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

DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 299 posts

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#121

Post by jcampbell1 »

oijaf888 wrote: post #97
dave_sullivan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I'll bite. You're right. But you're not going to avoid the stock market (where you might get paid in dividends) because you want to avoid double taxation. However, when forming a company for the first time, you'll hear double taxation cited as a reason you might not want to form a corporation. This is stupid because you're not going to pay yourself in dividends. Of course there are many reasons you might cho…

If you run a company and are paying yourself excess profits as salaries or bonuses, you are paying payroll taxes on that money. If you have a C corp you are paying taxes on that money as dividends. If you have a pass through entity of some sort (S corp, LLC, etc) you can avoid paying payroll taxes on distributions and also avoid double taxation. Unless I'm missing something with AWS, what oversight in their system ca…

The IRS has been cracking down on people who use that loophole.... The doctor that has $50k in FICA earning and $200k in partnership distributions. Using that kind of loophole is playing with fire. You might get away with it for life, or might get stuck with a $250k tax bill at any time.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#122

Post by oinksoft »

bad_user wrote: post #120
hiphopyo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My logs show increased break-in attempts after moving to Digital Ocean. Their IPs are hot targets for hackers, making it all the more important to properly secure my droplets, something I'm having a hard time doing in Linux. With Linux, it's lot of beating around the bush. Overcomplicated config files, a lot of disabling and removing of things one don't need, having to deal with a messy and outdated firewall. With Op…

Just install ufw. It's very simple to configure the rules for a basic server. Here's how: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-setup...

Why would you use that over iptables? It's simple and doesn't require installing a package.

  > There is a lot of functionality built into these
  > utilities, iptables being the most popular nowadays, but
  > they require a decent effort on behalf of the user to
  > learn and understand them.
Is that a corner worth cutting?

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#123

Post by bowlofpetunias »

AWS is a cloud service provider with a huge ecosystem of services. Digital Ocean is a VPS provider.

It's like comparing a harddisk manufacturer to Apple.

Even EC2 is barely an overlap, since EC2 is a computation unit in the convenient form of a (very ephemeral) virtual server, not the virtual equivalent of an actual, permanent server. (And you're going to be in a world of hurt if you use them like that.)

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#124

Post by phaker »

bananas wrote: post #23
hiphopyo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My logs show increased break-in attempts after moving to Digital Ocean. Their IPs are hot targets for hackers, making it all the more important to properly secure my droplets, something I'm having a hard time doing in Linux. With Linux, it's lot of beating around the bush. Overcomplicated config files, a lot of disabling and removing of things one don't need, having to deal with a messy and outdated firewall. With Op…

Yeah noticed that as well. First thing I do is (on debian), update packages and the kernel, install ufw (allow only 22), fail2ban, postfix and logwatch. Then setup a non privileged user, sudo, turn of root ssh and password auth and move to key based auth. Then I can sleep/configure the rest of the system. Been meaning to package this all up in an ansible playbook but I can't be bothered :( I'd be using FreeBSD if the…

> update packages and the kernel

PSA: If you just update the kernel using system tools within the instance, it'll still boot the old one. (At least it did few months ago.)

The grub (or other bootloader) and kernels that are installed inside the instance's disk image are silently ignored and the vm uses a kernel stored outside of your instance's image. You can select which kernel image you want to boot in the control panel. The problem is that the kernels available in there are updated very, very rarely. For popular distributions like Ubuntu they can lag several months, for others it can get up to, say, _two years_ [1].

Since digitalocean "doesn't support custom kernels" it appears that the only way to use something up to date (and stay secure) is to write a script that loads a custom kernel using kexec. :S

edit: The fact that they use kvm (and that kexec works) which means real visualization but can't boot user's kernels is just very, very weird. The only technical reason i can think of is that they can't manage to make it work with their control panel. If that's the reason, then it's very worrying. (The "right" way is easier to code and it's the solution that you'd think of first and it makes custom kernels a non-problem, but they picked one that both has obvious problems and is harder to setup, i can't think of a reason why.)

