Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#1

Post by adhambadr » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:51 PM UTC

for reasons too long to write here I have around $8k of credit on AWS from my last failed venture that will expire end of this august. Id hate to let those credits go in thin air and I don't have the time to build the stuff I imagined myself building to use them, so I thought Id give it to the HN community if they come up with a really cool 'demanding' computational task to use this kind of server power.

Comment on how you'd like to use it and if you impress us they're yours.

p.s id be super happy if somehow the computational power is used to build/crawl some kind of data that would directly/indirectly help anyone for free. Second to that would be if hackers in the comments come up with an idea and do it together.

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#2

Post by jdimov9 » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

That's very generous.

Not sure if this matches your criteria, but I've been wanting to run some extensive benchmark tests on the most multi-core EC2 instance that I can get for this Elixir project: https://github.com/a115/exmatrix

I probably don't need more than a couple of days of uptime to complete this, and the results will of course be made public, with proper credit for your support. jdimov at a115 co uk

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#3

Post by smt88 » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 5:05 PM UTC

If someone wants you to do webscraping, even for a good cause, I wouldn't waste my time if I were you. Most AWS IPs have been long-since blacklisted by the most interesting sites (e.g. craigslist).

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#4

Post by autotune » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 5:09 PM UTC

How about building an Einstein@Home lab with some of those credits? Help discover some neutron stars.

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#5

Post by joshstrange » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 5:09 PM UTC

You could spin up a large number of ArchiveTeam warrior images

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#6

Post by justizin » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 5:12 PM UTC

Can you spend the credits on reserved instances? If so, they shouldn't have to be used by end of august.

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#7

Post by mikebabineau » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 5:13 PM UTC

justizin wrote: post #6

Can you spend the credits on reserved instances? If so, they shouldn't have to be used by end of august.

In general, no:

https://aws.amazon.com/awscredits/ (Section 1.1)

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#8

Post by pjungwir » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 5:19 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #5

You could spin up a large number of ArchiveTeam warrior images

Are they a 501(c)(3)? If the OP's marginal combined tax rate is, say 50%, then donating $8k in credits would be like $4k in their pocket.

EDIT: Of course OP should talk to an accountant first. . . .

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#9

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 5:20 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: $8k on AWS in August for you, any interesting computations?

#10

Post by j0hnb » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

I donate to http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/ when possible. Right now I'm donating my monthly $100 MSDN Azure credit. I would do more through AWS but I don't have the budget to do so at the moment.