Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#131

Post by OwainX » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #110

OwainX wrote: 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).…

I like the simplicity, well done for getting this up and running! Please be more open about the pricing though. When the service costs are not upfront and are buried in the FAQs, I lose trust in the service. Every real customer of yours will want to know what it costs. Have a simple pricing page at the very least, and link to it from the standard 'how does this work?' and other places. Just saying that you can pay $2…

A great suggestion. We've received quite a few suggestions for improvement. As the MVP/First beta we aimed for absolute simplicity in the design and implementation as it's easier to add things than take them away. The homepage and informational sections of the site will receive some improvements over time as we get more feedback like this.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#132

Post by OwainX » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:05 PM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #125

OwainX wrote: 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).…

> credit card or bitcoin Thank you for allowing Bitcoin. Many people don't have a credit card (everyone who has one gets it only because all the American companies require it, but I never needed one in the Netherlands or Germany, the two countries I have experience with).

You're welcome. Thanks to Stripe there was no extra work required on our end to accept Credit card, bitcoin and alipay. We hope to keep all these options around. There are concerns about having a bitcoin option leading to more abuse so we'll be gathering data over the coming weeks and hopefully the measures we're taking to prevent abuse will allow us to continue to offer the Bitcoin option.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#133

Post by lemiffe » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

robotresearcher wrote: post #91

netrap wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same here

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#134

Post by OwainX » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

ryao wrote: post #20

OwainX wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a free service we will pretty strictly enforce abuse reports and take action on them. We're using a few methods to profile users based on their github account/ssh key and other factors to block abusers once their identified. Dply servers are blocked from using SMTP ports to prevent spam. Yes. You can create another server once the first expires but automating this process is not allowed and therefore we do not pro…

What constitutes abuse? I imagine certain applications that would be fine with the server going up and down every 2 hours. That would effectively mean that they would have free service indefinitely. For example, a Tor bridge.

In general abuse is anything that is illegal under US law, causes a disruption of service or is otherwise disruptive to our ability to run the service. As far as our TOS goes, if we say it's abuse, it is. We will be very strict in our enforcement. We're hoping that backend procedures and processes we have in place will help us to profile abusers and prevent them from using the services as our goal is to prevent abuse while making the barrier to getting started as low as possible for legitimate users.

A tor bridge/relay might not be an issue but TOR exit nodes will almost certainly result in abuse complaints and action being taken.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#135

Post by OwainX » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:11 PM UTC

Filligree wrote: post #29

Would it be possible to add NixOS as an option? I'd find that very useful for demonstrating it to people, which... okay, might not be why you're running this. Nowadays I'm handing out shell accounts to my own server, which is mostly fine, but misses out on some of the functionality.

Dply is built on the DigitalOcean cloud which doesn't allow custom OSes so we are somewhat limited in that regard. As others have written scripts to convert a DigitalOcean droplet to Arch and Alpine we are experimenting with making those options available. It appears this exists: https://github.com/jeaye/nixos-in-place which might make NixOS possible as well. We will be carefully reviewing these options as just because there is a hacky way to convert a droplet on DO doesn't mean it'll result in something suitable for re-use or work as expected with cloud-init and ssh key insertion on Dply.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#136

Post by OwainX » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:13 PM UTC

homerguy69 wrote: post #130

Is there no way to manually delete an instance?

There will be soon. We've already implemented an "expire now" function in the backend for servers on the free plan and are working on adding it to the UI. We're hopeful that this feature will be available this weekend.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#137

Post by OwainX » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:14 PM UTC

libeclipse wrote: post #10

Doesn't work for me. I seem to be getting a 403 forbidden code when I authorise it.

This is the only report of this that we've seen and checking our web server we weren't able to find any 403's being returned today. If you see this again, please open a ticket by clicking the question mark in the corner of any page so we can investigate.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#138

Post by OwainX » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:15 PM UTC

giosch wrote: post #47

emcrazyone wrote: post #37

"Dply blocks common SMTP ports by default in order to prevent abuse of the platform and be able to provide servers for free." Why do this over simpler bandwidth throttling say after a certain threshold has been met?

Because no spam is better than a low volume of spam

Absolutely. Keeping costs low is key to having this model work. Each paid server can cover the costs of a lot of free ones but abuse policy enforcement takes people and that's much more expensive. There are quite a few transactional mail providers who offer APIs that can be used for most purposes where mail sending is needed.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#139

Post by y4mi » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:16 PM UTC

phamilton wrote: post #83

hashin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty cool service! I have had my moments when I had to set up the AWS free tier a few hours before a very important client meeting. I have this gut feeling that this service will make the cloud technology a bit more accessible for a budding to medium skilled developer. Personally, I have hesitated a lot to try out AWS and other cloud services at college due to the "over billing nightmare" you have every t…

> the part of the world I come from Just curious, is a $5/month DO server cost prohibitive in your neck of the woods?

Pretty sure he is talking about the people that got hacked (with 2 factor on) and had their acc used to mine bitcoins. I remember reading about that twice one or two years ago

Or maybe even less nefarious reports about people accidently ordering a bigger machine and forgetting about it until the month is over. Can result in 1+k bill as well.

Or the most talked about problem. Downloading something from the glacier.

They're mostly avoidable problems. And they still terrify people with little income

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#140

Post by OwainX » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 8:19 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #106

if i can pay with bitcoin, whats to stop me from doing bad things with these servers?

Without going into too much detail we keep track of users, profiling things like ssh keys and github accounts, IP addresses and activity in order to make sure that abusers, once identified cannot come back. All payments are non-refundable (though if we break something we'll credit the time back in almost all cases) so if you pay with bitcoin and abuse the service you'd be out the money with no server left to show for it. The ephemeral nature of Dply servers means that verified cases of abuse will usually result in server deletion and account locking.

If even with the processes we have in place, abuse becomes an issue we could require that the Github account used has a certain amount of history and activity (doing more to profile the user that way). All these things combined with no API and automation of creation being disallowed makes for a low ROI on an abuser's time compared to other services already available.