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I don't need a VPS anymore

greenash.net.au

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Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#71

Post by shkkmo »

willis936 wrote: post #48
shkkmo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, we don't currently have the ability to compile any of our software from scratch. Every compilation utilizes digital artifacts that were created externally. To operate a "no trust computer", not only would you have to build the hardware for scratch, but you would also have to recreate more than a half century of collaborative advancements in computer science. This isn't a cozy thought for those "chasing the tru…

You'd have to make an assembler then a compiler by hand to bootstrap. It's a monumental task, but reasonable to do. The blueprints are all there. Re-implementing modern operating systems and complex languages and the tools that run on them? That's wholly impossible for one human lifetime. This is one of my favorite youtube videos in the past year. https://youtu.be/SJ7lOus1FzQ

You have to do that and much more. A "self-hosting" basic OS is a great achievement that I am not trying to downplay. However there really aren't any examples that I am aware of where that was achieved without relying on artifacts somewhere up the chain that come from an external source. I would say that achieving any self-hosting OS without relying on external artifacts is well outside one human lifetime. Edit: You have to completely manually bootstrap your hardware design and manufacturing simultaneously with your software.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#72

Post by cortesoft »

LoveGracePeace wrote: post #66

I felt sad when I read all the "No more ..."'s then saw the cartoon and text parodying religion in a pejorative context and was done reading.

I think you are misinterpreting the joke... it isn't pejorative against or parodying religion, it is making fun of tech companies handling security by just confessing security sins and then thinking that is enough.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#73

Post by MatthiasPortzel »

copperx wrote: post #43
est wrote: post #29

You still need a VPS if you want to serve non-www traffic.

Agreed. We need a Netlify for Gemini.

Sourcehut pages offers Gemini capsule hosting.

Edit: Sourcehut pages is the most direct parallel to Github pages but there's a bunch more options for free hosting listed on gemini://geminiquickst.art/ And that's not even mentioning the number of Tilde's that are configured to let you host Gemini content.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#74

Post by jaza »

richardfey wrote: post #59

There are two or three scare-mongering arguments in the article that I cannot believe to be true. The rest might be valid but throwing-in these makes the whole post less valuable: - traffic might take your site down: it's never going to happen, although I understand why one would hope so - SSH attacks: change your default port - shellshock: you use or used CGI scripts in the last decade?

Author here. Sure, maybe successful attacks in those categories are unlikely. But my main point was, so long as I maintain my own VPS, they're still possible, and I'm responsible for defending my box against them. Whereas in SaaS land, I don't even know what physical / virtual boxes the provider has, nor do I care, because I'm not responsible for their security nor for anything else regarding them.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#75

Post by tluyben2 »

pcr910303 wrote: post #67

There was a hype on serverless, so a lot of people here on HN is a bit allergic on them and tell ‘an EC2 instance is all you need’. And it’s not wrong — I’ve seen seriously over-engineered serverless systems with so much AWS-specific code. But a few years passed now a lot more services now provide (almost) lockin-free APIs that are pretty useful for simple. IMO blindly recommending ‘just self host’, a sentiment that…

Blindly, nothing is a good answer; you need to weigh your needs. But so most people blindly grab aws; unlike yourself, I find HN actually almost The AWS & K8s Promotion Team. People swear by this stuff here, even if you don’t need it, at all. They forget that not all startups have million$/year to throw away on devops to handle the bizarre complexity of those solutions while they also just really do not need them (now and, statistically, as they will likely fail, ever). It all always reads like resume driven development; I understand it; good people you hire want to do stuff that furthers their career. But it makes it blind in almost all cases I read here (which are tiny companies with no traffic at all, ramping up to be the size of TikTok overnight).

But I digress.

Ec2 is incredibly expensive (outside the free tier that is) compared to many other vps options.

And as for serverless; last month a startup without funding was making a scraper and used aws lambda because it was easy. With their js code it took me 1 day to save them 1/1000th of their cost by using a vps; on ec2 that would’ve been a 1/10th save (outside the free tier which would not work; not enough power). This saving allows them to hire an extra dev for free to work on, you know, extra bottom line features to actually create a business.

