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Paperspace – A full computer you can access from any web browser
- DTE 12y agoHi HN! Founder here. We just announced Paperspace today and I'd be happy to answer any questions (technical or otherwise).
- virtuallynathan 12y agoWhere are you running it? AWS?
- DTE 12y agoWe did a lot of prototyping on AWS and still use them a lot, but really we are pretty agnostic as to where the VM lives. We need nvidia GRID cards (which is what we use to scrape the remote desktop really fast and which AWS has for prototyping) but the rest is pretty off the shelf. So currently its a pretty hybrid system
- techaddict009 12y agoHow much bandwidth should the user have for smooth experience? P.S I am from India and its difficult to find more than 2 Mbps internet bandwidth with ease here.
- sidcool 12y agoThis is a really important question. I am from India and good bandwidth is a luxury here.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- codezero 12y agoTheir website states 20MB down with 60ms latency. This seems like a high value in general.
- techaddict009 12y agoSeems like they will have very less amount of users from developing countries like India then. Sad even I will not be able to use it.
- dagw 12y agoNot just a problem with developing countries. I have 100 Mb at home so that's not a problem, but the main use case I see for this for me is to able to use it while traveling. Even in countries with a great high speed internet in general, getting great high speed internet in a hotel room or conference center is almost impossible.
- majordroid 12y ago20MB down is too much to ask for even here in the States.
- MichaelGG 12y agoHopefully it'll scale down gracefully when not doing graphics-intensive work. RDP is quite usable even with 100ms latency and only a few Mbps. OTOH I guess nothing's stopping you from renting a machine from Amazon now. I'd just be worried if they use H.264 that there's not lossless compression on most UI elements. RDP falls back to lossy video-compression like behaviour under pressure, and it looks terrible and quite unusable. For Photoshop and graphics apps, sure. But for text and most UI elements, ouch.
- kmfrk 12y agoCopy says >15Mb at the moment. Funky way to denote minimum - reminds me of the "Recommended" specs on a videogame. That rules out me, but it's a nice reminder of how much of an obstacle to innovation lack of broadband can be.
- billconan 12y agobut nvidia is building their own similar service, www.nvidia.com/object/trygrid.html, how will you differentiate?
- tasteup 12y agoFrom my understanding, trygrid is aimed at supporting specific applications. Paperweight is the entire PC sort of like how you would lease a VPS.
- old_adam 12y agoWill there be any support for gaming?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Mithaldu 12y agoThe copy on your website ranges for me from confusing to offputting. I'm not even sure exactly what you're selling after having looked at your site for two minutes. Maybe you sell virtual machines in a data center, accessible with vnc or rdp implemented in JS? And maybe an additional mini computer preconfigured to access that? Note: The answers to that do not matter. What matters is that your website doesn't answer them and is in fact so vague that it triggers all of my mental fraud bells. Edit: Also small footnote. This is probably honest and well-meant, but it reads like snake-oil: "Your desktop is managed in a secure data center and we send you a fully-encrypted feed." Which data center? What does secure mean? What guarantee do i have about that security? What encryption are you using? What about the data i put on my VM, are you backing it up? Is it encrypted by default or can any paperspace employee read my diary on my cloud computer? You need to answer them in that sentence but without links and/or footnotes to further explanations it's just meaningless and amounts to "Just trust us, ok?"
- DTE 12y agoApologies for the confusion (and yes, the website needs some love). To answer the questions, we are primarily building a streaming protocol that makes remote desktops usable for a broader range of applications (namely "media-rich" use cases like photoshop, CAD/CAM, etc) Behind the scenes we are using GPU tech originally developed for video game streaming, but using it primarily as a way to send a vanilla desktop. We are currently delivering this desktop to any webbrowser using a JS renderer. That said, we didn't want you to have to have an old machine to use this one, so thats where the paperweight comes in. VDI/remote desktops have been around for a while but they are usually really poor quality/hard to setup/etc. So we are trying to wrap that all in a simple package.
- Mithaldu 12y agoNow that's a great explanation of what your company does! That makes me really look forward to when i can use that technology to remotely access my own machines from my cellphone. :D
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- q7 12y agoIn the video you claim that it is "secure". I understand that as "nobody else can see my files or what I do, guaranteed". Well, you could place a bug between the VNC and the VPS parts. Or your government might force you to do it. How can you reassure me that isn't the case?
- DTE 12y agoWe take privacy and security really seriously and have designed the brokering process (the part that connects you to your remote computer) to support this claim by following industry best practices. We are still in a limited pilot program, but one of primary things we are testing is how to ensure that your computer is not compromised in any way. We think that if we can achieve the technical goals then arguably, having a remote machine is more secure than one that someone can take from your house/car/etc. That said, it is a really hard technical problem to manage a computer for someone without having any access to it and that is something we are designing out now.
