This Blog is now hosted on a GPS/LTE modem • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by megous » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

ajnin wrote: post #137

megous wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not secret, it's updateable, and doesn't need to be running constantly, and doesn't need to be proprietary. It's possible to just not load the modem firmware and have Pinephone as a device with two ARM SoCs both running mainline Linux and open bootloader. ;) You'll just not be able to use EG25-G as a modem with modem FW not loaded. There are also options in between.

It's a stretch to call it unneeded, being able to communicate over the cellular network is pretty much the definition of what a mobile phone is, if you remove that it stops being a phone. In that sense running the phone with any system is optional too since you can always use it to weigh down some papers on your desk ...

So? Apple made such a thing into a product years ago. It was called iPod Touch.

Pinephone may have a phone in name, but it's basically a neat little SBC with an integrated touchscreen and battery, and bunch of other peripherals, and can be used for anything you like.

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

#152

Post by benja123 » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

olyjohn wrote: post #147

benja123 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Peeling off the edges of the pages printed on a dot matrix printer was either super relaxing or super stressful depending on what you had just printed.

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

#153

Post by verst » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

stadium wrote: post #114

caslon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A static site is really easy to host and HN's hug of death isn't actually that intense; the site itself only gets like six million views a day, a fraction of those click on every link, and no syndicated page has much reach.

I recently migrated a personal blog running on a hugo static site to digital ocean with automated github deployment, SSL certificates, CDN, and a custom domain. It took all of 15 minutes including updating the DNS on my custom domain registrar.

I find GitHub Pages even easier for that scenario.

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

#154

Post by DaniloDias » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

That carrier grade nat'd ip address would make this an unreliable resource.

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

#155

Post by DaniloDias » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

MayeulC wrote: post #99

Slightly misleading title. This blog post is not hosted over LTE. Instead, the web server just happens to run inside the Pinephone modem. Internet --> USB --> Pinephone CPU --> (ADB forwarding) --> Pinephone modem with webserver. That's cool, but I am slightly disappointed. I was hoping to find out that some ISPs allowed to forward ports over LTE. Here, I don't really see the advantage over doing it on the main CPU,…

You can get carrier grade connections that would allow this kind of routing- it is not part of a standard consumer package. This type of capability is managed via the "Access Point Name" feature in phones.

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

#156

Post by dcposch » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #145

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://osm…

Do esims fix this problem? Increasingly the norm, no physical sim card at all.

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

#157

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

Funny to have not just one but two Linux computers in your pocket. I wonder if there are still more of these.

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

#158

Post by spijdar » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:27 PM UTC

mfashby wrote: post #121

imhoguy wrote: post #35

This is realy cool! I wonder if Justine's Redbean[0] webserver, which got recently posted on HN[1], would support ARM in such use case. Its executable size is 460KB, it even allows Lua scripting, and benchmarks 1 million pages per second on desktop PC. [0] https://justine.lol/redbean/index.html [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26271117

Possibly not. I believe that runs natively on (any!) x86 system, but it uses QEMU to run on ARM, which might make things a big too big here.

While you'll probably run out of memory first, there's the enormous overhead of running qemu's translation, too. Using QEMU to emulate x86 on my POWER9 system, I get... roughly the performance of a 2001-2004 pentium processor, and the host cpu is running at 3.8GHz and comparable speed wise to a 2018ish intel processor.

In spite of the author's insistence, I don't think Cosmopolitan is really usable on anything but x86, the QEMU thing is more a cute proof-of-concept. For very simple programs I guess...

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

#159

Post by majewsky » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

yakubin wrote: post #106

bogwog wrote: post #80

So a modem on a pine phone can survive the HN hug of death (and the number one post no less)? Am I missing something here? Because there's no way I believe that!

HN traffic isn't all that demanding[1]. Websites falling under the load are a testament to the poor quality of the software stack used to host them. [1]: https://xyrillian.de/thoughts/posts/latency-matters-aftermat... >

Hey look, it's my blog. It's a small world. :)

Since we're here, I did a quick grep through today's access log. It appears that your link got me 573 visitors to that article and 56 people clicking through to the other article linked therein.

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

#160

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

caslon wrote: post #83

bogwog wrote: post #80

So a modem on a pine phone can survive the HN hug of death (and the number one post no less)? Am I missing something here? Because there's no way I believe that!

A static site is really easy to host and HN's hug of death isn't actually that intense; the site itself only gets like six million views a day, a fraction of those click on every link, and no syndicated page has much reach.

[deleted]