[alyx]

You can technically do this today albeit with some overhead.

Spin up an Azure VM, install all the apps you desire and configure it as you want.

Every other PC you own, becomes just a head display, using RDP you can use a single dedicated VM.

The overhead here becomes that you still need to have full blown OS installed on the heads, however their specs can be very limited (compared to the VM).

[bhauer]

I have attempted to approximate what I call PAO on today's existing technologies by using application servers at my home and at a data center. However, I think you're missing the notion of multiple concurrent views of singular applications, with each view adapting to the capabilities of the device at hand.

The closest approximation is connecting multiple web browsers via WebSocket to a self-hosted web application with a responsive user interface, and then using the WebSocket to relay all UI interaction at a fine-grained level. But if you read my blog entry about PAO, you'd recognize that as a facsimile of what I want—an effort to create PAO out of the mish-mash of technologies we have today.

The guts of what Microsoft is building here would be a key building block if something like PAO were to ever materialize. It will be necessary for applications to understand the capabilities of the view as they change. What's missing still is supporting multiple concurrent views with a singular application state and secure network transport for those views.

[gaelow]

A connection is not an extension. It is a poor replacement for what is suggested; extension of a system by employing multiple devices. Think of dual screen duplicating desktop vs an actual extension of the desktop on the second screen.

[stephengillie]

As well as double-digit latency, maybe even triple-digit at times, solely from general internet transit.

[freehunter]

And being blocked by basically everything in existence. I installed a desktop on Linode and Google blocked me from even their search product. Many other sites had blocks set up or at least CAPTCHAs. If you have browsing activity coming from a datacenter, everyone assumes it's a bot. Geo IP gets messed up too. Really hard to get any work done like that.

[retroafroman]

That's strange. Maybe they do that for the big providers, but I've run roughly 80% of my browsing activity through a SOCKS proxy on a VPS running in multiple different datacenters and never really had a problem that I noticed. I usually get my VPSs from little guys so maybe that's why they're not on a blacklist.

[walterbell]

Does this blocking also apply to VPNs which are likely routing through data centers? One would think that most botnets are running on compromised consumer networks.

[stephengillie]

Botnets must leverage their infected host's internet connection. Almost all anti-bot tools use IP/rate metrics to identify the classic DOS: a large number of connections from a few IPs.

To get around Threatstop, Distil, and other solutions, we see attackers having to use 100+ different source IPs during their coordinated attacks.

[walterbell]

Low-traffic botnets could be clicking on ads, simulating normal usage patterns.

[malnourish]

So networked thin-clients?