For a $10m-for-a-PoC seed invested startup, this is all the usual blah blah about ‘but it saves time on management’ (it doesn’t in this case or many others I have seen in the wild), but if you don’t have prior VC relations on speed dial, you might be funding it all yourself (for now) and cloud stuff is just shovelling money into a pit if you don’t need the upsides at this moment.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#76

Post by cutler »

MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #70
cutler wrote: post #21

Fine if you can make do with static sites but that's hardly a common use case. Most of us who use a VPS are hosting Nginx with a reverse proxy to Rails, Django, Express or Laravel + PostgreSQL or MySQL where the memory costs are a fraction of the equivalent cloud offering. I tried Github pages once, rather than Netlify, and pulled my hair out trying to get HTTPS working with a personal domain. Last I checked it's sti…

> I tried Github pages once…and pulled my hair out trying to get HTTPS working with a personal domain. Last I checked HTTPs was available by default even on custom domains. I did have to remove and re-add my custom domain on a Github pages site that was created before this was the case. But after doing that, it was 0-config.

It's been available for a long time but when I tried I forget which but one of the 6 url formats didn't work, ie.

    http://domain.com
    http://www.domain.com
    https://domain.com
    https://www.domain.com
    domain.com
    www.domain.com
Try them all with your domain. Unless things have improved one of them will fail.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#77

Post by dogecoinbase »

trey-jones wrote: post #57

I might need some perspective. Every time I read one of these I'm just shaking my head, and yes the arguments are Less Power, Less Control, but also SysAdmin is me. That is my identity, and the part of the job that I like the most. I solve problems with configuration before code. So I hate to think that I'm becoming obsolete, of course. I also don't think that I am, because I do think that my way has some clear and d…

You're not wrong, and I think the right way to think about it is in the context of a company that wants to go "multicloud" -- suddenly they need to abstract a suite of infra-as-code configuration components up out the individual services and APIs offered by various cloud/VPS providers and the reductio ad absurdum of this process is systems administration.

Essentially, a system that requires administration is the opposite (on the far end of spectrum) of vendor lock-in (whether that's AWS, or technologies like k8s, et cetera). Make of that what you will, in terms of the need for your ilk (and mine) in the tech world.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#78

Post by alexjurkiewicz »

trey-jones wrote: post #57

I might need some perspective. Every time I read one of these I'm just shaking my head, and yes the arguments are Less Power, Less Control, but also SysAdmin is me. That is my identity, and the part of the job that I like the most. I solve problems with configuration before code. So I hate to think that I'm becoming obsolete, of course. I also don't think that I am, because I do think that my way has some clear and d…

There will always be sysadmins in the same way there will always be Fortran programmers. There are benefits to the old way of doing things, but those benefits are of shrinking relevance.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#79

Post by pan69 »

trey-jones wrote: post #57

I might need some perspective. Every time I read one of these I'm just shaking my head, and yes the arguments are Less Power, Less Control, but also SysAdmin is me. That is my identity, and the part of the job that I like the most. I solve problems with configuration before code. So I hate to think that I'm becoming obsolete, of course. I also don't think that I am, because I do think that my way has some clear and d…

You're not obsolete. It's just that some people just want to drive their car and get it serviced somewhere every once in a while rather than doing it themselves. Same for servers.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#80

Post by fergbrain »

mjevans wrote: post #4

There are still reasons to have a VPS. However nearly all of them are driven by one factor for me: American ISPs suck; cash from the wallets and otherwise. For one thing, they often make it against the ToS to host 'a server' (generally). ISPs with even remotely decent uploads, EVEN for their business offerings, in the metro area around Seattle (still crazy rent, can't even afford to try buying a house) are like Cable…

Ziply Fiber has been great and I get 1gb symmetric for $80/month with no data cap.

My homelab has never been happier!

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