GitHub Student Developer Pack | Hacker News Reader

GitHub Student Developer Pack

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59 pointsguessmyname32 comments

Just a heads up:

Do NOT use AWS Educate (regardless if you get it from some hackathon or Github).

The amount of pain and suffering you have to go through just to get permission to spin up a EC2 instance is unbearable. Compounded with a ton of restrictions and 60-minute sessions, it'll make you unlike AWS real-quick.

I would instead suggest to use the $300 GCP credit (since there's no restrictions for that) if you need cloud credits.

Wouldn't what most people are doing fit underneath the free tier?

So to activate AWS Educate you'll need to do this:

1. Get verified (which even though I had an .edu email took 2 weeks and back and forth convo to do... not to mention that I've been trying for about a year with my HS issued .org email...)

2. You get access to this super weird and sluggish "Learn AWS" portal (by the way, none of this is by AWS, they outsourced to some 3rd party) where they force you to take 5 hours of learning AWS... luckily I found a way to bypass it.

3. Once you get through these portals you end up on this weird "ending page" which I highly recommend bookmarking if you really do decide to use the measly $75 they give. This "ending page" basically gives you the credentials (to use on CLI) and FORCES you to click on this button on the page anytime you want to access AWS.

4. Now that you clicked on this link, you have 60 minutes to do whatever that is under this heavily restricted AWS console...

5. After 60 minutes both your credentials in CLI and in the browser are gone and you'll have to use this "ending page"'s link again to get new credentials for both CLI and browser.

I don't have time to explain all of it, but it was really painful to setup.

GCP on the other hand just gives you $300 without question (other than credit card/phone number) and allows you to do whatever you want.

TLDR: AWS Educate sucks. If you need to play around with cloud stuff, use GCP's $300. OR use AWS's free tier (but then again there are some super weird restrictions.... but I guess it's more bearable than Educate)

To answer your question: Probably... just read what you can and cannot do (but stuff like spinning up EC2 instances is fine... its just that you can't connect for more than 60 minutes)

For those who are part of Hack Club (https://hackclub.com), we partnered with GitHub to provide speedy access to the Student Developer Pack (48 hrs vs. 2-3 weeks). Redeem at https://hack.af/pack.

More on the partnership at https://medium.com/hackclub/github-hack-club-grants-for-your...

Practical question: how the heck do people manage subscriptions for personal (not enterprise) use? Do you know all the services you subscribe to, how much you paid(whether the amount reset to a higher number after the introductory offer), whether you’re being auto-billed for something you’ve barely used, etc? Further, have you cancelled subscriptions as a result of such analysis?

I wonder how many people would pay a couple of bucks each mont for a no-hassle subscriptions management platform!?

I have a budget system where all recurring income and expenses are averaged out into a daily number that accumulates over time, less any incidental expenses.

The part of the spreadsheet that I use to calculate the daily net income has every subscription listed on it.

I budget conservatively so in the sheet I "pay" the full rate from the beginning even if I actually have the introductory rate.

...I don't actually have many subscriptions, so there hasn't been anything I've unsubscribed from as a result of this.

I have a handful of apps that help me keep track of my finances — https://i.imgur.com/M6rzJ6i.png

One of them —“Chronicle Pro”— does exactly what you asked; the app keeps track of recurring subscriptions.

Unfortunately, most of these apps are only available in the Mac App Store, with a few exceptions, but I believe you can find quality software with the same features for Windows and Linux as well if you search the correct keywords online; try mixing the words “banking”, “finances”, “money” and “budget” in this query: “[word] app for windows”.

Here is the list of apps I use (in alphabetical order):

• https://www.iggsoftware.com/banktivity/

• https://www.jumsoft.com/money/

• https://moneywell.app/

• https://chronicleapp.com/

• https://savingsapp.com/

• https://hochgatterer.me/finances/macos/

I put all of my subscriptions on single purpose card numbers I generate using www.privacy.com

The tool lets me set a total or per month spending limit on each card, which I can use to decline unexpected transactions -- basically either auto billing that kicks in after a trial, or price increases that I never noticed.

It also gives me a convenient place to see all of my active subscriptions.

