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The micro spots I'm using are usually closer to $0.003/hr. Amazon rounds up 35 mins to 1 hour, so typical cost is $0.003 per button click. Least profitable conversion nets ~$3.50, so if I get 0.1% conversion it breaks even.

Of course abuse or market fluctuations could be costly, but there are built in limits. And thanks!

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Don't forget bandwidth costs. I could get about 100mbps to an external server. At $0.12/GB, 100mbps * 35 minutes = 25GB = $3. Most clicks won't cost you this much, but you should definitely keep an eye on this. Maybe set a bandwidth cap somehow.

Also, I noticed a public key in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. Is that intentional or just part of how EC2 APIs work?

Other than that, great job. I would definitely use this service.

Thanks, I'll keep an eye on bandwidth. The authorized key is a leftover from bringing up the server, I'll consider deleting it automatically.

Curious to hear what you and others use this for--I built it because it's cool, but still trying to put my finger on the biggest use case(s). So far people have told me they're having fun with 'rm -rf /', fork bombs, and getting a decent python shell in the browser ;).

I think the bit I missed was the "you can pay to keep it longer" bit. It makes sense now with that critical piece of information :)

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