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Every phone should be able to run personal websites

rohanrd.xyz

201–210 of 432 posts

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#201

Please no. Phones go into tunnels, run out of battery, and go indoors where there's a poor signal or none at all. They make terribly unreliable servers. Not to mention how much faster this would chew up battery life. If you want to keep a spare phone plugged in all the time in your closet, connected to Wifi/Ethernet, and hack it to be a webserver, then go ahead. But webservers on mobile devices, being used in a mobil…

Personal websites are info only. Don't change that much. Google can and should cache results. Once synced, the website could be behind Cloudflare to avoid DDoS.

If you are going to use cloudflare, you might as well just host the page with them.

Maybe the value of running on your phone would be so people could see that your phone is up or something like that?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#202

Please no. Phones go into tunnels, run out of battery, and go indoors where there's a poor signal or none at all. They make terribly unreliable servers. Not to mention how much faster this would chew up battery life. If you want to keep a spare phone plugged in all the time in your closet, connected to Wifi/Ethernet, and hack it to be a webserver, then go ahead. But webservers on mobile devices, being used in a mobil…

>Phones go into tunnels, run out of battery, and go indoors where there's a poor signal or none at all. i.e. when you can't take a call or a text or read a social media notification. Why does this need to be always-available if those don't?

Because you can't predict when someone will try and hit your site?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is saying that everyone should host websites on your phone. The author is saying you should be able to, if you so choose. Android and iOS put restrictions on what applications on a phone are able to do, often for arbitrary reasons. You can't hack a web server in your closet to run on port 80 without jailbreaking your phone/unlocking the bootloader and rooting your phone, and I can't really think of a reason wh…

I chose to purchase a phone that can’t do this. I’m fine with that. I’d rather my phone be how it is. I don’t need some nerd fighting for me in some imagined battle. I am incredibly sick of this line of reasoning. Anyone who spends any time arguing this point quite clearly has too much time on their hands and no real problems. It’s utterly cringey. Leave me be.

...you don't have use for a feature so you don't think anyone should want it?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I understand what you are saying but this is not supposed to be full fledged social media kind of websites we want to run on phone. The site could just be a simple way for your loved ones to check up on you without calling or messaging you. I remember the Nokia web server used to share battery and other vital info on website. There are lot many things that can be done with a tiny web server.

"Why aren't you answering my calls? I can see you have battery left!" Sorry ma, I was in a meeting. Really, our proclivity for instant gratification over patience is unhealthy. I'm sure there's all sorts of neat ideas for what could go onto a phone's website, but I can't say that I see the appeal, personally.

I assume the intention was more like, "Oh, their battery is at 18%. Maybe I won't download 500 photos from their gallery at just this moment."

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you are telling people NOT to do this, from the get go, without giving a reason?

This entire thread should be saved in the Smithsonian. It’s the most epic bikeshedding about the stupidest idea, with people emotionally tying it to their pet peeves. Capitalism! Walled gardens! Free software! No, it’s just a bad idea because few people want it, and even if you did want it, you can, and even then it open a up issues of battery life, reliability, etc. we can barely get actual software makers to care a…

Who are you to say what people want? Why limit your imagination? Why not think about the possibilities first? Why presume that things must be difficult?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#206

> The reason I think this is needed is because a large percent of Internet users cannot afford hosting personal websites. "For as little as $0.25, you can set up websites at NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, the masters of only pay for what you use hosting since 2002." [1] Are you telling me people who can afford a smartphone cannot afford some simple static hosting? [1] https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/

Micropayments aren’t more of a thing already for a reason. There is friction and overhead with signing up for a 3P subscription service even if the actual dollar cost is negligible.

The reason is high credit card fees. If payment gateways allowed micropayments they'd be more popular. (Square, for example, charges 31-33c on anything under $1.)

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#207

Please no. Phones go into tunnels, run out of battery, and go indoors where there's a poor signal or none at all. They make terribly unreliable servers. Not to mention how much faster this would chew up battery life. If you want to keep a spare phone plugged in all the time in your closet, connected to Wifi/Ethernet, and hack it to be a webserver, then go ahead. But webservers on mobile devices, being used in a mobil…

Nobody is saying that everyone should host websites on your phone. The author is saying you should be able to, if you so choose. Android and iOS put restrictions on what applications on a phone are able to do, often for arbitrary reasons. You can't hack a web server in your closet to run on port 80 without jailbreaking your phone/unlocking the bootloader and rooting your phone, and I can't really think of a reason wh…

Literally when the title indicates. Why would phones need to run a web server if that’s not the point?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#208

Please no. Phones go into tunnels, run out of battery, and go indoors where there's a poor signal or none at all. They make terribly unreliable servers. Not to mention how much faster this would chew up battery life. If you want to keep a spare phone plugged in all the time in your closet, connected to Wifi/Ethernet, and hack it to be a webserver, then go ahead. But webservers on mobile devices, being used in a mobil…

[deleted]

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...or even de-Googled Android, on a normal Android device can absolutely tank your battery life." Not necessarily. About eight hours ago I was having trouble with the GPS on my main phone (I cleared GNSS on GPStest app and it wasn't refreshing fast enough), so I found another in my assortment of phones that was still running and had some charge left in it and used it (it also had GPStest installed)—and I'm using it…

A de-Googled device doing very little will have great battery life. Once you load up a chat app or two, that battery life quickly starts degrading, because every app starts polling a server for updates. Most people use some kind of app that receives push updates from the internet onto their smartphones, whether that's Facebook or WhatsApp. If you can live without those apps then you'll have a much better time, becaus…

"You don't need to de-Google your phone for this effect. Just disable all internet access (WiFi off/disconnected, cellular data off) and your phone can last a day longer."

True, that's my experience too. As mentioned, I've well over a dozen unmodified and rooted Android phones and some of these have been repurposed including for navigation, remote control of equipment etc.

I'm not a typical user, no social media, no Google accounts, no cloud storage and such, so for phones that aren't rooted Gapps are either disabled or where possible removed, similarly, any running services that I'm not using are stopped (if possible). On rooted phones apps only run when I'm using them, WiFi/SIMs are disabled and or airplane mode is on when the phone is not in use, also no background data is allowed etc. so I expect my phones to last for days without recharging.

What surprised me about this Huawei is that it is six years old and the battery has been abused—left charging at 100% for days on end—yet it still managed 24 days on standby in normal power mode. No doubt it would have lasted a full month if I hadn't used it today.

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