[HN Gopher] Jeff Bezos hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent...
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Jeff Bezos hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the
cloud
Author : _____k
Score : 32 points
Date : 2026-01-14 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.windowscentral.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.windowscentral.com)
| cjbenedikt wrote:
| Hmmm...I'm not technical well versed but doesn't it sound a bit
| like the initial Chrome idea???
| Jigsy wrote:
| Considering how countries are trying to push things like Chat
| Control, I can see them having a hard-on for ideas like this.
|
| "You _must_ use a Cloud computer in order to make sure you're not
| doing anything illegal."
|
| Amazon et al. will have to pry my tech from my cold, dead hands.
| purplecats wrote:
| yes, you are an outlier, and one day (presumably <50 years)
| your hands will be cold and dead, along with your
| representation in the holdout resistance movement. you must
| make a bigger impact than standing your (individual) ground
| Jigsy wrote:
| Well, I'm almost 40, so I'm hoping I will be dead by then.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| I've given up trying to improve society. They keep voting for
| the worst idiots they can, buying from the worst exploitative
| businesses etc. Most people are acting against their own
| interest and I'm not going to change that.
|
| I'm just trying to isolate myself now from these toxic
| developments. If society falls into techno fascism after I'm
| gone, so be it. They wanted it. While I am around I'll shield
| myself as much as possible by self hosting, custom phone ROMs
| etc.
| InexSquirrel wrote:
| I could be wrong, but maybe you trying to shield yourself
| from these things also cuts you off from the good that's
| happening?
|
| There's a lot of bad things going on - but (and not saying
| this as justification) - there always has. There's always
| some power hungry person that claws their way to a position
| where they can benefit themselves at the expense of others.
| But the majority of people want to have good, peaceful
| lives with a sense of community and connection. Build
| things. Make art. Laugh. Grow and learn. Wonder about what
| could be, and build futures towards that.
|
| Don't forsake them because of the all of the bad stuff that
| gets shoved in your face every day.
|
| It's a dis-service to yourself and the life you have, and
| it weakens the people and groups that have do have the
| energy to stand up to not-so-good actors. If you're _happy_
| being isolated then definitely go do that, but don't cut
| yourself off because you're only fed bad news everyday.
| Finnucane wrote:
| The year of Linux on the Desktop will happen because it will be
| the only choice for the desktop.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Biggest cloud vendor wants everyone to subscribe to his services.
| Well yeah of course. He has to say that, it's literally his job.
|
| But no for me never. I hate cloud.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > I hate cloud.
|
| It doesn't matter, the choice is being removed from the market.
| The clouders are already front running and scalping the
| hardware retail, just like scalpers were doing to GPUs during
| crypto.
|
| Today's excuse is AI but it's the same process, just on an
| industrial scale - the clouders buy in bulk at low prices,
| create shortages and exorbitant retail pricing, which forces
| you to buy from them, providing them with nice profits. The
| only difference from vanilla scalping is, they sell the
| services provided by the hardware, not the actual gear.
|
| The process is unstoppable without legislative intervention, it
| works with or without the presence of inflation - front running
| assures the scalping of retail. The high tariffs on Chinese
| hardware and the draconian restrictions on selling them gear
| for semiconductor manufacturing remove the only natural remedy
| - competition.
|
| On the other hand, the existing semiconductor manufacturers are
| highly incentivized to sell in bulk so some leave the retail
| market altogether to become exclusive suppliers to big cloud
| and big OEM - e.g. Micron.
| general1465 wrote:
| Which is going to work, only if people will buy into it.
| However if they won't (see Google Stadia or Micrslop's crying
| about people refusing Copilot) then whole thing will just
| implode into a lot of cheap hardware everywhere.
| xg15 wrote:
| Meanwhile in the cloud:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46620835
| xvxvx wrote:
| Called it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46511477
|
| You'll own nothing and like it. Not even your 'own' data.
| Everything sitting on someone else's server, free to access by
| whichever government agency feels like it. This is like communism
| x1000.
| biglyburrito wrote:
| Don't call this communism, when it's simply end-game
| capitalism.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| > This is like communism x1000.
|
| But it is, in fact, capitalism x1
| mikestew wrote:
| Mmm, this is nothing like communism, by any definition I'm
| aware of. Now, "$ADJECTIVE capitalism", such as "late-stage
| capitalism", that I can go along with.
| RedComet wrote:
| Strange claiming you "called it', people were saying this far
| earlier than 8 days ago.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I can't imagine a circumstance where I would do that. It's simply
| a nonstarter. I need to remain in complete control of my
| machines, and I am not in control of anything in the cloud.
| InexSquirrel wrote:
| Same feeling here, and I'm already getting frustrated with
| Windows pushing their crap into my OS. Definitely don't want
| even more of that.
|
| Beyond work I only use the PC for gaming and watching movies -
| so really if the only option was 'it has to be in the cloud',
| then my position becomes "well I guess I don't really play
| games any more". Not the worst thing.
|
| But whatever. Just because Jeff wants that, doesn't mean it
| will be so. And like who cares what he thinks? The only hat he
| ever wears is "how do I make more money", not "how do I ensure
| people live good lives and enjoy themselves".
