AlexITC

Simple, use services providing a fixed price like DigitalOcean, with services with variable cost like Github Actions, we just set a monthly limit. I avoid services where this isn't possible unless I'm confident that there is no way to get into a huge bill.

For some reason the link isn't complete, this one worked for me: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Lang...

Hi hn,

Since I shared the AudioCraft cool project with my family, they were keen to try it but there does not seem to be any live version from it, I decided to host my own for a while and detailed my steps in this guide.

There is a live MusicGen demo app for hn users to try, I don't know how long it will last online because the server doesn't seem to be capable of handling many concurrent requests: https://audiocraft.wiringbits.net/

In a preview hn discussion about AudioCraft I saw a few people that weren't sure how to execute it, this guide can hopefully help the community (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36972347).

The way to deploy this version is the old-school way, similar to a previous hn discussion (https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/how-i-run-my-servers) that generated some interest.

Overall, this piece of technology is pretty interesting and fun, I hope the guide helps.

Thanks.

These look very cool, I wonder if there is anything supporting rokutv to set photo wallpapers picked from my server, do you happen to know any?

Thanks.

- Postgres over mysql/mongo/sqlite, I'm yet to come up with a use case where Postgres doesn't fit well for a while, while mysql is considerably better than before, it just bit me again where I had to run `mysql_tzinfo_to_sql` before tz conversions work, guess what? others didn't had to do this.

- Github-actions over circleci/travisci/etc, while I miss features from time to time, github-actions adoption allows to easily find most workflows you can need, having it with github itself is also handy.

- Integration tests with a real database mounted by docker, some people complain that this is slow but its worth it given the confidence it provides, in-memory databases or fake databases could be appealing due to the speed but they are annoying to maintain and never behave like production.

- DigitalOcean over AWS/GCP/Azure, for most projects, DO is enough, its simple to use and predictable pricing is something I could never get from other clouds.

  Location: C-Corp from Chicago
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: No
  Technologies: Scala/Scala.js, Java, Rust, Postgres, Pulumi, Ansible, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Ruby, Blockchain.
  Résumé/CV: linkedin.com/in/alexis-hernandez or github.com/AlexITC
  Email: hn at alexitc dot com

> Alexis consistently proposed solutions that were both practical and innovative, illustrating his commitment to our project's success above his own billable hours

I grabbed a piece shared by one of my customers, there are more comments at https://wiringbits.net (you can ring my phone from there).

I'm generalist that commonly deals with tricky problems, broken projects, flaky infrastructure, etc.

My goal with projects is that they work smoothly without much maintenance.

I'm looking for part-time work to fund my own product, I can increase my commitment temporary to deliver important milestones.

I have worked in anything from tiny companies to even enterprises where we delivered projects to FAANG.

SEEKING WORK | REMOTE | CONTRACT

> Alexis consistently proposed solutions that were both practical and innovative, illustrating his commitment to our project's success above his own billable hours

I grabbed a piece shared by one of my customers, there are more comments at https://wiringbits.net (you can ring my phone from there).

I'm generalist that commonly deals with tricky problems, broken projects, flaky infrastructure, etc.

My goal with projects is that they work smoothly without much maintenance.

I'm looking for work to fund my own product, my time-commitment would increase/decrease based on your needs, we can work together for a few weeks or a few years.

I have worked in anything from tiny companies to even enterprises where we delivered projects to FAANG.

These are the tools I commonly work with, I'm happy picking new ones: Scala/Scala.js, Java, Rust, Postgres, Pulumi, Ansible, JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Ruby, Blockchain.

There are many code samples at https://github.com/AlexITC

The next AI tool for catching these people?

That's a reason to keep doing it, 6 months of income is a considerable amount.

I have been on the other side, people wanting to hire me to be the front-door either take interviews or the front-door with customers, the last time I was offered $xx/h + 20% from each project's revenue.

Darknet dairies has an interesting episode about this: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/133/

It's a real problem which makes it harder for people like me that are legitimately working remotely. This has existed for a long time but it wasn't as popular because remote working was unpopular before the pandemic.

> Really frustrating because it's making us have to do silly things like require photo ID verification over video on the first screening call

Unfortunately, this wouldn't solve it, a person can join the calls and get someone else to do the work.

Last year I tried but switched to Xorg, screen sharing neither xbindkeys worked with Wayland, I wrote a bit about that at https://wiringbits.net/accessibility/2022/12/05/macos-like-p...

We did it and I'd definitely do it again but my whole team is in the same timezone.

Our situation is a bit particular because we sell software development services while using the funds to create our own product.

