LowEndTalk.com is approaching its 14th birthday later this year and LowEndBox will be 16 in a couple weeks.
Over the years, our community has organically created a ton of slang and terminology, some of which is obscure in origin and some of which is completely incomprehensible to the newcomer. I mean, if you go up to someone on the street and ask them what a Summerhost, Cest Pit, or LowEndBox is, they’ll give you a blank stare.
So for those who are wondering what some of our strange terms mean, here is a (probably not exhaustive) guide. Did I miss anything? Please comment below!
LowEndLore
$7: The traditional starting point for what is considered a LowEndBox. If the monthly cost is more than $7, it’s not a LEB. Also the maximum monthly price for offers on LowEndTalk. Many if not most offers in 2024 are now well under $7. Also the default response whenever someone asks what something is worth.
Autoboot: An “anti-abuse technology”. This term comes from Dewlance, who had (maybe still has) a system where VPSes that used too much CPU were automatically rebooted.
Billions Per Hour: How much in revenue a typical LowEndTalk user loses when their $2/month VPS goes down.
Black Friday: This has the same meaning as in the muggle world – the day after Thanksgiving, when deals are amazing. Of course, in the LowEnd community, they’re amazing on steroids.
Buffalo: City in upstate New York. Earlier in LET’s history, ColoCrossing offered cheap dedicated servers which were popular with startup hosts (and they still do), and they operated a datacenter in Buffalo. Hence, Buffalo became a popular, almost inevitable location for cheap VPSes.
Cest Pit: A pun crossing “cess pit” and “C’est pit”. The latter is French-ish…literally it means “It is pitiful” but reads like “it is the pit”. This is a special thread on LET that is a catchall for everything that can’t be discussed in other threads (esp. politics), meta conversations, etc. Created by administrator emeritus @jar.
Cluster Error: Early on in LET’s life, whenever there was a problem with the software (Vanilla), the admins would blame it on a “cluster error”. LET was not running on a cluster then.
Deadpool: RIP, provider. Sayonara, service. A term used when a provider has involucated (see below) themselves.
Debian, thx: The community’s favorite distro, famous for how much RAM requirements you can squeeze out of it. In the era of a 32MB or 64MB VPS, you could get core Debian RAM usage down to only a few megabytes. Today Debian remains one of the favorite distros of lean and mean computing.
Don’t Be a Dick: The Golden Rule of LET. It’s very hard to write comprehensive rules of everything that isn’t allowed, so ages ago some mod summarized the rules this way.
Double Your Bandwidth: A popular promotion on LowEndTalk. Providers offer to double bandwidth (or disk, or other inducement) if the customer posts their order #. This provides a bandwagon effect (look at all the people getting in on the deal) and bumps the thread back to the top of the Vanilla category.
Fartmother: Sometimes people get upset and curse, and sometimes they translate curses in their native language into English. Sometimes they translate humorously. I don’t remember who originally slung this one but it is certainly memorable.
Idling: The tendency to buy cheap VPS systems because the deal is…just…so…good! And then let them sit unused.
Involucrate: Part of the legendary HostSolutions saga. HS was a Romanian provider run by @cociu who offered very cheap systems and frequently posted in broken, often humorous English. You can read an interview in the archives, though the English there has been smoothed for readability and doesn’t give you the flavor. What finally took them offline was a disk failure. They had a massive array and couldn’t get it back online, and @cociu reported to LET that the disks were “involucrated,” instantly inventing a neologism for something that has self-destructed. On LET, the “banned user” image references this.
IPv6 Hall of Shame: This is maintained by longtime LET member @yoursunny who calls out hosts that don’t offer IPv6. Come on, it’s 2024, people!
LowEndBox: What we’re all about! If you go back to LEB’s founding in 2008, a lot of VPSes were selling for $20-30/month. Legendary founder LEAdmin started a blog devoted to finding cheap VPS offers and trying them out, and termed them “low end boxes”. (“Box” is a term widely used in the IT industry for “server”.)
LET is Eternal: A widely accepted conjecture in the sciences that the LowEnd community is so powerful it can never die. Also part of the T&Cs of using LET: the admins don’t delete posts or accounts, and hence whatever you post on LET is there until the end of time.
Linux ISOs: Euphemism for what everyone is actually torrenting on their seedboxes.
LowEndDetectives: A squad of Interpol-trained specialists who ferret out the truth no matter how well concealed. The reality that it’s hard to hide a scam or fraud from our community.
The Party Van: Also known as the FBI, or whatever your national equivalent is, showing up at your house unannounced to do some proactive backups of your digital media. The term comes from an experience @joepie91 had.
Perfume Seller: Besides selling cheap VPS systems, @cociu (see Involucrate) also had a business selling perfume on the side. Or it may have been the other way around. Someone who has an irrelevant side business, or an irrelevant primary business. Can also be spelled “parfum” in honor of @cociu.
Pointless Bump: Ironic comment sometimes made. See “Double Your Bandwidth” above.
Refugee Offer: When a provider deadpools, other providers will jump in and offer a special deal to anyone switching away from that provider.
Shoe Scammer: People who want many small VPSes with lots of IPs are sometimes shoe scammers. These are people who want to use these network orders to place many orders for new shoe models (literally shoes, like Nike) the day they’re released in the hopes of profiting on resale.
Summerhost: Every spring, high schoolers get the idea that running a hosting company must be pretty easy. All you need to do is rent a server, post an ad on LET, fill it up with VPSes, and rake in the cash. These hosts are often out of business by September.
The End is Nigh: C’est la vie. It is what it is. That’s life for you. A shaking of the head and a shrug of the shoulders.
WHT: A fossilized forum filled with providers stumbling over each other to post brief responses in threads in the desperate hope someone will notice the link in their signature. Run by a pathetic bunch of dicks.
YABS: Yet Another Benchmark Suite, a popular benchmarking script created by @masonr.
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I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.
I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308
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The LowEnd community’s history, tastes, and ideals are reflected in these phrases, which also serve to define its own language.
The amount of terminology and culture encapsulated in this glossary is fascinating. It’s like peering into a unique subculture with its own language and customs.