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SoylentNews subscriber here. I also pay to host my own stuff on Linode and use Namecheap as my registrar. In addition, internet routable IPv6 at home.

Frankly, websites that exist solely because of advertising can die in a fire. Nothing of value will be lost.

All that needs to happen is some serious momentum towards IPv6 adoption and federated protocols such as XMPP. DNS might remain a bugbear, but it would be neat if an ISP wanted to offer either 6RD or native IPv6 and also allow me to set up say vel-ex-tech.customers.awesomeisp.com and give me some way to point that at 2600:1337:543:8A30::1 (or ::2 depending on how they're routing from my personal /64 if ::1 is on the ISP side). Not saying that will ever happen. Hey, maybe it has the side effect of giving people who know wtf they're doing with technology an escape from Eternal September.

(Also note: if I wanted to have vel-ex-tech.customers.awesomeisp.com point to my desktop, I'd add 2600:1337:543:8A30::10/64 say as an address and have the XMPP server bind to that address. Then for non-server traffic use IPv6 privacy extensions to generate a random address in the /64, so on the rare occasion I go to MyFace, one day I'm coming from 2600:1337:543:8A30::DEAD:BEEF, then next day 2600:1337:543:8A30::1234.)

Granted, another alternative is some kind of micropayment service. I want a way to direct my money towards websites that are doing actual investigative journalism. I feel the hidden danger of advertisement-based services is that the mainstream players like WSJ, WaPo, etc get all the pageviews simply for having a brand when what I really want is something like Breitbart or The Root (flame away, well aware of both sites' biases, just examples of the kind of detail in reporting I want). Sites that repost repost the AP and Reuters feeds don't need my money--I can go straight to AP and Reuters myself. (Hey, they deserve at least a few peanuts for cranking out short summaries of events in different parts of the world!)

No, as long as it will com back up, with all data in-tact, it has plenty of value. Or are you saying there is no value in a remote warehouse full of your backup tapes because you can't access them immediately and sometimes the facility closes down and you can't access them at all? Not that anyone should be using GitHub as a backup solution, but it's the same principle: a datastore.

If your data, and ability to access it at all times, is important, you plan for that. In this case, that means hosting your own remote alongside GitHub and configuring Git to push to both; that way, when Git is up, you get all of the added value it brings (and there is much) and, when it is down, you can still clone your repo from a known location, without having to collaborate with another developer, who may be unavailable, to clone from his repo.

You can do this for $5/mo if your repo is <15GB or so. Or, if you want something just ever so slightly more reliable, you can do the same for $10/mo and let me get a little commission on the deal (and get an extra 4GB of storage). Hell, if you're willing to trust me with temporary access, I'll even set it up for you (one time, maintenance is on you) on Linode if you've used my referral link.

Linode is a quite good VPS provider. They have several stock distro installs to choose from (Linux and BSD), and then the sky is the limit. They also pay for user-generated documentation, and the focus is on FLOSS software that you can install and configure on your node. This isn't some PHP MySQL crap. I've been a happy user for years now, running a private mail, web, and IRC server. The prices are quite than reasonable. I'm not sure if they offer Xen nodes anymore since KVM is the way to go.

My nodes at Fremont haven't been affected yet. Soylentnews, also hosted on Linode, seems to be doing well too.

http://status.linode.com/incid...

Since your Google appears to be broken

https://www.linode.com/

They are a "Cloud Hosting" company. Which makes the recent events quite the Lulz.

The landscape has changed. VPS used to have a large additional cost compared to shared hosting. This effectively limited smaller budgets to the web programming languages the shared hosting provider supported - mostly PHP. VPS is now as cheap as shared hosting:
Digital Ocean VPS starts at $5/month
Linode VPS starts at $10/month
There are even sites dedicated to just cataloging inexpensive VPS hosting
Personally, I just started using Digital Ocean on the $5 month plan; just the low latency of their VPS makes it a big step up from my prior shared hosting provider (Bluehost), despite the same cost.

Linode is comparable. Better in some ways, worse in others, but overall about on par.

I just spent a bunch of time messing with free AWS instances. It was a great way to larn up on Linux stuff.

I'm a software engineer; not a Linux sysadmin, so I needed to learn a lot (still do).

The AWS stuff was enough to get me to the point where I spun up a Linode VPS, and I've been setting up my "real" server there.

As an educator, you could probably get a deal on some kind of cloud server arrangement. Maybe Amazon, maybe Rackspace. There's a few of them out there, but they tend to end up resolving to these two.

That way, all the grunt work is SEP.

http://blog.linode.com/2013/04/16/security-incident-update/ However I'm not knowledgeable enough wrt security to say if it's just damage control or not.

