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

Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

blog.alexgleason.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 141 posts

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#81

Post by paul_f »

nacs wrote: post #74
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #63

This article is kind of depressing, when did hosting your own server become a lost art? One of parler’s problems was they didn’t scrub headers which made it very obvious they were using AWS and which AWS services they were using. AWS is just a bunch of APIs - they could have colo’d their front end or put a bunch of varnish servers in front if it at a colo and nobody would have been the wiser they were using AWS on th…

Yep, the amount of incompetence in Parler's case is just mind-boggling. Their failure to make it cloud agnostic being 1 (even though they claimed before they went down that their app could run without AWS without issue). Their failure to be incapable (still) to get it running again on non-cloud hardware.. And of course their inability to, as you suggest, move the frontend routing to a CDN/Cloudflare/DDosguard type se…

Maybe they didn't think they needed to. Before a few months ago, you didn't yank someone off your network because you didn't like their politics. (yea yea, terms of service something or other)

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#82

Post by alkonaut »

rbanffy wrote: post #39
ping_pong wrote: post #20

The "reason" given why Parler failed is awfully glib and one dimensional. You can't just serve content to millions of people per day and think you can just up and move to another provider. Had Parler just moderated their posts like they were asked to do, they would still be around. You can still have right wing, even extreme right wing views without calling for violence or organizing insurrections. The fact they esse…

That and their hardware footprint seemed ridiculously overprovisioned. You can serve content to millions of people per day with fewer boxes than they were using. I always try to design a "degraded mode" read-only into my apps that covers maintenance windows and unscheduled outages. That is usually easier to lift and shift than the full app and can even be hosted someplace else if you don't mind it lagging behind the…

One can only assume that 90% of their hardware was doing something much heavier than “microblogging”. I’m guessing e.g tons and tons of media processing like video transcoding.

Would be interesting to hear how much it costs Twitter to have video features. If I was Parler right now I’d just switch off media and throw up a very lean MVP version with just text. Even with millions of users Parler has the luxury of almost no consistency problems at all. It’s all eventual consistency and simple replication. Shouldn’t need a lot of hardware at all.

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#83

Post by ClumsyPilot »

TameAntelope wrote: post #73
acover wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. When a corp has billions in revenue, your $2000 is nothing compared to any possibility of jeopardizing a fraction of their revenue. Imagine a corp optimizing click through. Any negative news could dampen that and require immediate action. You have to be perfect or too big to remove.

And yet I’m neither of those things and I’ve never been kicked off of a platform, so clearly there’s something off with what you’ve said, otherwise people would be getting deplatformed for saying or doing anything at all that might go against popular sentiment. Parler wasn’t removed from AWS because it was a conservative site, it was removed because it wasn’t willing to handle the legally troubling volume of potentia…

"never been kicked off of a platform, so clearly there’s something off with what you’ve said"

I've never gotten COVID, so clearly there is something wrong with how you breathe!

Do some reading, google employees got banned from gmail and never found out why.

There is an important point that you are missing - I am not claiming that you can't kick people off your platform. I am asking that you have fair due process, and it's the same rules for me and for some loudmouth politician.

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#84

Post by lightlyused »

rvz wrote: post #50
tpmx wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it works. So much money is wasted with AWS. (Look at at their margins.) It's useful in development/testing. It's irresponsible to use managed services that don't have an easy migration path to something open.

It works for comma.ai as they are self-hosting their deep-learning system in house and not in the cloud with these huge costs. Deep-Learning in the cloud really is a scam and a complete waste of money.

I wouldn't say it is a scam. There are a lot of benefits to running load in the cloud, understanding what works for your business is the hard part.

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#85

Post by phendrenad2 »

spijdar wrote: post #18
endisneigh wrote: post #8

Does there exist a de-platform proof way of hosting something on the internet? Even if you host your own server on your own premises they could forbid you from using the location, shut off your electricity, etc. Is it possible to host a website entirely on bittorrent? I suppose there's also IPFS but I'm not entirely familiar. Maybe once solar is cheap enough you could launch some sort of array of powered drones into…

"They" in that case would typically be the government (assuming you own your property), which at least in the US would have to (at least nominally) follow more regulations and protocols for restricting your speech, while a private business doesn't really have those same obligations. I'm not sure how ISPs fit into this though, and to what extent they can say "we don't like the content you're serving" and cut your net.…

I wonder, if the electric company gets thousands of requests to disconnect someone's power, will they comply?

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#86

Post by whatthesmack »

wging wrote: post #77
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #63

This article is kind of depressing, when did hosting your own server become a lost art? One of parler’s problems was they didn’t scrub headers which made it very obvious they were using AWS and which AWS services they were using. AWS is just a bunch of APIs - they could have colo’d their front end or put a bunch of varnish servers in front if it at a colo and nobody would have been the wiser they were using AWS on th…

AWS publishes which IPs it owns, so scrubbing headers is not enough for secrecy. (Not that doing something that relies on secrecy is a smart plan for a business, anyway.) https://isitonaws.com/

I think you can bring your own public IP assignments to AWS. Wouldn't that do the trick? I mean, there's always tracerouting, I suppose.

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#88

Post by joezydeco »

doggydogs94 wrote: post #87

On the other hand, ThePirateBay seems to be able to stay up.

Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi (‪@brokep‬) 1/10/21, 03:05

"The pirate bay, the most censored website in the world, started by kids, run by people with problems with alcohol, drugs and money, still is up after almost 2 decades. Parlor and gab etc have all the money around but no skills or mindset. Embarrassing.

The most ironic thing is that TPBs enemies include not just the US government but also many European and the Russian one. Compared to gab/parlor which is supported by the current president of the US and probably liked by the Russian one too.

First time tpb got shut down was because a Mexican gang wanted some cash. Took a day to move. Second time was when the USG forced Sweden to send 50 cops and even arrest the lawyer. Took 3 days to get back online, 1.5 days was spent to get drunk and party."

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#89

Post by OldHand2018 »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #85
spijdar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They" in that case would typically be the government (assuming you own your property), which at least in the US would have to (at least nominally) follow more regulations and protocols for restricting your speech, while a private business doesn't really have those same obligations. I'm not sure how ISPs fit into this though, and to what extent they can say "we don't like the content you're serving" and cut your net.…

I wonder, if the electric company gets thousands of requests to disconnect someone's power, will they comply?

Probably not. In many places, shutting off utilities to an occupied residence is very hard to do legally without meeting a huge number of requirements.

I once lived in an apartment tower that didn’t pay the water bill for 3 years (because of an incompetent transfer of management responsibilities). They didn’t shut off the water. They didn’t threaten to shut off the water. After 3 years, they threatened to charge interest on the unpaid amount if it wasn’t paid within 30 days!

Re: Parler’s epic fail: A crash course on running your own servers

#90

Post by OldHand2018 »

rhencke wrote: post #6
542458 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why you also check Fast.com - it’s on Netflix’s servers, so you can’t whitelist Fast without also whitelisting Netflix.

It really was such a brilliant move on Netflix's part.

My rinky-dink little ISP has peering connections with Netflix, Apple and AWS. The operate in 2 midwestern cities with maybe 50,000 total customers, so it seems like the Netflix vs ISP issue only exists with the Comcasts and Xfinities of the world. Everyone else is really happy to work with Netflix; it costs them nearly nothing.

https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/peering/

Post reply on HN