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Every phone should be able to run personal websites

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Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#341

Post by luag »

roxil wrote: post #298

I see at least one very good reason why this shoud be possible: old phones. Reusing old phones as a webserver seems like a good idea to me, since they were built for power efficiency (unlike old PCs) and would otherwise simply end up as e-waste in a landfill or discarded, forgotten in a drawer somewhere. Maybe it's because I use LineageOS (and Cyanogen mod before that), but I never even knew that there were problems…

For simple p2p file sharing, you can try using [toffeeshare.com](https://toffeeshare.com/)

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#342

Post by abigail95 »

It's a neat trick to demo a PoC on your phone if you find something really poorly optimized.

I took a product that was "required" "minimum spec" to be run on a c5.2xlarge, fixed it and ran it on my phone, with a load test.

It achieves showing how wasteful their approach to resources was, and how powerful smartphones have become, and a cool way to show off.

If someone wants to know how resource intensive something is, if you can say I can get X Tx/QPS on my phone, it's probably not that complicated, and not that hard to run/maintain.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#343

Post by robertlagrant »

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…

> 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".

This is a category error. The use is marginal, not the people. You can't just uprate the severity of something because it suits your wants.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#344

Post by gertlex »

paulcole wrote: post #309
postalrat wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you gaining by entering this fight? Step aside.

Totally agree. Let’s keep this the one-sided echo chamber it was designed to be.

It was probably more reference to tmpX7dMeXU's pointless rambling response than a desire to not hear actual arguments.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#345

Post by thih9 »

abigail95 wrote: post #342

It's a neat trick to demo a PoC on your phone if you find something really poorly optimized. I took a product that was "required" "minimum spec" to be run on a c5.2xlarge, fixed it and ran it on my phone, with a load test. It achieves showing how wasteful their approach to resources was, and how powerful smartphones have become, and a cool way to show off. If someone wants to know how resource intensive something is,…

The “showing how wasteful their approach to computing resources was” part wouldn’t work on me. I think I no longer see phones as inferior computing resources, at least not that much.

My phone can use ai to generate images locally[1], process video or camera raws, run better games than my laptop and likely more.

[1]: https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/draw-things-ai-generation/id64...

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#346

Post by _factor »

janalsncm wrote: post #253
vlan0 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your take hits the nail on the head. Most people have zero interest in running their own website.we live in a world where people have no clue how things work. They just want it to work and not have to understand how. People could change their own brakes and oil too. But how many folks want to? Not many. It doesn’t provide value to them. Just like a personal website wouldn’t provide value to them. Hence, like…

The fact that most people don’t understand how things work is a testament to good design. You shouldn’t have to understand how a car works to use a car. You shouldn’t have to understand how a lightbulb works to switch on the lights. Abstraction allows us to build on prior technologies. It’s also a practical reality of living in a complex world. Someone using Excel isn’t thinking about how that app was programmed. Mos…

It’s only a bad thing if we live on a world we can’t breathe on anymore because the air filter guy fell asleep.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#347

Post by Moldoteck »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #100
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…

Is the right of a handful of people to run a web server on their phone more important than the right of millions of "unsophisticated" users to not be scammed / abused by malware? Since it's inception smart phones have been a consumer platform, used for consuming content. The platform for tinkerers already exists. It's called a PC with Linux installed. Every platform does not need to cater to your needs.

right of millions of "unsophisticated" users to not be scammed / abused by malware - but who even said this will lead to millions being scammed? Does (just) the ability to create a server on pc/mac imply are less secure compared to phones?(the question is just for this ability, not other protection mechanisms). Also, why just not treat it like option to sideload apps in android? Imo that option is orders of magnitude 'more dangerous' compared to creating a server but still that option can be used without the root and without breaking the warranty.

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#348

Post by Moldoteck »

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?

What is not forbidden is allowed, you are born with your rights, law just limits them for society to function. Afaik law doesn't forbid to run a webserver on your phone so technically you can say it's a human right

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#349

Post by Moldoteck »

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.

But this issue is minuscule compared to allowing running unverified apps... a thing that's allowed in most android phones a button away without the need to break warranty. What's more funny, looks like ios soon will allow this too. So phones are already offering the option to run unverified code, user should just allow it and accept the risks prompt. Why not treat the server thing (which imo is much less dangerous) just the same way?

Re: Every phone should be able to run personal websites

#350

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #178

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…

What would someone do with a "website". Well, what is a "website". People backing so-called "tech" companies will tell us, but the story they tell is biased toward using the web as an advertising and sales medium, from which they, as intermediaries, can profit. The surveillance they perform using this arrangement is other worldly.

A website is a computer running an httpd. It's not a "platform" and it's not a means of drawing an audience. Those are specific uses of running an httpd, ones that happen to enrich so-called "tech" company intermediaries, but those are not the only uses.

An httpd is a program that reponds to HTTP requests. There is much one can do with HTTP. Certainly, HTTP is not limited to the uses that so-called "tech" companies have chosen: attracting large audiences, mass data collection and the sale and delivery of programmatic advertising. For example, using only HTTP one can transfer and receive files, messages, audio, video, any stream of bytes, to and from one's family, friends and colleagues, directly, without using a so-called "tech" company intermediary.

This has been demonstrated, for example, by a gentleman in Japan:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37044318

Of course, people that profit from these so-called "tech" companies do not want any discussion of such other uses for HTTP. If the uses do not allow for advertising or some way for certain people to make money, then these people will talk them down. "No one wants that." "I don't want that therefore no one else wants that." "It will not work because..." "We tried it and it failed." We have seen these lame arguments so many times. The more empathic the negative responses from HN commenters to any proposed non-commercial, non-advertising-related uses of the web, the more we can be sure such uses are not only possible but highly probable. Time will show the wiser. It's early days.

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