Some details that people have been able to find so far.

1) The guy claimed to have hacked ColdFusion using some 0-day exploit. He could have just been going off this recent Adobe bulletin. But this bulletin was before the Linode announcement, so who knows. http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb13-10.html

This hotfix resolves a vulnerability that could be exploited to impersonate an authenticated user (CVE-2013-1387).
This hotfix resolves a vulnerability that could be exploited by an unauthorized user to gain access to the ColdFusion administrator console (CVE-2013-1388).

2) One of the files in the directory list that has a unique name is actually accessible on linode.com: http://www.linode.com/y_key_57284cb2de704e02.html

3) Looks like seclists (nmap people) were targeted by this hack: http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2013/q2/3

4) It is not clear if credit cards were compromised or not. While this "ryan" guy claims they were, we won't know unless the list is published or Linode admits to it.

http://status.linode.com/2012/03/manager-security-incident.html

ok.. apparently it was their fault

To my knowledge, there was only a single incident, it was fixed as soon as it was discovered, and it was disclosed. I think they handled the situation well.

I am surprised that it took this long for it to reach /.

Linode.com had already patched the items last month. During an emergency but scheduled update round (took less than 30mins per host) and most users did not notice any issues since they were given more than 7 days advanced notice of the emergency update. [linode uses XEN on intel].

http://blog.linode.com/2012/06/13/xen-security-advisories-and-how-we-handled-them/

What can I do with my Linode?

It's probably easier to tell you what you cannot do: Nothing illegal and nothing that interferes with other customers and services. Our Terms of Service document is located here: Terms of Service

In other words, they have stated that their product can be used for any intended purpose, except things that are illegal or interfere with their services.

Like any vendor, Linode has included language in their contract which limits their liability. This is standard language, and it operates according to the following principal, which originated in landlord/tenant law: Linode has no control over the value or sensitivity of the property that you store on its site, so you must get insurance against the loss of this property yourself. No landlord/host wants to act as an insurance company, and they are in no position to do so. I can put anything I want in a rented space; it could be a $5,000,000.00 supercomputer, or a $30,000,000.00 Van Gogh. If there is a leak in my landlord's roof and a drop of water destroys the supercomputer, I must look to my own insurance policy, because I am the one why owns this property. If I want to store $15,000 in cash, I am not going to rent a storage unit and leave it lying all over the floor (the equivalent of what these Linode users did). I am going to put it in a BANK, which is a business specifically designed to store one type of thing, and which provides insurance against its loss.

Here's a link to the TOS: http://www.linode.com/tos.cfm

THIS POST DOES NOT CONSTITUTE LEGAL ADVICE OR CREATE AN ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP. ANY LEGAL ADVICE MUST BE TAILORED TO YOUR INDIVIDUAL NEEDS BY AN ATTORNEY LICENSED IN YOUR JURISDICTION.

http://status.linode.com/2012/03/manager-security-incident.html

If anyone (like me) was wondering if there was any confirmation that linode accepted blame other than from the person who was robbed, there is.

http://status.linode.com/2012/03/manager-security-incident.html

Linode is actually rather lucky this person who did this only went for 8 machines. They could have been in a whole lot more trouble when someone got access like this.

http://www.linode.com/tos.cfm

Section 9, paragraph 1:

Subscriber acknowledges that the service provided is of such a nature that service can be interrupted for many reasons other than the negligence of Linode.com and that damages resulting from any interruption of service are difficult to ascertain. Therefore, subscriber agrees that Linode.com shall not be liable for any damages arising from such causes beyond the direct and exclusive control of Linode.com. Subscriber further acknowledges that Linode.com's liability for its own negligence may not in any event exceed an amount equivalent to charges payable by subscriber for services during the period damages occurred. In no event shall Linode.com be liable for any special or consequential damages, loss or injury. Linode.com is not responsible for any damages your business may suffer. Linode.com does not make implied or written warranties for any of our services. Linode.com denies any warranty or merchantability for a specific purpose. This includes loss of data resulting from delays, non-deliveries, wrong delivery, and any and all service interruptions caused by Linode.com.

Hands down best I have ever used. Excellent support 24/7. www.linode.com

Hands down winners .... Linode

More power to you for running your own mail server, but if you hadn't chosen a technical profession or hobby, I doubt you would even know where to start or that it was even possible. If you know what you're doing, it's always easy.

Sorry, that's just not true. I've seen several people who weren't IT professionals, had never seen a bash prompt before, and had nearly no starting knowledge get a VPS and get basic mail services up and running in less than a day. Guides like this help a lot with that sort of thing. Or you could just install Zimbra.

