4 ms·

OVH forgot they donated documentation hosting to Pandas

149 points by nwalters512 7mo ago

vova_hn2 7mo ago
Vibecoders messed with billing service again
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- blell 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - vova_hn2 7mo ago
    Sorry, couldn't resist
Robdel12 7mo ago
Does it really need a VPS? Can’t throw it onto a cloudflare page for free?
- messe 7mo ago
  Please don't encourage MITM-ing even more of the web by a US company.
  - someotherperson 7mo ago
    They're already throwing cloudflare in front of it
    - messe 7mo ago
      Ah, dammit.
peterangular 7mo ago
As someone who's been around the block for affordable hosting providers, OVH was one of those that never really impressed. They never had any major downtime for me, but micro-outages, blips... things like that were common. Support was fine. In time I migrated off in search of better stability. Overall my gold standard is still Hetzner or DO for easy-to-use, affordable VPS/hosting options.
- iberator 7mo ago
  DO is amazing. Easy to use and clean
  - ac29 7mo ago
    Too bad they stopped investing in new equipment around the time they IPOd in 2021. As near as I can tell, the newest "premium" CPU you can get from them is a ~2021 era Xeon. The shared and "regular" CPUs are even older.
- utopiah 7mo ago
  > They never had any major downtime for me One of my server was lost to a fire so... That being said, only happen one and I had no data on it so I didn't mind. I switched to Hetzner too.
  - hinkley 7mo ago
    How many data centers have had a server room burn to the ground? We had a halon system in an on-prem data center twice the size of my bedroom. We had to knock out a wall because the volume was too small for the smallest cooling system we could get installed in the building. That was 20 years ago, and we had to do it for insurance reasons. In the United States, which I know you Europeans like to make fun of for being sooo amusingly Neanderthal. What the absolute fuck, OVH.
    - everfrustrated 7mo ago
      I think the OVH datacenter was also built of wood and right next to another "independent" datacenter which also burned down when the fire spread. OVH is about cheap, not quality. Like hetzner they come from the vps/hosting end of the market which is all about cutting corners, packing vms, overselling, etc. Very much the cowboy end of the market.
lucb1e 7mo ago
The comment says "again". I'm not too surprised agreements like this are not the normal procedure and can get forgotten about (it shouldn't... but if this isn't automated, humans can make mistakes), but more than once?
bombcar 7mo ago
The pertinent comment is "again" - apparently this has already happened once. (OVH should either have a special type of free account they can use for donations, or just bill themselves for it as "internal" usage.)
hypeatei 7mo ago
I've always wondered how these types of "waived" accounts are coded in the backend. Are there flags in a table (i.e. first class support) or is it hacked together with duct tape? Seems like OVH is using the latter solution.
- altairprime 7mo ago
  Sounds like 'prepaid balance transferred by accounting and manually entered into DB', which is then consumed slowly until outage.
idoubtit 7mo ago
Before cutting a service, OVH sends several warnings. In my opinion, the worrying point is not that OVH made a mistake, it's that important messages to the "infrastructure mailing list" of Pandas were ignored for weeks... until the post-mortem.
- embedding-shape 7mo ago
  To be fair, if I had an agreement with a hosting provider and started to get "Your balance is too low", I'd also chalk it up to their payment/metering systems not knowing about the deal, not for the entire platform and organization to have forgotten about it. Still I'd look into it at that point and send them an email about "Billing system not agreeing with what we've agreed on" or similar, rather than just ignoring it...
arionmiles 7mo ago
Why does documentation require hosting it on a server? My assumption is that it's a static site, and as such, even GitHub Pages would be sufficient. I know... all content has to be served via a "server" but in case of OVH it's a full-blown hosting solution isn't it? Besides, I'm sure GitHub wouldn't mind supporting Pandas documentation. They do it for a million other projects for free (even though they're not popular among the HN crowd these days)
- chaps 7mo ago
  Free stuff has a way of short circuiting things.
- eduction 7mo ago
  Probably because your assumption is wrong - they host a live shell and documentation search. https://web.archive.org/web/20260220092649/https://pandas.pydata.org/try.html https://web.archive.org/web/20260220092649/https://pandas.py... https://web.archive.org/web/20260225185816/https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20260225185816/https://pandas.py... (I don't know anything about pandas, incidentaly, I just did some basic research before posting.)
  - GrayShade 7mo ago
    That's not a shell, it's a Python interpreter compiled to WASM and running in the browser.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
    - eduction 7mo ago
      Whatever you call it, it’s plainly calling repeatedly to the server once loaded. You couldn’t just throw it on GitHub or cloudflare as is.
  - ErikBjare 7mo ago
    Both of those are statically served
lovelearning 7mo ago
I wonder why they didn't use readthedocs.com. Their community plan promises free hosting for docs of open-source projects. I thought most Python packages prefer it. Surprised to see pandas outside of it.
wiether 7mo ago
Billing is definitely the worst thing for OVH customers. It's far from perfect otherwise, but billing is just awful.
m132 7mo ago
Man, the spam this issue has been getting since getting posted here though... GitHub has literally become Facebook with code hosting
- jon-wood 7mo ago
  A lot of it looks like people trying to be helpful but it must be infuriating handling issues for a big project like this. I'm going to guess that the infrastructure team for Pandas don't actually need random men on the internet informing them that such obscure hosting options as Vercel and Netlify exist.
shipstatic 7mo ago
we would love to offer you early access to our static hosting platform and a free Pro subscription PM if you are interested
- altairprime 7mo ago
  'PM'?
  - tpoacher 7mo ago
    Personal/Private Message. It's how Prime Ministers and Project Managers prefer to abbreviate it. Especially in the afternoon (Post Meridiem). Particularly Meaningful if it relates to Project Management or Post Mortems.
    - deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
sloped 7mo ago
I would be curious what a $5 hetzner or equal vps could handle. Is pandas docs that busy? That said, free is no longer free if you have to worry this much about it.

