diffusion, Whisper voice recognition, etc would be useful, as these types of models can run much faster at higher quality on a beefy GPU than they ever will on a phone. The endgame of these models is an agent that knows practically everything about me and can perform tasks on my behalf, which I would really prefer to live in my house running on hardware I own, rather than in a data center under someone else's control.

ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
Precisely, data will become the ultimate material, from chemputers [1] to neural laces, it's all data, and having the user be the true absolute owner of it, as in actually owning the database, is paramount for any sane future use and development of technology. More thoughts and some code on this [2]. After the user owns a server capable of storing the databases and the function execution contexts (see deserve functions) for all their services, having also pixels rendered there and sent to thin clients it's just a matter of convenience and security: no more worries that the device you carry all day can be broken or stolen, it's just a low-cost piece of glass with an uplink to your server. [1] http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/news/cronin-group-builds-chemputer-to-chemify-chemical-space http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/news/cronin-group-builds-ch... [2] https://github.com/plurid/deserve https://github.com/plurid/deserve