| webdevver wrote:
| if everyone had symmetric gigabit, this would be a no-brainer.
| imagine having auto-scaling CPUs, auto-scaling RAM, etc - it
| would incentivise some cool OS architecture (yes yes, privacy
| issues aside etc.)
|
| most of the time i'm doomscrolling, but every now and then you
| wanna play with linux, or llvm, or some VM cluster.
|
| i bought a beefy rig for these 1% events in my life, and the rest
| of the time its doing basically nothing. seems a real waste.
| biglyburrito wrote:
| lol absolutely never.
| kotaKat wrote:
| The last time I tried this Microsoft killed my CloudPC trial not
| even 24 hours after starting it, wiping out the initial work I'd
| been doing in the computer I was renting.
|
| So, uh. Yeah. I'll get right back on that "cloud PC" thing.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Of course, cloud is the new timesharing.
| wormius wrote:
| Bloody rentierists. This is what I've been realizing more and
| more as this "AI" push combined with rising consumer hardware
| prices. IMO this is an intentional war on consumers to force them
| into being digital serfs (like MS and Sun and all the others
| wanted back in the day). Mainframes->Minis (and
| mainframes)->Micro/PC->Cloud(and back we go to centralization).
|
| You will own nothing and be happy.
| SvenL wrote:
| Well, at least for gaming It worked for me quite well with
| GeForce NOW. I have a MacBook can play here and there some games
| I like - as a casual gamer it's fine. I wouldn't bother to
| maintain a gaming PC for the casual gaming sessions I have. In
| this sense - yes, I gave up my non existing gaming PC to rent.
|
| To be honest for 95% of stuff it would be enough to connect my
| smartphone via USB-C to a dock for mouse/keyboard/displays etc.
| (I know Microsoft had this and it was an amazing idea) For doing
| the non standard stuff like gaming/resource intensive development
| stuff I could rent a cloud pc.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Apple could do this if they wanted to. Hey Apple, Put the Pro
| back in the iPhone Pro. Give me a dock and and macOS in docked
| mode.
| general1465 wrote:
| 30% App Store fee. Not gonna happen.
| SvenL wrote:
| I would love that. For the things I do on my phone the
| hardware is so oversized - it's really ridiculous. It's
| definitely capable of running desktop things. Most of the
| apps out there are just webpages anyway (which are
| responsive).
|
| They could basically abandon MacOS completely and focus on
| iOS. I mean sometimes it feels like they abandoned macOS
| already.
| peppersghost93 wrote:
| If the option of owning my own computer is taken I'll own old
| computers. If they somehow take that away I'm giving up and
| moving to a cabin in the woods.
| butvacuum wrote:
| with or without a manifesto?
| peppersghost93 wrote:
| I knew someone would compare me to Uncle Ted but I don't
| share political ideology with him. I'd just want to live out
| my life peacefully in nature.
| general1465 wrote:
| I am kinda using LLM for code generation, but the moment I will
| have the chance (Smaller models or cheaper hardware), I am
| hosting it locally, because I don't want to give anyone my data.
|
| Currently I am solving this problem by having like 6 AI services
| and drip-feeding each one with a little bit of problem so there
| is no context apparent from the queries.
| efficax wrote:
| but don't i need a pc to use the pc in the cloud
| resfirestar wrote:
| Seems like this article misses the enterprise angle which is the
| main question. I'm sure some gamers aching for an upgrade will
| sign up for cloud PCs while RAM is overpriced, just like how
| Geforce Now had a moment while GPUs were overpriced. But does it
| make any sense for businesses with massive fleets of Windows
| laptops, and might already have some kind of VDI setup, to
| replace them with thin clients? Would need some significant
| progress on the hardware.
| hereonout2 wrote:
| I'm not really a big gamer but was looking into buying an xbox
| again. I already had a controller and thought why not try xbox
| cloud gaming on my Samsung TV.
|
| With a decent internet connection I now struggle to see why
| anyone would want to buy a hardware Xbox. Games on the cloud
| version load instantly, play brilliantly and cost the same as
| the usual Game Pass as far as I can tell. The catalogue seems
| smaller maybe but aside from that I see little downside.
|
| I could see it working well for PCs too - as long as the
| terminal device is seamless. I guess us devs have been renting
| computers in "the cloud" for decades anyway.
| 63stack wrote:
| I'd say you are wrong on gamers aching for this. Any amount of
| latency ruins games, even turn based games lose a lot of their
| enjoyment when the ui starts getting delayed from user input.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| It could have been a good idea if tech corps wouldn't have
| demostrated to be such huge POS.
| petre wrote:
| Yeah, he also hoped to rent Venice for his wedding, but he had to
| move the venue because people got annoyed. They'll probably also
| get fed up with him shoving his cloud down their throats. He
| could then move on to mining asteroids using robots, who won't be
| unionizing.
| weirdmantis69 wrote:
| Hasn't client server architecture been a thing for a while? I
| don't understand the need for this, DRAM prices not withstanding.
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