5 ms·

Show HN: A Marketing Bot That Sells OpenStack Cloud Instances for Bitcoin

96 points by kordless 12y ago

kordless 12y ago
Happy to answer any questions about the project in here. It's all Open Source and parked on Github: https://github.com/stackmonkey https://github.com/stackmonkey. Thanks for taking a look!
- pquerna 12y ago
  Pretty cool demo! The pre-pay model works well for reservations of a VM, but what are your thoughts about consumables that vary, eg Bandwidth? Would you imagine service providers just say, hey X VM includes Y gig of transfer per hour?
  - kordless 12y ago
    Thanks! Providers could create payment endpoints to increase or decrease transfers, storage or compute resources. If you need more of X, you simply squirt BTC at the address. The appliance currently allows you to set an ask price for the instance size, but later versions could easily let you configure how much you charge for what resource, even doing so based on current demand on your systems.
- lanstein 12y ago
  Was shocked for a second there Kord... :)
  - kordless 12y ago
    I'm periodically shocking, if anything. Apologies.
zhemao 12y ago
Well this will be used for totally legitimate purposes I'm sure.
- pquerna 12y ago
  I work for Rackspace, we have a cloud. Sometimes people do illegitimate things with it -- but attackers using resources fall generally into two groups: 1) Fraudulent Payment method (eg, stollen credit card) 2) Someone hasn't patched Wordpress (or another app) in 3 years, box gets hacked, then used for bad things. So, at least with paying via BTC for compute, you pretty much eliminate #1 -- in all cases the provider gets paid, no chargebacks, etc.
  - danohuiginn 12y ago
    you don't eliminate #1, it just has less consequences for the hosting provider. Bitcoins can still be stolen (albeit perhaps not as easily as credit cards). But since there's no chargeback system, the victims don't have much recourse.
    - kordless 12y ago
      The expectations that we'll eliminate 100% of fraud are fundamentally flawed. Fraud will always exist. The Bitcoin blockchain provides a good amount of fraud resistant technologies that can be used by external systems to help lower the incidences of fraud in their own systems. Unfortunately, some systems that have connected to the blockchain have been vulnerable to being broken into, which is where the coins usually get stolen. It's companies like Coinbase and Blockchain that carry that responsibility for the rest of us, and for that, I'm grateful. I would hazard the amount of fraud will go down considerably (compared to credit card fraud) once we've sorted around the best practices for securing your coin.
      - judk 12y ago
        > once we've sorted around the best practices for securing your coin. The same theory applies to credit cards (single-use card numbers, etc)
      - al2o3cr 12y ago
        If we always applied best practices for CC data, there wouldn't be much fraud with that system either. Sadly, we live in the real world.
Alex1540 12y ago
This is really a very deep examination about the nature of trust, online identity and its precepts cleverly disguised as a proof-of-concept. Or maybe it's just a way to get servers and pay with bitcoin. Either way, it's a potent precursor to a distributed compute exchange.
- kordless 12y ago
  It keeps my office warm too!
patio11 12y ago
The cryptocurrency enthusiasts call this a Distributed Autonomous Corporation and they envision a future where they're capable of being entirely self-sustaining by using APIs to a) create value for customers (human or, more interestingly, not), b) transact with customers, and c) purchase the resources they need to continue living. (A rather smart gentleman who may not appreciate me attributing the conversation explained his theory that Bitcoin is, itself, one of these. He and I agree more on that than we disagree, though he meant it as a compliment and I'd phrase it as a "self-organizing Internet boiler room with very impressively engineered viral spread among people susceptible to certain flavors of memes.")
- kordless 12y ago
  I had a rather engrossing conversation about a runaway version of one of these eating all our compute. One of the individuals in the conversation came up with a way to incentivize efficiency in the network, so we all calmed down a bit afterwards. I still wonder about it though.
  - patio11 12y ago
    Good news: Bitcoin can't go Clippy because you can't get > X compute for X compute's cost in BTC, at virtually any margin, to say nothing of the scales required to e.g. meaningfully impact availability at any major cloud provider. Ask if you care about the economic or engineering details, but typically, people running Bitcoin mining on public clouds are doing so to exfiltrate value from accounts or payment methods which they have stolen, in a way which is fairly difficult for law enforcement to combat. (That or they're enthusiasts who either don't particularly care about monetary incentives or should have spent a wee bit more time reading about currently successful mining strategies.)
  - wmf 12y ago
    To eat all your compute it would have to outbid everyone else, which would probably mean it was creating an incredible amount of value. Which is also a roundabout comment on VC-backed vs. bootstrapped companies.
- 12y ago
dochex 12y ago
I love the idea, but to me bitmessage is a better fit for the control interface. Doesn't help with the marketing part tho.
- kordless 12y ago
  I've considered adding this before, so I just threw a ticket up for it: https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-pool/issues/31 https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-pool/issues/31
notastartup 12y ago
what is openstack and how does it differ from digitalocean?
- kordless 12y ago
  OpenStack is a set of software components that run on one or more Linux boxes. Together, they form a cloud thing that looks very similar to DO, but runs in your own datacenter (or in my case under the house). If you are interested in installing it and have an Ubuntu box laying around, I have some scripts that do it pretty quickly: http://www.stackgeek.com/guides/gettingstarted.html http://www.stackgeek.com/guides/gettingstarted.html
droopyEyelids 12y ago
Now have the bot automate payroll, and have it post bounties for provisioning new hardware & links to ISPs
- kordless 12y ago
  The bounties for the ISPs should come by way of revenue share on StackMonkey. Anyone can be a provider with the appliance, and groups of companies can band together to form appliance groups to share excess compute. I love the idea of bounties for software development as well - especially given OpenStack development can be somewhat opinionated at times.
judk 12y ago
Why is Twitter a better comms method than email or a regular website?
- kordless 12y ago
  It's a MVP of the larger concept of a highly distributed cloud. This feature runs in a much larger project. It took me a few days to write it, and got your attention! :)