- tux3 12y agoThat comment is really not reassuring. I'm happy that you take privacy and security very seriously, that's great to hear. However industry best practices is a little vague and 'to ensure that your computer is not compromised in any way' makes it sound like you want to do the job even the best antiviruses have trouble doing. Furthermore I'd argue that if someone steals your machine from your house/car/etc, getting the keys to any remote machine should be trivial just by looking at the stored passwords and configuration. But maybe I misunderstood what you were saying, sorry if that's the case.
- sctechie 12y ago'Industry Best Practice' in this case amounts to 'we will hand all of your data over to the government' if required. Abdicating responsibility for personal security to ANY 3rd party makes one less secure, period. Now, when the government comes knocking, instead of handing over some files or access records, you'll be able turn over the user entire computer. That's the exact opposite of security to me.
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- alexland 12y agoDo you have any information to share on how much it will cost to use the service (with/without a Paperweight)? Is there a monthly subscription option, or is it pay-as-you-go?
- wildboarcharlie 12y ago"...but support for other operating systems, including Mac OS X, are planned." – Techcrunch How feasible do you think supporting OS X will be? Wouldn't Apple be hesitant (more than hesitant) to cooperate since hardware is their source of profit? Unless you are thinking about reverse engineering the Cocoa WindowServer?
- kozak 12y agoIn can be done in hardware by connecting a Mac Mini to some sort of a KVM server. Only a matter of price.
- flarg 12y agoLooks a lot like the old workspot [0] which I really loved (when it worked) so that's cool. But why don't you lead with the Paperweight offering and just cut out all the other stuff? Just throw the lady's computer on the floor, and then give her the Paperweight. For me, that's the attractive bit. I could definitely sell that to clients because it implies 2FA security. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workspot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workspot
- pfui 12y agoLet me guess, you're using webrtc to deliver a screencast of a headless VM to my browser plus JS to capture I/O events and deliver them over a websocket to the server essentially replicating the functionality of a "zero client" using modern web technologies, no?
- xs 12y agoIs the paperweight optional? I'd like buy the paperweight for my father, but then be able to access his paperspace from my computer when he needs help on something.
- DTE 12y agoThe paperweight is completely optional. In your case, it would make sense for him to use one and then you could access his desktop through your web browser. One of neat things about streaming desktops is that you get screen sharing built in
- xs 12y agoWhat do you get for the pre-order? The link takes me directly to a credit card page. Do you get a paperweight + 0 months of service? Or does it include a few months to get started?
- egonschiele 12y agoThis looks really interesting. I'd like to know more about network lag. Even with a better protocol, you can't get past the physical speed of a network. How laggy is paperspace in practice?
- chestnut-tree 12y agoThanks for stopping by to answer questions. My question is about privacy... Since you must sign-in to use Paperspace (and everything you do is saved or performed online), do you track user activity in any way? For example, apps used, tasks performed, sites visited. If you do track, what kind of data do you collect? Is the tracking data tied to individual accounts? Or disassociated from them? How long do you keep this data? Is it anonymised?
- revorad 12y agoWhich OS do you support? Some screenshots or demo videos of the workspace would be nice. Edit: Also, a comment on the video - it started off well with the woman having issues with an old slow computer (which is what I have and so I could relate). But then later on all the actual use is shown on fancy macbooks and iMacs which kind of defeats the puropose for me.
- _vn5r 12y agoI want to try this NOW :D How can I?
- loganbrowne 12y agoDo you have an option to start up with a clean and fully patched system each time and not retain state? Can users have a library of machines for different purposes? I am thinking that something like this could be valuable as a secure and disposable space for someone living or traveling in a risky location. Have you tested it on a phone with an external display?
- warkdarrior 12y agoWhat are the constraints (if any) on the desktop VM that you host? Can I run any software on it? How powerful is it? Edit: additional question below... Can I start long-running jobs (an image render) on it and then disconnect?
- csomar 12y agoI want something touchable about latency (I tried lots of remote working but it doesn't work "coz" latency). Something like, the usual remote networking app runs on 10 frames per second, we run on 60. Or, given the connection is the same, we are 10-20-50 times better/faster...
- easytiger 12y agolatency in a command line + emacs is perfectly fine on even the worst connections
- barbs 12y agoWhat hardware and software does the paperweight itself run? I understand it acts as just a thin client, but I'm curious to know what's inside.
- gravypod 12y agoWhy have you not touched on security? How do you protect people from MITM attacks against your service? This is the largest thing that could happen (since it seems you are targeting people on-the-go from hotel to hotel).
- timtas 12y agoYour copy mentions "more operating systems in the future." Does that include OSX? When?
- Synroc 12y agoThis is amazing! I have been waiting a long time for something like this. I can't even begin to imagine the uses that this will have.
- blfr 12y agoSo it's a pre-configured VPS and a little physical VNC device?
- garry 12y agoThe team actually built their own streaming tech from scratch so it works quite a bit better than VNC.
- DTE 12y agoYea, so VNC is really versatile but not very performant. We set out to build a remote desktop protocol that could stream HD video streams and which would make doing things like high-end graphics and other media-rich applications possible. On a more technical level, VNC sends block of pixels whereas we are using a video stream.
- milkmanjr 12y agowhat operating systems will it support out of the box?
