Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

dply.co

91–100 of 205 posts

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#91
post #17
post #2

This is a project I've been working on for a while. Dply allows you to quickly create a temporary cloud server (1CPU/512MB RAM/20GB SSD) for free. You can have one free server running at any time. Log in with your Github account and it will allow you to create your server using your Github ssh-key. Servers are free for 2 hours and expire after that time (unless you choose to add more time via credit card or bitcoin).…

The server name field might be better suited to be a white box like the rest of the options after you click New Server. Nice idea. Might want to have some kind of vetting of accounts if it gets bigger.

Strongly agree. I missed the server name field and got an error about the syntax for server names instead of 'you didn't enter a server name' error. Field should be visually similar to the other fields.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#92
Great service! I needed a free host to demo a class project. Works great, but the user script didn't setup right... maybe I just didn't know how to use it but I tried to follow your example. Would be great to be able to test that before running up a server.

Edit: http://198.199.73.132:8080 if you want to check it out in the next hour and a half

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or bitcoin miners

You would mine maybe 1 penny per day. Not worth the click.

....that's not how fraud works.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7490766

Just google aws bitcoin mining abuse and see what happens when shitty people have access to free servers.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#94
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the Pattaya font on Dply, which itself is a version of Lobster, which was/is a very popular font for Logos and websites. You will be very busy if you accuse every project which uses Lobster to be a ripoff of Diply. What do you mean with "everything"? The use of the color blue?

How do you not see the similarity between "Diply" and "dply" that uses the identical font and a similar color...

It honestly seems like a coincidence to me. Using a popular font (Lobster) for your logo means your logo will look like other people's logos.

As for "similar color", the dply logo appears to be black. There is some blue (not the same blue) on the page, I guess?

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#95
If like me you are wondering about the prices, I finally found the FAQ (link in small font at the bottom of the page) and there is the relevant information:

    2 Days: $2
    1 Week: $3
    1 Month: $10
    6 Months: $50
So, if you need a long term server (which is not what this service is intended for) it's a lot more expensive than other cheap VPSs (it's easy to find OpenVZ VPSs for as little as $15/yr).

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would mine maybe 1 penny per day. Not worth the click.

....that's not how fraud works. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7490766 Just google aws bitcoin mining abuse and see what happens when shitty people have access to free servers.

Pretty sure it only makes sense when you can spin up AWS GPU instances, which you probably cannot do here.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#97
post #95

If like me you are wondering about the prices, I finally found the FAQ (link in small font at the bottom of the page) and there is the relevant information: 2 Days: $2 1 Week: $3 1 Month: $10 6 Months: $50 So, if you need a long term server (which is not what this service is intended for) it's a lot more expensive than other cheap VPSs (it's easy to find OpenVZ VPSs for as little as $15/yr).

The price reinforces the idea of free temporary Linux servers with short TTL. I think it's smart and the price point could possibly make up for the money lost providing a free service. I am curious as to how it'll turn out financially.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#98
I did something very similar a few years ago with http://stackmonkey.com. Note the site's cert is currently invalid and there are no pool controllers running, so you can't start a server until someone starts a pool controller. The idea was to tie starts of instances to something decentralized (Bitcoin) and then securely fetch the configuration data from somewhere you control. Thinking IPFS for that in the next iteration.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#99
post #38

Nice service! I could see this being really useful for web scraping or for offloading compilation. (Or any relatively short computation, really.) I caught a bit of an awkward sentence on the FAQ though: "Unless specifically specified otherwise.." Just "specified" will do :)

The compiler tool chain is not installed by default on the Ubuntu 16.04 image I used. GCC installs in a few seconds. You'd need to automate the setup. So startup is a bit costly (in time) for compiling, CI, etc. Maybe dlpy could add a dev-ready image one day.

edit: the init scripts make setup easy:

https://dply.co/help/cloud-init

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#100
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how will you deal with abuse? scripts to just spin and mine bit coin etc. cool project!

Nobody's gonna mine bitcoin on a machine with half a gigabyte of RAM and 1 CPU.

Doesn't mean nobody is going to try...
Post reply on HN