Same problem here. Was working earlier this week, now it is PW protected. Forum credentials do not seem to work. Help! Thanks.
I guess I don't understand the cost here. James keeps talking about shutting down except for feeders, which I am. Back to costs: if the history backend is the huge cost, then can it be stored on a shared sql cluster that feeders provide a node? Much like torrent? I'm talking out of my ass here, as I have no idea how to make that work, but there has to be a solution that would do it. That being said, the real cost is storage for history 13k mentioned, so the other costs are minimal? I said close the entire mother fucker down unless you feed. That's just me.
https://adsbexchange.com/flight-data-sql-archive/ Link explains costs. The problem is one person can run up hundreds or thousands of dollars in usage feeds, and that is exactly what is happening. I have at least 20 emails from corporate types that were smashing the historical since it was open, and when I asked them to pay - "well we don't have money for that!" Well WTF. And it's not just corporate types, there are feeders sending hundreds of queries a day. One feeder is having a mental breakdown, he uses roughly $40 in usage a month, but he sends ADSBx $3 monthly .. so $2.55 after PayPal fees ... The rest are students, researchers, news media, etc... No money there or very minimal. I would say 10% of the people that emailed me are feeders. 10%! Of those that do have feeds, 90% are feeding FA or FR24 .. but not ADSBx .. but still demanding they have access to ADSBx. It's not cheap to run a data store that is doing 19.2 TB of data storage/transfer. That's $1,920 in just bandwidth each month. No, the other costs are unfortunately not minimal. The rest of the infrastructure to run ADSBx is around $10,000 a month. But there are no 'usage fees' - data center is unlimited bandwidth, and we rent metal. Thus, ADSBx costs roughly $250,000 a year at this point. I can assure everyone that Dan and I have full time jobs, and if there is some perception that ADSBx is making millions like FR24 or FA. I gaurantee that is NOT the case. Last year, I started helping Dan with the site because it was 2 months from being shutdown permanently. The corporate card was near maxed out and the monthly costs were ever increasing. ADSBx has been able to generate some revenue because the data is unfiltered and ADSBx lined up a few corporate supporters and NGOs, but it's not going to cover things like this. ADSBx has become a big enough threat to FlightAware and FlightRadar24 that when we cross paths on commercial data contracts - both will give away the data for near free just to starve ADSBx of revenue. FlightStats does this all the time, just to snag the contract. That historical database used to cost, $2,500-5,000 a month. It took every penny ADSBx generated to pay for it, but it was working. I curtailed the abuse on the old public-api and historical downloads, then built a vastly more efficient REST API. That reduced server load by 50%. All was good, but only briefly. So what happened? They moved to smashing the historical, since they can get access without paying, and without hosting a feeder. This is the issue in a nut shell. What do we do about $150,000 a year for that historical? Restricting it to feeders isn't fixing that fact ADSBx can't pay for it. Donations TOTAL less than $1,000 a month. For a site that has 50,000+ daily users. That's less than 0.02 per person A MONTH.
$14,000 USD per month. It really doesn't matter if 3 people pay $10 or $100 or $1000 ... the bill is $13,000+ You all need to chill the fuck out and let people figure it out. There are too many people emailing offering $2 fucking dollars a month that think they can run up $50+ in usage fees. At least 10 commerical business with revenues in the multi-million are demanding access but refusing to pay. Several jackasses with sites or some other bullshit demanding access because they think it should be free. One asshole told me that since he feeds he is entitled as much usage of the historical as he desires. I told him that he can fuck right the fuck off if that is his attitude. I'm tired of emails from entitled assholes this week. Calm the fuck down. The more emails I get the less I get to work and the more time I spend telling people to fuck off. We all do this for a hobby because we enjoy it. We do this because FlightAware et all filter and block the data. We do this because the unfiltered data is useful for doing a lot of good in the world. In my opinion, Dan turned many in this this user base into spoiled brats that throw non-stop tantrums by offering everything for free and just paying for it on his credit card. So how about one or more of you step the fuck up and stop sticking ADSBx with the bills... or let us figure it the fuck out. There's 50,000 active users on the site every day ... $20 a year from everyone and ADSBx works for everyone. Donations total less that $1,000 a month. Do the fucking math ....
I'm also tired of the "well I'm going to just feed FlightAware or FlightRadar24!" threats. Fucking fine! Go! Piss off! The ADSBx coimmunity does not needed entitled jackasses as users. If you think ADSBx owes you something for feeding then you are sadly mistaken. Fucking go do it if that is your attitude. Ask yourself .... Does FR24 offer you free unfiltered global data? Does FA offer free unfiltered global data? Does either show miltary? Does either show police? Does either show anything interesting other than commerical airlines? Does either do anything good with the data? Do they provide data to track criminals? The answers are all "No". The real people who feed ADSBx understand why feeding ADSBx is important. Those are the users I want, the rest can go! So, go fucking enjoy your circle jerk fake enterprise dashboards with fake filtered data if you are going to demand anything here. I'm fucking tired of it. To the rest of you. Thanks for your patience! Keep up the good work!
"Several jackasses with sites or some other bullshit demanding access because they think it should be free." Also none are hosting feeders or donating. So they are litterally doing NOTHING for the community at ADSBx but bitching and demanding.
James, I feel your frustration but try not to 't let the idiots get you down.....But hey we all need to vent sometimes. Anyways, why not archive the bulk of the historical data? Say anything more than one month or one week or even one day old? For this older data you could charge on a per request or batches of requests basis Also how about limiting people to a certain number of requests per day. Say 1-49 is free. 50-499 costs x amount, 500-5999 costs y amount, etc, etc I only suggest these from my 15+ years of experience in running a data capturing website for first ACARS and then adsb. Even with 5billion records my storage fees are almost non existant. So as this seems to be a not insignificant chunk of your costs, I think you need to investigate it further as it does seem to be rather excessive especially with the cheapness of mass storrage nowadays. Again, just a suggestion. I must say I only came across your site a few months ago and was so impressed by it, when compared to the other sites available, especially your attitudes about showing unfiltered data. I raise my hand in guilt to say I never got around to feeding to you, but that will be changing now. Moreso after flightaware, who I have been supporting with my feed almost since day one, have now turned round and no longer want the very people that helped them build up their database in the first place. Typical corporate attitude. I was talking with 'skymaster' on the mode-s list, who I believe is a Database volunteer for you, and he explained how things were, a few months ago but I just never had the time to volunteer. well now I have a bit more time and if you require more volunteers, please just let me know. In the meantime I will set up a feed to you. Cheers Alexis
Thanks! I apprecaite it. I thought the first post would be a 'f you' post. I'll elborate more on how it all works and why the costs are so high when I have time tonight. Right now I'm working to make the MLAT 4A/4B work better - instead of enjoying a beautiful Saturday outside ...
