I don't feel like this really answers the question thought, right? At least not at face value.
I could see the side of maintenance burden being a potential point, meaning that one would be "pushed" to update the system between releases more often than something else.
Typically you want stability and predictability in a server. A platform that has a long support lifecycle is often more attractive than one with a short lifecycle.
If you can stay on v12.x for 10 years versus having to upgrade yearly yo maintain support, that’s ideal. 12.x should always behave the same way with your app where-as every major version upgrade may have breaking changes.
Servers don’t need to change, typically. They’re not chasing those quick updates that we expect on desktops.
Yeah, and that's the take I assumed to hear based on what was said.
However, for something like ARM and the use case this particular device may have, in reality you would _want_ (my opinion) to be on a more rolling release distros to pick up the updates that make your system perform better.
I'd take a similar stance for devices that are built in a homelab for running LLMs.
Depends on what you're building an ARM system for. There are proper ARM servers out there; server work isn't the exclusive domain of x86, after all.
For homelabs, that's out the window. Do whatever you want/fits your needs best. This isn't the place where you'd likely find highly available networks, clustered or highly available services, UPS with battery banks, et. al.
I was wondering why the PSU is half the size of the compute unit housing. 15 years ago, sure, but today it just seems cheap and lazy on part of whoever designed it.
Caveat: I'm frequently mistaken, always keen to learn and reduce the error between my perception and reality!
>I'm not a hardware engineer, I've failed miserably in software engineering and now run a VPS host.
I’m curious how hard hosting VPS as a business was to get off the ground? I’ve worked 5 years previously as a Linux sysadmin, but am getting pretty bored at my current job (administering Cisco VOIP systems). Think I’d rather go back to that
In the US, many refurbished Pixel phones are Verizon variants which disallow OEM unlocking.
When was in college and had Sprint this was a nightmare since then I wanted root for unlimited hotspot (Sprint made it easy that way), but most refurbished Pixels were Verizon variants.
And I couldn't just use OnePlus because they were only designed GSM networks or later Verizon CDMA-less. Then, new Pixels were unaffordable for me, but parents insisted on using Sprint.
I ended up getting a Pixel 3 off Mercari (which I still own) just to keep root.
Now, I can afford a Pixel 10 Pro new (which I am right now), alongside spare Pixel 9 and OnePlus 13R units. But even then (a) my income is lower than when I worked at Microsoft and (b) The OnePlus was from a trade-in deal.
Oh man, sorry to hear that! On the other side of the pond, carrier-specific/locked phones haven't been a thing for ages. Haven't seen a carrier-specific phone since 2013 or 2014.
It is possible, but many people still buy them from their provider with financing or subsidies. That means people shopping for used Pixels who want to unlock the bootloader need to avoid the special Verizon variant which forbids unlocking the bootloader.
This is separate from SIM locking, which forbids use with another carrier. US carriers still do that, but are required to remove the lock after a while if the customer doesn't owe them money.
It's not clear why Verizon insists on permanently locked bootloaders or why Google agrees to it for Verizon when they don't do it on Pixels sold anywhere else.
Yep. I lost a restocking fee when I bought a used "unlocked" Pixel. Turned out it was not SIM locked, but it was impossible to unlock the bootloader. It was pretty easy to find a bootloader-unlockable Pixel once I knew what to look out for, but the first time I had no idea this was something you had to look out for.
> Unfortunately, I must recommend Windows 10/11 here, because then you don’t have to mess around with any drivers; it’s the simplest option.
When I worked at Microsoft but ran FreeBSD at home, I often used my work Windows laptop to install custom ROMs. This is because FreeBSD was finicky with adb.
Now I run Fedora and the Android drivers are pre-installed. I installed GrapheneOS on both a Pixel 10 Pro (main) and Pixel 9 (spare) that way.
On Windows, I've had more trouble with Android drivers than I did on non-Windows.
This has been my experience with Windows too. Airpods connect out of the box on Linux, but on Windows they would stop pairing every couple minutes until I fixed some drivers
Question: how a person can provide VPS host srevices without being a reseller? Did you own the hardware? I am super interested. Hey, I even would pay for a series of articles about this!
I used to do site/vps hosting (millions of sites); we just bought slightly older 1U rack servers off ebay (and later our rack neighbour in the hosting room, who always had to buy the latest for his clients allowed us to buy of him) and kept filling local racks. We paid for a large bad quality bandwidth pipe for the large bandwidth eaters and good quality for the smaller traffic properties; we served some % of traffic per host through the good and after that through the bad. The porn / warez or whatever people didn't care and the business or hobby folk were happy as well.
