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If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

casparwre.de

21–30 of 40 posts

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#21
post #18

This may be out of topic, but it seems that user reviews for https://keepthescore.com/ use "thispersondoesnotexist" profile pics (or similar service). Even without knowing of these, they seem off. I'm not sure they are a benefit to illustrate actual human reviews, it makes these reviews feel off too, when you're aware of their source. This might be a very personal thing, but I'd feel better reading reviews with just…

Do you have a good reason to believe “Cate” doesn’t in fact have a conjoined twin with a rare facial deformity placing her left eye roughly in line with her mouth?

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#22

I ran infra to power a vps hosting solution where I was the solo admin for 6 years. A hard drive crash took out a critical database and that spelled the end of my cash cow. I now keep websites on cloud servers and autopay, however most terms of service gives the provider the right to discontinue service after your death. Best to keep a will and a reputable steward to maintain your systems posthumously

You didn't have backups of that critical database? You didn't use at least RAID on the machine that hosted the database?

No need to use cloud if you are careful.

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#23
post #17

I think upon death there are automated systems within financial institutions to close bank accounts and credit cards; AFAIK death records are public. Therefore, probably at the next billing cycle, as a dead man makes no credit card authorizations.

How about the bank or even the national finance? Although more unlikely then the cloud provider or the DNS registrar (verification needed), the bank or the fiat could also cease to function. I would like to remark that, a single point of failure also applies for financial systems, but often overlooked by people.

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#24
> Payment failure

Visa now has Visa Account Updater [1], and Mastercard has Mastercard Automatic Billing Updater [2]. It looks like American Express has their own too [3].

If one configures some form of automatic payment on their cards (AutoPay in the US; direct debits or GIRO in other parts of the world), along with using a "wallet" comprising multiple cards or bank accounts like PayPal [4] — it feels like paying for services would go on for longer than expected.

[1] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/visa-accoun...

[2] https://developer.mastercard.com/product/automatic-billing-u...

[3] https://www.godaddy.com/help/about-credit-card-account-updat...

[4] PayPal's more than happy to also take money from your bank accounts without your consent if your cards fail, if you have the accounts added, just to keep your bills paid.

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#25

I ran infra to power a vps hosting solution where I was the solo admin for 6 years. A hard drive crash took out a critical database and that spelled the end of my cash cow. I now keep websites on cloud servers and autopay, however most terms of service gives the provider the right to discontinue service after your death. Best to keep a will and a reputable steward to maintain your systems posthumously

Thus why businesses should not be sole proprietors but at minmum single member LLC's. Which would not "die" with the death of the owner,

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#27
post #18

This may be out of topic, but it seems that user reviews for https://keepthescore.com/ use "thispersondoesnotexist" profile pics (or similar service). Even without knowing of these, they seem off. I'm not sure they are a benefit to illustrate actual human reviews, it makes these reviews feel off too, when you're aware of their source. This might be a very personal thing, but I'd feel better reading reviews with just…

Maker of Keepthescore here. You are correct. How did you know?

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#28
post #27
post #18

This may be out of topic, but it seems that user reviews for https://keepthescore.com/ use "thispersondoesnotexist" profile pics (or similar service). Even without knowing of these, they seem off. I'm not sure they are a benefit to illustrate actual human reviews, it makes these reviews feel off too, when you're aware of their source. This might be a very personal thing, but I'd feel better reading reviews with just…

Maker of Keepthescore here. You are correct. How did you know?

There's six faces and two seeds. It's hard to describe, but if you bring them up in an image viewer and cycle through the directory you'll see it right away.

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#29
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maker of Keepthescore here. You are correct. How did you know?

There's six faces and two seeds. It's hard to describe, but if you bring them up in an image viewer and cycle through the directory you'll see it right away.

Also, all of the eyes are in the same exact position in all of the pics.

Re: If I died tomorrow, how long would my webapp keep running?

#30
One of my crowning Engineering achievements was a Zombie Webapp. I owned the entire server side, and spent about 8 months building something robust, but with a small server footprint. As it turns out, our investor hated the app that it powered, so we shut it all down...or so we thought.

18 months later, we started getting disk-space alerts as the DB file system filled up. As it turns out, we'd gotten rid of all of our alerting & monitoring except for the "last resort" fallbacks, which were starting to fire. The system had performed its task flawlessly for the entire time.

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