5 ms·

As a DO (digital ocean) customer, care to elaborate?

neom 11y ago
Under penalty of prosecution, not really. All I can say is that they genuinely do their best to protect you. For me it's that they have to spent a lot of resource (fiscal and other) to protect you from what is in my opinion: really sketchy shameful shit on the US and many other government's part. If people want to really know why tech companies are at the point of enough is enough, it's because many governments continually try to twist laws/regulations/random stuff/whatever they want/made up shit in an attempt to get what they want. Eventually becomes boring, annoying and very expensive telling them they're wrong.
- jsmthrowaway 11y ago
  > Under penalty of perjury, not really. Since you're quite obviously having to dance around how to communicate the fact that you've received NSLs and invocations of CALEA that made you feel queasy (I feel your pain for similar, vague, hypothetical reasons), perjury isn't the legal concept that you're after there. You want 18 USC 2709, and for those keeping score at home, to my knowledge nobody has been prosecuted for violating (C)(1) which would test that law on appeal. The Internet Archive famously challenged the nondisclosure itself and won, which is a bit different. I honestly don't know with what they'd charge you. Obstruction, maybe, but there's enough national security buzzwords in the (again, I've heard) letters and law to give me pause on considering civil disobedience there. The law does say in 18 USC 3511 that they can invoke a district court to force compliance, and then contempt can follow. But unclear on the nondisclosure part in the absence of a court order, and that's scary. (BTW, IANAL, just an ex-hoster with a penchant for policy, and I'd love to hear someone like rayiner's view on this.)
  - neom 11y ago
    Fixed, although frankly perjury may apply if I went too far given.. handwave.
    - jsmthrowaway 11y ago
      Indeed. I know exactly what you mean. Relatedly, I hope you were able to avoid situations that required you to talk to NCMEC. (I wasn't, and I carry those memories with me now.) To others: Don't go into hosting, particularly the abuse side, if you value your sanity and a positive outlook on humanity in general.
      - neom 11y ago
        Yippers, hosting anything for the general public as a pretty brutal business to be in. I didn't enjoy any aspect of my job that required dealing with the judicial arm of any government. I'm incredibly happy to see apple going to town on this issue. I wish people knew what a fucking mess it is.
  - acqq 11y ago
    You see, Apple's "enough is enough" is exactly, "you have CALEA, we work with you based on that, but now you ask us based on 'All Writs' to modify our products." The essence of "All Writs" is (actual quote) "all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." which if I understand means in simpler English "we can officially request anything from everybody when we do our job, unless it appears as too illegal."
- gschrader 11y ago
  Thank you, I appreciate your response.
Kluny 11y ago
While we're talking about Digital Ocean, how has your experience been? My company currently uses Dreamhost, but we've had quite a few problems with them lately and we're thinking about switching.
- Zarel 11y ago
  Could you tell me about your problems with Dreamhost? I've had minor problems with Dreamhost, but nothing major yet.
  - Kluny 11y ago
    They are pretty good with customer support and transparency. It's just that we have hundreds of sites, and about half are on a dedicated server. We asked that it be moved to Portland when they opened up a new datacenter there, but they moved it to Virginia instead - I guess Portland wasn't ready or something. Anyway, our sites were in Virginia and our database was in Portland, and the latency between the two got out of hand. We had a lot of down sites and a very stressful week or so for me and my boss. Problems continue with the shared server upgrading to a version of PHP that doesn't work with our sites - we can't really blame them for doing that and there was plenty of warning, but it added more stress to an already stressful month. On top of that, our server in Portland STILL isn't ready, and we don't have an eta on when it will be. There's been a couple of other little things too - basically it feels like a major problem with the server every other day, clients are mad, and we feel out of our depth. Anyway, I leave work at 5pm but my boss doesn't and I don't want him to die of a heart attack. So. Digital Ocean is being investigated.
    - Zarel 11y ago
      Yeah, that'd be the "minor problem" I mentioned. Their shared hosting is great for $10/month, but my site eventually grew out of it. Their dedicated servers were out of my price range so I never tried them. I currently use OVH for dedicated servers. Low prices (starting at $70/mo), unlimited bandwidth use (most other hosts charge for bandwidth above a certain amount), DDoS protection as a standard feature (most hosts just threaten to kick you out when you get DDoSed or make you pay $15,000/mo for DDoS protection), and they've only been down once in the past few years I've used them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494475 (And they automatically refunded me for that incident; didn't even make me open a support ticket or anything!) I don't want to sound like a shill but I (and others I know) tried a few hosts before settling on OVH and OVH has just been so much better in every way than any other host I've tried... On the other hand, if you're looking for a really cheap dedicated server, Oplink has a $35/mo dedicated server: https://www.oplink.net/dedicated.html https://www.oplink.net/dedicated.html I used to use Oplink and still like them, but they were one of those hosts that kicked me off for getting DDoSed (related: if you run a popular game, expect to get DDoSed).