- blfr 12y agoLinux and Windows. We’re starting off with Windows and Linux options for now but plan to offer more operating systems in the future.
- altcognito 12y agoCan I store the state of my machine, or do I only get one instance/snapshot at a get go? What if the machine gets corrupted? What kind of backups?
- fortytw2 12y agoAs far as I can tell, Paperspace is a hosted VNC+VPS esque service wrapped in a friendly user interface? Seems nifty. Anyways, the intro video is easily one of the more amusing ones I've seen in a long time. Props.
- mod 12y agoI feel like the music built up some tension that never got released. I can feel it in my head, it's like I'm "in battle" in a video game or something.
- PythonicAlpha 12y agoAs much I understand, the service (not the device) is not generally available? When will it be ready? When will it be possible to use it from other countries (other than US)? The service as such is very interesting, for example, when I want to have quick access to a Linux/Windows desktop with a particular OS without the need to install on real iron. Depends of course on the pricing. The idea sounds really neat!
- gtirloni 12y agoAbility to select a region in a specific country would be key.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- sidcool 12y agoA chromebook competitor?
- DonGateley 12y agoA Chromebook adjunct. A way to get Windows and its apps on the Chromebook. The lack (or difficulty) thereof is what stands between me and owning one. I'm considering teaching, selling and supporting Chromebooks and the people using them in "old folks homes" (as we called them long, long ago) as an inexpensive and low skill entry to the internet. Some potential clients will have enough experience that they will require Windows access. If (and it is a bit hard to determine from the site) Windows machines with persistence can be created that problem is solved. Have you looked at the issue of migration from an existing Windows home system into one of yours? Were that made relatively easy it would be a huge benefit. Perhaps a partnership with Laplink and their PCmover would benefit both you and them.
- tantalor 12y agoThe audio track in the video is painfully noisy and clicky... maybe it's over compressed? Please fix.
- kstenerud 12y agoSo, a thin client connecting to a virtual machine under some other company's control? No, thanks. The fact is, computers are plenty fast now, and can handle 90% of peoples' usage patterns (browsing reddit, watching cat videos) with ease. The last thing I want is to have a remote desktop that lags out whenever there's a network hiccup.
- benoliver999 12y agoI'm having a weird issue where my modem keeps restarting. I'll fix it, but it's not bad enough to worry about. With paperspace, I get to break into a cold sweat because I can't access my shit!
- DTE 12y agoGeneral computers are undoubtedly getting fast enough for a lot people. However, hosted computers (VDI, DaaS, etc) can do things that regular computers can't. I hate having to upgrade a physical computer (which isn't even an option on laptops usually) and with a VM that is no longer a concern. If you need more power (which admittedly not everyone does) its really is a click away. Transferring large files is also something that is still not easy to do with existing cloud storage options because the model is flipped (both parties have to upload and download over a single connection). By contrast, when using two hosted paperspace machines, you can transfer files nearly instantaneously. Effectively you trade one type of network transfer (the remote desktop image) for another (a big file you might be collaborating on with someone) and in some cases thats a huge win.
- 27182818284 12y agoI very much like Browserstack for doing this as it allows for easy testing. I just don't like Browserstack's pricing as no shop I've worked in, and my own company, has ever needed it continuously. Rather, we need sorta pay-as-you-go minutes like cheap cell phones
- nine_k 12y agoThis is not about the cost of hardware or software, it's about the price (and hassle) of maintaining them. Also, it's not about browsing reddit and accessing gmail; it's more about 'real' office applications and the like. In certain non-tech-savvy environments, such a thing has a very good chance of adoption. Also, it's a nice venue for renting heavyweight applications (like CAD, graphics, finance, etc) for a limited time, with a full guarantee against violating the policy by users.
- thehoff 12y agoThis looks pretty awesome. What if I muck up my space, can I go back to a fresh install? Which flavor of linux? Where are my files stored? Say I want to take those files on the plane with me and work from my laptop, will I need something like Dropbox/OneDrive/SpiderOak? Liked the video as well.
- benoliver999 12y agoYeah if you could make it rm -rf * proof out of the box so things, at least in my home directory are backed up, that would be interesting.
- dkobran 12y agoPaperspace founder here. We offer an instant rollback to a safe state which is a neat thing that VMs can do that regular computers can't (or at least don't do very well). Everything is stored in the cloud so have your entire desktop available to you at all times meaning you wouldn't need to transfer your stuff to a cloud storage service. It's actually just like cloud storage but with the added benefit of having your whole operating system (apps, settings, shortcuts) on the go.
- metalliqaz 12y agoSo, how is this different than using RDP or VNC to connect to my PC?
- yoasif_ 12y agoSomewhat off-topic, but it's kind of disappointing that the intro video doesn't play on my copy of Firefox nightly on Linux -- Kickstarter videos play fine, since it seems like they provide a webm video. Error says: Awww, snap! This video can’t be played with your current setup. I could open up Chrome or Opera to play the video, but that's too much friction for something I might not care too much about. It _looks_ like Vimeo -- I wonder if they let you know how many people tried to view the video but couldn't.
