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

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

#151

Post by flexd »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #64
bananas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It took me about an hour to put all of this into an ansible playbook. I think there are couple of examples out on blogs about this as well. If there is interest I'll share my playbook. Writing this playbook paid off already for the second installation of the box.

I'd like a copy of that playbook too :-), publish it somewhere?

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

#153

Post by flexd »

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?

It's just a nicer interface to iptables. Instead of changing my iptables config file you can do things like 'sudo ufw allow 22' or 'sudo ufw allow http' for example.

You should still understand iptables but you do not need to config everything manually.

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

#154

Post by res0nat0r »

gamblor956 wrote: post #133
logjammer wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is not how it works. Your salary is an expense for the company, paid before any corporate tax is paid, and thus reduces corporate tax. A company that has $10MM in revenue, and $10MM in salary expense will pay zero corporate income tax.

A company paying its owner $10mm in salary cannot deduct all $10 million. It could probably get away with paying a six-figure salary (fully deductible), but the rest would be re-characterized as a dividend and the underlying "salary" expense would not be deductible. At the numbers we're talking about in this hypothetical, the corporation would be treated as severely underreporting its tax liability--meaning the highe…

His point is: salaries are an expense.

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

#155

Post by MichaelGG »

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.

Regardless of the truthiness of this blogpost, their ToS actually includes this gem (repeated twice actually, due to poor editing):

3.13 Subscribers may not use the Services in a manner that would violate the lawful privacy rights of any person, ... or embarrass, which shall be determined in DigitalOcean’s sole and absolute discretion.

So... if someone gets embarrassed by what you put up, DO just decides to take it down.

https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/terms/

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

lallysingh wrote: post #40

I'm a (moderately [1]) happy customer. But I have to ask, isn't this industry slowly turning into just virtualized hardware leasing? After the management tools commoditize, and I think there's a solid risk of that, isn't it just price and DC-location that differentiate? And in that vein, wouldn't the winner in each area just be the one who bought their hardware the most recently? Instructions/dollar are still increas…

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by hueving »

chc wrote: post #104
fuzzix wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I kind of doubt this is about the golf angle so much as the creepy obsession the writer seems to have with this guy. Calling out some random Google employee and publishing his chat logs along with derogatory comments while seemingly looking to get him in trouble with his employer is harassment. I'm not sure why "Digital Ocean enforces its terms of service" is considered scandalous. (Full disclosure: My only relations…

>I kind of doubt this is about the golf angle so much as the creepy obsession the writer seems to have with this guy.

Can you explain what you mean here? The blog owner appeared to be offended by the Googler's stance that he was taking in a public chatroom about Google policies so he blogged about it. How is that a creepy obsession?

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

#158

Post by beachstartup »

raiyu wrote: post #65
tshtf wrote: post #35

Broken DigitalOcean promises: IPv6 in Q4 2012: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/is-ipv6-ava... Ability to boot own kernel ("2-3 weeks from Feb 2013"): https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digital-oce...

Completely agree with you, we definitely broke a few promises. We ran into this problem because we were used to our development cycle that we had in 2012, but in 2013 our growth really took off and we spent most of our time working on scaling challenges. That unfortunately pushed us back on a lot of different timelines. Now that we've grown the company from 5 people to over 50 and with this latest round we're finally…

the interesting thing about the hosting market is the less people pay, the more entitled they feel.

not sure if digital ocean has customers in the $20k+/month range, but they are by far the least demanding.

pretty incredible isn't it?

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

#159

Post by lallysingh »

6cxs2hd6 wrote: post #112
lallysingh wrote: post #40

I'm a (moderately [1]) happy customer. But I have to ask, isn't this industry slowly turning into just virtualized hardware leasing? After the management tools commoditize, and I think there's a solid risk of that, isn't it just price and DC-location that differentiate? And in that vein, wouldn't the winner in each area just be the one who bought their hardware the most recently? Instructions/dollar are still increas…

> isn't this industry slowly turning into just virtualized hardware leasing? After the management tools commoditize, and I think there's a solid risk of that, isn't it just price and DC-location that differentiate? Well, I don't think it's like aircraft or auto leasing. More like apartment or office leasing -- there's also a property management, maintenance, and operation dimension. You're not just paying for hardwar…

I like this analogy. It's like you're leasing an office for your program to work in. It works well for both pricing and differentiation.

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

#160

Post by drone »

oijaf888 wrote: post #132
jcampbell1 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't that only the case if you are paying yourself mainly via distributions? If you are paying yourself a market rate salary and taking any profits at the end of a good year via distributions would they frown on that? Assuming you have shareholders who don't work in the business (say family) I don't see how else you could distribute proceeds back to them.

The self-employment tax covers K-1 distributions, etc. If you're inactive (not actually working for the pass-through entity, only receiving profit distributions) your taxes are additionally higher on those distributions.

In summary: typical pass-through entity distributions are typically taxed as self-employment income and subject to the SET which attempts to recover the missing employer's half of tax payments. You cannot avoid all employer's half of taxes by taking them as distributions, and whomever told you that has misled you.

Now, what you might actually be thinking here, and would be correct, is that for those who earn less than a certain income (which would place them in the top tax bracket), the effect of applying all of those payments as self-employment income generally results in a lower tax rate than the corporate tax rate, and allows for deductions that companies may not have available to them.

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