149 points by nwalters512 7mo ago

vova_hn2 7mo ago

Vibecoders messed with billing service again

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
blell 7mo ago
[flagged]
- vova_hn2 7mo ago
  Sorry, couldn't resist

Robdel12 7mo ago

Does it really need a VPS? Can’t throw it onto a cloudflare page for free?

messe 7mo ago
Please don't encourage MITM-ing even more of the web by a US company.
- someotherperson 7mo ago
  They're already throwing cloudflare in front of it
  - messe 7mo ago
    Ah, dammit.

peterangular 7mo ago

As someone who's been around the block for affordable hosting providers, OVH was one of those that never really impressed. They never had any major downtime for me, but micro-outages, blips... things like that were common. Support was fine. In time I migrated off in search of better stability. Overall my gold standard is still Hetzner or DO for easy-to-use, affordable VPS/hosting options.

iberator 7mo ago
DO is amazing. Easy to use and clean
- ac29 7mo ago
  Too bad they stopped investing in new equipment around the time they IPOd in 2021. As near as I can tell, the newest "premium" CPU you can get from them is a ~2021 era Xeon. The shared and "regular" CPUs are even older.
utopiah 7mo ago
> They never had any major downtime for me One of my server was lost to a fire so... That being said, only happen one and I had no data on it so I didn't mind. I switched to Hetzner too.
- hinkley 7mo ago
  How many data centers have had a server room burn to the ground? We had a halon system in an on-prem data center twice the size of my bedroom. We had to knock out a wall because the volume was too small for the smallest cooling system we could get installed in the building. That was 20 years ago, and we had to do it for insurance reasons. In the United States, which I know you Europeans like to make fun of for being sooo amusingly Neanderthal. What the absolute fuck, OVH.
  - everfrustrated 7mo ago
    I think the OVH datacenter was also built of wood and right next to another "independent" datacenter which also burned down when the fire spread. OVH is about cheap, not quality. Like hetzner they come from the vps/hosting end of the market which is all about cutting corners, packing vms, overselling, etc. Very much the cowboy end of the market.

