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0.005 p/h ~ $3.60 per month for those who were wondering.



That's the rate though. For little sessions here and there during your working hours and per-minute billing, I feel like it'll be unusual to do more than say 5 hours a week even if you often forget to exit before the "garbage collector" turns it off for you. That gets you into below $1/month territory pretty easily.

Disclaimer: I work on Compute Engine but not Cloud Shell.


So $1.20 more per month than more powerful VPS from competitors like OVH.


I understand worrying about burn rate and all that, but when the entire service costs the same as a single cup of coffee per month, it might just not matter. How well it works, what features it provides, and how well it interfaces with the rest of the cloud services you're using are much, much more important concerns than saving a buck a month.


Well, not always. As a student, you don’t want to spend 4$ for a cloud console, plus 4$ for cloud IRC, plus 20$ for a VPS, plus 12$ for your phone contract, plus 120$ for a new phone every 2 years...

I – like most people – don’t let useless devices run on standby either, costing me upwards of 30$ a year for a TV on standby.

As a student, I don’t buy totally overpriced coffee that costs that much either.


You're well past the point of diminishing returns where it makes sense for you to focus your efforts more on increasing income rather than reducing expenditures further. If saving $1 per month is significant to you then it sounds like you've already cut your expenditures to the bone, and there's no more blood to squeeze from that stone. Even working a single hour per week at a part-time job would have better returns than extreme penny-pinching on unplugging appliances and rewriting entire applications to save a few bucks per month. I'm a frugal person, but not illogically so, and I know that income has no ceiling but expenditures definitely have a floor.


I’m a student, I have not much time to work during the day, and jobs during the night are not exactly growing on trees.

Also, I’d still cut expenditures equally. Even my parents – both of which have studied law – do this. Actually, most people I know do. Why waste money on useless devices if it takes only seconds to unplug them?


If you're capable of rewriting essential subscription web-based services from scratch instead of paying a few bucks a month for them, you're basically do have a part-time job at night, except that your few-$-per-month savings aren't paying you anything close to what you're worth. Rather than spending your time doing this, you should be doing some programming that actually pays you a good wage.


Yes, I should just get a job – but that is long-term more work, and still does not fix the issue of wanting to run FLOSS.


A sure sign of a weak argument is including the phrase "... like most people ..."

Do you really think most people unplug their televisions after using them?


Most people use socket strips with switches for their TV, yes. At 40ct per kWh, no one can afford to let that shit run 24/7.


You really believe "most people" use socket strips and a remote control to turn their tv's on and off each time? In the words of respected philosopher Nelson (from The Simpsons), "Ha Ha"


"most people" depends on where you live. In my region, obviously, this is the case.


Where is that? That's literally 4-6x more expensive than my electricity.


Germany, for example (Where I live). Most people don’t live in the US, and for most people wasting 1.20$ for a product where you save one or two lines of code to integrate it is not okay.

I seriously rewrote several web products myself that I'd have to normally pay 4$ or so per month for. I took over development for the QuasselDroid Android client because I could not afford IRCCloud. I ended up rewriting all the features of Reddit Gold last night as a browser extension because I can’t afford wasting money on Reddit Gold.

It’s problematic wasting money in one place, but for a dozen services at once? Nope, that’s gonna bankrupt a student who has no income except for a small grant.


I followed this thread with much interest, and I'm glad I did.

I was just gilded this afternoon, and was able to confirm for the first time that new comment highlighting is not particularly hard for RES to pull off, it just doesn't do it for political reasons.

Hence, the only way would be to quietly develop an extension for the purpose... or, strike the jackpot, and come across someone who's done just that :D

Might I borrow your extension? =P

(My email address is in my profile if you prefer to respond that way)


The extension currently is designed to only run on my system, as I wanted to be able to sync comment times between my computers.

So you’ll need to write an endpoint that stores the data somewhere, I'll link you my current solution.

First, the actual script that I load: http://cdn.kuschku.de/reddit-silver/reddit-silver-comments.j...

Second, the way I load it into the page: http://hastebin.com/raw/sugixafeve.js (You’ll need to adapt that, too, as Userscripts or extensions can’t easily interface with the rest of the page normally)

Third, the code of the endpoint that I use: http://hastebin.com/raw/gipubidevu.php

Last: You’ll need to set up localStorage.authkey to be equal to the auth key you set in the php script, you’ll want to host the PHP script on some server, and you’ll want to create an SQLite database on that server, give your PHP environment write access to that database, and initialize the database with a table:

    CREATE TABLE `reddit-silver-comments`( `thread-id` TEXT PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, `values` TEXT NOT NULL);
After that, just modify the URL in the first script to point instead of my server to your server

    ------------------------
If you want, I can write you an alternative version that stores the data in local IndexedDB, but then it’s not synced between devices.


Wow, thanks!

You've definitely given me some awesome ideas with this. My implementation is likely to be slightly different, but your links are an awesome start and will definitely come in handy.

I'll likely take a while to get to actually implementing my idea (>.>), but I think it'd be cool to share my implementation when I (finally) finish it. How best can I get back to you in perhaps a month or two?


Sure, contact me at newsletter@kuschku.de (that email goes per default to my spam folder, if you send me an email today I’ll whitelist your address).

And the implementation is very simple: I just store every timestamp when you visit a thread (unless you visited it in the last 5 minutes already), and then just display those in a list.

Highlighting then all comments that were created after that timestamp is pretty simple.


> Germany, for example.

40c per kWh is outrageous. This certainly goes a long way in explaining the dismal failure of Tesla in Germany so far.


Nah, Electricity is still cheaper than gas. Which is currently at 9$ per US Gallon.


Your TV uses 25 watts on standby?


No, but electricity is 40 cents per kWh.


Well, that's not typical of most of the world, and that's still a lot more watts than something on standby should be using.


That’s typical for most of the EU. A group of 500 million people. More than the US. Meaning, there are more people unplugging TVs to save money than there people who are able to waste their money on Starbucks coffees.

And if more people are unplugging their TVs to save money than there are people wasting money on Starbucks coffees, then maybe, just maybe, saving 1.20$ per month on a VPS is worth it.


I guess wikipedia needs an update because by its numbers the europe average seems to be half that.


I normally am quite reserved about language use, but comparing google to OVH? Seriously? OVH is a dysfunctional company that somehow turns a profit.

We almost lost our company's domain name twice due to their incompetence.


Why is OVH dysfunctional? My dedicated server is running splendid for 2y now.


Their customer service is notoriously... "hit or miss."


Sounds like Google.

(Used OVH for several years, but my server with them has an uptime of 1034 days as of today, so customer service might very well be useless - I've never had a reason to talk to them)


I used OVH and had a terrible, terrible, demanded a refund experience.

But I have something that approximates bad luck. See my earlier posts about Project Fi.


For non-critical things, they provide relatively good value for money. For critical things, I wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.


Please, make your contribution worth something by explaining your issues with OVH.

I've been a very happy customer for years now.


We paid OVH for the renewal of our company's domain name several weeks before its expiration. This domain hosted our google apps for business and more. We received an invoice and bank statements for that. OVH never renewed with the registry.

We only got to know about this because of a standard email warning from the country's registry (not OVH as a registrar) itself about quarantaine and expiry!

We spent over eight hours over several days talking to OVH. I have been able to verify that the problem was on the side of OVH only, and not on the registry's side at all.

In the end, we made a direct payment to the registry to make sure the domain was not deleted.


Twice? Well....


Which is why we moved away from them of course...


Right, ovh is fine as long as you don't need their support




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