

Show HN: Get a Server Instantly - FriedPickles
http://instantserver.io

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ichilton
Nifty - useful for quick testing tasks.

The concerns though are the sustainability - if instances are paid for and not
free tier + bandwidth, it could not be around for long, particularly if it
gets abused.

Also, privacy/security - there is no guarantee that instances are
destroyed/erased after use and won't get assigned to someone else or logged
into. Probably don't want to put private code/IPR on there just in case.

For quick commands (eg, testing a firewall setup from the outside or checking
something from an external ip) then it's very cool indeed.

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kennywinker
I'm a bit confused. Are you not paying for this, somehow? I expect it will add
up fairly fast, yes? 35min @ 0.060/hour is $0.35 per user. 100 users/day * 31
days/month = >$1k/month. So even at a small scale this will cost you a fair
bit, won't it?

Don't get me wrong, it's pretty slick!

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FriedPickles
The micro spots I'm using are usually closer to $0.003/hr. Amazon rounds up 35
mins to 1 hour, so typical cost is $0.003 per button click. Least profitable
conversion nets ~$3.50, so if I get 0.1% conversion it breaks even.

Of course abuse or market fluctuations could be costly, but there are built in
limits. And thanks!

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valverde
Don't forget bandwidth costs. I could get about 100mbps to an external server.
At $0.12/GB, 100mbps * 35 minutes = 25GB = $3. Most clicks won't cost you this
much, but you should definitely keep an eye on this. Maybe set a bandwidth cap
somehow.

Also, I noticed a public key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Is that intentional or
just part of how EC2 APIs work?

Other than that, great job. I would definitely use this service.

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FriedPickles
Thanks, I'll keep an eye on bandwidth. The authorized key is a leftover from
bringing up the server, I'll consider deleting it automatically.

Curious to hear what you and others use this for--I built it because it's
cool, but still trying to put my finger on the biggest use case(s). So far
people have told me they're having fun with 'rm -rf /', fork bombs, and
getting a decent python shell in the browser ;).

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tlongren
Cool. But the flipping/rotating card with the info on it doesn't show very
nicely in Chromium on Xubuntu 13.04.

It's transparent, so you can see the text sitting "behind" the front-facing
text.

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bugkilling
Awesome.

