Hi HN!
Founder here. We just announced Paperspace today and I'd be happy to answer any questions (technical or otherwise).
Founder here. We just announced Paperspace today and I'd be happy to answer any questions (technical or otherwise).
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.
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.
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?
Have you tested it on a phone with an external display?
This is the largest thing that could happen (since it seems you are targeting people on-the-go from hotel to hotel).
Edit: additional question below...
Can I start long-running jobs (an image render) on it and then disconnect?
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.
How can I?