neom 11y ago

Under penalty of prosecution, not really. All I can say is that they genuinely do their best to protect you. For me it's that they have to spent a lot of resource (fiscal and other) to protect you from what is in my opinion: really sketchy shameful shit on the US and many other government's part. If people want to really know why tech companies are at the point of enough is enough, it's because many governments continually try to twist laws/regulations/random stuff/whatever they want/made up shit in an attempt to get what they want. Eventually becomes boring, annoying and very expensive telling them they're wrong.

jsmthrowaway 11y ago
> Under penalty of perjury, not really. Since you're quite obviously having to dance around how to communicate the fact that you've received NSLs and invocations of CALEA that made you feel queasy (I feel your pain for similar, vague, hypothetical reasons), perjury isn't the legal concept that you're after there. You want 18 USC 2709, and for those keeping score at home, to my knowledge nobody has been prosecuted for violating (C)(1) which would test that law on appeal. The Internet Archive famously challenged the nondisclosure itself and won, which is a bit different. I honestly don't know with what they'd charge you. Obstruction, maybe, but there's enough national security buzzwords in the (again, I've heard) letters and law to give me pause on considering civil disobedience there. The law does say in 18 USC 3511 that they can invoke a district court to force compliance, and then contempt can follow. But unclear on the nondisclosure part in the absence of a court order, and that's scary. (BTW, IANAL, just an ex-hoster with a penchant for policy, and I'd love to hear someone like rayiner's view on this.)
- neom 11y ago
  Fixed, although frankly perjury may apply if I went too far given.. handwave.
  - jsmthrowaway 11y ago
    Indeed. I know exactly what you mean. Relatedly, I hope you were able to avoid situations that required you to talk to NCMEC. (I wasn't, and I carry those memories with me now.) To others: Don't go into hosting, particularly the abuse side, if you value your sanity and a positive outlook on humanity in general.
    - neom 11y ago
      Yippers, hosting anything for the general public as a pretty brutal business to be in. I didn't enjoy any aspect of my job that required dealing with the judicial arm of any government. I'm incredibly happy to see apple going to town on this issue. I wish people knew what a fucking mess it is.
- acqq 11y ago
  You see, Apple's "enough is enough" is exactly, "you have CALEA, we work with you based on that, but now you ask us based on 'All Writs' to modify our products." The essence of "All Writs" is (actual quote) "all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." which if I understand means in simpler English "we can officially request anything from everybody when we do our job, unless it appears as too illegal."
gschrader 11y ago
Thank you, I appreciate your response.

Kluny 11y ago

While we're talking about Digital Ocean, how has your experience been? My company currently uses Dreamhost, but we've had quite a few problems with them lately and we're thinking about switching.

Zarel 11y ago
Could you tell me about your problems with Dreamhost? I've had minor problems with Dreamhost, but nothing major yet.
- Kluny 11y ago
  They are pretty good with customer support and transparency. It's just that we have hundreds of sites, and about half are on a dedicated server. We asked that it be moved to Portland when they opened up a new datacenter there, but they moved it to Virginia instead - I guess Portland wasn't ready or something. Anyway, our sites were in Virginia and our database was in Portland, and the latency between the two got out of hand. We had a lot of down sites and a very stressful week or so for me and my boss. Problems continue with the shared server upgrading to a version of PHP that doesn't work with our sites - we can't really blame them for doing that and there was plenty of warning, but it added more stress to an already stressful month. On top of that, our server in Portland STILL isn't ready, and we don't have an eta on when it will be. There's been a couple of other little things too - basically it feels like a major problem with the server every other day, clients are mad, and we feel out of our depth. Anyway, I leave work at 5pm but my boss doesn't and I don't want him to die of a heart attack. So. Digital Ocean is being investigated.
  - Zarel 11y ago
    Yeah, that'd be the "minor problem" I mentioned. Their shared hosting is great for $10/month, but my site eventually grew out of it. Their dedicated servers were out of my price range so I never tried them. I currently use OVH for dedicated servers. Low prices (starting at $70/mo), unlimited bandwidth use (most other hosts charge for bandwidth above a certain amount), DDoS protection as a standard feature (most hosts just threaten to kick you out when you get DDoSed or make you pay $15,000/mo for DDoS protection), and they've only been down once in the past few years I've used them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494475 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10494475 (And they automatically refunded me for that incident; didn't even make me open a support ticket or anything!) I don't want to sound like a shill but I (and others I know) tried a few hosts before settling on OVH and OVH has just been so much better in every way than any other host I've tried... On the other hand, if you're looking for a really cheap dedicated server, Oplink has a $35/mo dedicated server: https://www.oplink.net/dedicated.html https://www.oplink.net/dedicated.html I used to use Oplink and still like them, but they were one of those hosts that kicked me off for getting DDoSed (related: if you run a popular game, expect to get DDoSed).