Paperspace – A full computer you can access from any web browser
paperspace.io
paperspace.io
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.)
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
The performance issues with using Broadway.js were more "general", in that the experience varied wildly, from amazing to unusable depending on the browser/device/etc)... Not necessarily related to Websockets + Webworkers.
The Websocket issue on the other hand, was for a more recent experiment where I was playing with the idea of bridging NoVNC over WebRTC data channels.
It's not so much a performance "issue" as much as a "possible area for optimization"... Though, every time I'm playing with noVNC or Broadway.js in a FF tab on my i7 laptop, it pretty much renders FF pretty laggy in all other tabs. I imagine offloading as much of the processing to workers as possible would be the best approach to lessen the effect — though, I'm not much of a frontend / JS dev.
Here's the noVNC issue: https://github.com/kanaka/noVNC/issues/114 And the bugzilla for FF: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504553
Of course it has some drawbacks, as MPEG1 is a pretty old codec. The data rate is fairly high and it struggles with high resolution streams. 720p still decodes nicely in realtime on most mobile devices, though.
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...
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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.
It worked pretty well.
but, people already forgot about OnLive? the company that streamed games in a way you could play multiplayer shoothers rendered in a server.
NVidia just announced today at the GDC they would be doing the same thing, at a premium cost, at full 1080p, 60 fps streaming.
https://www.nomachine.com/getting-started-with-nomachine
(Note: it includes both client and server functionality).
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.
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.
Founder here. We just announced Paperspace today and I'd be happy to answer any questions (technical or otherwise).
P.S I am from India and its difficult to find more than 2 Mbps internet bandwidth with ease here.
Sad even I will not be able to use it.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
That makes me really look forward to when i can use that technology to remotely access my own machines from my cellphone. :D
I think you guys might be doing yourselves a bit of a disservice by promoting the hardware before you are in a position to really provide clear information about the actual service and the pricing. It creates a lot of confusion about what it is that you actually offer.
Especially considering the fact that the site recommends a minimum of >20mbps download speed... I suspect that anybody with that kind of connectivity already has a computer.
One more question: how are you handling the Windows licensing?
Maybe it's just that I'm not interested in whether it's any of those things, but I have no problem with the copy on the website. The site says to me: we will sell you a computer, keep it at our place, and let you use it from yours. And it's secure.
Don't take this the wrong way but you might be coming at it from a too-technical, less consumer-based focus.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
How can I?
Have you tested it on a phone with an external display?
Edit: additional question below...
Can I start long-running jobs (an image render) on it and then disconnect?
This is the largest thing that could happen (since it seems you are targeting people on-the-go from hotel to hotel).
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.
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.
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.
I see people complaining about the hassles of maintaining a computer. Seriously? It's been like... how many years since basically everyone introduced that "revert to when this was working" state?
And even if it weren't for that, if maintaining a computer is so much of a hassle, how exactly is this supposed to be accessed? With browsers running on the holodeck? "From a consumer-level device, like a tablet"? Yes, I can't wait to use AutoCAD with a pointing device that has a precision of ughhh about my thumb's size.
And let's not get into the whole privacy thing. A 1 TB drive is, what, fifty bucks today -- and people would rather store their files in a datacenter across the ocean?
Hook up your oculus rift to their paperweight and have a full powered computer anywhere (with internet access).
While they are mentioning you can use AutoCad, I'd say that is merely to show that it can handle intensive applications. The majority wants to be able to surf the internet, and with this, you would never need to buy another computer again. For the random times you need to run Photoshop it can do it and will scale up to it, other times it scales down to handle your reddit addiction.
Look at how many people use Dropbox, iCloud, Google drive, etc etc. Everyone is already ok with storing their files in a datacenter. Privacy issues or not, people have accepted it is fact and the high majority already do it. That's not to say it is right, but it's a given that people want convenience over privacy.
Buying a Macbook air costs around 1k. And most people seem to upgrade ever 4-6 years. This costs $10/month. The cost savings are blatant. I know I’m comparing it with a mac and they are overpriced and you could do so much better, blah blah blah.
