Amazon Snowball • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Snowball

#91

Post by azinman2 » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 6:33 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #81

utrex wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may cost that much to buy that capacity, but it costs a lot more than that to run the large scale organizations (CAPEX/OPEX) that build and buy these services. You're not just paying for a pipe, you're paying for the corporation.

> You're not just paying for a pipe, you're paying for the corporation. You are paying their profit margin, yeah. It is wildly overpriced, no matter how you look at it. Operating costs even when done on a much smaller and more inefficient scale than for AWS do not make the total cost for incremental bandwidth usage THAT much larger.

What's the alternative?

Re: Amazon Snowball

#92

Post by ghshephard » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

mpeg wrote: post #17

I'm curious about how they're going to approach this from the fraud perspective. This is a $200 charge for a device that has 50TB storage, which would probably cost you around $2000 to buy. There's people out there that will sign a contract under a fake name / address with a phone provider and sell the phones, and the way the providers fight against it usually by running credit checks and verifying address against th…

You can rent $10,000+ of cameras/lenses on your credit card through camera rentals places, though they will take a deposit on your card. Perhaps after Amazon is burned a few times, they'll require a deposit.

http://www.borrowlenses.com/product/Canon-EOS-C300-Mark-II-E...

Re: Amazon Snowball

#93

Post by ars » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 6:42 PM UTC

mpeg wrote: post #27

phaer wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be the best idea to steal from someone who has your full name and credit card, which Amazon does for AWS customers as far as I know.

The way this usually goes is that you pay with a prepaid debit card (that doesn't verify name or address). Then you get it shipped to a name and address that are not yours, and you intercept the package before it gets there. It becomes even harder to trace if the name / address / card all match, for instance if you've taken out a credit card on your elderly neighbor's name

It has a kindle attached to it. Every kindle has a built in cell phone transceiver. I would not be surprised if they use that to send periodic location data.

Re: Amazon Snowball

#94

Post by jonknee » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 6:49 PM UTC

kobayashi wrote: post #87

jonknee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you sent it in you already have a copy. Don't delete it and you can save the $1500.

I think the idea is that if one needs to recall the data from AWS it's due to something like data loss

If I lost 50TB of data and could fix it for $1500 I would consider myself the luckiest person on Earth.

Re: Amazon Snowball

#95

Post by jonknee » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 6:51 PM UTC

Carrok wrote: post #77

vvanders wrote: post #3

The e-ink display showing a shipping label is brilliant.

This article says it's not e-ink but just a Kindle strapped to the side. >It has a Kindle on the side, which functions as an automatic shipping label. http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/07/amazon-launches-snowball-a-...

> This article says it's not e-ink but just a Kindle strapped to the side.

Guess what a Kindle's display is?

Re: Amazon Snowball

#96

Post by devit » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:00 PM UTC

hsod wrote: post #89

devit wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... which is also wildly overpriced. According to multiple sources, Internet transit in the US now costs less than 1$ for a 1 Mbps line for large deals, which translates to 1$ for 324GB, which translates to 0.003$ / GB. Amazon charges 15-30 times that. (it appears that traffic can be much more expensive in places other than the US and presumably Europe)

what does "overpriced" mean in this context? "overpriced" compared to what? is there another company offering a similar service for a lower price?

Compared to marginal cost.

There are companies offering prices much more similar to cost, for example:

- Hetzner.de servers/colocation offers additional traffic at 1.39 EUR/TB = 0.00158 $/GB

- DigitalOcean offers 1TB traffic with $5/month instances = 0.005 $/GB

Re: Amazon Snowball

#97

Post by nacs » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

sengstrom wrote: post #65

The math for the time to transfer comparison is interesting: "Even with high-speed Internet connections, it can take months to transfer large amounts of data. For example, 100 terabytes of data will take more than 100 days to transfer over a dedicated 100 Mbps connection. That same transfer can be accomplished in less than one day, plus shipping time, using two Snowball appliances." With a 100 Mbps connection it take…

Good luck trying to saturate the 10Gbps port (on both the read and write sides) however.

Re: Amazon Snowball

#98

Post by chrismarlow9 » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #81

utrex wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may cost that much to buy that capacity, but it costs a lot more than that to run the large scale organizations (CAPEX/OPEX) that build and buy these services. You're not just paying for a pipe, you're paying for the corporation.

> You're not just paying for a pipe, you're paying for the corporation. You are paying their profit margin, yeah. It is wildly overpriced, no matter how you look at it. Operating costs even when done on a much smaller and more inefficient scale than for AWS do not make the total cost for incremental bandwidth usage THAT much larger.

Don't bother, AWS defenders will continue to defend it and replace employees with a larger AWS bill and further lockin until they shoot themselves in the foot.

Re: Amazon Snowball

#99

Post by notatoad » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:14 PM UTC

Carrok wrote: post #77

vvanders wrote: post #3

The e-ink display showing a shipping label is brilliant.

This article says it's not e-ink but just a Kindle strapped to the side. >It has a Kindle on the side, which functions as an automatic shipping label. http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/07/amazon-launches-snowball-a-...

Unless i'm mis-judging the scale of this thing, that screen looks a fair bit smaller than a kindle. I think it's just techcrunch using "kindle" as a generic word for e-ink display.

Re: Amazon Snowball

#100

Post by chx » Wed, Oct 07, 2015, 7:15 PM UTC

I am sure most companies which are the target of this will welcome plugging in an outside device into their internal networks with open arms.