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This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

nns.ee

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Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#141

Post by rrss »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #129
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really appreciate that CPU manufacturers started adding dedicated hardware for things like decoding MP3's. Not sure about the machine learning hardware they put in it nowadays, but then, that's mainly Apple who do a lot of that for e.g. your pictures (so they don't have to send it to their servers).

I’m not aware of any desktop CPUs (now or before) that had hardware MP3 decoding. Do you mind enlightening me?

In my interpretation, "dedicated hardware for things like MP3s" doesn't necessarily mean "hardware MP3 decoding."

Intel MMX (multimedia extensions) introduced dedicated hardware to accelerate things like MP3 decoding.

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#142

Post by marcodiego »

These modems are way powerful. This reinforces the need of open source firmware for them. They run their own OS and can stay on independent of the rest of the hardware consuming very little power. Imagine putting your computer to sleep while downloads continue and can survive geographical network migration.

A fully open source firmware for GPS/LTE modem is badly needed.

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#143

Post by eeZah7Ux »

pengaru wrote: post #128
paultopia wrote: post #119

Wait wait wait, does this mean data is going over a cellular network? On a data plan from some phone company? And their blog post just showed up here, on the front page of HN, which is notorious for crushing small servers with traffic? LOLSOB, I really hope this poor person isn't in the US. Or the cellphone overage charges...

> LOLSOB, I really hope this poor person isn't in the US. Or the cellphone overage charges... I am in the US, and have unlimited 4G LTE data w/AT&T prepaid for just $65/mo. There wouldn't be any risk of overage charges in this plan, at worst it would be throttled if the network is congested. You could totally host a small site over such a link, it would just require something like a dirt cheap VPS for the public IP a…

> just $65/mo

"just"? That's very expensive.

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#144

Post by olyjohn »

anthk wrote: post #74
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really appreciate that CPU manufacturers started adding dedicated hardware for things like decoding MP3's. Not sure about the machine learning hardware they put in it nowadays, but then, that's mainly Apple who do a lot of that for e.g. your pictures (so they don't have to send it to their servers).

A Pentium II was more than enough to decode MP3's in parallel.

What's interesting is, I used to have this old 486 laptop. With Linux on it, I could run XMMS playing my MP3s and do other things and you could barely tell it was there. In Windows, playing an MP3 file with WinAmp took up so much CPU, you were stuck running only WinAmp.

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#145

Post by rsync »

marcodiego wrote: post #142

These modems are way powerful. This reinforces the need of open source firmware for them. They run their own OS and can stay on independent of the rest of the hardware consuming very little power. Imagine putting your computer to sleep while downloads continue and can survive geographical network migration. A fully open source firmware for GPS/LTE modem is badly needed.

"They run their own OS and can stay on independent of the rest of the hardware consuming very little power."

It's worse - there's a second, independent computer inside your phone that you have no control over: the SIM card.

The SIM is a standalone computer with its own processor and memory which your carrier can communicate with and upload programs to run on it without your knowledge ("OTA updates", etc.)

https://osmocom.org/projects/cellular-infrastructure/wiki/SI...

ftp://www.3gpp.org/tsg_sa/WG3_Security/TSGS3_30_Povoa/Docs/PDF/S3-030534.pdf

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#146

Post by olyjohn »

mod wrote: post #45
taneq wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid we had a BBC Micro. In university we had CD burners but if you bumped the computer or did anything else while it was burning the CD, the disc was ruined. :P

I splurged in high school for a 4x cdrw drive by Sony. I had to kill all extra processes or else the machine (maybe the fault of the HDD) couldn't keep the buffer filled and the write operation would fail. I made a lot of coasters, but that was my favorite time with computers (1999 or so).

They were expensive coasters back then too! When I was in high school, I spent like $30 (was a ton of money to me back then) on blank CDs (like a 10 pack) only to have them all stolen out of my locker. No idea what the thief would have done with them, as CD burners were not common at all.

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#147

Post by olyjohn »

benja123 wrote: post #44
oblio wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started with a Pentium I, 166Mhz, 16MB, 1GB HDD, and I'm not even that old. I imagine we have folks here that started on a PDP :-) My P1 would stutter while playing MP3s :-))

When I was 6 my parents decided to buy a PC for our home. I think it must have been a 286, but I really don’t remember. I do remember moving to a 386 and then a 486. Lots of fond memories of norton commander, wordperfect and the old versions of battle chess. Good times! I wish I had understood back then how much computers were going to change the world. Luckily my parents did.

Same story here. I remember being 5 or 6 years old. We had a DOS PC with an orange CRT display. I think it was also a 286. I still remember the commands to run Word Perfect and this game called Fun House. My first command line experience. Mostly my mom used the computer for word processing and printed off letters on our dot matrix printer.

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#148

Post by Scoundreller »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #108
cormorant wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something in front of it, maybe? It reports nginx. $ curl --head 'https://nns.ee/blog/2021/04/01/modem-blog.html' HTTP/2 200 server: nginx date: Fri, 02 Apr 2021 13:28:26 GMT content-type: text/html content-length: 12937 last-modified: Fri, 02 Apr 2021 09:40:40 GMT etag: "6066e698-3289" accept-ranges: bytes

Could be. The statuspage from the device shows darkhttpd as the server, not nginx: https://nns.ee/blog/status.html

Looks like darkhttpd's website: https://unix4lyfe.org/darkhttpd/ is NOT hosted on a GPS/LTE modem and has been hugged to death.

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#149

Post by xx_ns »

Scoundreller wrote: post #148
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be. The statuspage from the device shows darkhttpd as the server, not nginx: https://nns.ee/blog/status.html

Looks like darkhttpd's website: https://unix4lyfe.org/darkhttpd/ is NOT hosted on a GPS/LTE modem and has been hugged to death.

Oh my. Sorry to who hosts that site!

(FWIW, I think the darkhttpd's website uses... Apache)

Re: This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem

#150

Post by pengaru »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #143
pengaru wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LOLSOB, I really hope this poor person isn't in the US. Or the cellphone overage charges... I am in the US, and have unlimited 4G LTE data w/AT&T prepaid for just $65/mo. There wouldn't be any risk of overage charges in this plan, at worst it would be throttled if the network is congested. You could totally host a small site over such a link, it would just require something like a dirt cheap VPS for the public IP a…

> just $65/mo "just"? That's very expensive.

That's very expensive for what's effectively cordless broadband internet including unlimited texting and calls?

Not compared to contemporary broadband prices in the US...

Also the price drops if you setup autopay.

What are you comparing to? This is Starlink territory.

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