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Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

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Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always a balance between how much fraud you allow and how many real customers you reject. They set their threshold at an interesting level, but maybe they're happy with that choice.

You're right. But unfortunately this mindset moves us closer and closer to having algorithms exclude people from society and life. And as the stories already told here show, it can happen to any of us for no apparent reason. It's like, imagine a magic wand that, if waved, would make life a little better for 99% of society, but much worse for 1%. Would it be moral to wave that wand?

The problem with this mindset (incredibly common in the US; much more so than in the European countries I've lived in, at least) isn't thinking probabilistically, and trying to determine the likelihood of a prospective customer being a fraudster. It's really just that there are only two possible outcomes: Yes and no.

Just by having a third option, most of the downsides of doing the evaluation incorrectly could be mitigated. Of course, that's generally much more expensive (and often uneconomical) than saying no, so it's usually not done.

I've been on the 1% side of things quite a few times due to having new credit and (presumably) various data brokers not knowing every detail about me yet, and the experience really, really sucks.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#413
post #322

As a Hetzner bandwidth enjoyer affected by this, this is why ( HN cough ) multi-cloud/dedi k3s is great, because if you get rug pulled you just migrate to another provider with better prices. That said, $1/TB for bandwidth overage seems pretty fair. I empathize with the complaining but if the new price is such a ripoff everyone should be recommending what cloud VM provider they're migrating to for a better deal.

I use OVH (VPS’s specifically), which offers unlimited bandwidth. In my experience they’ve been both reliable and affordable which is a rarity. I run a few applications that require high amounts of bandwidth, so silly caps like the ones that Hetzner are imposing are a non-starter for me

OVH is the most set and forget experience I've ever had. They email me maintenance notices 3 or 4x a year, but I don't think I've ever had any downtime. It just stays happily humming along for years. I think I pay something like 60 a year for it.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#414
The bandwidth reductions look like they bring the US in line with Singapore, i.e. typically 20TB of bandwidth in the EU and 1TB in Singapore, US moving from 20 to 1.

I wonder if their cost base has changed significantly. Singapore having just 1TB included makes sense because in Singapore traffic is charged differently and costs a huge amount for all companies. I wonder if the colo provider for Hetzner in the US has screwed them over in some way.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#415
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not advocating for anyone being a nasty person, but there are significant cultural differences again for what it means to be rude. In Japan the cultural expectation is that saying "no" is rude in a customer service situation, which is far beyond the expectations of most of the world. This is particularly tricky when the answer is actually "no". If you're used to American customer service, you may find European cu…

"Try again, and this time provide real data" would be considered very rude even in Germany.

Well, we haven't seen the data.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#416
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A non virtualized Linux install isn't more locked in than a docker install Again, sorry for my ignorance here, but if not virtualized, how does one move hosting providers otherwise? My experience is limited to either running all the bash commands in an install readme, or installing a docker image. So there must be something in-between, to recreate a linux install elsewhere? > Replying here as your other question is…

>So there must be something in-between, to recreate a linux install elsewhere? There's a class of tools like chef, ansible, puppet. Or you can just package your services into debs and run a Debian repo to install them from, same as the base OS Possibly there's something closer to dockerfiles out there by now as well >btw, you can click on the time of the post, and reply there when there is no reply link in the main t…

It's a fire extinguisher feature; for when the thread has too many, too fast replies.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#417
post #316

I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they auto-suspended my account before I could log in. I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I bought compute elsewhere. I don't know how they're still in business.

Same with me a few years ago. Their support told me that they didn't want me as a customer. It was my first interaction with them. I swear I'm just a regular nerd with a credit card :D They are bizarre.

A credit card? That... makes some sense, then. I'd be wary if anyone trying to pay with one of those as well; they're much too rare, and I've heard it's easy to unilaterally reverse charges.

Hetzner is a German company. Credit cards may be common in the USA, but they're not anywhere else.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#418
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not advocating for anyone being a nasty person, but there are significant cultural differences again for what it means to be rude. In Japan the cultural expectation is that saying "no" is rude in a customer service situation, which is far beyond the expectations of most of the world. This is particularly tricky when the answer is actually "no". If you're used to American customer service, you may find European cu…

"Try again, and this time provide real data" would be considered very rude even in Germany.

Without reading the actual wording sent, and knowing which culture the sender was from, this is all just speculation. I'm more interested in challenging the assumptions that we have about our own expectations in customer service being universal. From the rest of this thread it sounds like there is a commonly held opinion that Hetzner customer service is blunt, and my point is that that may be fine and maybe customers should not expect to be treated in a particular way all the time.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#420
post #283

What are some examples of applications people are running that: 1. Require 20TB of bandwidth / month 2. That bandwidth can't be shielded by Cloudflare and others? Is it like... real time video streaming? Gaming servers? I can't imagine a web app getting anywhere close to that. I run a mid sized NFT art creation website that generates both images and GIF's ( https://mintables.club ) and with over 100000 users at peak,…

BitTorrent seedbox. If you are apart of a private torrent tracker you may download 5tb and upload 10tb of data per month to be in good standing within that tracker’s community

I've always wondered how ratios like that are supposed to work. Surely the ratio has to be 1.0, averaged over all users.
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