18:16 <kentonv> ugh google cloud is deprecating something or other API and it says our web server and Alpha VMs are still using the API but I don't know why they would be

18:17 <kentonv> it's probably some google utility service on the machine doing it but who knows what or what will break if I don't fix it, maybe I won't be able to log in anymore???

18:17 <kentonv> guess I'd better rebuild the machines from scratch

18:18 <abliss1> https://imgflip.com/i/4gphe8

18:19 <JacobWeisz[m]> What API?

18:19 <kentonv> machine metadata API. Basically there's an HTTP API exposed to each machine on a special IP address

18:20 <kentonv> and the original version of the API was too SSRF-prone so they deprecated it

18:20 <kentonv> which is a valid concern, sure

18:21 <JacobWeisz[m]> Opinion: Every Google API deprecation is an excellent time to move off Google services.

18:21 <kentonv> but like, these machines don't have SSRF vulns, pretty sure, and so this is just needless work for me

18:22 <JacobWeisz[m]> That seems pretty unlikely to break Sandstorm... you think it'd possibly just murder the VM somehow though?

18:22 <kentonv> I think it's very possible it will break SSH

18:22 <kentonv> they have a thing where they deliver SSH keys to the machine via metadata...

18:22 <kentonv> so that would be rather bad

18:23 <kentonv> yeah I'm tempted to switch to Digital Ocean but I'd have to transfer 130GB of data

18:23 <kentonv> just for Alpha... more for the web server

18:23 <kentonv> and I'm lazy

18:24 <JacobWeisz[m]> Like a third of Alpha is the app index grain now, I see...

18:25 <kentonv> surprised it's not more TBH

18:26 <kentonv> heh just the bandwidth will cost me like $15. Not that I care about $15 but it's amusing.

18:29 <JacobWeisz[m]> I wonder... so it costs money to move stuff out of cloud services usually, due to data egress fees. ...Is that concept legal in the EU? Since you own your data and have a right to request it.

18:36 <kentonv> heh I imagine any reasonable court would find those laws aren't intended to apply at that level.

18:43 <JacobWeisz[m]> I don't know. Google Takeouts can be pretty huge and they'd probably take issue with Google charging for them.

18:44 <JacobWeisz[m]> The EU lacks corporate personhood, so I imagine the right to your personal data wouldn't apply to any corporate accounts, but I wonder if a valid case could be made for personally-owned accounts.

18:45 <kentonv> I mean, I don't know if they'd treat low-level cloud infrastructure the same as application-level personal data

18:51 <kentonv> oof, Digital Ocean would be *much* more expensive for the RAM and disk requirements

18:56 <isd> Relevant: https://medium.com/@steve.yegge/dear-google-cloud-your-deprecation-policy-is-killing-you-ee7525dc05dc?source=rss-c1ec701babb7------2

19:06 <kentonv> yep, that blog post is great

19:07 <kentonv> infrastructure has to just keep working forever. You cannot just go around telling people to rewrite things

19:44 <JacobWeisz[m]> Yegge posts have always knocked it out of the park.

19:55 <abliss1> "Google Cloud is still #3... and according to some internal sources, there’s some concern that they may sink to #4 soon" -- Is he saying they're behind Amazon and... Microsoft azure? What would the third other competitor be?

19:56 <abliss1> IBM? Alibaba?

19:59 <kentonv> I imagine IBM, they are way bigger than you think

20:00 <kentonv> you don't hear about them as much since they pretty exclusively court gigantic enterprise customers

20:01 <isd> Reminder: office hours tonight

20:02 <abliss1> yeah, i don't hear anything about azure either, but i'm willing to believe they're big in enterprise.

20:04 <abliss1> speaking of office hours... sorry to have drifted away without saying anything, but I kept hoping that the Remote Learning pain would ease and I'd get some more time to contribute to sandstorm. But now I have a new job starting next week, so I should probably excuse myself in a slightly-more-formal way. Sorry I never got around to doing all those things I said I'd do. :/

20:21 <kentonv> I'm going to have to take alpha down for a few minutes for migration

20:34 <kentonv> going down now

20:51 <kentonv> it's back up

20:51 <kentonv> that wasn't so bad

21:04 <kentonv> except I can't get the smtp port open

21:08 <isd> abliss: no worries. Best of luck in the new job.

21:10 <TimMc> abliss1: Are you on the teacher or the student side of the mess?

21:21 <kentonv> to be honest I cannot tell whether SMTP is open or not, because just about everyone blocks *outgoing* SMTP so I cannot test it from anywhere. Sheesh.

21:21 <JacobWeisz[m]> Oracle is probably another silently large cloud. They have Zoom for one.

21:22 <JacobWeisz[m]> And allegedly soon TikTok...

21:22 <kentonv> probably no one cares about incoming SMTP to alpha... right?

21:30 <abliss1> TimMc: parent of a kindergartner and a 2nd grader. Onsite 3 mornings / wk, remote the rest of the time. Exhausting.

21:37 <JacobWeisz[m]> Probably not, kentonv

21:37 <JacobWeisz[m]> Should anyone be using Alpha as their mail server? I think the answer, from a technical sense, is no.

21:38 <kentonv> I think we only ever had one app that could receive e-mail and it was bad

21:42 <JacobWeisz[m]> I mean I think we had Roundcube and Mailpile, but yeah, the experience was not there.

21:42 <kentonv> hah totally forgot about mailpile (especially since I think it was never on the "new" app market?)

21:42 <JacobWeisz[m]> Beyond the fact that probably nobody should be doing production work on Alpha in 2020.

21:42 <JacobWeisz[m]> Correct, it never got polished up with all the metadata and stuff.

21:43 <JacobWeisz[m]> And the lead guy on it has come and gone from working on it for ages. Roundcube Next died too, for all the hope modern open source mail was gonna have.

21:53 <kentonv> did roundcube next ever deliver anything? I seem to recall Sandstorm gave them $10k...

22:03 <JacobWeisz[m]> I mean, I think there's a repo.

22:22 <isd> kentonv: can confirm SMTP is reachable on alpha from my VPS

23:14 <XgF> <JacobWeisz[m]> I wonder... so it costs money to move stuff out of cloud services usually, due to data egress fees. ...Is that concept legal in the EU? Since you own your data and have a right to request it. <-- organisations are allowed to charge reasonable handling fees

23:56 <ill_logic> Sorry for missing office hours twice - I don't want to miss this debate.