My telling you it's possible fixes the "not knowing it's possible" part, and now you can tell other people it's possible.

I've been a customer for what feels like 10 years now. Their support is great, they have knowledgable people and yes, you do get root. You can have console access, just not graphical console access. (Who would want X running on a colocated server anyway?)

Here's their faq: http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm - They've got a great community, go pop on IRC on irc.oftc.net and join #linode. Ask your questions there if there's something you want to know that isn't in the FAQ.

Here's a referral link - you don't really need to use it, but if you do I'll get some free service as a thank you for referring you.

http://www.linode.com/?r=8304c52b0c2b67372d5dcbe998ee4e04271275d6

I've been a customer for what feels like 10 years now. Their support is great, they have knowledgable people and yes, you do get root. You can have console access, just not graphical console access. (Who would want X running on a colocated server anyway?)

Here's their faq: http://www.linode.com/faq.cfm - They've got a great community, go pop on IRC on irc.oftc.net and join #linode. Ask your questions there if there's something you want to know that isn't in the FAQ.

Here's a referral link - you don't really need to use it, but if you do I'll get some free service as a thank you for referring you.

http://www.linode.com/?r=8304c52b0c2b67372d5dcbe998ee4e04271275d6

I have two right now: one at Linode (a 512 with Debian, http://linode.com/ and one at Webfusion UK (http://www.webfusion.co.uk/virtual-private-servers/starter/ with Ubuntu) ... with Linode is easier to manage your VPS, you can even have alternate images stored and load the one you need, with WF is easier to manage your sites, if you host sites ...

I don't mean to pick on linode in particular but last i checked their west coast facility was hurricane electric, fremont 2.

In their defense, they are in many datacenters. Also, I wouldn't say Linode is a "cheap VPS provider" - they're one of the pricier ones, particularly if you look at the bandwidth.

I use a Linode 512 to do web development, run automated tasks (Twitter updates, website production), and keep current on new technologies. It has hosted application servers including Openfire XMPP, NGINX, Redmine, and I'd read of others hosting Asterix and many others. Its a server that doesn't go down due to local power or internet outages. Although the Linode team provides top notch support, I really haven't had to use it. The tools are great and the service just works!

I used to do sysadmin work professionally, and I still do it personally (I have a Linode VPS) where I host my personal e-mail, website, jabber server, and personal e-mail of family members. It's just one of those things that as a geek a lot of us end up doing.

One of the unspoken golden rules of trust was this: don't fucking read other people's e-mail. Period.

Now I do information security, where I keep my employer's network safe. This includes both external, and internal threats - such as domain admins going rogue, and abusing their powers (I've seen it happen, and wrote up the incident). It really bothers me that 1 out of 4 "IT Professionals" are unprofessional enough to violate the trust that has been granted them.

D) Semi-reliable, always connected hardware to run it on.*
E) Semi-reliable, fairly-fast, connection to run it through.**
F) Sufficient, reliable income to afford a commercial DSL or better internet connection because hosting such a site over most residential plans is a violation of TOS.***

My VPS costs me less than $20 a month at Linode. I run my blog and several other sites off of it. Less full-featured hosting is available even more cheaply. Why would I buy my own hardware to run a web server?

I have FaceBook pick up my RSS feed. My FB "friends" can read my posts there, but if FB collapses I still have my content.

Depending on the amount of email you want/need to host, you could turn to a vps like Linode. I have a few small servers with them and their performance is great. There is a small cost associated with it but that is probably well worth it considering you are obviously posing potential important emails.

Get a VPS and a VPN and call it day. You have complete control of both ends. Its easy, cheap, safe, and secure.

It costs me 20 bucks for a server with incredible performance and lets my laptop and android cell VPN in from anywhere.

Simple as that.

Easiest solution you have full control of:

VPS + VPN= secure. cheap. safe.

It will cost you 20 bucks per month for a reliable system you know is secure because you control the other end. I use both my laptops an android phone to connect to my vpn when ever using public wifi.

