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Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

colaptop.pages.dev

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Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#51

Post by whilenot-dev »

corvad wrote: post #20

This seems very sketchy. Give us your laptop and we promise we won't keep it... > © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved. Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev > Thank you for your interest. Please submit the form below and we'll get back to you within 2 working days. > - Team @ CoLaptop.com Also colaptop.com is not even registe…

> Website copyright is out of date by two years...

Can you explain how a copyright can be "out of date by two years"?

I always thought the copyright notice should reflect the year of creation, and that it's actually bad (from a legal POV) to always show the current year through scripting.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#53

Post by IshKebab »

Nyr wrote: post #50

This is CLEARLY a scam. There is no way they are partnering with Hetzner, or charging just 7€/month flat rate... they specifically want to know the model of the laptop, and offer to send send a courrier to your door...

I would be really surprised if this was a scam. It doesn't have the smell of a scam at all. Who would target a very tech savvy audience just to get old laptops?

Given that the "sign up" link goes to a survey form, my guess is this is just some idea someone had and they made this page to see if anyone actually wants it before they put any effort into making it happen.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#54

Post by gowld »

bombcar wrote: post #49
whalesalad wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tons of places do mac mini colo, https://www.macminivault.com/mac-mini-colocation/

Marco tells us that if you have 48 Mac minis, buy them yourself and rent a rack.

How does that work if you don't live near the colo?

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#55

Post by Nyr »

IshKebab wrote: post #53
Nyr wrote: post #50

This is CLEARLY a scam. There is no way they are partnering with Hetzner, or charging just 7€/month flat rate... they specifically want to know the model of the laptop, and offer to send send a courrier to your door...

I would be really surprised if this was a scam. It doesn't have the smell of a scam at all. Who would target a very tech savvy audience just to get old laptops? Given that the "sign up" link goes to a survey form, my guess is this is just some idea someone had and they made this page to see if anyone actually wants it before they put any effort into making it happen.

Colo scams are pretty common. Some percentage of people will offer to send expensive laptops, and the scammers can discard the rest of "interested customers".

It is inviable to colo old laptops, a regulatory nightmare - Hetzner would NEVER accept those in their datacenters. It is also absurd to think they are partnering with Hetzner to begin with.

It makes no sense to believe they will even EXPORT laptops from Europe to the US if you choose the US location. It just makes no sense, so I don't get why I am getting downvoted.

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#58

Post by kube-system »

corvad wrote: post #20

This seems very sketchy. Give us your laptop and we promise we won't keep it... > © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved. Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev > Thank you for your interest. Please submit the form below and we'll get back to you within 2 working days. > - Team @ CoLaptop.com Also colaptop.com is not even registe…

> > © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved.

> Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev

That's exactly what it should be then. A copyright notice lists the year of publication. Not the current year.

> A proper copyright notice consists of three elements: a © symbol, the year of publication, and the copyright owner’s name.

https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-copyright-notice/

Re: Old laptops in a colo as low cost servers

#59

Post by perrygeo »

GTP wrote: post #46
perrygeo wrote: post #45

Old laptops as low cost servers? Absolutely, build a homelab in your own basement, rent a cheap VPS, set up wireguard and viola - instant data center for tens of dollars per month. It's not production grade but you'll learn a ton. But colocation? Strip away the learning component and add production uptime requirements - why would you even consider using crusty old laptops for this? If you have production grade needs,…

They aren't targeting big companies for sure, but maybe a small or medium-sized office could make use of this.

I don't see it. Hobby projects can use a VPN tunnel to make a data center from local equipment. Real projects that choose colocation have uptime requirements that simply can't be met by random consumer hardware. The venn diagrams don't intersect.

There's no middle ground where you try to run a real business on old laptops. That's insane. You either keep things small/hobby and stay simple, or graduate to production-grade equipment once you have real requirements.

The middle ground, taking on production colocation problems plus the unreliability of random hardware, sounds like the worst of both worlds. There are both simpler and more robust options.

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