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A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

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Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#61

Post by _shantaram »

bshacklett wrote: post #53
planb wrote: post #23

Sometimes I have weird fantasies about a post apocalyptic world where factories burned down and people have to live with the tech that’s available. No network, just off site solar power or generators, only local devices. I think it’s interesting to think about how far we could get with this. Does anyone have recommendations for novels, movies or video games with that topic?

Not exactly what you're describing, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After kinda fits the vibe. Warning: it's really depressing, but a good read if you're in the right head space for it.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank is another great book in a similar vein.

Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#62

Post by gruez »

zipy124 wrote: post #3

This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems preventing users from maintaining their phone with security updates, and very limited support length from OEM's leads to VERY insecure devices after they drop out of support. You should not be connecting these old devices to an internet accessible network. Google notably does well here with…

>This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems preventing users from maintaining their phone with security updates, and very limited support length from OEM's leads to VERY insecure devices after they drop out of support.

Approximately nobody is throwing away phones because the OEM stopped providing security patches. They're doing it for more practical reasons, like the phone getting slow, the battery wearing out, or wanting a better camera.

Moreover being able to replace firmware blobs/kernels/whatever doesn't mean such updates will actually materialize. For lineageos, many phones are stuck on 22.2 (android 15) because android 16 requires linux 5.4 and above, which means phones with earlier kernels are out of luck. Prior to this, there were phones from as early as 2016 (eg. the original Pixel) that could be upgraded to the latest Android. This isn't a "firmware blobs" or "locked down systems" problem. The kernel sources are available, and the kernel can be replaced, but nobody is going to bother upgrading the kernel for a 10 year old phone.

https://lineageos.org/Changelog-30/#legacy-devices

>You should not be connecting these old devices to an internet accessible network.

This depends on the use case. If you're using this as some sort of NAS or compute cluster running trusted workloads, you should be fine as long as there isn't some sort of RCE in the kernel.

Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#63

Post by bshacklett »

gruez wrote: post #48
Elfener wrote: post #46

Very weird that this is coming from Google, given that they made their phone platform specifically to not let you install your own operating system. And now, they're making it illegal to install custom apps too: https://keepandroidopen.org/

>given that they made their phone platform specifically to not let you install your own operating system. ??? You can still install alternate OSes (eg. grapheneos) on their latest phones. >And now, they're making it illegal to install custom apps too: https://keepandroidopen.org/ Besides the questionable use of "illegal" (what are they going to do, send you to jail?), that's not even accurate. You can still install a…

If they use anything that can be classified as a "digital lock" to enforce the policy, section 1201 of the DMCA comes into play. That includes potential criminal liability, resulting in fines and/or jail time as described by section 1204.

Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#64

Post by seu »

> This is generally driven by people’s desire for a new device, including for the functionalities provided by new models.

So people are to blame, not the companies shoveling ads, offering promotions to buy new phones, and in general creating the huge demand that they later, "are forced to satisfy".

Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#65

Post by aleksejs »

Elfener wrote: post #45
binyu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems Couldn't Google somehow fix this? Since they control the substrate (Android) and they would be doing it for their convenience

They're literally doing the opposite, right now you can't install a custom operating system, but in the near future you won't be able to install custom apps either: https://keepandroidopen.org/

You can install a custom operating system on (a non-carrier-locked model of) every phone Google has ever made.

Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#66

Post by Gander5739 »

Elfener wrote: post #45
binyu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems Couldn't Google somehow fix this? Since they control the substrate (Android) and they would be doing it for their convenience

They're literally doing the opposite, right now you can't install a custom operating system, but in the near future you won't be able to install custom apps either: https://keepandroidopen.org/

What do you mean you can't install a custom operating system? The bootloader is unlocked on google phones, isn't it?

Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#67

Post by AtlasBarfed »

noodlesUK wrote: post #8

I would love to see regulation that required making bootloaders unlockable to enable this sort of thing. People have been making clusters of consumer hardware for decades: I’m sure people remember the PS3 supercomputers of the mid 2000s. I personally have lots of batch jobs like CFD simulations that could easily run on a fleet of phones with no real reliability issues, and I’d love to reuse old hardware and give it a…

Make it a seven year rule: hardware vendors must release necessary source code for firmware, blobs, etc.

I think there should be a 20 year rule for all released commercial software to release the source code outside of national security concerns.

Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#69

Post by jrmg »

It’s counter intuitive to me that this is a net carbon win.

- Are these phone processors really as compute-pet-watt efficient as a regular data center processor?

- There’s so little embodied carbon in a phone motherboard - and presumably some embodied carbon in whatever custom racking hardware up is being used to house these. Is that really compute-power-per-embodied-carbon-footprint efficient than making a new server?

Re: A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones

#70

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

azkalam wrote: post #19
zipy124 wrote: post #3

This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems preventing users from maintaining their phone with security updates, and very limited support length from OEM's leads to VERY insecure devices after they drop out of support. You should not be connecting these old devices to an internet accessible network. Google notably does well here with…

Google has so much influence over the hardware manufacturers. They should do more. Does anyone in the industry know why so much firmware is proprietary?

I've worked with manufacturers who shipped us binary blobs for their hardware. They are often willing to customize the software for you, but they want to own the modifications, which they can use for other customers. A big part of many contracts is a services component where they provide features or advanced functionality, and this lets them mark up their bill substantially. They're existentially scared of their hardware being cloned or their customers building in-house solutions, so they have to stay competitive on that front.

It's also a huge pain in the ass for them to release software as open source. They would need to track all the different forks and modifications in an organized manner (they often do a lot of copy paste and one-off nonsense). They run pretty light staffing on a lot of these components and doing all of that is just another chore for their overworked devs.

Lastly, I've heard they sometimes use other commercial, closed-source software components which they can't easily relicense.

Is this all bullshit? Yes absolutely. I'm not defending them but these are the excuses they give.

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