They can't even make this basic stuff just work!
As of December 2023 on a
t2.micro instance, the only one part of free tier at the time with advertised 1 vCPU, 1 GiB RAM, 8 GiB disk for the first 12 months, on Ubuntu 22.04:$ free -h
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 949Mi 149Mi 210Mi 0.0Ki 590Mi 641Mi
Swap: 0B 0B 0B
$ nproc
1
$ df -h /
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 7.6G 1.8G 5.8G 24% /To install software:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install cowsay
cowsay asdfThese come with pre-installed drivers, so e.g. nvidia-smi just works on them out of the box, tested on g5.xlarge which has an Nvidia A10G GPU. Good choice as a starting point for deep learning experiments.
Large but ephemeral storage for EC2 instances. Predetermined by the EC2 instance type. Stays in the local server disk. Not automatically mounted.
- docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/InstanceStorage.html (archive) notably highlights what it persists, which is basically nothing
- serverfault.com/questions/433703/how-to-use-instance-store-volumes-storage-in-amazon-ec2 mentions that you have to mount it
Amazon's informtion about their own intances is so bad and non-public that this was created: instances.vantage.sh/
Mentioned at: aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/g4/
TODO meaning of "nd"? "n" presumably means Nvidia, but what is the "d"? Compare it g4ad.xlarge which has AMD GPUs. aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/g4/ mentions:
However, many, many, many terrible horrors come with it:
- it hasn't made the move to desktop for too many years. It could destroy Microsoft Windows and replace it with open source, but they just won't budge towards an unified mobile/desktop setup.
- vendors litter it with uninstallable bloatware that should be illegal. European Union to the rescue!!! www.cnbc.com/2020/12/15/digital-markets-act-eus-new-rules-on-big-tech.html
- vendors lock down devices so it is very hard to get sudo, let alone to modify their images!
- there isn't enough hardware standardization for open source distros to thrive like on desktop
- code drops mean that "master" is useless and trying to contribute from outside vendors' closed walls is a waste of time: stackoverflow.com/questions/1809774/how-to-compile-the-android-aosp-kernel-and-test-it-with-the-android-emulator/48310014#48310014
- if you ever go below the Java API, e.g. to C++ or AOSP build, everything is horrendous and undocumented
- Google doesn't care about the CLI, even the hello world requires creating infinite out-of-control boilerplate from a GUI: stackoverflow.com/questions/20801042/how-to-create-android-project-with-gradle-from-command-line/46994747#46994747
- the boot is uber bloated and takes forever in cycle simulators
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact