As many sites do, it may actually invalidate your copyright. You have to put all of the years when you made copyrightable edits to the page. A range like 2010-2025 is only allowed if every single year in that range is included.
This sounds like pseudolegal folklore (in the US at least). Do you have any actual examples where this affected a case?
In the US, you get copyright on your work automatically, with or without a label.
The only thing a label does in the US is defend against "innocent infringement" defenses. But even that defense doesn't absolve the other party from liability; you just can't recover as much.
There is no reason you can't have (C) 200X-$currentYear Acme Inc or whatever.
Yet your earlier comment said "200x-$currentYear" not "200x-$modifiedYear" in reply to someone automatically inserting the year. That shows a misunderstanding of copyright AND an intent to mislead when you believe others view it as last updated.
You're better off omitting it entirely in generated web pages. No one cares unless they don't understand copyright, the year shown isn't the current year, and they're already looking to find fault. In other words, for those that treat it as last updated, they must already be struggling to find value when they scroll to your copyright notice, and at that point, after feeling the page looks stale, is seeing the current year going to change their mind?
1) You don't have to keep copyrights up to date (and in fact you don't have to put them at all), 2) Every single startup i've seen on HN is sketchy af. Racking laptops in a cage at a Hetzner DC is probably the least sketchy product i've seen here.
And honestly, not a terrible idea, I have old laptops that would work as a VPS. $7/month for somebody to host a public server for me, and not on my crappy residential isp? All I have to lose is an old laptop I haven't touched in 5 years? Sign me up
(they do need a real domain before i'll give them money tho, lol)
> Website copyright is out of date by two years...
Can you explain how a copyright can be "out of date by two years"?
I always thought the copyright notice should reflect the year of creation, and that it's actually bad (from a legal POV) to always show the current year through scripting.
Colocating itself, though isn't new at all. Lots of different ways to host, including servers, mac minis, laptops are conceivable too because they share the same kinds of parts that mac minis might have.
Also, isn't this just a huge fire hazard of they actually do what they claim? Or will they remove the batteries from these old, continually plugged in, poorly cooled laptops?
Maybe I'm in the minority... but this seems like an extremely compelling offering for certain use-cases. Not for enterprises, but for individuals and small businesses.
My off-site backup is a thinkpad x230 with a 1 TB HDD. It's currently at my friends house, and I access it with tailscale. 7 eur/month to colocate this in a datacenter with stable (and fast) Internet + power seems like a pretty good deal.
I can understand some of the concerns with user-provided hardware. Maybe a better model, would be for CoLaptop to offer hardware themselves. This would allow them to standardize on a few models, which opens up many possible improvements such as central DC power, power efficient BIOS settings, enclosures with cooling ducts, etc. They can still follow the "old laptop as a server" model by buying off-lease laptops from the corporate world.
> Your old laptop packs more CPU power, RAM, and storage than their entry-level offerings - and with us, you'll pay just €7/month for professional hosting
This is basically the same price as the cheapest options on Hetzner: https://snipboard.io/C9epWo.jpg. Sure my old laptop does have more RAM and a bigger SSD, but I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day. So is the tradeoff really worth it? It's hard for me to believe that this is a genuine improvement for most things. The only definite winning case I can think of is if I have a process I want to run, but I don't care if it just suddenly stops working. But when would that ever be the case? and to save a couple dollars per month?
I work for IPinfo and we operate a distributed network consisting of around 1,400 servers. I think we have reached a point where it is extremely hard for us purchase VPSes from interesting ASNs.
To support lots of ISPs, universities, and different organizations we have been asking them if they have an old laptop lying around that they can host our software on. Goal is to reach 70,000 probes within the next couple of years.
It is a simple probe software and we share some data or we can pay 20-30 bucks a month for it. We have a couple of NUCs in remote regions but no laptops yet. Basically, we are even happy if an ISP (or any one) hosts our software from a laptop dangling by a charging cable from a socket in some random corner.
We can send over a RPI or NUC, but with remote hands, and setup and all that it can get quite expensive. So, we always first ask if they have an old laptop lying around and can install our software there.
For us, at least, we are not interested in the hardware aspect. We are interested in the network. The old laptop approach only acts as a last resort. We will be more than happy to go with the predictability of a traditional VPS hosted in a traditional data center. Colocation, no matter what form it takes, involves a lot of moving parts.
Its a page hosted on CLoudFlare's "pages.dev" service. Their method of contact is a Google Form which does have an email address on this domain "CoLaptop [dot] com", but that as a web address does not work.
Old laptops as low cost servers? Absolutely, build a homelab in your own basement, rent a cheap VPS, set up wireguard and viola - instant data center for tens of dollars per month. It's not production grade but you'll learn a ton.
But colocation?
Strip away the learning component and add production uptime requirements - why would you even consider using crusty old laptops for this? If you have production grade needs, look to a standard cloud provider or, at the very least, a colo facility where you can put production-grade equipment.
The advantage of a laptop is exactly that you can easily host it at home, and own everything. I have one - with an UPS also holding the router and fiber optic and an external HDD. I'm actually working right now to version 2.0 which is a beefed up version - still used laptop (found a great deal on a lenovo P1), but slightly more expensive and I'm waiting on some parts to upgrade. Should be able to even hold the production environment in a pinch.
Ah, and obviously you put a claude/codex on it, so your actual work is just ... installing claude, and maybe a linux. The rest is done by the AI - setup, scripting etc.
As a colocated option... I see it work for some people. But it'd be a niche offering, when the whole value proposition is "make my own, with blackjack and hookers".
Just gonna point this out since I noticed it a few weeks ago and notice is still there, Hetzner has paused selling new colocation service: https://www.hetzner.com/colocation/
It’s OKish as a starting point into selfhosted world but overall not ideal. The battery is a fire risk and the entire thermal design isn’t really geared towards 24/7 operation.
Not really something I’d co locate unless it was a DC physically near me so that stopping by is easy
Funny, I had a similar idea this morning in the shower. I was thinking about how distributed digital infrastructure could be achieved in practice. Running some music streaming and photo server on an old laptop at home that I access via tailscale has proved surprisingly smooth. I feel there is some future in empowering users by giving them access to a cloud on hardware that is actually owned by the user. It would be a way to achieve absolute digital freedom, no lock-in and if done in a secure way privacy friendly. Hell it's the OG idea of the internet! The question is how to bring this to non-technical users. I know many people who are getting sick of paying each month both to Apple and Google for storing their ever growing pile of pictures. This solution of course does imply some sort of lock-in as your tied to a subscription and it's probably quite the hassle to get your laptop back. Also the fire hazard seems like a legit concern. I nevertheless do hear some music here.
Eeek, I can't imagine what this is like if it scales. What happens to the fire risk when theres 20,000 laptops with aging batteries all sitting together? I hope they take the batteries out, however many laptops use batteries to smooth out power fluctuations.
Laptops aren't designed to be servers - peg your laptop CPU and GPU at 100% and see how long it lasts, I've done this before and the answer is about "2 months", yep sure, this effort isn't targeting that workload, but how many bad apples does it take to start a fire? In their page they say "kubernetes server - no problem" kubernetes DOES keep the CPUs busy, not pegged, but busy enough so that they wont step down their frequency.
I admire the effort to reuse old tech, but boy oh boy would I not want to be a sysadmin here!
Suppose we set aside the concerns in this thread about the legitimacy of this.
How would this work when the old hardware inevitably needs to be serviced (mechanical hard drive failure, memory errors, dust buildup, etc)?
Would they have technicians on-site available to service whatever random laptop you send them? If your laptop dies do they ship it back to you so you can fix it and send it back?
Or what if you bork the OS by accident? Will their KVM solution allow you to upload an ISO and plug it in over some USB drive emulation?
Have an old Mac book pro sitting in my office as a self hosted Mac GitHub runner and it works great.
My biggest complaint used to be that it would occasionally restart after a system update and I’d have to unlock FileVault in person, but macOS 26 now allows unlocks over ssh.
247 comments
> © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved.
Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev
> Thank you for your interest. Please submit the form below and we'll get back to you within 2 working days.
> - Team @ CoLaptop.com
Also colaptop.com is not even registered anymore. If I had to guess the pages.dev site stayed up but the domain and email are nowhere.
> > © 2024 CoLaptop. All rights reserved.
> Website copyright is out of date by two years... And the website has been online since then. https://crt.sh/?q=colaptop.pages.dev
That's exactly what it should be then. A copyright notice lists the year of publication. Not the current year.
> A proper copyright notice consists of three elements: a © symbol, the year of publication, and the copyright owner’s name.
https://copyrightalliance.org/faqs/what-is-copyright-notice/
``
© Your Name``As many sites do, it may actually invalidate your copyright. You have to put all of the years when you made copyrightable edits to the page. A range like 2010-2025 is only allowed if every single year in that range is included.
In the US, you get copyright on your work automatically, with or without a label.
The only thing a label does in the US is defend against "innocent infringement" defenses. But even that defense doesn't absolve the other party from liability; you just can't recover as much.
There is no reason you can't have
(C) 200X-$currentYear Acme Incor whatever.What looks off is showing you don't know how copyright works by blindly putting the current year.
You're better off omitting it entirely in generated web pages. No one cares unless they don't understand copyright, the year shown isn't the current year, and they're already looking to find fault. In other words, for those that treat it as last updated, they must already be struggling to find value when they scroll to your copyright notice, and at that point, after feeling the page looks stale, is seeing the current year going to change their mind?
2. Copyright law varies in other countries
3. Many laypeople just cargo-cult legal tropes without understanding them
And honestly, not a terrible idea, I have old laptops that would work as a VPS. $7/month for somebody to host a public server for me, and not on my crappy residential isp? All I have to lose is an old laptop I haven't touched in 5 years? Sign me up
(they do need a real domain before i'll give them money tho, lol)
> Website copyright is out of date by two years...
Can you explain how a copyright can be "out of date by two years"?
I always thought the copyright notice should reflect the year of creation, and that it's actually bad (from a legal POV) to always show the current year through scripting.
