5 ms·

> I understand that. But when I rent a server, I want to be able to use the hardware. That is, if I want to roast the CPU or write to the disks 24/7, I should b

by tw04 5y ago

> I understand that. But when I rent a server, I want to be able to use the hardware. That is, if I want to roast the CPU or write to the disks 24/7, I should be able to do that, because I rented the full server. No, when you BUY a server you should be able to do what you want with it, including burning up the CPU in a week. When you RENT a server, you get to do exactly what the owner says you can do.

mirekrusin 5y ago
Where is the line between allowed and banned? Mining crypto you created and researching on? Mining crypto where mining doesn't use ie. drive, ie. maybe is latency based or something else? Doing research project with your own blockchain on git or whatever?
- tw04 5y ago
  I don’t work for hetzner, you would need to ask them. If you’re asking philosophically: the answer is exactly the same. The line is wherever they say it is, it’s their hardware.
- xoa 5y ago
  >Where is the line between allowed and banned? Uh, in the contract (here the Terms and Conditions) the customer agreed to? That's kind of how business transactions work. Hence why they updated the T&C. This isn't some abstract question of philosophy, it's their hardware that they rent under their T&C which they can revise at will (and customers may then go elsewhere, or not). In the case of rental in general, it often includes some expectations around non-abusive usage. Part of the entire freaking model of "rental" is that a customer of some property can cease usage at will on a rapid time frame, dealing with no capital expenditure/depreciation/maintenance issues, and then the property can be rented to new customer. If one customer destroys said property or massive degrades it such that it can no longer be used for future customers, that completely changes the entire equation. And most rental businesses outside of special (and extremely expensive) situations don't want to deal with that. There isn't anything unreasonable about that. If people want to use hardware to the absolute max with absolutely zero control except the law and contracts for their energy/bandwidth, that's what colo is for.
  - mirekrusin 5y ago
    You missed my point. I know it's T&C. I'm asking where is the line between "mining crypto" that is banned and that is allowed. You can't say that T&C ban mining crypto for proof of stake, because it doesn't abuse any rented resources; or your own, experimental proof-of-number-of-starts-on-github or proof-of-hn-karma, or proof-of-lowest-latency, proof-of-lowest-ip-address-and-port-xored-with-elon-musk-latest-tweet-hash etc. In other words "mining" is equivalent to "computation" of any sort, which doesn't need to be intensive at all.
    - xoa 5y ago
      >I'm asking where is the line between "mining crypto" that is banned and that is allowed. Well specifically here, their T&C has 9.3 (https://www.hetzner.com/rechtliches/agb https://www.hetzner.com/rechtliches/agb): >9.3 We are also entitled to terminate the contractual relationship for good cause without notice. >Another important reason, that can result in block or determination without notice, may be that the customer uses content, which affects the performance or the safety of the server. So basically, "Are you being an asshole and fucking up our equipment and/or experience for other customers? Do that and GTFO." And that's it. It's not a big deal. >You can't say that T&C ban mining crypto for proof of stake They certainly could. They can put anything not contrary to law in the T&C they want, and they don't need any reason for it either. They can flat out forbid cryptomining period regardless of if it's proof of work or proof of stake or proof of steak or anything else. They can do it because it mostly tends to be abusive and it's too much of a PITA to sort through and "why the hell don't you just buy your own server and colo", or the can do it if they feel it's morally wrong, or whatever. >In other words "mining" is equivalent to "computation" of any sort It's not though, it's mining. They can discriminate by application if they like. Now as a practical matter sure, if you're doing something that causes zero issues then even if they say "no mining" you're highly unlikely to face any sort of trouble. They don't seem to be actively and zealously out to get customers, they just don't want assholes as customers. It's obviously unlikely they'd bother anybody merely doing reasonable computation. But a blanket "no mining" rule may still be worth it to them for what to point to in case of issues given the business incentives involved. And that's ok. I mean, it seems like you're trying to be cute here and rules lawyer as if they're a computer running a program, not humans running a business. That's not the case though. Customers and Hetzner have 100% short period consensual transactional relationships in a crowded market. Neither side owes the other anything in particular outside a single billing cycle. They don't need a bright line, and indeed bright lines tend to be INCREDIBLY challenging and a bad idea when it comes to this kind of general population service limits (ie., outside of high price serious SLA ones where someone genuinely is paying for everything). It gets too complex to tailor to situations like "John Doe has been a great customer for 10+ years and needed to do this one time super heavy thing and we're going to cut him some slack" vs "Joe Blow who just joined a few months ago on a bottom barrel tier and whined at support constantly and suddenly thrashed our hardware pursuing the latest pump and dump", which businesses certainly can and do treat differently even if both parties "used the same amount of hardware resources in a given period". If it becomes a big enough deal, a judge can sort out whether something was for "good cause" or not, but it's unlikely to go to court over such chickenfeed money (nor would an abusive customer win anyway). In short: If you want a specific SLA with bright lines and so forth, you need to negotiate a specific contract to that effect. Expect to pay for it. If you want the "sign up in 30 seconds on the website come one come all!" offer I'd pay close attention to the T&C and in particular sections like 9.3 above, which if anything is fantastically generous to the customer vs what you'd get from American companies.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  They were OK with me running Ethereum testnet on their servers, but I have a 12+ year business relationship with them. That said, Hetzner will wield the banhammer whenever you do things that interfere with their network infrastructure, so port scanning or connecting to many potentially unroutable IPs is a sure way to get your server taken offline. And I believe most if not all cryptocurrency networks run decentralized with P2P connectivity, which means they would cause a high rate of unroutable connection requests. Also, they can't really offer a beefy server and free HDD replacements for €50 monthly if too many people abuse it and run Chia. So as a current customer, I'm quite happy that they keep the noisy neighbors out ;)
  - skjoldr 5y ago
    Can confirm the P2P problem when testing Ethereum Swarm. FYI I managed to resolve it using the Docker+UFW script from Github and banning outgoing bogon requests from both Docker and the host, though I had to request server unbans several times before I got it to work.
gruez 5y ago
>No, when you BUY a server you should be able to do what you want with it, including burning up the CPU in a week. Meanwhile in a top voted comment from yesterday's thread: "I'm thrilled by [Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining]": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27200700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27200700
- tw04 5y ago
  As far as I know they aren’t retroactively crippling GPUs. A vendor is well within their rights to artificially limit hardware to create market segmentation. That’s just a fact of doing business. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Want to mine? Buy a mining card or a piece of hardware from some other vendor.
  - gruez 5y ago
    How does this tie in with other popular initiatives, ie. right to repair? "A vendor is well within their rights to artificially limit repairs to increase margins. That’s just a fact of doing business. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Want a repairable phone? Buy it from some other vendor."
    - mannykannot 5y ago
      You want a right to repair things you have rented?
      - gruez 5y ago
        My initial comment[1] was supposed to point out that it's not limited to rentals, contrary to what OP says. The rest of the thread is talking about your rights when you purchased something. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27213202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27213202
        mannykannot 5y ago
        To this outside observer, the discussion between you and tw04 appears to consist mainly of you trying to change the subject away from tw04's trenchant comment, through the introduction of increasingly distant irrelevancies. What does right of repair have to do with Hetzner's new policies?
seligman99 5y ago
Where's the line? I rented a EC2 node to calculate a fractal. It involved running a 36 physical cores machine at 100% CPU for a few days. I paid AWS for that, but I surely impacted the lifespan of that box compared to someone else that would use it for something more traditional. AWS seems happy to let people use EC2 for whatever they'll pay for, for the most part, but does this mean that Hetzner doesn't want me to calculate the next version of my fractal on their machines? Or has Hetzner just decided they don't want Cryptocurrencies, and that's exactly the line?
- adfrral 5y ago
  Scale. Crypto mining on rented hardware will scale itself up to infinite machines if you let them, while “real” hardware-taxing use-cases are niche. Renting out hardware involves setting a price point that turns a healthy profit assuming some average hardware lifespan. Crypto miners that rent hardware are leveraging arbitrage though, where the price of hardware rentals is just low enough that the crypto mining generates more money than the rental cost. This means they will rent as many resources as Hetzner will let them and hammer them as long and hard as Hetzner will let them, because it’s pure profit. All the risks associated with buying hardware for crypto mining is dumped on Hetzner’s collective lap for a fee that’s too small to justify it. Either Hetzner can raise prices to eliminate this arbitrage opportunity (at the expense of their normal/primary customer base and core business), bet big on crypto and pivot to being a crypto mining company and cut out these middle-men, or just ban crypto and go back to business as usual. If Hetzner has any faith at all in their core business model, banning crypto mining is the obvious choice.
  - robocat 5y ago
    Also if there is a crypto-mining profit to be made, why wouldn’t Hetzner want to capture that profit themselves?
    - capableweb 5y ago
      Because Hetzner is a hosting company, not a cryptocurrency operation. Both of them are obviously two different things and just because you're good at one of them doesn't mean you're good at the other. Or maybe they simply prefer to offer hosting to people rather than a financial network, what do I know?

