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Comment by saynsedit | Hacker News Reader

Why is this not a single Python script on a cron that uploads to github pages?

"Data is typically made available at different days/times throughout the week by different external sources, so each Collector is triggered by a CloudWatch cron job." Also it's in Java, but the author mentions at the bottom that python would be better if you need low latency.

Run the Python cron job every five minutes. It checks the condition of all data sources. You don't need a server to do this, you can run this from your house!

Maybe, but I guess I don't see why you're so worried about it. It works and it costs less to run than it would cost in electricity if he were running it from his house.

They are worried about it because they are tired of being sold bullshit.

(That is what I am inferring from their messages, not necessarily my own opinion)

The Lambda method seems like a more complex and unreasonable way to solve the problem. It's like using a hammer to tie your shoes.

This can literally run from his laptop whenever it's online. You don't need a fully fledged server to do this.

He doesn't have a "fully fledged server". He's sharing some servers with tens of thousands of other people. It's literally less hardware investment then a RPi let alone a laptop, and it's priced accordingly. And it runs even when his home computer isn't powered on or online.

That's like saying "I use this hammer to tie my shoes and it's good because now I have a hammer."

Then you have to pay for a server to run the cron jobs which would be more expensive. You could run it from home, but then you need to manage uptime yourself.

A simple cron job doesn't require managing uptime. It just needs to run frequently enough and then upload the generated HTML to github. I'm sure he uses his laptop at least once a day. This is crazy!!!

I don't know about OP, but I know that I often don't use my (personal) laptop once a day. I think I went a month earlier this year where I only touched it twice, and that was to move it out of the way so I could write a letter at that desk. Setting up something like this that's so inexpensive is a reasonable selling point for hobby projects that fit the model AWS has been designed for.

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