These days it's easy to build a simple FLAPS Firebird+ Linux+ Apache+ Php+ SSL style or FUNP Firebird + Ubuntu+Nginx+Php/Python/Rails virtual server

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddzwj4jw_112ddwrd52h

You can buy a simple vps and install what you want there (Firebird php , rails ,
django ...)
I give you some options but there are more to choose from
http://www.linode.com/
http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix_vserver/vserver-produktmatrix/

It's quite easy to install and start on ubuntu for example
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Firebird2.5

(i didn't included howto connect and howto secure the server)

I had about 30 domains with GoDaddy, and was very unhappy with their user interface and customer service. I wanted to be able to make mass changes to the domains, such as name servers. I tried a few different ones and settled on gkg.net. It's not the prettiest, but it's inexpensive and reliable, and the website UI is simple (no crazy Ajax, Flash interface, browser requirements, etc). For my highly important business domains, I went with DynDNS, which is slightly more expensive, but has a clean and beautiful site, offers various other services I use, and has a theoretically more reliable infrastructure, since they run DNS and registration for big names. I've been very happy with both.
Oh, and I also had a virtual server with GoDaddy, which I switched to Linode, and SSL certificates, which I switched to theSSLstore.com. Extremely happy with those too. And extremely happy to finally be rid of GoDaddy.

DBMail. I use it on a Linode host (small fee every month).

Why don't people in China and Australia just get Cheap Linux Servers in the US and just tunnel into them when they want to hit some blocked content? I use mine whenever I travel and/or use public wifi. Then I know anything I do on the web is encrypted until it his my server in NJ.

That is a valid way of bypassing the filter, but the main point is that we shouldn't have to resort to anything like that to be able to view the internet uncensored.

Why don't people in China and Australia just get Cheap Linux Servers in the US and just tunnel into them when they want to hit some blocked content? I use mine whenever I travel and/or use public wifi. Then I know anything I do on the web is encrypted until it his my server in NJ.

A Linode + putty = done

First: Contrast the behavior of big companies like Verizon who consistenly reduce their level of service with that of companies like Linode, who consistently increase the level of service offered to their customers for no additional charge: http://blog.linode.com/2010/06/16/linode-turns-7-big-ram-increase. THAT is how you ensure customer loyalty. Sometimes squeezing every last penny out of customers isn't the best way to do business.

Woah... as a Linode customer who hadn't yet seen the announcement, thank you very much. Rebooted my server and got more allocated memory - awesome!

First: Contrast the behavior of big companies like Verizon who consistenly reduce their level of service with that of companies like Linode, who consistently increase the level of service offered to their customers for no additional charge: http://blog.linode.com/2010/06/16/linode-turns-7-big-ram-increase. THAT is how you ensure customer loyalty. Sometimes squeezing every last penny out of customers isn't the best way to do business.

Second: When I purchased my smartphone, I didn't like being forced to purchase the "unlimited" plan for $30/month. Since the phone has WiFi and I'm usually near a WiFi access point, I was willing to rely on that to save some money. Instead I had to drop a second phone from the plan so my monthly bill didn't increase too much. If their new data plans include limitied but reasonable data allowances for a lower cost, I'm actually ok with that. The real problem is that it seems many (most?) current smartphones don't easily allow 3G to be disabled until needed. Or deprioritized with respect to WiFi - eg. Use WiFi preferentially when in range, only fall back to 3G if necessary and only for the apps configured to do so. (Note I say *easily* - I know data can be turned off but it's a PITA. The normal state is "data always on".) Given that these devices are constantly accessing the network, if simply having the phone on with data enabled puts people in danger of incurring overage charges when using the standard plans, they (Verizon) did it wrong. The new plans should take "normal" use into account, be less expensive than current plans, and provide reasonable options for heavy data users. Then this move might actually be a good one, benefiting everyone.

A VPS is rented space on hardware in the same way you rent an apartment. You don't own the hardware, but that doesn't mean the host can break into your box whenever he wants. Maybe the contract asserts they have that right (you would be an idiot to contract with them). Use Linode (arguably the best VPS provider in the industry): http://linode.com/ (I am not affiliated with Linode.)

I've now got two Linodes, one in the UK and one in Atlanta

.. UK?

I was pretty sure they didn't have servers outside the USA.. which is why my second virtual server is with Bytemark in the UK.

From their page.

Our Facilities and Hardware

All of our servers are running Intel Xeon processors, battery-backed hardware RAID, and are connected to our upstream providers via a gigabit network. We offer five world-class, geographically diverse data center facilities for you to choose from:

        * London, GB, UK
        * Newark, NJ, USA
        * Atlanta, GA, USA
        * Dallas, TX, USA
        * Fremont, CA, USA

You can view each data center's availability here.

I was pretty sure they didn't have servers outside the USA..

Wow, seems they turned on a London data centre on December 7 2009!

Not anymore you dont :)

Linode is tops. Their service and performance is second to none. You can start with their base plan and upgrade/downgrade at any time. Those guys "know" Linux. Their use community is very good as well (IRC and forums). I've been with them for about 2 years now.
Features: http://www.linode.com/features.cfm Community: http://www.linode.com/community
WebHostingTalk.com often has coupon codes for various web hosting companies.