- vitamen 12y agoThis seems like a complete homerun for small to medium sized businesses like the one I'm working in now, provided that's a major focus and their specific needs are met (monitoring, backup, security).
- DTE 12y agoAbsolutely. If you are a very large company (lets say >500 people) then you can buy some expensive and complicated tools from the big guys to handle this kind of thing. We are trying to wrap the hard parts of administering desktops into a really easy interface so that i.e. redundant and regula backups are no longer a big worry
- iask 12y agoCool! I've worked with similar technologies in the past. Most common issues are with peripherals and web browsing (sticky frames) in enterprise environments. Ncomputing came closest to what I was looking for. Integrates perfectly with printers, scanners, barcode scanners, usb sticks, audio etc. Small-form factor with wiFi (not all models) and you are able to host the instances right in your DC or LAN.
- EvanDotPro 12y agoI've done A LOT of research and experimentation in this space over the course of the last 5-ish years, mainly out of sheer curiosity. This sounds very, very similar to something I prototyped a while back using x264 + Broadway.js (HTML5 video streaming with low latency is a non-starter). I'm extremely curious, has Paperspace actually developed an entirely new video codec, encoder, and efficient JS decoder for this? I'm a little confused by the statements so far (and the comments are flowing in, so apologies if this was addressed while I was typing): "we are using a video stream", "using a JS renderer", "building a streaming protocol", "using GPU tech originally developed for video game streaming", "a remote desktop protocol that could stream HD video" So, is just the streaming protocol you've developed and not the codec? In my expiriments, simply pushing out h264 NAL units over websockets and passing them to the decoder was a pretty solid start. Add a tiny layer of buffering over that and I imagine it'd be fairly stable. Ultimately, I backed away from h264 for licensing and performance issues. Also, what's the transport into the browser? Websockets? WebRTC data channels? Have you encountered performance issues with Firefox not being able to handle websockets or data channels in web workers? (Which is seemingly coming in FF37.)
- DTE 12y agoawesome questions! There will be tech blog deep dive that goes into more detail, but just to clarify things a bit we are using h264 as the underlying codec but the protocol is a combination things -- h264 packets over websockets is where we started too! Usually you want a "reliable" transport (tcp) for handshake, some transfer, etc and then you can get away with a more fire-and-forget (udp) stream for everything else. We broker different connections for different scenarios. The web version is naturally limited to either webrtc or websockets but for the paperweight it didn't make sense to force a web paradigm (or full webbrowser just to access limited socket types) so we interface directly with the hardware. Haven't encountered big problems with firefox, but browser inconsistencies are definitely something we spend a lot of time working through
- billconan 12y agohow do you interface directly with the hardware?
- novacole 12y agoHow is this different than just renting a VPS?
- Fastidious 12y agoThey designed their own protocol for a much better experience. Read their comments!
- novacole 12y agoHow is this different than just renting a VPS?
- drglitch 12y agoWhat is the longer term target market? Is this designed to compete with thin client offerings from the big boys when it comes to larger installs? One big advantage for something like microsoft remote desktop services is ability to throw a beefy server into an existing infra with aging desktops and use them as thin clients/dumb terminals. I can see an advantage of this as being able to take just that box when i travel, plug it into any random machine, and get an instant resume of my previous desktop session over VPN... but this makes it oh-so-close to Windows To Go? Most importantly, what is the monthly cost of the actual VPC (not the hardware)? Its not listed anywhere on the site that i could find. What would you do better than Azure, Amazon VPC, rackspace, or multiple others?
- r-u-serious 12y agoDoes it say what the computer is full with? I would probably be not that interested if it is bees. In contrast, if it is dark chocolate, I would be very interested.
- icantthinkofone 12y agoSo, you mean like Unix/Linux/BSD always has?
- xs 12y agoI love this idea. I'm very tempted to pre-order but the lack of a pricing page keeps away from pulling my wallet out. Here is one use I'm really interested in. I'd love to get this for my father who is not very computer literate and needs a lot of help with it. He doesn't have strong security concerns because he only uses it for email and basic card games. Unfortunately I live hundreds of miles away and have a difficult time doing remote support for him. With this device+service it cleans up the clutter on his desk, and I hope allows for us both to connect to the VPS even though I don't have the paperweight. This way I can help him when he needs it and I can connect with ease.
- piyush_soni 12y agoI don't think doing that is pretty hard with today's technologies. I do the same to my father using a free version of TeamViewer and setting unattended access on his machine. I can access his machine whenever I want, fix things and close the session. I don't need anything more than that.
- smlacy 12y agoSo this is basically OnLive but "consumerized" (as they are focusing on enterprise these days it seems). Even your line "using GPU tech originally developed for video game streaming" makes me think you've actually licensed or are a subsidiary of OnLive.
- ShoePooPoo 12y agoFound a typo: https://paperspace.io/enterprise https://paperspace.io/enterprise Paperspace replaces hight upfront infrastructure costs with low monthly payments.
