Free (as in beer) Dynos • Hacker News Board

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#51

Post by ukbootstrapper » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

csdrane wrote: post #8

mapleoin wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a downgrade. The whole post sounded like a downgrade since they felt the need to emphasize their commitment to experimentation. I am one of the people affected by this since I was running a one-page website dyno and had pingdom keeping it out of sleep mode. This is what they are referring to as well in the last paragraph. I didn't know it was that many people doing this, though the solution for me would be a si…

People wouldn't have been pinging their dynos to remain awake if it didn't take so long for them to spin back up. Know of any alternative places for projects that don't use a lot of resources?

Redhat's OpenShift runs on the same AWS regions as Heroku and offer a free tier.(https://www.openshift.com/products/pricing).

IBM are also putting a lot of resources in to Bluemix which offers a 512MB dyno equivalent in their free tier, it doesn't run on AWS though. (https://console.ng.bluemix.net/pricing/)

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#52

Post by arsenide » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:23 PM UTC

arsenide wrote: post #27

pvh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could call it a side-grade. We're also allowing users to add a worker dyno and use up to 18hrs/day of `heroku run` and scheduler one-off dynos as well. All told you can get quite a few more compute-hours for free applications now than before.

You can call it what you want, but for what I (and others presumably) use it for, the 24/7 uptime is essential. Sure an argument can be made for needing to pay for 24/7 uptime, but it is very clearly a downgrade in such a case where such an argument even needs to be made!

To clarify: I'm particularly speaking about the parent's use of the term "sidegrade." I'm not disagreeing with the idea that 24/7 uptime should be paid for (because I agree), but to call the change in terms of service a "sidegrade" is a misrepresentation of what it actually is: a downgrade in services for my particular use case.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#53

Post by e12e » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #25

briandear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or pay $7 per month?

It's for an open source project, not an internal work instance or anything. As a student at uni with no full time job, adding more monthly charges is hard to deal with.

Move it to digital ocean?

https://education.github.com/pack

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#54

Post by mhink » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:45 PM UTC

sebular wrote: post #42

Shank wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for an open source project, not an internal work instance or anything. As a student at uni with no full time job, adding more monthly charges is hard to deal with.

I'd try to scrounge some old computer from your CS department or buy a raspberry pi and run it on that.

Old computer, yeah- Raspberry Pi, not so much. Takes hours to compile node from source, and I've only been able to find one source for ARM node binaries.

And after all that, hubot still ran pretty damn slow. :(

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#55

Post by mysterymachine » Thu, May 07, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

I'm pretty sure pinging services and such were out of their ToS anyway. They're better facilitating non-sketchy free users by giving them the Scheduler and a worker, and have given people who absolutely need 24/7 service a great service for dirt cheap.

I bet most people who need the 24/7 service probably have the money to spare, and I bet most people are overestimating the uptime they need anyway.

On the flip side, for a small flat fee, I can now have 10 processes running on a 24/hr server, effortlessly. I'll pay the 7 bucks for an easy deploy. Most of my projects are going to be hosted on Github Pages or Heroku's free tier anyway.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#56

Post by e12e » Thu, May 07, 2015, 6:21 PM UTC

mhink wrote: post #54

sebular wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd try to scrounge some old computer from your CS department or buy a raspberry pi and run it on that.

Old computer, yeah- Raspberry Pi, not so much. Takes hours to compile node from source, and I've only been able to find one source for ARM node binaries. And after all that, hubot still ran pretty damn slow. :(

Presumably you'd buy a Rasberry Pi v2 that has arm v7, and can run full/regular Debian with a proper kernel?

https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi

Still, Debian only ships nodejs 0.10 (even Sid) for now -- and I'm not sure what the status is for compiling node 0.12 on armv7 (it apparently has issues on armv6 which the rpi v1 runs).

Fwiw, if you can get by with node 0.10 for hubot (Which I think you can[1]?) -- there shouldn't be any problem:

http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/pool/main/n/nodejs/

Unless you need to compile your own nodejs binary for some reason?

[1] https://github.com/github/hubot/blob/master/package.json

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#57

Post by tburch » Thu, May 07, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

pvh wrote: post #17

task_queue wrote: post #2

So they're getting rid of their free option for another free option that gives you only 18hrs of non-sleep time a day. How is this not a downgrade?

You could call it a side-grade. We're also allowing users to add a worker dyno and use up to 18hrs/day of `heroku run` and scheduler one-off dynos as well. All told you can get quite a few more compute-hours for free applications now than before.

why not allow 36 hours per day of 'heroku run' or 'heroku web'?

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#58

Post by mark_l_watson » Thu, May 07, 2015, 6:36 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #25

briandear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or pay $7 per month?

It's for an open source project, not an internal work instance or anything. As a student at uni with no full time job, adding more monthly charges is hard to deal with.

IBM's Bluemix has a very generous free tier. If you can run an app or apps using a total of 512M of ram with modest data storage requirements, then that is free.

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#59

Post by fiatjaf » Thu, May 07, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #25

briandear wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or pay $7 per month?

It's for an open source project, not an internal work instance or anything. As a student at uni with no full time job, adding more monthly charges is hard to deal with.

So because you are a student you think people have to provide you with free computers?

Re: Free (as in beer) Dynos

#60

Post by fiatjaf » Thu, May 07, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

Stupid people who were abusing Heroku by pinging the apps caused this, now they might as well suffer. All my hobby apps go to sleep regularly and it is not bad.

I am grateful to Heroku for providing me all this free computing and I hope they get rid of the freeloaders.