96 points by kordless 12y ago

Happy to answer any questions about the project in here. It's all Open Source and parked on Github: https://github.com/stackmonkey https://github.com/stackmonkey. Thanks for taking a look!

pquerna 12y ago
Pretty cool demo! The pre-pay model works well for reservations of a VM, but what are your thoughts about consumables that vary, eg Bandwidth? Would you imagine service providers just say, hey X VM includes Y gig of transfer per hour?
- kordless 12y ago
  Thanks! Providers could create payment endpoints to increase or decrease transfers, storage or compute resources. If you need more of X, you simply squirt BTC at the address. The appliance currently allows you to set an ask price for the instance size, but later versions could easily let you configure how much you charge for what resource, even doing so based on current demand on your systems.
lanstein 12y ago
Was shocked for a second there Kord... :)
- kordless 12y ago
  I'm periodically shocking, if anything. Apologies.

zhemao 12y ago

Well this will be used for totally legitimate purposes I'm sure.

pquerna 12y ago
I work for Rackspace, we have a cloud. Sometimes people do illegitimate things with it -- but attackers using resources fall generally into two groups: 1) Fraudulent Payment method (eg, stollen credit card) 2) Someone hasn't patched Wordpress (or another app) in 3 years, box gets hacked, then used for bad things. So, at least with paying via BTC for compute, you pretty much eliminate #1 -- in all cases the provider gets paid, no chargebacks, etc.
- danohuiginn 12y ago
  you don't eliminate #1, it just has less consequences for the hosting provider. Bitcoins can still be stolen (albeit perhaps not as easily as credit cards). But since there's no chargeback system, the victims don't have much recourse.
  - kordless 12y ago
    The expectations that we'll eliminate 100% of fraud are fundamentally flawed. Fraud will always exist. The Bitcoin blockchain provides a good amount of fraud resistant technologies that can be used by external systems to help lower the incidences of fraud in their own systems. Unfortunately, some systems that have connected to the blockchain have been vulnerable to being broken into, which is where the coins usually get stolen. It's companies like Coinbase and Blockchain that carry that responsibility for the rest of us, and for that, I'm grateful. I would hazard the amount of fraud will go down considerably (compared to credit card fraud) once we've sorted around the best practices for securing your coin.
    - judk 12y ago
      > once we've sorted around the best practices for securing your coin. The same theory applies to credit cards (single-use card numbers, etc)
    - al2o3cr 12y ago
      If we always applied best practices for CC data, there wouldn't be much fraud with that system either. Sadly, we live in the real world.

