Google Colab is convenient but they shutdown after some inactivity. This is annoying if you are running some persistent process, like a server.

So, how do we make them run for a while?

I discovered this trick from oobabooba. First, paste the following code in a cell:

%%html <audio src="https://oobabooga.github.io/silence.m4a" controls>

When you run it, you should see an audio player. Hit the play button and you are all set!

You can then run a server in the next cell and have that available for a day.