Some bank/cards let you download statements in csv. Plain text ledger app does the rest.

This is something that is on my radar. I am making a "SAAS admin" system for businesses but during my market research, a few people have told me that they would like something like it for themselves as well.

I am just not sure what would be a good solution. I could scan your email for known entities or through a browser extension take a look at which sites you go to. Both would be much more problematic in terms of privacy than I would be comfortable with.

I suppose another model would be to only keep track of stuff that you manually enter but I doubt that would add enough value for anyone to care?

I pretty much just look at my credit card statement every week or so when I push they "pay it off" button. It's not that hard. I do cancel subs to stuff, but while I have several it's not so hard to analyze that I can't do it while looking at a CC statement.

https://www.trackmysubs.com/ Is one I know of out of my home town, The irony of a SaaS to track SaaS is not lost on me.

I avoid subscriptions. My household pays for Amazon and Netflix. We have no other recurring services outside of utilities. If I do sign up for a trial, I add a calendar reminder to cancel the service a day before the trial expires.

The best value I've gotten out of this pack is the DO credit. 10 months on a 5$ plan for free is a great deal, I recommend it to friends in education

Was that a long time ago? I’m pretty sure it expires within 2-3 months now.

Also if you created an account before, even if you never used it, you'll be prevented from redeeming your student developer credits...

Pretty disingenuous to offer free credits to verified students For educational use, but put the stipulation they can't have an existing account. Makes the thinly veiled ploy to lock in "new blood" all that more transparent.

You can contact support and they'll add it for you.

They won't... I tried back when I was still a student.

It was a pretty awful support experience, including patronizing responses and being accused of just demanding free credits from DO.

"It appears that you have already tried out our platform and decided that you did not wish to pay to use it."

"I was attempting to introduce you to what I'm faced with here and a bit of a background on why other people have forced my hand toward being skeptical of people's intentions from time to time."

"The bottom line is I have people begging for free credits outside of the promotion rules constantly and I wanted you to give me a reason to skate around those rules for you."

All this over $50 of credits... cost them a lifetime of recommendations and lost business.

Google's got a pretty nice 'always free' plan, and the 300 bucks will get you a fair bit more.

Also check out https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev . Not just for students

I wish there was a way to extend this kind of thing to non traditional students.

What do you mean?

Probably someone like me who's old but still keen to learn.

Or someone who's trying for self taught

For these "student" offerings, only the appearance of credentialism matters. They've never cared about self-taught, at least from all the evidence I've seen.

The reality is it’s a company giving offerings away for free. Do the people in these companies who care about education wish _everyone_ who needed to learn could have it for free? Of course. But welcome to businesses. The definition of “student” is as it is because it’s a verifiable segment. Self learners are, unfortunately, not.

Not sure what you mean? Non-traditional students are eligible like anyone else.

Well, I download free books on specific topics, get academic papers, and work out how things work to further my art and science.

In some ways, I've furthered my areas of study and documented them for the world, with a similarity to masters candidates would.

What I've given up on is the "Education System". Classes are too slow - I'll find interesting avenues during learning something, and deep dive and see interconnections with many other areas. I've gotten nothing like this in ANY classroom setting. Traditional class focus only on the grade vs actually learning the material. This might be different in grad school, but never got there. And cost way too much. 2hr/week for 16 weeks at $60/hr is $1920 . Yet, how much is tuition for that class again? Yeah. (Lest to say, the profs themselves get paid less. Whole diff can of worms there too.)

I'm definitely a 'Non-traditional student'. But lets cut the bullshit. It's coded language for "getting a university degree much older than you should have"... Do I get the benefits of 'non-traditional student'? Hah, nope. The base requirement is always some @.edu .

> It's coded language for "getting a university degree much older than you should have"...

Err I don’t think it’s ‘coded language’ I think that’s literally part of the definition.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontraditional_student#

Teachers qualify too?

Teachers don’t qualify, but GitHub Education offer teachers GitHub Pro for their personal account, and GitHub Teams for organisations they use to teach their students. More here: https://help.github.com/en/github/teaching-and-learning-with...

Disclaimer: ex-GitHub, used to work on the education program

Thank you

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