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Instant Server - Click the button to get a virtual private server
- anExcitedBeast 13y agoI never thought "Made in the USA" would make me so nervous.
- sanbor 13y agoMe too. Is like putting "NSA passed".
- honzzz 13y agoExactly my thought. Funny how things can change their meaning - it used to be something to be shown with pride and now it's more like a warning.
- kybernetikos 13y agoNice for people who want to run temporary VPNs to access USA streaming video though.
- cryptic 13y agoError: No servers right now... :(
- OliC 13y agoYou should add a "kill it" button so I can easily free up the server if I finish playing with it before the ~30 minutes is up.
- VaucGiaps 13y agoshutdown -h now?
- OliC 13y agoSure, but a button would still be a nice touch. I closed my connection before shutting the server down. I hoped there would be a "kill it" button on the page but there wasn't so I had to reconnect before I could shut it down. Hardly a great effort but some people might not bother.
- notum 13y agoDisplay server availability on page load and spare people their valuable time.
- badhairday 13y agoDitto! I don't want to enter a CAPTCHA for nothing.
- lucb1e 13y agoIt was not for nothing. You helped digitalizing a book.
- coherentpony 13y agoBull. They aren't even real words. Edit: Downvotes != disagreeing. Captcha is a serious fucking problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laEVYBxLfF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laEVYBxLfF0 I know the video is satirical. That's the point. There needs to be a solution that doesn't involve photocopying sodden pages from Mathematica Principia and asking users to take a guess at what on Earth the stupid squiggly lines are supposed to read.
- stack0v3erfl0w 13y agoI wouldn't advertise the "Made in USA", especially not after the NSA scandal.
- genwin 13y agoAt least change it to "Free NSA monitoring!"
- bigiain 13y ago"Free NSA backups[1]" [1] To restore from backup, if you're a US citizen- commit a terorist or copyright offence, and collect your backedup data from your attorney at your court appearance. Non citizens can just attempt a border crossing.
- dbond 13y agoFirst thought, isn't this a tad dangerous for the supplier? There seems to be nothing stopping me from using huge amounts of bandwidth just to screw with them. Or if I really was a bad guy, how much of an effective dos attack could be launched on ec2 hosted sites in the same az from these servers?
- quantumpotato_ 13y agoHow would you use lots of bandwidth after you created the servers?
- dbond 13y agoI downloaded a couple small files with wget and got 10MB/s, so just point it at a large file, maybe even loop the command.
- badhairday 13y agoThis is great, but I'd just prefer to use Vagrant and VirtualBox for vanilla Ubuntu VMs that I intend to destroy. It's so easy to set up and I can use it longer than 30 minutes, for free, if I desire.
- gibybo 13y agoThe CAPTCHA really cramps your 'instant' style :( It would be great if it had more convenient ways of preventing abuse. Perhaps look at IP/current server load/user agent patterns/etc to give most people the benefit of the doubt, and only fall back to a CAPTCHA in edge cases? Thinking about it more, just using an easier CAPTCHA would go along way to making it more user friendly. ReCaptha is hard. It usually takes me 2-3 squinting tries to get it right :/
- FriedPickles 13y agoI'm the creator. I didn't want to use a captcha, but had to put one on with all the demand. I'll switch to an easier one, if anyone has any other ideas let me know! Requiring signing in with a google account would also stop abuse, but that seems equally annoying.
- quantumpotato_ 13y agoQueue your e-mail address w/ a CAPTCHA solve
- lucb1e 13y agoThat's not equally annoying, that's a total show stopper for many.
- bifrost 13y agoI don't use google, so yeah, that would stop me :)
- danielsamuels 13y agoWhat about a choice? Either use the slightly more annoying signin with a captcha or the easier signin with a Google account without a captcha.
- sciurus 13y agoOne big question I don't see answered- why are they providing this service?
- Jleagle 13y agoBecause you can pay to get longer sessions?
- cmircea 13y agoWhy should I use this over DigitalOcean? One hour on the smallest VPS is .7 of a cent. Bonus: SSD.
- sciurus 13y agoIt costs them somewhere between $0.01 and $0.02 for every uses who doesn't pay to get a longer session. I'd expect that cost to outweigh what the get from paying users, but of course I could be wrong.
- Jleagle 13y agoYou need to add a queue system, filling in a captcha to just get "No servers available right now :(" is pretty annoying.
- zackmorris 13y agoThis is brilliant. I'm flabbergasted why every single virtual server I've ever tried has had some gotcha that made it agonizing. Why is it so hard to have one-click templates that give you a server that can run 90% of what a user needs, say apache/php/ruby/node/mysql/postgresql/ssh with cpanel (or equivalent), already installed and set up "the right way" so you can easily add domains? I know the reasons why this hasn't happened, but I don't care. I want to know the real reason it hasn't happened, and I think it has a lot to do with every problem looking like a nail. I laugh at hosting providers, for failing so spectacularly at giving customers what they want. Good on this site for finally pointing out the obvious.
- wdmeldon 13y agoProbably because SysAdmins are fervent about customization. If a simple tool pops up like this, the demands for complex features overwhelms the product and brings it all the way back to the complex nightmare it's always been. Developers are more accepting of "Sane Defaults" as Rails has proven, but not enough hosting providers are interested in selling to developers. I have a feeling this will change sooner rather than later as the fields continue to merge.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoProbably because SysAdmins are fervent about security/maintainability/reliability. Fixed that for you. Too often all developers care about is "Ship. Ship. Ship". Get a pager and come join our world for a bit. You'll understand what its like to run a real-world, mission critical app.