The fact is that if latency problems can be overcome, there is really no reason beside privacy that one needs to own and maintain their own computer. Rented space that you pay monthly for is cheaper, and will adapt to fit your specific needs. It works much better for a internet connected society to share several supercomputers then for individuals to each own their own.
Local storage and local compute continue to fall in cost.
As long as humans remain sensitive to subsecond latency of repeated stimulus, and the speed of light remains unchanged, local user interfaces will offer competititve advantages.
At the risk of sounding like a grumpy graybeard, it's impressive how all of these things have been implemented at least in Plan 9 for almost twenty years now.
The Plan 9 documentation is pretty good, but 9front's introductory documents ( https://code.google.com/p/plan9front/wiki/fqa ) are probably a little better to get your feet wet with.
> Are Plan9 users mostly running on bare-metal or VMs? If the latter, would you recommend VMware, Xen or something else?
Both, I guess... VirtualBox is the only one I tried it on. Its distributed nature makes it fairly easy to run it on a server and connect to that from a system running Plan 9 from User Space (see http://swtch.com/plan9port/ ), so that you also get a... well, a functional desktop, I guess.
When a friend had his laptop stolen he said that it wasn't a big deal other than the money lost, as 90% of his files were in dropbox or Google drive.
In my world at least, this is the way the wind is blowing.
I've seen stuff covered under bloody NDAs being carelessly shoved into Dropbox or Google drive.
No one serious about their work is using them as a platform to work their files on, but they are used for that.
[1] Nearly so---for me, there's no true replacement for an IBM model M keyboard.
People would rather have convenience of access across their devices. Despite the fact that people tend to have home networks and go around with a wifi-enabled device in their pocket, syncing tools remain atrocious.
That's the pain that dropbox addresses, not the cost of storage.
Yep. Fact is, HNers are much more concerned with privacy than your average consumer is. Most people care much more about convenience than privacy. I don't really know if that's a good or a bad thing, but it's a truth.
To give an analogy, cloud storage was definitely around long before dropbox and google drive. It was simple, I uploaded a file to FTP, you opened your FTP client, and we could share files. The reality was that less tech-savvy people might never get past the install step.
What dropbox/google drive/box did was take an existing (and increasingly commodity) offering and wrapped it in a layer that made it accessible to a whole new class of users.
Digital Ocean is amazing and we are shooting for the same simplicity for full desktop computers.
I'm really curious as to what the main use case would be ? I think this would make big strides in saving licensing costs if it were possible for certain cases where a shared computer may make sense.
But regardless, my criticism is that slow speed in the hardware is rarely a problem these days. Almost every "slow computer" problem I've diagnosed in recent times (that hasn't been due to McAffee) has in fact just been a slow internet connection or a misconfigured router. When you're not a computer expert, it's hard to know why your Youtube video stutters.
So yes, they will probably get a lot of sign ups with a mantra of "faster", but IMO this isn't solving the actual problem that users tend to have with computer "slowness". In fact, it will only exacerbate it, although that might be good for pushing towards greater bandwidth.
I'm also not too keen on putting even more of my data on someone else's system.
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-... [2] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-ga... [3] http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~swc/onlive/onlive.html [4] 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.
* 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?)
* 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.
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.
Again though, I might just be dumb.
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?
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.
Anyways, the intro video is easily one of the more amusing ones I've seen in a long time. Props.
I can feel it in my head, it's like I'm "in battle" in a video game or something.
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.
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.
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
edit: added url
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.
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.
The Linux in Javascript demo seemed like a neat demo:
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://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! :)
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
On a more technical level, VNC sends block of pixels whereas we are using a video stream.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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!
I can't even begin to imagine the uses that this will have.
That being said, if they have nailed this, I see an acquisition in the very near future. This could be an incredibly profitable concept.
Paperspace replaces hight upfront infrastructure costs with low monthly payments.
(Click for streaming DEMO)
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.
1. Did Sandwich make your promo video? 2. What desktop resolutions do you support?
Cant wait to try it out!
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.
1) it requires internet connection.
2) it requires JS and graphical browser. Links console browser for example does not work.
We’re starting off with Windows and Linux options for now but plan to offer more operating systems in the future.