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

Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

dply.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 205 posts

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#181

Post by welly »

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).…

Love this. I shall have all kinds of fun destroying various linux distros without a care in the world for the consequences. Looking forward to seeing where you go with this. I understand your reservations about building an API but is something I'll look forward to playing with when/if you do eventually provide one! Good luck with the project, I'll be watching this one closely.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#183

Post by MaulingMonkey »

wheelerwj wrote: post #120
brianwawok wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you missed the no API part. If it takes a person 5 clicks to launch an instance, the reward has to pay for the cost. Why aren't people using AWS free tier to Bitcoin mine? Seems a bad prop.

I am sure that some people did try to use the free tier, and that AWS probably has some decent controls in place to monitor for this type of activity. They are also a MASSIVE company that can absorb loss much easier than a startup. [1] As far as the API goes, I don't know if you're aware of how hacking works, but not having an api has protected exactly no one ever. Calling your application secure because "it has a bu…

> As far as costs, you understand that people do thousands of tasks on mechanic turk for pennies right?

You still have to invest either your time or hire someone to set things up for the mechanical turk setup - the opportunity cost you pointed out earlier. And pennies per turk isn't worth it if your ROI is micropennies per turk. Depending on how much friction there is, it may be cheaper to trick your turks into running the bitcoin miner on their own computers.

Not saying there's no potential for abuse - as you say, there is - but saying there's "no costs" and that "You literally can't lose" is about as accurate as saying there's "no profits" and that "You literally can't win". Unless CPU bitcoin mining is wildly more profitable than my understanding, given that you're competing against GPU and ASIC miners.

Maybe one of the alt-currencies that are supposedly harder to GPU mine...?

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#184

Post by bmh100 »

diwu1989 wrote: post #179
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).…

something that would be awesome is if there was a command line tool to spin one up & it'd have a ticking timer to let me know how much time is left.

I agree with this. It would be much better to annoy users with constant "time remaining" notifications than to unexpectedly delete everything when the time expires. This would also function as an up-sell promotion, a literally "limited time offer" to extend the server's life. I'm not sure it's feasible, but what if you also added a command within the instance to extend its life to the next tier?

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#185

Post by choicenotchance »

diwu1989 wrote: post #179
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).…

something that would be awesome is if there was a command line tool to spin one up & it'd have a ticking timer to let me know how much time is left.

Yeah. Something along the lines of:

    dply launch
    ... bunch of SSH log, logged into instance, see ASCII logo of DPLY like in EC2 servers..
    $/home/random-user-11110101010/# AND WE ARE IN

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#187

Post by jon-wood »

y4mi wrote: post #139
phamilton wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Th…

It's definitely a worry, but to their credit AWS at least are pretty nice about accidentally racking up a big bill. Last month I forgot to shut down a GPU instance I'd been experimenting with on my personal account and got hit with $150 I hadn't been expecting, but on explaining the situation to support they cancelled the bill from the previous month and applied a credit to my account to cover the time it had been active this month. I'm going to guess that's a one time thing, but the gesture was very much appreciated.

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#189

Post by jenskanis »

Warp__ wrote: post #46
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).…

Thanks a lot, this service looks really useful. Would it be possible to offer a LAMP install for two hours?

This is already possible. They support Cloud-init: https://dply.co/help/cloud-init

Re: Show HN: Dply – Free temporary Linux servers

#190

Post by Warp__ »

jenskanis wrote: post #189
Warp__ wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot, this service looks really useful. Would it be possible to offer a LAMP install for two hours?

This is already possible. They support Cloud-init: https://dply.co/help/cloud-init

Ah, didn't read closely enough. Thank You.
Post reply on HN