- KaiserPro 13y agoYour sysadmin is obviously not beating you hard enough. You break my system, you're in deep shit sunny Jim.
- corresation 13y agogive you a server that can run 90% of what a user needs Are you saying that you just keep adding things to the server until you've covered that mythical user? That sounds like an absolute disaster from a security, maintenance, and resource usage perspective. I don't see what problem this solves. Start an EC2 instance (takes seconds), configure it as you want it (which to me includes a hardened, specific set of software with very specific routing rules where nginx sits in front of node, etc), and then save an AMI from your specific mix of technology. Trivial, and perfectly suited to the user's needs. I can then spin up any number of perfectly suited instances.
- vinhboy 13y agoOk. Now that "Open Terminal" thing is awesome. Nice job.
- wcchandler 13y agoAnybody know what project that is? I'm interested in running it internally on my network without an SSH client.
- FriedPickles 13y agoIt's this fantastic project: https://github.com/aluzzardi/wssh https://github.com/aluzzardi/wssh. It runs term.js on the client, and talks to an intermediate server via websockets that translates into ssh. I'm also running that server at term.isv.io if you need to ssh into any server a pinch, but of course running your own server is the more secure solution.
- honzzz 13y agoI don't mind CAPTCHA per se but this one seems to be surprisingly difficult. Other that that - nice idea.
- tg3 13y agoIt's reCAPTCHA, which is very popular and actually does some good (OCR help in digitizing bookz where machines fail). http://www.google.com/recaptcha http://www.google.com/recaptcha
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bnc 13y agoisv.io/kCJyvgutauRFzdqW5
- vonskippy 13y agoOnce you have an account with Linode, spinning up another node is quick and painless, and with way more options. Plus they're up front with their billing - I need to send in a question and wait for a email response on how much it will cost to keep it longer then 30 minutes? I'll pass. His concept is to SAVE TIME, yet with all the missing details, it will end up costing more time (and probably money) then it's worth.
- FriedPickles 13y agoPrice information is available on the second page of the "Get More Time" flow, after entering your email (or not) and hitting "Continue". I'll try to make that more obvious. Thanks for the feedback.
- g3orge 13y agocan you have a Linode account w/o having an active server? This is suppose to offer a small testing environment, fast and easy. and I guess is cheaper that Linode to just keep it a little bit longer online...
- prg318 13y agoYou can have a Linode account without any active VPSes on your account. If you want to spin up a Linode for a day, you get charged a prorated amount for the day(s) that it is active on your account. Pretty reasonable IMO. Just note that you need to have an active Linode on your account in order for any DNS records hosted with Linode to be served.
- dpe82 13y agoOr DigitalOcean. Usually about 30 seconds for an instance to spin up.
- bryogenic 13y agoI'd be interested in the mechanics behind this service. I see you are using Meteor, any other info on the stack?
- Chris2048 13y agoHow does meteor compare to, say derby and/or angular?
- mvip 13y agoSame thing here, but with a lot more flexibility: https://zrh.cloudsigma.com/ui/#/trynow https://zrh.cloudsigma.com/ui/#/trynow
- lucb1e 13y ago> This site is down. Try again later. Looks like somebody's 35 minutes were up
- bifrost 13y agoSo ok, it copies an AMI and fires it up, thats not real exciting, right? If you are "doing it right" you can actually get a freshly installed server in under 60 seconds if your installer isn't totally busted (IE: stock ubuntu/centos/etc).
- dmourati 13y agoNice work. Provisioning should be just this easy.
- motoboi 13y agoAnd then you get Slashdotted. Good luck paying the bills.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dlsym 13y agoWith PRISM "virtual private" just got a whole new dimension.
- smaili 13y agoYeah I was thinking the same exact thing.
- joebo 13y agoSuggestion: Please let me know there are no servers available without requiring me to type in the incredibly frustrating recaptcha.
- sciurus 13y agoThey're reselling EC2; how can there be no servers available? Maybe they've bought a some reserved instances to get the $0.012 cents an hour cost and won't scale beyond those?
- runarb 13y agoThere are limits to how many EC2 instances one account can run without getting special permission from Amazon. And even when you do get permission they will only increase the limit so much. More information is available in the AWS faq: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#How_many_instances_can_I_run_in_Amazon_EC2 http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#How_many_instances_can_I_run...
- alextingle 13y agoNothing but a blank white page for me.
- alextingle 13y agoOh I see. You've not tested it without cookies. It's nice to get a heads up that you require cookies, you know.
- js4all 13y agoI noticed, that another user is logged into the same server before me from IP 50.16.x.x. If you are monitoring sessions, you should disclose so.
- CodeFoo 13y agoSomeone make this but with Docker instead. Linux containers start up in seconds, but you'd probably have to consider security a lot more.
- blago 13y agoThis is great. Thank you.
- disclosure 13y agohttps://bitnodes.io https://bitnodes.io offers small instance for free for 1 hour when you use coupon code "hn" but you win hands down with that built-in terminal!
- Sealy 13y agoI love this in your description: When would I use this? Among other reasons, perhaps: You need linux but accidentally used windows
- Myrth 13y agoWell, I sure do hope that the OS image doesn't have keylogger pre-installed and auto-generated user password is not available to the owner..
- wallrat 13y agoInteresting. http://simpleredis.com http://simpleredis.com is a similar service, but for Redis instances (for testing, CI etc), including a nice console. Instances terminates after one hour, but you can run an instance forever if you validate your email. Been thinking about doing the same for VPS, but using LXC instead (actually already using it for internally for running tests, CI etc).