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Comment by DavidBuchanan | Hacker News Reader

Author here - this was just a quick PoC, I'm pleasently surprised that it seems to be handling all the HN traffic.

It's served from a python script using aiohttp, behind nginx, on a $16/year VPS.

I might make a github repo with more details, but in the meantime, here's the server script: https://pastebin.com/ykUeppqc (apologies for pastebin, I don't have access to my github account at present)

Just in case the server dies, there's a video of it here: https://twitter.com/David3141593/status/1388602027484356614

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Might I ask where you found a $16/year VPS, and whether you'd recommend the provider?

Indirect answer, checkout lowendbox[0] for information and reviews on cheap hosting and VPS.

[0]: https://lowendbox.com/

LowEndBox is full of scammers. https://talk.lowendspirit.com/ is cleaner.

It's with HostUS. I got a coupon a few years ago (via LowEndBox), and it's been renewing at the same rate ever since. I have no complaints about them, but I'm not sure you can get the same pricing today.

While most of the black friday deals are shams, but when it comes to VPS they are actually good.

If you're looking for such deals cyber monday / black friday is when you will often find such deals.

At this price point you are barely paying for the IPv4 address. It will be an OpenVZ container.

I had a $15/yr VPS with BuyVM.net for many years and would absolutely recommend them at this price point, except that they have shut down this offering and switched to KVM (it's for the best). Ramnode.com are honest enough and still offer the "192MB SVZ" plan for $15/yr.

I would rather scrape by on the GCS/AWS/Heroku free tier, Netlify / GH pages, ...rather than going back to OpenVZ. Better to pay just a few dollars more for a proper KVM VPS.

Not exactly what you asked for but Oracle Cloud has a generous "Always Free" tier which allows you to spin up 2 VMs with decent amount of storage.

I get that people are apprehensive of using anything from Oracle but so far I haven't had any issues.

> so far I haven't had any issues.

Aren't the reported issues with Oracle that they charge you retrospectively? You wouldn't know if you have issues yet!

I'm seeing a big banner saying ""When your trial is over, your account will be limited to Always Free resources."" which is pretty reassuring.

> Might I ask where you found a $16/year VPS, and whether you'd recommend the provider?

Here is how you can get the answer to this question yourself:

    $ dig <website-domain>

you'll get its IP(v4) address.

    $ whois <IPv4>

you'll see to whom this IP is registred via RIPE.

In this case, you can find that the AS it belongs to is also a host provider. They sell KVM hosts for $15.95 / month.

Didn't know you can use whois on IP addresses and not just domains.

Just get the two free VMs from Oracle Cloud.

https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/#always-free

Or four ARM VMs. Nice. They didn't have those when I signed up.

While this is a good deal, If you are not familiar with cloud management, you should stay away. Only use it if at least:

1. You know how to create alerts on spending (bugdets)

2. You know exactly what VMs are included in the free tier.

3. You know about networking, VPC, DHCP, IP - Ephemeral vs Reserved

Otherwise a simple mistake may cost you $$$.

It is impossible to spend any real money (as opposed to their $300 credit) without switching to a paid account, which is a multi-step process that you can't perform accidentally.

After the 30 day trial expires your account is switched to the "always free" mode. It does not allow creating any paid resources which are not marked as "always free".

I was curios and read about it, and you are correct. But just like I said, there are many pitfalls. for example - I assumed you can change your paid plan freely but:

"...After I upgrade my account, can I downgrade?

There is no option to downgrade your account"

https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/faq.html

fwiw, you can do network throttling entirely on the client, but unfortunately only Chrome implements the required APIs.

Anyway, here's a tool for loading images at 2g speeds https://static-misc-3.glitch.me/slow-img-load/

That's neat! For those curious, the API seems to be:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TransformSt...

'adamation' is a great pun

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