Alex1540 12y ago

This is really a very deep examination about the nature of trust, online identity and its precepts cleverly disguised as a proof-of-concept. Or maybe it's just a way to get servers and pay with bitcoin. Either way, it's a potent precursor to a distributed compute exchange.

kordless 12y ago
It keeps my office warm too!

patio11 12y ago

The cryptocurrency enthusiasts call this a Distributed Autonomous Corporation and they envision a future where they're capable of being entirely self-sustaining by using APIs to a) create value for customers (human or, more interestingly, not), b) transact with customers, and c) purchase the resources they need to continue living. (A rather smart gentleman who may not appreciate me attributing the conversation explained his theory that Bitcoin is, itself, one of these. He and I agree more on that than we disagree, though he meant it as a compliment and I'd phrase it as a "self-organizing Internet boiler room with very impressively engineered viral spread among people susceptible to certain flavors of memes.")

kordless 12y ago
I had a rather engrossing conversation about a runaway version of one of these eating all our compute. One of the individuals in the conversation came up with a way to incentivize efficiency in the network, so we all calmed down a bit afterwards. I still wonder about it though.
- patio11 12y ago
  Good news: Bitcoin can't go Clippy because you can't get > X compute for X compute's cost in BTC, at virtually any margin, to say nothing of the scales required to e.g. meaningfully impact availability at any major cloud provider. Ask if you care about the economic or engineering details, but typically, people running Bitcoin mining on public clouds are doing so to exfiltrate value from accounts or payment methods which they have stolen, in a way which is fairly difficult for law enforcement to combat. (That or they're enthusiasts who either don't particularly care about monetary incentives or should have spent a wee bit more time reading about currently successful mining strategies.)
- wmf 12y ago
  To eat all your compute it would have to outbid everyone else, which would probably mean it was creating an incredible amount of value. Which is also a roundabout comment on VC-backed vs. bootstrapped companies.
12y ago

dochex 12y ago

I love the idea, but to me bitmessage is a better fit for the control interface. Doesn't help with the marketing part tho.

kordless 12y ago
I've considered adding this before, so I just threw a ticket up for it: https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-pool/issues/31 https://github.com/StackMonkey/utter-pool/issues/31

notastartup 12y ago

what is openstack and how does it differ from digitalocean?

kordless 12y ago
OpenStack is a set of software components that run on one or more Linux boxes. Together, they form a cloud thing that looks very similar to DO, but runs in your own datacenter (or in my case under the house). If you are interested in installing it and have an Ubuntu box laying around, I have some scripts that do it pretty quickly: http://www.stackgeek.com/guides/gettingstarted.html http://www.stackgeek.com/guides/gettingstarted.html

droopyEyelids 12y ago

Now have the bot automate payroll, and have it post bounties for provisioning new hardware & links to ISPs

kordless 12y ago
The bounties for the ISPs should come by way of revenue share on StackMonkey. Anyone can be a provider with the appliance, and groups of companies can band together to form appliance groups to share excess compute. I love the idea of bounties for software development as well - especially given OpenStack development can be somewhat opinionated at times.

judk 12y ago

Why is Twitter a better comms method than email or a regular website?

kordless 12y ago
It's a MVP of the larger concept of a highly distributed cloud. This feature runs in a much larger project. It took me a few days to write it, and got your attention! :)