S4 - $12 for 1 year of 1 TB write-only storage

[clemesha]

At the top of the page source:

  <!-- Ahh... I see you're a distingushing Internet user.  You're really a "check under the hood" -->
  <!-- type of guy.  I like that about you.  I also like how you really told off that bully-->
  <!--at the Christmas party... you're such a stud.  And have you lost weight?  You're looking great.-->

and at the bottom:

  <!-- You looked all the way down here?!  Let's hump. -->

Classic.

[jacquesm]

another gem:

http://www.supersimplestorageservice.com/error.html?aspxerro...

[tdm911]

i like:

"Please contact us with any questions by e-mailing us at the address below. All complaints and feature requests will be immediately stored using our S4-backed user request database."

[dhimes]

The PayPal links work!

[jwr]

I started reading and I thought this was real. I've built one-way logging systems in the past, where the link to a logging computer was a one-way serial link, with physically no possibility of anything ever going back. This makes sense in network security.

[ynniv]

I'm somewhat disappointed that it isn't. I can think of good reasons for a service in which data cannot be erased. If it could only be read on-site but written over the network, it might be advertised using copy similar to this page.

[fierarul]

Or you could buy a licence for /dev/null which supports unlimited write-only storage. No internet required.

[g__]

And it's extremely fast:

  $ pv /dev/zero > /dev/null
  18.6GB 0:00:05 [3.76GB/s] [    <=>                                            ]

[MicahWedemeyer]

I won't use anything that doesn't have 5-nines uptime guaranteed by an SLA.

Until there's an enterprise-level solution for /dev/null, I think I'm going to have to stick with S4.

[stcredzero]

Someone should patent it!

[StarLite]

At first glance I thought it was some sort of backup solution, where storing was very cheap, but restoring would be the pricey bit. As soon as I reached the Abacuses and 3,5" floppies I definately knew it was a fake :)

[rapind]

Same. I was even thinking: Genius! I almost never need to restore my backups. If I can backup cheaper but still with the peace of mind of knowing that if I do need to restore I just pay an extra fee.

I wonder if there's a real business model there. Most of us restore an extremely small percentage of what we backup. Could you offer a cheaper storage cost than other businesses and make up the difference on the small number of restores that occur?

[tybris]

I bet they use multiple /dev/null devices in RAID.

[someone_here]

Their performance must be insane.

[jacquesm]

In a way this is a variation on a very old theme, here is the original:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1360704

[seanc]

For all we know, they've got custom hardware which uses that chip! Maybe that's how they get such fast write speeds.

[Qz]

They check in, but they never ever check out.

[jacquesm]

It's the Hotel California of online storage.

[elblanco]

"Key Scenarios - Customer complaint database"

Hilarious. I know lots of companies that must use this service.

[strick]

Funny stuff! Looks like a response to Amazon's new offering:

"We are pleased to introduce a new storage option for Amazon S3 called Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS) that enables customers to reduce their costs by storing non-critical, reproducible data at lower levels of redundancy than the standard storage of Amazon S3."

http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2010/05/19/announc...

[jacquesm]

Hm. April 1st was a while ago. If you consider buying, hit me up, I'll beat their prices whatever they ask for.

[stcredzero]

Can you offer a transactional API?

[JoachimSchipper]

Actually, not too useless for testing your outgoing bandwidth/latency.

[mwerty]

Surprised that the paypal link is real.

[zemaj]

I just paid for 1TB (really) :)

[euccastro]

They have a money back guarantee. E.g. in case you manage to read your data back.

[jacquesm]

Why? It's the perfect product :)

[catch23]

probably to pay for that upload-only bandwidth.

[Maro]

Great interview filter if you ask me.

[leftnode]

Better filter for recruiters if you unfortunately have to deal with them. Tell the recruiter you're looking for an applicant with S4 experience and see if you get any resumes back with it. If so, you know the recruiter is altering the resumes.

[ez77]

Naive question: How do you recover the write-only data?

[uptown]

You just need to reverse the polarity.

[darrenkopp]

this is awesome! i now have a GOOD cloud storage candidate for backups of my blu-ray movies that doesn't cost more than the cost of a new blu-ray disc.

[gmlk]

LOLROTF

[greyman]

MotherInLawPhotos.com - great case study. ;o)