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This is how I feel about this industries fetishization of "scalability". A lot of software time is spent making something scalable when in 2025 I can probably

by tempest_ 10mo ago

This is how I feel about this industries fetishization of "scalability". A lot of software time is spent making something scalable when in 2025 I can probably run any site the bottom 99% of most visited sites on the internet on a couple machines and < 40k capital.

tbrownaw 10mo ago
> any site the bottom 99% of most visited sites on the internet What % is the AWS console, and what counts as "running" it?
- tempest_ 10mo ago
  > What % is the AWS console 0% Prior to the recent RAM insanity(a big caveat I know) a 1u supermicro machine with 768GB some NVME storage and twin 32 core Epyc 9004s was ~12K USD. You can get 3 of those and and some redundant 10G network infra(people are literally throwing this out) for < 40k. Then you just have to find a rack/internet connection to put them in which would be a few hundred a month. The reality is most sites don't need multi region setups, they have very predicable load and 3 of those machines would be massive overkill for many. A lot of people like to think they will lose millions per second of down time, and some sites certainly do but most wont. All of this of course would be using new stuff. If you wanted to use used stuff the most cost effective are the 5 year old second gen xeon scalables that are being dumped by cloud providers. Those are more than enough compute for most they are just really thirsty so you will pay with the power bill. This of course is predicated on assumption you have the skill set to support these machines and that is increasingly becoming less common though as successful companies that started in the last 10 years are starting to do more "hybrid cloud" it is starting to come back around.
  - cap11235 10mo ago
    If you are paying 12k, why would you ever subject yourself to supermicro
    - trueismywork 10mo ago
      Hehe.
    - tempest_ 10mo ago
      They just happen to have an online config tool that is somewhat close to what you would pay if you didnt engage with sales which is useful for a hackernews comment.
oblio 10mo ago
Raw technical excellence doesn't rake in billions, despite what IT people keep saying. Otherwise Viaweb would be the shining star of 2025. Instead it's a forgotten footnote on a path to programming with money (VC).
Animats 10mo ago
The sites that think they need huge numbers of small network interactions are probably collecting too much detailed data about user interaction. Like capturing cursor movement. That might be worth doing for 1% of users to find hot spots, but capturing it for all of them is wasteful. A lot of analytic data is like that. If you captured it for 1% of users you'd find out what you needed to know at 1% of the cost.

tbrownaw 10mo ago

> any site the bottom 99% of most visited sites on the internet What % is the AWS console, and what counts as "running" it?

tempest_ 10mo ago
> What % is the AWS console 0% Prior to the recent RAM insanity(a big caveat I know) a 1u supermicro machine with 768GB some NVME storage and twin 32 core Epyc 9004s was ~12K USD. You can get 3 of those and and some redundant 10G network infra(people are literally throwing this out) for < 40k. Then you just have to find a rack/internet connection to put them in which would be a few hundred a month. The reality is most sites don't need multi region setups, they have very predicable load and 3 of those machines would be massive overkill for many. A lot of people like to think they will lose millions per second of down time, and some sites certainly do but most wont. All of this of course would be using new stuff. If you wanted to use used stuff the most cost effective are the 5 year old second gen xeon scalables that are being dumped by cloud providers. Those are more than enough compute for most they are just really thirsty so you will pay with the power bill. This of course is predicated on assumption you have the skill set to support these machines and that is increasingly becoming less common though as successful companies that started in the last 10 years are starting to do more "hybrid cloud" it is starting to come back around.
- cap11235 10mo ago
  If you are paying 12k, why would you ever subject yourself to supermicro
  - trueismywork 10mo ago
    Hehe.
  - tempest_ 10mo ago
    They just happen to have an online config tool that is somewhat close to what you would pay if you didnt engage with sales which is useful for a hackernews comment.

oblio 10mo ago

Raw technical excellence doesn't rake in billions, despite what IT people keep saying. Otherwise Viaweb would be the shining star of 2025. Instead it's a forgotten footnote on a path to programming with money (VC).

Animats 10mo ago

The sites that think they need huge numbers of small network interactions are probably collecting too much detailed data about user interaction. Like capturing cursor movement. That might be worth doing for 1% of users to find hot spots, but capturing it for all of them is wasteful. A lot of analytic data is like that. If you captured it for 1% of users you'd find out what you needed to know at 1% of the cost.