DTE

You could try Paperspace (YCW15, https://www.paperspace.com) for hosted Windows or Linux desktops. We run our own hardware to keep costs low, all instances have a GPU, and we built a streaming algorithm that works extremely well. We also have native apps for all desktop platforms and a killer web receiver as well :)

[disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders]

For some context here is a great intro to adversarial networks generally: https://medium.com/@devnag/generative-adversarial-networks-g...

Yup we can do gpu-backed Windows also! They should be publicly available in the interface in the next week or two — we are hammering out some frontend changes to go with it. You can also email support [at] paperspace.com and we can set you up with one today.

We are using NVIDIA Quadros and the new P100's both in "pass-through" mode so you get the whole GPU. The economics of running this kind of business on top of AWS definitely doesn't make sense (we tried for a while). Ultimately we decided to build out our own datacenters (currently one in CA and one in NY) which gives us a huge advantage in that we can really optimize the hardware and also control costs. The end result is that we can offer an instance that is twice as powerful as Amazon's g2.xlarge for about half the price.

This is great. We do a lot of work with GPUs in Win10 at Paperspace (https://www.paperspace.com) but we mostly use GPUs for video acceleration not compute.

That said, all of our cloud VMs have GPUs and we are adding new instance types designed for ML/ HPC.

Reach out directly if you are in the space and want early access to CUDA-backed Windows instances in the cloud.

Guacamole is a great project for using VNC/RDP protocols. We have developed our own protocol at Paperspace which we are constantly optimizing for sub-optimal conditions which can include low bandwidth and low-quality (i.e. lots of dropped packets). That said, we are primarily building for a world where access to high quality, fast internet is a reality.

As far as "untethered agility" goes, it was intended to speak to being free to access your computer from any device! Sorry for the confusion :)

Like amazon we can only offer Windows 7/2008 as part of our licensing. We will offer Windows 10/2016 as soon as it becomes possible to do so. In the meantime, we offer a BYOL option that allows you to run whatever you want on our cloud

If you are interested in VDI without the complexity that comes with AWS check us out at https://www.paperspace.com (YCW15)

a few key differences:

- we can stream directly to a web browser without any plugins

- you can fire up a new machine in just a few minutes

- all of our machines have GPUs that make the experience feel great (we work with architects, engineers, and others that need a fluid desktop experience)

- we are cheaper (starting at $15/month) and our pricing is predictable

[disclaimer: I'm one of the founders]

All of our machines at Paperspace https://paperspace.com have GPUs and our pricing is much more affordable (disclaimer: I'm one of the founders). Currently only Windows but Linux is coming soon :)

Eve looks incredible. I love seeing the the UI stuff that these guys put out as its a non-trivial problem to wrap a complex programming model with an interface (graphical) that can expose both powerful as well as generic functionality. The crew at Eve/LightTable are taking on a huge project and are clearly extremely talented. We would all do well to follow this project as it matures. Keep up the great work.

Paperspace (YCW15) | NYC | Full Time - DevOps

We are building a large scale virtual desktop infrastructure built entirely for the web. We are looking for local (on-site) engineers to help us architect a challenging distributed system. Especially looking for people who have worked with CloudStack/OpenStack/Virtualization/XenServer

email me directly, dillon@paperspace.io.

Also looking for developers working with WebRTC/C++

Thanks for sharing! I've definitely bumped into jsmpeg a number of times when researching JS decoders. Did you ever pursue an emscripten/ asm.js version?

We 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.

A lot of the underlying technology for paperspace certainly exists today and its best to think of what we are doing as providing a layer on top of it all (and polishing the pieces that didn't work so great before):

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.

(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.

great 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.

The 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

awesome 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

General 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.

Absolutely. 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

We 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.

Apologies 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.

Yea, 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.

We 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

Hi HN!

Founder here. We just announced Paperspace today and I'd be happy to answer any questions (technical or otherwise).

I've been testing their app and its great for what it was designed to do -- giving orgs their own app for internal communication. Congrats to the GroupAhead team!

Thanks for the shoutout :) (Paperspace cofounder here) Just to followup a bit - we let you run an full desktop computer in a web browser (we host the machine for you, so its fully managed). This means you can turn a macbook air or chromebook into a powerful machine. If battery is a concern, it might be a great fit.

We are still in a closed beta but shoot me an email dte@paperspace.io if that sounds interesting.

How can you take privacy seriously[0] when there is the option to capture full screenshots and send them back to the dev team? That is absolutely not an expected behavior of any app. Am I not understanding something here?

[0] "We take privacy seriously. You can choose to hide sensitive information, only record certain sections of your app, or even pixelate out all text entirely."

Edit: added source of claim

Edit 2: To clarify: I don't mean to diminish the hard work of the team. I know how hard it is to put your work out there and I'm sure there was a lot of interesting technical work that went in to it. That said, I really think the premise is troubling, especially if it is intended beyond a "beta tester" group. Even with the best intentions, this is a really powerful tool that could be easily abused.

exactly...it is unlikely they would be interested in data storage being treated as the commodity it is.

Although clearly not completely resolved, there are a number of really interesting ideas at play. The programmatic and reactive color schemes that we first saw in iTunes for album art, for example is really nice.

The parallax effect looks fun but it will have to be subtle enough to not be gimmicky after a week or two.