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Every phone should be able to run personal websites

rohanrd.xyz

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Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#281
post #279

Here's my theory: One of the reasons the Internet is (was) so good is that it was a communication mechanism with a filter. It used to be that you had to work hard (and pay more) to host anything on the Web and get your content seen. That meant that the Web had more high-quality content, written by high-quality people. Inaccessibility on the content authoring and hosting side is a feature, not a bug. Now that anyone c…

I've heard it before, don't know if the theory has a name though.

Fwiw, I disagree. To me, the best sites on the old internet we made by generous people donating their time and energy to make something cool, and nowadays

1. The internet is no longer cool in the same way,

2. The community is different

& most importantly

3. The vast amount of ad-based commercial websites.

Adding a financial barrier would just make it more dominated by commercial entities, and people wanting to share their stuff for fun would be more likely to post in a silod social media app instead of a website.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#282
post #279

Here's my theory: One of the reasons the Internet is (was) so good is that it was a communication mechanism with a filter. It used to be that you had to work hard (and pay more) to host anything on the Web and get your content seen. That meant that the Web had more high-quality content, written by high-quality people. Inaccessibility on the content authoring and hosting side is a feature, not a bug. Now that anyone c…

Feels like a variation on the idea of Eternal September. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#283

With respect to the idea of hosting personal websites without using hosting companies, why does it have to be port 80. Port 80 is what commercial hosting uses, but this proposal is fundamentally different from commercial hosting. I'm not sure I understand why using an agreed-upon high port would not be an acceptable alternative. As for non-rooted Android not allowing use of port 80, this is just one symptom of the la…

> Port 80 is what commercial hosting uses

Port 80 is the standard insecure http port assigned by IANA. Whether or not the site is commercial has nothing to do with it.

https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/...

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#284
Let's assume that having full control over your phone is a problem. Then the biggest issue lies with power management. A phone will try to power down any subsystem which seems to be underused and that doesn't play well with a server listening on a network socket all the time. So either you will have to disable power management negatively affecting the battery life or accept that most of the time your server won't be able to handle requests.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#285
post #276
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not work instead on reducing the number of roadblocks and services that you need to manage, rely on, hand over your rights to, and entrust them with your personal data? I don't know about you, but that seems to me the logical thing to do

Convenience of course.

Great, that means we don't disagree

Because the entire point of the article is that hosting on mobile should be indeed more convenient and accessible.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#286
post #279

Here's my theory: One of the reasons the Internet is (was) so good is that it was a communication mechanism with a filter. It used to be that you had to work hard (and pay more) to host anything on the Web and get your content seen. That meant that the Web had more high-quality content, written by high-quality people. Inaccessibility on the content authoring and hosting side is a feature, not a bug. Now that anyone c…

[deleted]

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#287
post #279

Here's my theory: One of the reasons the Internet is (was) so good is that it was a communication mechanism with a filter. It used to be that you had to work hard (and pay more) to host anything on the Web and get your content seen. That meant that the Web had more high-quality content, written by high-quality people. Inaccessibility on the content authoring and hosting side is a feature, not a bug. Now that anyone c…

That makes sense to me.

Additional theory: Online payments weren’t initially possible / trusted and that meant lots of content online was put there out of passion rather than to derive a profit (another filtering criteria).

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

If NearlyFreeSpeech.net needs to make $1 of profit to be sustainable, they would just charge $1.50 for their product, and I highly doubt there is anyone who can afford $1 but not $1.50

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#289
I don’t buy the basic premise of the post. Why should a mobile server be good thing? It is either a constant drain on the battery or a server that responds very rarely. I remember taking a mobile communication class in university in 2007 and it was full of acronyms and history of standards but had some interesting stuff to it, eg how networks using directional microwave antenna would not work after an earth quake.

However, one of the last topics was the problem of routing for mobile servers and how to find optimized path if both the client and the server frequently change physical locations. And I remember the professor saying how this is a big unsolved problem for the industry. I think it is just not something that many people would use in practice.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually thought a bit about this over the years, and wrote a whitepaper in ~2002 on such... (sorry that file evaporated a decade+ ago) Whereby ; And this was prior to Cloud BTW (and I met with some goog eng friends in 2006 or so about it, but they said it would never be a thing: I wanted a cloud based desktop, with your personal encrytped access key being your phone, which you would dock, and then grab an insta…

> I wanted a cloud based desktop, with your personal encrytped access key being your phone Sun used to have a desktop product similar to this, it worked with an authentication token like a company badge or whatever. You could go sit at any desk and login and you'd have your own desktop environment including audio. Of course the whole thing was proprietary and it was server side so you needed heavy servers. Also loggi…

Yeah, I recall those -- was that the invention of "zero desktop" nomenclature - even though a terminal to a mainframe/AS\400 was the same thing :-) (or a vax (never used a vax)
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