[1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/how-can-i-b...

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#125

Post by bad_user »

z92 wrote: post #50

I am running these services in a $5/month DO droplet: dns [named], ntpd, httpd [apache], smtp [postfix], imap [dovecot], webmail [roundcube], vpn [pptpd]. It's taking 350MB off 500MB RAM. Now after adding getmail to back up gmail I am now wondering what more I can do with it.

I tried installing postfix/dovecot but couldn't do it. Any recent tutorials I could try?

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#126

Post by erbo »

I moved my personal Web hosting from another provider to DO a couple of months ago. I'm spending the same amount I was paying the other provider, and I'm getting a hell of a lot more for my money. (I have two droplets running right now, one with my Web server and mail, one running some network services...and I have plenty of capacity on both to do more.) Plus, since it's an actual VPS as opposed to shared hosting, I have more control over it. I'm kicking myself for not having made the jump earlier.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#127

Post by cscurmudgeon »

fuzzix wrote: post #75
bananas wrote: post #14

Adding to the commentary on here with something not so gushing: * kernels lag terribly behind the distributions meaning you're wide open sometimes. * can't resize or add storage * no freebsd support or custom kernels * VM availability problems. If you want to have another box, you aren't guaranteed to get one. * no IPv6 * somewhat shonky security reputation. * cant deliver to yahoo mail from their AMS2 IPs I've been…

Don't write about the owner's golf buddies either. https://vpsexperience.wordpress.com/ An odd experience, I would say.

Things like this want me to give up programming and take up farming.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#128

Post by gamblor956 »

AznHisoka wrote: post #93
dave_sullivan wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright, I'll bite. You're right. But you're not going to avoid the stock market (where you might get paid in dividends) because you want to avoid double taxation. However, when forming a company for the first time, you'll hear double taxation cited as a reason you might not want to form a corporation. This is stupid because you're not going to pay yourself in dividends. Of course there are many reasons you might cho…

Hmm.. question for u. Say I start a corporation, with just me and another partner, and I need to pay myself... So the revenue earned by the company that's paid to me. that's taxed once by the company. And then again by me as salary. No? Isn't that how it works?

Yes and no. What the other comments are ignoring is that the deductibility of salary paid to owners is capped, precisely to avoid the shenanigans they're trying to achieve (i.e., avoiding double taxation using the corporate form).

Up to a limit, your salary as owner is deductible to the corporation. Generally, the "safe" limit is usually the current SSI maximum wage. Beyond that, the IRS is very likely to re-characterize wages paid to owners as dividends. While this actually results in a lower (direct) tax to the owner, it usually results in higher taxes to the corporation, plus penalties and back interest.

Note that this is generally true for LLCs, S-Corps, and C-Corps, though the precise rules differ based on the type of entity. You'll definitely want to talk to a lawyer or accountant.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#129

Post by bananas »

oinksoft wrote: post #122
bad_user wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just install ufw. It's very simple to configure the rules for a basic server. Here's how: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-setup...

Why would you use that over iptables? It's simple and doesn't require installing a package. > There is a lot of functionality built into these > utilities, iptables being the most popular nowadays, but > they require a decent effort on behalf of the user to > learn and understand them. Is that a corner worth cutting?

Iptables is a crime against humanity from a config and documentation perspective. ufw makes it bearable.

I'd rather use pf on BSD though.

Re: DigitalOcean Raises $37.2M From Andreessen Horowitz to Take on AWS

#130

Post by threeseed »

zerop wrote: post #27

I use linode and was drawing comparisons between two: 1. 8 cores on linode is what binds me to it. Linode rules here 2. Digital ocean is cheaper than linode 3. More Network transfer in linode (minimum 2TB) 4. Digital ocean offers more RAM 5. Private network - Does not exist on Linode. Shame. DO Rules.. What else...

NOBODY should be using Linode. For ANY reason other than for throwaway reasons.

They have deliberately withheld information from customers not once, but twice during critical security incidents.

Post reply on HN