by tw04 5y ago

mirekrusin 5y ago

Where is the line between allowed and banned? Mining crypto you created and researching on? Mining crypto where mining doesn't use ie. drive, ie. maybe is latency based or something else? Doing research project with your own blockchain on git or whatever?

tw04 5y ago
I don’t work for hetzner, you would need to ask them. If you’re asking philosophically: the answer is exactly the same. The line is wherever they say it is, it’s their hardware.
xoa 5y ago
>Where is the line between allowed and banned? Uh, in the contract (here the Terms and Conditions) the customer agreed to? That's kind of how business transactions work. Hence why they updated the T&C. This isn't some abstract question of philosophy, it's their hardware that they rent under their T&C which they can revise at will (and customers may then go elsewhere, or not). In the case of rental in general, it often includes some expectations around non-abusive usage. Part of the entire freaking model of "rental" is that a customer of some property can cease usage at will on a rapid time frame, dealing with no capital expenditure/depreciation/maintenance issues, and then the property can be rented to new customer. If one customer destroys said property or massive degrades it such that it can no longer be used for future customers, that completely changes the entire equation. And most rental businesses outside of special (and extremely expensive) situations don't want to deal with that. There isn't anything unreasonable about that. If people want to use hardware to the absolute max with absolutely zero control except the law and contracts for their energy/bandwidth, that's what colo is for.
- mirekrusin 5y ago
  You missed my point. I know it's T&C. I'm asking where is the line between "mining crypto" that is banned and that is allowed. You can't say that T&C ban mining crypto for proof of stake, because it doesn't abuse any rented resources; or your own, experimental proof-of-number-of-starts-on-github or proof-of-hn-karma, or proof-of-lowest-latency, proof-of-lowest-ip-address-and-port-xored-with-elon-musk-latest-tweet-hash etc. In other words "mining" is equivalent to "computation" of any sort, which doesn't need to be intensive at all.
  - xoa 5y ago
    >I'm asking where is the line between "mining crypto" that is banned and that is allowed. Well specifically here, their T&C has 9.3 (https://www.hetzner.com/rechtliches/agb https://www.hetzner.com/rechtliches/agb): >9.3 We are also entitled to terminate the contractual relationship for good cause without notice. >Another important reason, that can result in block or determination without notice, may be that the customer uses content, which affects the performance or the safety of the server. So basically, "Are you being an asshole and fucking up our equipment and/or experience for other customers? Do that and GTFO." And that's it. It's not a big deal. >You can't say that T&C ban mining crypto for proof of stake They certainly could. They can put anything not contrary to law in the T&C they want, and they don't need any reason for it either. They can flat out forbid cryptomining period regardless of if it's proof of work or proof of stake or proof of steak or anything else. They can do it because it mostly tends to be abusive and it's too much of a PITA to sort through and "why the hell don't you just buy your own server and colo", or the can do it if they feel it's morally wrong, or whatever. >In other words "mining" is equivalent to "computation" of any sort It's not though, it's mining. They can discriminate by application if they like. Now as a practical matter sure, if you're doing something that causes zero issues then even if they say "no mining" you're highly unlikely to face any sort of trouble. They don't seem to be actively and zealously out to get customers, they just don't want assholes as customers. It's obviously unlikely they'd bother anybody merely doing reasonable computation. But a blanket "no mining" rule may still be worth it to them for what to point to in case of issues given the business incentives involved. And that's ok. I mean, it seems like you're trying to be cute here and rules lawyer as if they're a computer running a program, not humans running a business. That's not the case though. Customers and Hetzner have 100% short period consensual transactional relationships in a crowded market. Neither side owes the other anything in particular outside a single billing cycle. They don't need a bright line, and indeed bright lines tend to be INCREDIBLY challenging and a bad idea when it comes to this kind of general population service limits (ie., outside of high price serious SLA ones where someone genuinely is paying for everything). It gets too complex to tailor to situations like "John Doe has been a great customer for 10+ years and needed to do this one time super heavy thing and we're going to cut him some slack" vs "Joe Blow who just joined a few months ago on a bottom barrel tier and whined at support constantly and suddenly thrashed our hardware pursuing the latest pump and dump", which businesses certainly can and do treat differently even if both parties "used the same amount of hardware resources in a given period". If it becomes a big enough deal, a judge can sort out whether something was for "good cause" or not, but it's unlikely to go to court over such chickenfeed money (nor would an abusive customer win anyway). In short: If you want a specific SLA with bright lines and so forth, you need to negotiate a specific contract to that effect. Expect to pay for it. If you want the "sign up in 30 seconds on the website come one come all!" offer I'd pay close attention to the T&C and in particular sections like 9.3 above, which if anything is fantastically generous to the customer vs what you'd get from American companies.
fxtentacle 5y ago
They were OK with me running Ethereum testnet on their servers, but I have a 12+ year business relationship with them. That said, Hetzner will wield the banhammer whenever you do things that interfere with their network infrastructure, so port scanning or connecting to many potentially unroutable IPs is a sure way to get your server taken offline. And I believe most if not all cryptocurrency networks run decentralized with P2P connectivity, which means they would cause a high rate of unroutable connection requests. Also, they can't really offer a beefy server and free HDD replacements for €50 monthly if too many people abuse it and run Chia. So as a current customer, I'm quite happy that they keep the noisy neighbors out ;)
- skjoldr 5y ago
  Can confirm the P2P problem when testing Ethereum Swarm. FYI I managed to resolve it using the Docker+UFW script from Github and banning outgoing bogon requests from both Docker and the host, though I had to request server unbans several times before I got it to work.