Linode is tops. Their service and performance is second to none. You can start with their base plan and upgrade/downgrade at any time. Those guys "know" Linux. Their use community is very good as well (IRC and forums). I've been with them for about 2 years now.
Features: http://www.linode.com/features.cfm Community: http://www.linode.com/community
WebHostingTalk.com often has coupon codes for various web hosting companies.

Linode is tops. Their service and performance is second to none. You can start with their base plan and upgrade/downgrade at any time. Those guys "know" Linux. Their use community is very good as well (IRC and forums). I've been with them for about 2 years now.
Features: http://www.linode.com/features.cfm Community: http://www.linode.com/community
WebHostingTalk.com often has coupon codes for various web hosting companies.

I have a VPS at Gandi.net and it's a thousand times better than being hosted by a company that controls your web site. Gandi is the best according to me (for just one reason: I can prepay and they do not store my credit card number) but I've also heard good things about Slicehost, prgmr, and Linode.

A while back I was looking at Slicehost and Linode. I ended up picking Linode since you get significantly more memory and disk space. Right now I'm paying $20/month for their first plan (16 GB of disk space, 360 MB of memory, 200 GB transfer). For the same price, Slicehost gives you 256 MB of memory, 10 GB disk space, and 150 GB of bandwidth). Slicehost does seem to scale up farther (just in case you want 16 GB of memory), but buying your own server and paying for colo is probably cheaper at that point ($800/month).

Anyway, I haven't had any problems with Linode, and it's faster than Bluehost. In my quick test, Bluehost's ping was 60-80 ms, while Linode's was 30-35 ms. I uploaded a file to Linode at 9.5 MB/s (using scp from a school computer), and download that file back to the school computer at 4.5 MB/s. I uploaded a file to Bluehost using ncftp at 2 MB/s and then downloaded with wget at 480 KB/s.

The only downside to Linode is that you have to configure everything yourself, but so far I haven't had to change anything except my Apache configs since I installed Arch on it a year ago (with regular updates). I like the extra control, but it is extra work.

100X better than simply web hosting... Linode

Far better, yes. But you have to know a little about the command line and some sysadmin kind of stuff, or at least have time to learn as you go.

Low cost hosting providers rarely guarantee backup and restoration services as part of the low cost package. It is often a separate item entirely that must be paid for in addition to the standard account. Not only this, many of the shared/virtual private server type providers do not offer any guaranteed recovery period if the server you happen to be on goes down. If you are experiencing an outage due to another user sharing your hardware being compromised and they take the server offline, often times the provider will do nothing to get your site back up and running quickly even if you have the data prepared to slam back onto a new system; You just end up having to wait. (First hand recent experience with a one-and-one vps: The hardware had a drive controller failure. We have full backups of the VPS via bacula and if they were willing to give us a second vps on a new server at the same IP, we could have slammed the data back onto the server and been back up within the hour. They instead made my customer wait 48 hours while they worked on trying to make that original server work.)

Regardless of who you pay for hosting, your data is your responsibility. Their backups are worthless if you never actually prove they are usable yourself. Plan for disaster ahead of time and you'll be better off. Plan it at several different levels: what happens when the data is corrupt? What do you do if the server catches on fire? What do you do if the city/region experiences a catastrophe? What do you do when Joe Constructionworker is installing sprinklers next door and puts their backhoe through the datalines feeding the center? If your provider is offering to cover any one of these with a solution (like paying them to backup the data for your restoration) find out how you get the databack and what kind of SLA's they have. If they back it up, but it's a 24 hour process just to get to the point where you can restore things, that may not work for you. Understanding your recovery process before you need to put it in place is one of the biggest failings of many users/companies offering web based service delivery.

Now, one of the more interesting lower cost providers I've run into lately is Linode. You have a bit more flexibility in dealing with scaling and failover and you can move your virtual private server to bigger and beefier hardware as your site grows. They are working on an inhouse backup solution, but realistically if you care enough about your data, you'll regularly backup offsite with scripts or your favorite backup program (bacula anyone?). Linode is targetted more towards those who can admin their systems themselves rather than needing pre-setup solutions with GUI's (not that you couldn't use something like Plesk yourself on it). You can slowly scale your system hardwarewise to machines that have less and less shared users and you can even use multiple virtual servers with virtual load balancers in front of it (they have some interesting support for having a private lan between your virtuals that keeps the traffic 'local' and won't count against your bandwidth usage. You could use multiple virtual nic's to do load balancing with LVS type setups if you wanted).