lucb1e 7mo ago

The comment says "again". I'm not too surprised agreements like this are not the normal procedure and can get forgotten about (it shouldn't... but if this isn't automated, humans can make mistakes), but more than once?

bombcar 7mo ago

The pertinent comment is "again" - apparently this has already happened once. (OVH should either have a special type of free account they can use for donations, or just bill themselves for it as "internal" usage.)

hypeatei 7mo ago

I've always wondered how these types of "waived" accounts are coded in the backend. Are there flags in a table (i.e. first class support) or is it hacked together with duct tape? Seems like OVH is using the latter solution.

altairprime 7mo ago
Sounds like 'prepaid balance transferred by accounting and manually entered into DB', which is then consumed slowly until outage.

idoubtit 7mo ago

Before cutting a service, OVH sends several warnings. In my opinion, the worrying point is not that OVH made a mistake, it's that important messages to the "infrastructure mailing list" of Pandas were ignored for weeks... until the post-mortem.

embedding-shape 7mo ago
To be fair, if I had an agreement with a hosting provider and started to get "Your balance is too low", I'd also chalk it up to their payment/metering systems not knowing about the deal, not for the entire platform and organization to have forgotten about it. Still I'd look into it at that point and send them an email about "Billing system not agreeing with what we've agreed on" or similar, rather than just ignoring it...

arionmiles 7mo ago

Why does documentation require hosting it on a server? My assumption is that it's a static site, and as such, even GitHub Pages would be sufficient. I know... all content has to be served via a "server" but in case of OVH it's a full-blown hosting solution isn't it? Besides, I'm sure GitHub wouldn't mind supporting Pandas documentation. They do it for a million other projects for free (even though they're not popular among the HN crowd these days)

chaps 7mo ago
Free stuff has a way of short circuiting things.
eduction 7mo ago
Probably because your assumption is wrong - they host a live shell and documentation search. https://web.archive.org/web/20260220092649/https://pandas.pydata.org/try.html https://web.archive.org/web/20260220092649/https://pandas.py... https://web.archive.org/web/20260225185816/https://pandas.pydata.org/docs/reference/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20260225185816/https://pandas.py... (I don't know anything about pandas, incidentaly, I just did some basic research before posting.)
- GrayShade 7mo ago
  That's not a shell, it's a Python interpreter compiled to WASM and running in the browser.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  - eduction 7mo ago
    Whatever you call it, it’s plainly calling repeatedly to the server once loaded. You couldn’t just throw it on GitHub or cloudflare as is.
- ErikBjare 7mo ago
  Both of those are statically served

lovelearning 7mo ago

I wonder why they didn't use readthedocs.com. Their community plan promises free hosting for docs of open-source projects. I thought most Python packages prefer it. Surprised to see pandas outside of it.

wiether 7mo ago

Billing is definitely the worst thing for OVH customers. It's far from perfect otherwise, but billing is just awful.

m132 7mo ago

Man, the spam this issue has been getting since getting posted here though... GitHub has literally become Facebook with code hosting

jon-wood 7mo ago
A lot of it looks like people trying to be helpful but it must be infuriating handling issues for a big project like this. I'm going to guess that the infrastructure team for Pandas don't actually need random men on the internet informing them that such obscure hosting options as Vercel and Netlify exist.

shipstatic 7mo ago

we would love to offer you early access to our static hosting platform and a free Pro subscription PM if you are interested

altairprime 7mo ago
'PM'?
- tpoacher 7mo ago
  Personal/Private Message. It's how Prime Ministers and Project Managers prefer to abbreviate it. Especially in the afternoon (Post Meridiem). Particularly Meaningful if it relates to Project Management or Post Mortems.
  - deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]

sloped 7mo ago

I would be curious what a $5 hetzner or equal vps could handle. Is pandas docs that busy? That said, free is no longer free if you have to worry this much about it.