- ShoePooPoo 12y agoThis would be useful in places with notoriously bad internet connections. When I was in China a couple years ago, even getting a reliable connection was a stretch, let alone being able to use it for something other than transfer of small plaintext. I set up a box back at home and was able to use my 60MB connection by just transferring I/O via something like VNC or LogMeIn. I can see this being valuable for users in countries with subpar internet connectivity.
- dkobran 12y agoThanks for the typo catch... Great use-case btw, it's surprising how well virtual desktops can perform on slow connections. I'm from the east coast but work in Mountain View now and I stream my desktop from Virginia everyday for work. Right now in fact haha.
- jkot 12y agoDoes not work in ANY web browser: 1) it requires internet connection. 2) it requires JS and graphical browser. Links console browser for example does not work.
- egonschiele 12y agoNo need to state the obvious :) Otherwise I would also add: you need a monitor to use it.
- jkot 12y agoIt is not that obvious. I use text terminal to access other computers every day. I also use Links (text only browser) every day.
- hyperbovine 12y agoIf you use links every day then you are not the target market for basically anything. Sorry :-)
- tlrobinson 12y agoVNC between two machines 2 feet apart, connected through gigabit ethernet, has noticeable latency. I'll be impressed if Paperspace doesn't.
- sp332 12y agoI don't know why that would be true. x264 was getting sub-10ms latency (one-way) back in 2010. http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/249 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/249
- aminok 12y agoDoes Paperspace Inc. have access to the unencrypted data? i.e. does user data sit unencrypted on Paperspace's servers?
- new299 12y agoI've been interested in full operating systems implemented /in/ the browser for a while (rather than access remotely). The Linux in Javascript demo seemed like a neat demo: http://bellard.org/jslinux/ http://bellard.org/jslinux/ But I think it would be neat to create an in browser operating system that forwards traffic via a Websockets proxy. That's partly what prompted me to create minaterm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9137496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9137496 (https://www.minaterm.com https://www.minaterm.com). Which is a full ssh client implemented in Javascript. It creates complete ssh sessions in the browser and then uses a TCP proxy on the server to connect to the target server. This was kind of a tech demo as a first step to implementing a complete OS in the browser. I can see that you could have encrypted drive images that the browser would download and launch (based on a user supplied password which never hits the server). It seems like a neat idea, though I'm not exactly sure what the practical applications are! :)
- Lennie 12y agoSure you can run a full operating system in Javascript, how about DOS/Windows 3.1 ?: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4546 http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4546
- new299 12y agoSure, I linked to a in browser Linux emulation too. But both I think Windows isn't really what you want, and the Linux emulation has no network access. They both also rely on emulating an x86 system. I think what might be interesting is something that creates an in browser process model, possibly POSIX compliant. To which you could target applications, critically I think they'd need network access.
- angryasian 12y agoI would really be interested in trying the experience before I pay, as well as understanding what the capabilities of the machine are
- MarcScott 12y agoI prefer to use Linux on my machines, but need to use a Windows machine for various tasks such as CAD/CAM. I'd pre-order now if I had some idea of monthly pricing. There's a big difference between £5/month for a Windows VPS that can run SolidWorks and £50/month.
- dharma1 12y agoI was using an aws GPU (nvidia grid) instance at spot pricing for a while to use as a remote desktop. It was nifty but ultimately the GPU instance would need to be an order of magnitude more powerful than my laptop to really make it worth while
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- X-combinator 12y agoPut simply it's a Great idea!
- igl 12y agoLag, NSA, Games. Enough said?
- davidrusu 12y agoFor people doubting if this will work, check out OnLive[1], you can try game demo's for free, the experience was very good for me [1]https://games.onlive.com/ https://games.onlive.com/
- sreejithr 12y agoI can definitely see this work in an office environment. Working remote, collaborating and sharing could be easier. But a lot of companies might actually demand on-premise setups though. When I'm using AWS here in India, with my server there in the US, I face a clear lag. And that too in the terminal. I've seen browser testing tools like BrowserStack lag. I'm curious how Paperspace tackles this. And I sincerely hope they open source their wizardry!
- jliptzin 12y agoIt's pretty hard to get past the speed of light. I assume that as demand grows for their service internationally they'd have to distribute data centers around the world.
- dahdum 12y agoWhat are the advantages to this over something like Amazon Workspaces? With that I can use a thin client, ipad / android apps, desktop apps, etc.. We can use AD, NAT, images or none of it. It looks awesome, but I can't think of a recent time when I had access to a modern browser only. Does it have a good support for tablet access / extra controls?
- DTE 12y agogreat questions! amazon workspaces is conceptually very similar but implemented very differently. A few key differences: 1. they focus pretty exclusively on enterprise and the tooling around configuring, monitoring, and backing up AWS is not something you can jump right in to as a non-technical person. 2. we With paperspace, we want to provide the power of cloud computing with a really foolproof access layer. i.e. you go to our website, click a button and a new machine is provisioned for you with all the tricky stuff worked out. In the case the paperweight, using it requires almost no configuration at all. you plug it in and it connects to your desktop in the cloud.