I'd suggest you to think again about being fully distributed, getting it right is hard and you may want to invest such a effort in the product itself.

You have already got many useful comments, I can tell that what you need ask for is hard to get because these kind of tasks are not lucrative.

I'd suggest you to consider an alternative, hire someone for a retainer covering up to X hours/month, there is a high chance that this person will be able to put more time when necessary and you will pay the difference.

The best way to find someone to handle this would be by devs you already know/trust or referrals.

Upwork/Fiverr could work, still, some luck is necessary to find a reliable dev on those platforms. If you want to take this route, I'd also suggest Codementor, try many people with small tasks until you find someone you are comfortable with.

I support others about posting on the monthly `Who's hiring` thread.

At last, we have this kind of engagement with a few of our customers, I don't know if we can support you but a call could be worth it (you can find a phone widget in my website that rings my phone). We are working on our own product which is funded by working on these kind of tasks.

Good luck.

> No one is talking about redundancy though. I love setups like this but prod environments need robust forms of redundancy

Not really, there are many kinds of apps that don't need such redundancy.

> Also, none of the solutions discussed here gracefully handle new connections on the new service while waiting for all connections to terminate before shutting down the old service. Maybe some of the more esoteric Ansible do idk.

I have dealt with this in the code with shutdown hooks on the server, waiting for existing requests to finish its processing and reject new requests, clients will just end up retrying, not all apps can accept this but many can.

I guess, still, the image needs to be built somewhere, my bet is that you will do this on the server itself, its unnecessary complexity.

Interesting post, I liked the deploy script that keeps the app versioned in the server, which is helpful to do rollbacks.

I have been running a similar setup for many years with some differences:

1. Use `EnvironmentFile` on systemd to load environment variables instead of bundling secrets into the binary.

2. Set `LimitNOFILE=65535` on the service to avoid reaching the file open limit on the app.

3. Set `StandardError=journal` and `StandardOutput=journal` so that `journalctl` can display the app logs.

4. Use postgres instead of sqlite, DO is taking regular backups for me and postgres maintenance is almost null for simple apps.

5. Nginx can have password-protected endpoints, which are useful to expose the app logs without requiring to ssh into the VM.

6. Nginx can also do pretty good caching for static assets + API responses that barely change, this is very helpful for scaling the app.

At last, I use ansible but I'm considering if its worth it, replacing it seems simple and I'd be able to keep a single deploy file that runs faster than ansible.

> If on AWS, and if your servers are behind a load balancer, just install a certificate on those. Isn't that a little better?

My take from the post is that author's goal is simplicity, AWS isn't simple, also AWS load balancers are expensive.

Any reason to use systemd timers instead of cron jobs?

> Doing it with rust - especially cross compiling from mac to linux - is relatively painful

I have used cargo-dist and the process is quite smooth, it could be worth giving it a try.

> I think I would use Ansible to setup the servers and use it for the deployment script as well.

I do use ansible but I'm reconsidering whether it is worth it, while my scripts have barely changed in the last 7 years, they tend to be slow and require me keeping multiple files around.

Related to debugging, you can expose the app logs through a password-protected endpoint by nginx.

The author focuses on simplicity, he tries to handle everything with a single file for the app + a single file for the database.

Unnecessary overhead gets introduced with docker, for example, now you need to depend on a container-registry + the authentication to pull those images from the server + other stuff.

Go for it! It isn't as complex as it seems, then, you can decide whether it is worth it.

One advantage from DO is the regular backups.

Like you said, you can go for executing docker compose on the server if you want to do it fast.

I do the same, a VM per app, unless it's about static websites which I can host so many on a single VM.

I run a setup that's very similar to the author's one, but, I run postgres.

For a simple setup, postgres maintenance is practically null.

The way I do it is to set the `EnvironmentFile` entry in the service definition.

I'd guess that the author's idea is that if someone gains access to the server, the secrets would be either dumped from the binary or the environment file, if so, why to bother with another file?

Rate limiting and caching is another big advantage, setting it up with nginx is a piece of cake, setting it up in the app, not so much.

We are on the same boat, my ansible scripts have barely changed in the past 7 years, still, I have been wondering about getting rid of ansible for simple scripts to handle everything, the main reasons being speed and simplicity (1 file vs many files).

Let's see whether hn works again as the support channel for Stripe just like it did yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36403607

Good luck.

I don't see much advantage from Kotlin unless you are stuck with an old jdk (like the one from Android), still, the latest jdk is still far away from current Scala.

Scala stdlib is considerably better than the one from Kotlin, one detail I dislike about Kotlin collections is that `map` invocations always result in a List.