> Give us your laptop
There's no way to read this without hearing Scottish accent. It's like a sleeper agent activation phrase.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKfAjlW6E30
> Website copyright is out of date by two years
It's fixed now.
And someone bought the .com domain: https://crt.sh/?id=25447880244
Colocating itself, though isn't new at all. Lots of different ways to host, including servers, mac minis, laptops are conceivable too because they share the same kinds of parts that mac minis might have.
My off-site backup is a thinkpad x230 with a 1 TB HDD. It's currently at my friends house, and I access it with tailscale. 7 eur/month to colocate this in a datacenter with stable (and fast) Internet + power seems like a pretty good deal.
I can understand some of the concerns with user-provided hardware. Maybe a better model, would be for CoLaptop to offer hardware themselves. This would allow them to standardize on a few models, which opens up many possible improvements such as central DC power, power efficient BIOS settings, enclosures with cooling ducts, etc. They can still follow the "old laptop as a server" model by buying off-lease laptops from the corporate world.
> Your old laptop packs more CPU power, RAM, and storage than their entry-level offerings - and with us, you'll pay just €7/month for professional hosting
This is basically the same price as the cheapest options on Hetzner: https://snipboard.io/C9epWo.jpg. Sure my old laptop does have more RAM and a bigger SSD, but I bet it's also less reliable than Hetzner's servers, and is likely to suddenly die some day. So is the tradeoff really worth it? It's hard for me to believe that this is a genuine improvement for most things. The only definite winning case I can think of is if I have a process I want to run, but I don't care if it just suddenly stops working. But when would that ever be the case? and to save a couple dollars per month?
Edit: Maybe this is what github is doing :P
To support lots of ISPs, universities, and different organizations we have been asking them if they have an old laptop lying around that they can host our software on. Goal is to reach 70,000 probes within the next couple of years.
It is a simple probe software and we share some data or we can pay 20-30 bucks a month for it. We have a couple of NUCs in remote regions but no laptops yet. Basically, we are even happy if an ISP (or any one) hosts our software from a laptop dangling by a charging cable from a socket in some random corner.
We can send over a RPI or NUC, but with remote hands, and setup and all that it can get quite expensive. So, we always first ask if they have an old laptop lying around and can install our software there.
For us, at least, we are not interested in the hardware aspect. We are interested in the network. The old laptop approach only acts as a last resort. We will be more than happy to go with the predictability of a traditional VPS hosted in a traditional data center. Colocation, no matter what form it takes, involves a lot of moving parts.
Its a page hosted on CLoudFlare's "pages.dev" service. Their method of contact is a Google Form which does have an email address on this domain "CoLaptop [dot] com", but that as a web address does not work.
I'm not sure they have their act together.
- Mount something in a rack not firmly attached to brackets or a shelf
- Install anything with a battery larger than you'd find in a RAID card
Not to mention all the other ways this is sub-par in terms of airflow, density, serviceability, out-of-band management, etc.
I get the allure of it, but I wouldn't really want my gear anywhere near a bunch of laptops stuck in a cabinet.
But colocation?
Strip away the learning component and add production uptime requirements - why would you even consider using crusty old laptops for this? If you have production grade needs, look to a standard cloud provider or, at the very least, a colo facility where you can put production-grade equipment.
Ah, and obviously you put a claude/codex on it, so your actual work is just ... installing claude, and maybe a linux. The rest is done by the AI - setup, scripting etc.
As a colocated option... I see it work for some people. But it'd be a niche offering, when the whole value proposition is "make my own, with blackjack and hookers".
So this is probably a joke site or a scam.
> We're based in Amsterdam and aim to work with Hetzner
I wonder if Hetzner knows their aim.
> We might modify your laptop to remove or power down the battery, wireless radios, etc. to ensure it can be used safely in the data center.
Yeah, just use the DC's UPS.
It’s OKish as a starting point into selfhosted world but overall not ideal. The battery is a fire risk and the entire thermal design isn’t really geared towards 24/7 operation.
Not really something I’d co locate unless it was a DC physically near me so that stopping by is easy
Laptops aren't designed to be servers - peg your laptop CPU and GPU at 100% and see how long it lasts, I've done this before and the answer is about "2 months", yep sure, this effort isn't targeting that workload, but how many bad apples does it take to start a fire? In their page they say "kubernetes server - no problem" kubernetes DOES keep the CPUs busy, not pegged, but busy enough so that they wont step down their frequency.
I admire the effort to reuse old tech, but boy oh boy would I not want to be a sysadmin here!
How would this work when the old hardware inevitably needs to be serviced (mechanical hard drive failure, memory errors, dust buildup, etc)?
Would they have technicians on-site available to service whatever random laptop you send them? If your laptop dies do they ship it back to you so you can fix it and send it back?
Or what if you bork the OS by accident? Will their KVM solution allow you to upload an ISO and plug it in over some USB drive emulation?
My biggest complaint used to be that it would occasionally restart after a system update and I’d have to unlock FileVault in person, but macOS 26 now allows unlocks over ssh.