- billconan 12y agowhat kinda of graphics card do you have? possible to play games with this?
- habosa 12y agoI am very excited about this, however I found the copy on the website to be extremely confusing. Here is what I think is going on, would love confirmation/clarification: * Paperspace is running some sort of super low-latency system to serve me a VM in my web browser * The paperweight is a computer that runs such a web browser so I can attach it anywhere I have a monitor (like a raspberry pi?)
- dkobran 12y agoPaperspace founder here. So sorry that the copy is confusing--we've been really struggling with this but that's exactly what is going on. Paperweight is just a really cheap/dumb computer that connects with our servers that do all the heavy lifting. We prototyped a lot on the Pi, very similar setup. Any ideas on how to improve the copy would be appreciated...
- habosa 12y agoThanks for the response. I thought the video explained a lot of what was lacking on the page. I would just distill it down to two points: * Paperspace gives you a private computer in the cloud. You can access this private computer with any web browser. * The paperweight is a $50 machine that does only one thing: run a web browser you can use to get to your paperspace cloud computer. I am obviously not a good copy writer so those sentences are boring, but I think that's what I'd want to know when visiting your page.
- DTE 12y agoWe are updating the site to be more clear, so thanks for the feedback! And you are correct. We provide you a desktop OS that we deliver directly to a web browser. Unlike traditional remote desktop protocols (i.e. maybe you have VPNed into your work computer from home, for example) we are developing a high-performance streaming protocol that makes this machine feel like its right in front of you.
- diminoten 12y agoI might just be dumb, but I was having trouble understanding what the purpose of the Paperweight was. The above comment sorted me out, but I didn't get that understanding from your site. Again though, I might just be dumb.
- spydum 12y agoso all of the obvious questions have been asked, but if I hear the video right, we're talking about $10/month? Last I checked, Amazons own Workspaces product starts around $35/month, just no cool hardware interface, or fancy streaming optimization.
- BinaryIdiot 12y agoSo after reading the page I can buy your computer to keep at home which can then connect me to a virtual machine in the cloud? As I was reading I kept feeling like I had to buy that $50 machine to do this but it sounds like I don't.
- DTE 12y ago(apologies for the confusion -- we are working now on reworking the homepage with more info) just to clarify: the paperweight is completely optional. The primary interface for paperspace right now is a web browser but if you want an inexpensive device to act as a dedicated terminal, you can buy the paperweight.
- Paperweight 12y agoIs it a USB boot drive or a little micro PC that plugs into a monitor? It would be nice to have a cheap "disposable laptop" that works off a cloud-desktop that you don't need to worry about losing or breaking. People don't buy laptops because they're slow anymore, but because they're physically worn out! The equivalent of a cheap Chromebook that's like a real desktop with lots of power and runs Windows games and real applications! In the future, I wonder how you could implement a cloud-desktop that's zero-knowledge a la SpiderOak. That would be the ultimate secure workstation.
- redMonkey 12y agoAre you useing Docker or CoreOS??
- redMonkey 12y agoAre you using Docker or CoreOS in your architecture??
- noonespecial 12y agoYes its like renting a VPS with VNC or rdesktop. That's not the interesting part. The magic they claim is a low latency video transport to show you the screen on the remote. You can web browse on a remote computer with VNC but you sure can't use photoshop. Even on 1GB/s with the remote right next to you. Its not the network in that case, VNC is just too slow with its screen scraping and reassembling. Rdesktop is better but it still hurts to use something like photoshop. Forget games. Their entire product hinges on delivering that low latency video feed of the remote screen. None of the other features matter in comparison. They win if I can't tell its remote. Anything lesser...
- arm 12y agoI don’t know what these guys are using, but there is remote desktop technology out there that is fast enough to let me play games and watch videos on the server with minimal lag (so useable in fact, that I’ve been using my Mac mini that way through a Windows laptop for over a year now). I’m talking about NX¹ (specifically, I use NoMachine²). ―――――― ¹ — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_technology ² — https://www.nomachine.com/ https://www.nomachine.com/
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoLooks like the NX guys are folding shop to be pay only software and FreeNX doesn't have a client for Windows and other OS's http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1227519 http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1227519 Looks like yet another endless FOSS forking contest. NX > FreeNX > X2Go. Hopefully X2Go sticks. Looks good so far, it has the NX back-end but they have their own clients, Windows too.
- jdc0589 12y agoWhen I was in school (not all that long ago), we had a couple large centos servers, and a ton of cheap workstations that did nothing but server as NX Clients for the most part. Everyone just logged on to their account on the cent servers for anything Computer Science related. It worked pretty well.
- 12y ago
- buckbova 12y ago> The Professional tier is made for high-end 3D CAD, Creative Suite, GIS etc. What I'd love is to use a virtual terminal that has every application possible pre-installed or available on demand and runs like a citrix application with payment by time/cpu or whatever makes sense. So I want to use AutoCAD, I find it in the catalog of apps, use it for 20 minutes, pay 2 dollars or whatever. I want Visual Studio 2013, I find it in the catalog, use it for 2 hours, pay a dollar fifty. Then all I need is a cheap laptop with a nice screen and I'm good for years and years.
- tenser 12y agoWhat about sharing - heavy - files with coworkers not using this app? What about uploading files? It feels to me like working in a bubble... but maybe I'm wrong.
- dagw 12y agoHow about some sort of dropbox like syncing? Put your files in a shared dropbox folder, sync dropbox folder on remote VM, save your work on remote VM when done, changes get synced back to shared dropbox folder. Obviously not perfect and obviously problematic if lots of people try working on the same file at the same time, but should solve at least some of the problems.
- coliveira 12y agoNo company can provide this because the kind of service you want needs to be licensed by the software creators: Microsoft, Autodesk, etc. I don't think it would be an easy job to convince these big companies.
- dkobran 12y agoPaperspace founder here. One of the things we are most excited about is rapidly evolving cloud licensing models. Adobe (among others) has paved the way for a more on-demand version like what you are describing. I think a lot of other companies will move in this direction as well. We definitely share your vision and hope to offer pre-configured machines as well as on-demand apps in the future. Also, you can clone a VM and distribute it really easily which could be interesting (a dumber approach to what you're talking about).
- meatsock 12y agoseems like a great idea - but isn't the term 'paperweight' slang for bricked hardware that the magic smoke has escaped from?
- redindian75 12y agoWhat is low monthly cost mean? $10/month would be low for someone, expensive for others. Why not at least give the figure or even ballpark figure? (or at least in comparative terms - a cup of coffee...)
- Buge 12y agoThe video says "You can start using Paperspace for about $10/month."
- ewindisch 12y agoCute branding, but your market for the desktop thin-client will be companies looking for VDI and I doubt you'll get very far selling them something called a "paperweight".
- geoffc 12y agoNicely done, very slick, you have nailed a lot of the pain points of VDI. Shameless plug but at leostreamdesktops.com and leostream.com we have been in the VDI market for over a decade with a MSP and enterprise focus. Good luck on the venture, these are exciting times for VDI!
- negamax 12y agoWhat is the low monthly fee? Couldn't find that info on the website.
- gotrythis 12y agoBeen waiting for this and I'll sign up the second it's available. When might that be? Use case: As I write this, my computer is rendering a 4 minute video in the background. For the next hour, my computer is near useless and I've got a hundred of these to go. I'd love to be able to set it to remote render on a super-computer and close the tab. And, I may never have to upgrade my computer again!
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- samstave 12y agoHoly crap - I was just fantasizing about a service like this two days ago. Cant wait to try it out!
- scg 12y agoIs it much faster than GUACAMOLE over RDP/VNC? http://guac-dev.org/ http://guac-dev.org/ (Click for streaming DEMO)
- wtbob 12y agoWell, probably not any web browser: I'm thinking that elinks is definitely out, maybe conkeror will work and maybe it won't. It'd be interesting if surf did…
- imranq 12y agoThis is something I'd expect Amazon to make...or at least take a very close look at as they push towards the cloud (EC2, AWS, etc.)
- beefman 12y agoI have two questions: 1. Did Sandwich make your promo video? 2. What desktop resolutions do you support?
- brownbat 12y agoI thought OnLive and other thin client gaming services took a shot at latency, made some great achievements, but hit walls.[1-4] It seems hard to put a few miles between the game and the screen and keep response times natural. Maybe 99.9% of computing doesn't need latency as low as FPS and fighters though. Maybe this is just taking OnLive[5] tech and making a really smooth remote desktop out of it. If so, I guess this kind of a shoot for the stars, land on the moon technology. I guess that's still pretty cool. [1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-onlive-lag-analysis http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-onlive-lag-... [2] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-gaikai-vs-onlive http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-ga... [3] http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~swc/onlive/onlive.html http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~swc/onlive/onlive.html [4] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-onlive-boosts-image-quality http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-onlive-boos... [5] Or StreamMyGame or GaiKai or others. I gather there were a few different approaches to the problem, involving debates about whether datacenter placement or higher framerate rendering were more important. UPDATE: Ooh, DTE, I'd be really curious which of those approaches you thought were failures, assuming you studied competing services, or if you just harvested a few ideas from everybody.
- jzelinskie 12y agonVidia has had a service superior to OnLive called Grid which is going to be made publicly available in the near future. They claim ~150ms of lag.
- jmgtan 12y agoAre you guys supporting multiple regions? Let's say I start my day in Asia then fly to the US, would I be able to access my stuff using the nearest server?
- hophoang 12y agoA suggestion, on the pop-up after clicking pre-order from the nav-bar, add somewhere what is to be pre-ordered. I was confused a bit, but then see it's on the CTA container. Awesome looking product, good luck!
- peeyek 12y agoWith minimum speed of 15mbps to access, it's like impossible for students in developing country which i think they more need service like this for study, research, etc. For example in Indonesia, in my campus internet speed is only about 3-4mbps. Scaling infrastructure is hard, i think the future of service similar to paperspace is not a bunch of feature that they offer, but it's more about how they can optimize data compression to deliver full of experience with low internet speed. That's the key to own big market.