gruez 5y ago

>No, when you BUY a server you should be able to do what you want with it, including burning up the CPU in a week. Meanwhile in a top voted comment from yesterday's thread: "I'm thrilled by [Nvidia cripples cryptocurrency mining]": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27200700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27200700

tw04 5y ago
As far as I know they aren’t retroactively crippling GPUs. A vendor is well within their rights to artificially limit hardware to create market segmentation. That’s just a fact of doing business. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Want to mine? Buy a mining card or a piece of hardware from some other vendor.
- gruez 5y ago
  How does this tie in with other popular initiatives, ie. right to repair? "A vendor is well within their rights to artificially limit repairs to increase margins. That’s just a fact of doing business. I don’t see anything wrong with it. Want a repairable phone? Buy it from some other vendor."
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    You want a right to repair things you have rented?
    - gruez 5y ago
      My initial comment[1] was supposed to point out that it's not limited to rentals, contrary to what OP says. The rest of the thread is talking about your rights when you purchased something. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27213202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27213202
      - mannykannot 5y ago
        To this outside observer, the discussion between you and tw04 appears to consist mainly of you trying to change the subject away from tw04's trenchant comment, through the introduction of increasingly distant irrelevancies. What does right of repair have to do with Hetzner's new policies?

seligman99 5y ago

Where's the line? I rented a EC2 node to calculate a fractal. It involved running a 36 physical cores machine at 100% CPU for a few days. I paid AWS for that, but I surely impacted the lifespan of that box compared to someone else that would use it for something more traditional. AWS seems happy to let people use EC2 for whatever they'll pay for, for the most part, but does this mean that Hetzner doesn't want me to calculate the next version of my fractal on their machines? Or has Hetzner just decided they don't want Cryptocurrencies, and that's exactly the line?

adfrral 5y ago
Scale. Crypto mining on rented hardware will scale itself up to infinite machines if you let them, while “real” hardware-taxing use-cases are niche. Renting out hardware involves setting a price point that turns a healthy profit assuming some average hardware lifespan. Crypto miners that rent hardware are leveraging arbitrage though, where the price of hardware rentals is just low enough that the crypto mining generates more money than the rental cost. This means they will rent as many resources as Hetzner will let them and hammer them as long and hard as Hetzner will let them, because it’s pure profit. All the risks associated with buying hardware for crypto mining is dumped on Hetzner’s collective lap for a fee that’s too small to justify it. Either Hetzner can raise prices to eliminate this arbitrage opportunity (at the expense of their normal/primary customer base and core business), bet big on crypto and pivot to being a crypto mining company and cut out these middle-men, or just ban crypto and go back to business as usual. If Hetzner has any faith at all in their core business model, banning crypto mining is the obvious choice.
- robocat 5y ago
  Also if there is a crypto-mining profit to be made, why wouldn’t Hetzner want to capture that profit themselves?
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Because Hetzner is a hosting company, not a cryptocurrency operation. Both of them are obviously two different things and just because you're good at one of them doesn't mean you're good at the other. Or maybe they simply prefer to offer hosting to people rather than a financial network, what do I know?