In the end it got too much work with that many servers, something is always broken ; we had some virtualisation and failover stuff, but you have to go and repair it. We were basically two fulltime guys + some freelance and that meant getting into a car and driving for an hour every other day, storm or ice on the roads, christmas or birthday, doesn't matter. It made good money and we sold nicely, but servers are loud and we have been so often there for hours that even with ear protection I think it messed something up. Also crawling in small spaces for wiring etc isn't great for your body. I did learn a lot about Linux and the popular packages; we had our own patches and versions of most to shield from 0-days and save processing waste to put more on one machine without it degrading quality.
I would not do it with reselling ; you have no control; when the police called us for illegal/child materials and so on, we were in charge of removing/blocking that; if you resell, they will likely first just shutdown everything you have and then ask you for an explanation. And after a few time delete you and that's it. Or when there is something wrong technically, you are left holding the bag anyway as many will just blame you (and then after 'some time' your service 'suddenly' is back). You can hire much more expensive stuff with much better support but in our experience, that does not help much when there is a LOT of abuse (and with millions of sites, you have a lot of abuse that you cannot check).
Abuse complaints come to the IP address owner. If you have your own IP addresses, you don't need to worry about having your vendor terminate your account for abuse.
This is something I'd love to know, too. I like servers, infrastructure, and terminals, so doing something like this has been in the back of my head for a while now
When I worked at Microsoft, I seldom used Azure for personal use due to it being expensive and complicated.
Whereas I have plenty of Fourplex.net servers because even on half the salary, it's affordable enough for 16 Tor exit relays and two personal web/email/Mastodon servers.
For providers like us, we have to lease IPv4. We came long after IPv4 was already depleted. IPv4 prices did go down. Despite that, the $15/year 128MB BuyVM plan is long-gone.
But for a new provider like us, we'd have to spend more than an established player like BuyVM or RackNerd who bought most of their servers pre-AI-boom.
For countries, if you meaning connecting to VPS, lot of countries have good IPv6 connectivity now.
For me both ISPs I use have native v6. This will differ from person to person.
It is inconcievably stupid that github, run by a massive tech company like Microsoft, has not migrated to ipv6. They're single-handedly holding back adoption.
There may indeed be some tracking that MS does via IPv4, but it's not a good way to do it.
I suspect any such tracking is essentially just some cruft that snuck in (either their own or legislative) in the early 2000s, and nobody thinks it's their problem to make go away.
That said, that IPv4 is a poor way to do tracking doesn't guarantee there's no manager demanding it: any corporation eventually gets someone with no technical knowledge demanding bad solutions.
Responsibility and controls. If the host/dc assigns a dedicated addresses the contract can be essentially "the customer assumes all liability behind traffic". With NAT/LB you need at the very least quite robust, evidence-grade monitoring mechanisms tagging all traffic and keeping historical data. In practice, some for of active abuse prevention is required, otherwise huge chunk of your address space is going to effectively linger in blacklist limbo.
That is, if being unreachable below "presentation layer" is acceptable in the first place, but I guess the question kind of presupposes this.
I am very hopeful of CXMT. But then then it could take a while for them to ramp up production. Maybe by then, the AI bubble would've burst.
One problem with US sanctions is it could hurt US companies too, like in the case of cutting-edge EUV and CXMT. This is when China is actually a hero and not a villain.
We can certainly do with less plastic junk and fast fashion. But on the high end it hard to argue that cheaper Chinese products are ever a bad thing.
If corporations in western (aligned) countries stopped feeding sovereign wealth funds and private equity with profits and actually invested something maybe they could compete with China more closely, even with whatever shenanigans the CPC get up to with state support.
We use ASRock Rack servers, mainly because the only option for our industry are OEMs like Supermicro and ASRock. Dell and HPE are non-starters, except for our "storage" offering.
Back in 2019, HPE was a good midrange option. Then came ASRock Rack who obliterated HPE with the X470D4U, relegating HPE to high-end enterprise servers. But also made Ryzen-based VPS hosts including yours truly, BuyVM, et al.
The funny thing is, I used eSIM on a Pixel 3, since it was the easiest way to activate on Sprint. Now, no big carrier will use a Pixel 3's eSIM.
But then on Sprint, they tried to copy the CDMA activation system on LTE whereas everyone else just used SIM cards directly. Sprint was very progressive on eSIM even if they were slow to VoLTE.
My Pixel 3 moved to a physical SIM due to switching to T-Mobile 3 months before the merger, and I've mostly used physical SIMs before the Pixel 10 Pro outside of international travel. I avoid MVNOs as my primary service because of the specter of eSIM-only phones, and that was pre-Pixel 10.
And yes, if my Pixel 10 Pro had a physical SIM card slot I'd use it.
Whereas Debian/Ubuntu have 5 years and RHEL/Alma/Rocky have 10 years.
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