Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

workstream.paperspace.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 255 posts

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#71

Post by capableweb »

rubicks wrote: post #67
VikingCoder wrote: post #45

I'm just going to state again what I want, which is only tangentially related to the topic... 1) I go on Github and configure a service 2) I make a wallet that people can donate to 3) I start up a virtual machine, aimed at the Github, using the wallet to pay for the time on the machine. The virtual machine host guarantees that the code at that Github is what's really running. I can imagine lots of other things I want…

> The ... host guarantees... This is a really hard problem with "solutions" that usually run counter to privacy and, you know, controlling the machine consuming your electricity. Remote Attestation has come a long way, but (at least on Linux) still in its infancy.

First time I hear about "Remote Attestation", got any trusted sources/resources for someone to read up on it more? (besides Wikipedia and it's sources)

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#73

Post by third_I »

VikingCoder wrote: post #45

I'm just going to state again what I want, which is only tangentially related to the topic... 1) I go on Github and configure a service 2) I make a wallet that people can donate to 3) I start up a virtual machine, aimed at the Github, using the wallet to pay for the time on the machine. The virtual machine host guarantees that the code at that Github is what's really running. I can imagine lots of other things I want…

You should really look into GitLab. It's free to self-host the whole thing if you want, and there's a full CI/CD pipeline (you can plug whatever you want in there).

It's miles and leaps beyond what GitHub offers (different target I suppose).

You'd still have to code the linking to a wallet part, but that's definitely doable.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#74

Post by michaelgrafl »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #70
hnCensorFreedum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for my honest business practices to pay off. No cookies, no ads, donations only. It hasn't paid off aside from about 1k per year in revenue and lots of thank you emails.

No cookies, no ads, source code always available, pay for a prebuilt version, user names price ... in excess of $100k/year (after 20 years :) ... ardour.org

I'd love to see a graph of that income over those 20 years! Also, do you get any license payments from Harrison Consoles? And if yes, are those included in the 100k per year?

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#76

Post by draebek »

dudul wrote: post #18
tone wrote: post #11

Looks quite interesting. I could really use a Windows box that I could use for a few games while I'm isolated not at home with only my Macbook Pro.

Why use this over GeForce Now? Really curious, I don't see a lot of advantages.

I hear that, after it left beta, the number of games that you can play on GeForce NOW is greatly reduced. I have read that you can no longer play arbitrary games from your Steam library (like you could in beta), and furthermore, a few major publishers have pulled their games from the service.

So the advantage of Paperspace would be that you can play many more games than you can on GeForce NOW.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#77

Post by third_I »

hnCensorFreedum wrote: post #49
thawaway1837 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s nothing dishonest about just straight up charging, as long as you’re honest about what you’re charging.

I agree. I tried selling books, but it felt like the articles were just marketing funnels to the books. Still, I didn't do real copywriting. After a while I changed to donations Because the idea was to help people. And my day job pays 6 figs.

We need more people like you in this world.

Please breed if you can ;-) Hum, I mean, transmit who you are to other, infect them with greatness, however you can (books is a great idea, teaching and mentoring as well).

FWIW I think there's an ethical way to profit, but we have to be willing to wait for the value we created to actually materialize in the real world. A not-so-rare case, I think, is people donating large amounts to their mentors, once they "get there", once they're established and earning enough (likely 2-5 years after the mentorship or transmission took place; sometimes way more).

You certainly can't live from those returns. Some of them might be fabulous though, if what you transmitted was really life-changing. I guess. Never been on that side of things (gave, did not receive) but I'm thinking putting out the value is the mission, and anything else is a secondary concern (just keep that day job to pay the bills).

Have a great one.

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#78

Post by woah »

I've used Paperspace's Gradient product (hosted Jupyter notebooks), and while it is cheaper than most other options, I can't recommend it. The service has a very janky feel. When I first started, there was an issue where my instance was was stuck "shutting down" for half an hour or more and I couldn't access my code. Then there was a weird issue where some kind of geographical split between different types of instances resulted in my code getting lost (I think it happened twice). It has the feel of a product held together by duct tape and chewing gum with a thin veneer of slick graphic design. I recently tried using their CORE product (GPU heavy VMs), but for some reason instances with GPU's are not enabled until you write them a message (I did, and they haven't responded in a week).

My advice would be to use the cheap, high performance machines (VC subsidized?) if it makes sense, but never ever store data with them without backing up to a different service (git or Dropbox maybe?)

Re: Workstream: A fast virtual computer you can use for anything

#79

Post by thanksforfish »

VikingCoder wrote: post #45

I'm just going to state again what I want, which is only tangentially related to the topic... 1) I go on Github and configure a service 2) I make a wallet that people can donate to 3) I start up a virtual machine, aimed at the Github, using the wallet to pay for the time on the machine. The virtual machine host guarantees that the code at that Github is what's really running. I can imagine lots of other things I want…

Theres some interesting security ideas you could try to solve with something like this. With an open source service that is hosted by someone else, you never know what is actually running. You can't trust it.

I was thinking about something similar a few months back, and I think it could be doable. You'd need a CI service that creates reproducible builds, and a hosting service that can show what build artifact is currently loaded. You'd allow the public to view the state of the service. I think it could work with heroku or similar.

That gets me closer to: I trust the code, and I trust the hosting service (I.E. AWS), but I don't need to trust the person running the code as I can verify that it matches what's on GitHub.

Post reply on HN