Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Every phone should be able to run personal websites

rohanrd.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 432 posts

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#321

Post by Spooky23 »

soulofmischief wrote: post #98
FireInsight wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrestrained webservers on phones is an edge case that would certainly be abused by all sorts of crapware while being a very uncommon usecase for mobile devices at all.

I'm assuming the best intentions from you but I'd like to point out two things: 1. When discussing human rights (which apply to technological freedoms) reducing a need to "an edge case" is the basis of marginalization, defined as "treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral". Therefore, it is never appropriate to rely on such language to prove a point, especially when we are discussing sof…

I think there’s a balance here where you have different harms.

Your concern is about an intellectual ideal of full freedom to utilize a device as you see fit.

That is an ideal that I am philosophically attracted to. But… you have to balance harms when dealing with the public. Security risk management for mobile is difficult and even professional practitioners fail badly at it. A billion little servers with a trillion little bugs are a physical safety risk for thousands of people that they cannot effectively manage.

We live in an era where publishing is easier than it has been since society consisted of a bunch of cavemen in a few small bands. This idea is technically interesting but a bad one.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#322

Post by Dalewyn »

jeroenhd wrote: post #12
crazygringo wrote: post #5

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…

>Android and iOS put restrictions on what applications on a phone are able to do, often for arbitrary reasons.

When people complain about how Windows (and for that matter also Linux and BSD, et al.) don't lock their environments down, they should remember it's because both devs and users alike appreciate and respect the freedom to do whatever the hell we want on our computers.

Great power begets great responsibility. Android and iOS place next to no responsibility on the devs and users, but likewise also none of the power.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#323

Post by Spooky23 »

dividuum wrote: post #223
jeroenhd wrote: post #12

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…

Probably terrible data point, but running "nc -l -p 80" within the iSH shell app on iOS opens port 80 and is reachable from a desktop machine in the local network. iSH has requested the "Local network" permission at some point.

You can also use it with Tailscale (or other VPN) to make it reachable to other hosts in the tailnet.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#324

Post by brigandish »

cvoss wrote: post #232
soulofmischief wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming the best intentions from you but I'd like to point out two things: 1. When discussing human rights (which apply to technological freedoms) reducing a need to "an edge case" is the basis of marginalization, defined as "treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral". Therefore, it is never appropriate to rely on such language to prove a point, especially when we are discussing sof…

> When discussing human rights I've never heard an argument before that the ability to host a personal website on a cellphone is a human right. But, by using this phrase, you seem to be assuming your readers already agree with you that human rights is what we are discussing. As a rhetorical device, that may be effective at getting someone to back down for fear of being labeled as anti-human-rights, but it is not effe…

Most simply, you could start from the view that is the basis of English common law - that which is not explicitly forbidden is allowed. Your rights are not given, they exist prior to law, it is only for law to help define them for the purpose of upholding them.

Hence, freedom is the default position, the default human right. What needs to be justified is the restriction, not the freedom. Without good justification the restriction should be removed. An example of unjustifiable restriction is "criminals may use it", as:

a) your freedom should not be impinged on by the actions of others, especially malicious ones, and

b) you are presumed innocent (the second, perhaps only in order of mention here, great principle of English law, if not culture. One that is sadly being undermined).

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#325

Post by Spooky23 »

toast0 wrote: post #59
justsomeadvice0 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC macOS got rid of privileged ports for these reasons. Dunno about iOS... But in any case what cell provider is going to let you handle inbound traffic? Most of the wifi networks you are on are NAT'd, etc. At best you'd probably want an outbound persistent tunnel that is "terminated" by a relay elsewhere. At that point you might as well just have the relay host the thing.

You're not getting inbound connections on IPv4 without a fight, although, I remember when you used to be able to pay mobile carriers to get a public IPv4 address that might have also been static(!) for VPN purposes. But it's not uncommon for carriers to give you a whole /64 on IPv6, and for that to be full proper connectivity (maybe they block smtp and smb, that's very common). Yeah, IPv6 isn't everywhere, but if you…

All mobile traffic is proxied today, anything inbound on a normal plan will get flagged if it’s at all disruptive.

I had some experience getting yelled at by a carrier for something like this. If your “server” is mobile, they get testy.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#326

Post by EMIRELADERO »

judge2020 wrote: post #305
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do macOS users suffer from malware to an extent big enough that would justify the measures currently employed on phones and game consoles?

https://www.techradar.com/news/macs-have-too-much-malware-ac...

I don't think it's wise to take an Apple exec's word for it, especially in the context of a trial where it was very convenient for them to reach that position. We don't even have any objective info on what criteria Apple uses internally to quantify the levels of malware that are "acceptable" on macOS (if that even exists. I also think the exec may have been talking out of his ass)

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#327

Post by brigandish »

kanbara wrote: post #106
soulofmischief wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming the best intentions from you but I'd like to point out two things: 1. When discussing human rights (which apply to technological freedoms) reducing a need to "an edge case" is the basis of marginalization, defined as "treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral". Therefore, it is never appropriate to rely on such language to prove a point, especially when we are discussing sof…

i’ve never heard someone say that it’s a human right to run a webserver. i understand that you want to own the stack on your tech, and i would argue that if custom OSes were allowed, that fulfils that need. it’s not apple or google’s responsibility to let you do anything with their OS, in the same vein that you often are limited by stock router firmware or what’s on your ps5. as phones are hyper-personal it makes sen…

> i’ve never heard someone say that it’s a human right to run a webserver.

Now that you have, will you say that it has more merit if discussed in future?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#328

Post by hunter2_ »

cdogl wrote: post #273
hunter2_ wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole "Mac versus PC" thing somewhat solidified the notion that PC refers to x86. Raspberry Pi uses ARM.

I have an X86 MacBook Pro.

"PC refers to a non-Apple x86 machine" then :)

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#329

Post by brigandish »

froggit wrote: post #170
soulofmischief wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming the best intentions from you but I'd like to point out two things: 1. When discussing human rights (which apply to technological freedoms) reducing a need to "an edge case" is the basis of marginalization, defined as "treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral". Therefore, it is never appropriate to rely on such language to prove a point, especially when we are discussing sof…

> 2. It's an incredibly slippery slope to use "crapware" as a justification for reducing the freedoms of the individual. Criminals will find a way, do not create a hostile user experience. It's a legit security issue. Not protecting people from these things is far more user hostile.

Preventing some users who have the know-how from running a web server is not mutually exclusive with protecting people who don't wish to or don't know how.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#330

Post by brigandish »

janalsncm wrote: post #257
soulofmischief wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming the best intentions from you but I'd like to point out two things: 1. When discussing human rights (which apply to technological freedoms) reducing a need to "an edge case" is the basis of marginalization, defined as "treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral". Therefore, it is never appropriate to rely on such language to prove a point, especially when we are discussing sof…

If it is a human right to be able to run a web server off of a phone, does this mean that every human has a right to own a phone?

Why would one necessitate the other?
Post reply on HN