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Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

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Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#61

Post by sweca »

synthoidzeta wrote: post #60

Just wanted to applaud you — I'm over twice your age and would not be able to create something like this. Can I ask when you started programming/building things? Was it a natural interest or did you receive encouragement from someone in your life? Wishing Horizon all the best, excited to use it!

Thank you so much!

I started programming at around 9 years old in MS Batch. By making TUI apps, I learned the fundamentals, like variables, logic, functions, etc.

The interest actually stemmed from gaming. I was playing Minecraft and I was like, "hey, why can't I make cool stuff like this?" Spoiler alert: I did not remake Minecraft lol. My father was an early adopter of tech, like when he purchased the first Macintosh, so he also encouraged me into the field.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#62

Post by ijustlovemath »

sweca wrote: post #51
ijustlovemath wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not have the user's machine do the encoding into whatever format is cheapest/easiest for you to support? Could even divide user payloads into chunks and p2p it, bittorrent style. No compute needed, beyond a tracking server that can be very cheap to run

Transcoding client-side still has considerations: - What if the user's hardware is not performant? - Transcoding is intensive, so their machine will become slow - Even wasm based ffmpeg will not be as efficient and has its own issues - Takes a very long time

1. Then setup a worker thread with a very high nice value, like 19. Limit your throughput with tick-based compute (sleep if you're using too much compute)

2. Not if you do as proposed

3. Efficiency is not your problem, as you've stated with the previous 2 requirements. Your algorithm doesn't have to be maximally efficient if it takes a while to compute (eg you're using sleep in it)

4. Doesn't matter, most users of this service will only be taking a few photos or videos a day. Offer a paid service upgrade for heavy users who cant handle the upload times.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#63

Post by lelandbatey »

tyingq wrote: post #21

Looks great, and clearly a lot of time and thought invested. Not news to you, I'm sure, but these sites typically only last for a while. Because nobody has really hit on a way to subsidize a reasonable free plan enough to pay for the bandwidth it collectively consumes, and to implement enough spam protection. Especially once it hits a certain adoption curve. So they either die or find a way to push ads, like imgur di…

Exactly; I still remember reading the imgur announcement post on reddit which had all the same descriptions. They were ad free and they were aiming to be great forever. Now though they're the "big bad".

https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/7zlyd/comment/c...

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#64

Post by ijustlovemath »

sweca wrote: post #12
jml78 wrote: post #7

Congrats, it looks great, love that you have Linux app support. Question, have you done the business analysis to know how long you can afford to run the system when giving away 500MB? Even your paid model seems really inexpensive. Do you have enough margin to immediately not go broke? I am not trying to throw shade, I am just curious because it almost seems too good to be true since you aren’t running any ads and you…

Yes. Over the past 3 years I've been researching and re-iterating different monetization strategies. While I don't want to divulge exact operating costs, I can tell you that it's sustainable to provide free storage and the amount on the paid Everest plan.

What kind of backup and disaster recovery plans do you have in place, if any? Are they tested?

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#66

Post by 29athrowaway »

Hosting user generated content is one of the quick ways to run into awful content.

You have to take the necessary precautions, both legal and technological, to prevent awful content from becoming problematic.

Also according to your own terms of service you cannot access the website yourself, that is odd.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#67

Post by sweca »

29athrowaway wrote: post #66

Hosting user generated content is one of the quick ways to run into awful content. You have to take the necessary precautions, both legal and technological, to prevent awful content from becoming problematic. Also according to your own terms of service you cannot access the website yourself, that is odd.

Under the Adult Content section, yes, if there is adult content, the user must be 18 years of age or older. I see the irony in this.

However, for other usage of the site, the privacy policy says that the minimum age is 13 years old.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#68

Post by sweca »

airtonix wrote: post #52
sweca wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are good questions to ask. Right now, the monetization strategy is profitable. If an image does go viral, which has happened before on popular Reddit posts that hit the front page, the infrastructure should be able to handle it for a while, and it should not be costly.

you should protect yourself from free plans going viral and costing you more than you'd like with rate limiting rules of some kind.

I see your point, but the business model can sustain a large influx in free signups. I will keep this in mind though.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#69

Post by DaoVeles »

Just a quick note. That you have pricing up front is such a big thing. Places like Imgur and photobucket before it were out to be exploited merely for their free bandwidth.

There is a clear means of funding this and that instills confidence.

One other note, I also am a lot more likely to jump onto a service if there is an easy escape plan. While you don't want to loose customers, having an easy out allows people to exit on amicable terms.

Re: Show HN: Horizon – Private alternative to Imgur

#70

Post by sweca »

DaoVeles wrote: post #69

Just a quick note. That you have pricing up front is such a big thing. Places like Imgur and photobucket before it were out to be exploited merely for their free bandwidth. There is a clear means of funding this and that instills confidence. One other note, I also am a lot more likely to jump onto a service if there is an easy escape plan. While you don't want to loose customers, having an easy out allows people to e…

Yep! Having limits and sustainable pricing was at the top of mind prior to launch - didn't want to dig myself into a hole.

For exports, there are currently 3 export options:

- file download URLs (encrypted content is undecryptable by Horizon, therefore will not be downloadable without the correct key, which is not stored by Horizon)

- all your short links

- all your paste content (encrypted content is undecryptable by Horizon, therefore will show up in its ciphertext form)

These exports are all in machine-readable JSON.

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