- atarian 12y agoI live in Silicon Valley and even I don't get 15mbps with my home Internet, which I pay $40/month for (which illustrates how bad the Internet situation is in the US as well).
- corywatilo 12y agoVery interesting idea when I finally saw Paperweight in the video. I pre-ordered. But are you publicizing the tilt amount, how much you've raised of it, or what the timeline is on actually shipping out devices?
- omarchowdhury 12y agoCool.
- jaimecoder 12y agoHi, how would it work for something like Dragon Naturally Speaking?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- simonebrunozzi 12y agoI used to work at Amazon Web Services, and before I left I worked on a demo for their Amazon AppStream product. It licensed the PC-over-IP protocol http://www.teradici.com/pcoip-technology http://www.teradici.com/pcoip-technology From what I know, Paperspace can't be successful without a heavy dose of similar technology. Did they develop something meaningful? Or do they just assume that it's going to work without it?
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoSo 30+ years later, we've rediscovered the dumb terminal. Interesting. It's a neat little service/gizmo. I'd like to see an honest assessment of Paperspace's weaknesses. I doubt it will handle most games at all well, for example. That's okay, not everyone needs or wants that, but it's still an important point. I see that they do mention sensitivity to connection speed, which is good ("For the best experience we recommend >15Mbps download speed and less than 60 ms of latency"), but that's going to affect a lot of people's use cases.
- DonGateley 12y agoThe loss of which I've bemoaned for about 30+ years. This, or something very like, it is exactly what I want going forward. My biggest concern would the fate of my virtual computer should the provider go belly up. Without providing for that contingency I'd be really hesitant to put all my eggs in the basket.
- PhasmaFelis 12y agoI'm awfully leery of giving someone else total control over my computer for any reason. Take the security concerns over Dropbox and cloud storage and multiply them by 10. Convenience is great, but I'm not sure it's worth the prospect of willingly handing someone else complete observation and control over my entire computer and everything I do with it.
- sp4ke 12y agoYeah sure, with all the privacy concerns today let's just put every data about you in the hands of a company and trust them to be secure ...
- vbezhenar 12y agoYou really should send vectors, not video stream. It'll allow to keep bandwidth requirements low for most of the office workflow. Of course watching video on youtube require sending video stream and that's where you embed H.264 stream, but not everywhere. AFAIK Windows RDP works closely with the operating system to allow it to send only vector primitives instead of raw bitmaps. You can't stream lossless 4k retina video and anything other is a compromise for many people.
- kisstheblade 12y agoCan you forward peripherals (mic, videcam) for eg. videoconferencing? I don't get it, nomachine already does all of this and more.
- Elderwand 12y agoI already use this with Splashtop. I have a beast computer connected to a 100Mbps network offsite and connects to it via my budget laptop. Really neat, but not suitable for games due to the slight but noticable delay. However, it kicks ass to have 2 computers at the same time, if one starts lagging I just go to the other. Similarly, I can download Heavy files on the offsite computer while keeping my laptop and slower home Connection free.
- Elderwand 12y agoI already use this with Splashtop. I have a beast computer connected to a 100Mbps network offsite and connect to it via my budget laptop. Really neat, but not suitable for games due to the slight but noticable delay. However, it kicks ass to have 2 computers at the same time, if one starts lagging I just go to the other one. Similarly, I can download heavy files or encode video on one of them while working on the other. I also can do all downloading on the offsite computer to keep my slower home network in top shape. The good thing about Splashtop though is that it doesn't work like a video stream. Instead it only updates the parts of the screen that has changed. Meaning I can use Splashtop for chatting/surfing with almost no download bandwidth required locally. It also works great for HD streaming though.
- NIL8 12y agoThis tech is what many of us have expected to become the "norm," but I still think most of us would prefer having our own toys under our own beds. That being said, if they have nailed this, I see an acquisition in the very near future. This could be an incredibly profitable concept.
- mooktakim 12y agoWho remembers Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) Sun Ray's [1]? I worked for Sun (UK) in 2005 and they used them for all their employees. I never understood why they didn't sell them to schools and enterprise. Maybe they tried but couldn't. I really liked the true hot-desking. Find a desk anywhere (even another building) stick your badge into one of the thin clients and you had your entire desktop. You could also use USB thumb drives and it would work as expected. My manager had a Sun-ray in his house. He also used to go abroad to the other Sun offices and would just carry on with his session like nothing changed. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ray edit: added url
- DonGateley 12y agoWill there be any way to connect local USB peripherals (like phones, audio interfaces, game controllers, etc.) either to the Paperweight (better named the Puck) or to a local computer for service by the remote one?
- atekbiz 12y agoWill the paperweight support multiple monitors?
- sidgup 12y agoBut if I have a browser, I have a computer. And if I have a computer.. can I not RDC/VNC? I am honestly trying to question the punchline and not being sarcastic.