101–110 of 432 posts
I disagree with this, but it is possible with one of those Linux shell emulators for Android, I forget if I tried it on iOS, but I've managed to do it both via Python and Golang.
Without root access you're not going to be able to use port 80 or port 443 on Android. I don't think iOS has the same restriction, but I can't find any documentation about it so I'm not sure.
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…
> 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 even this low bar is (imo sadly) currently impossible for someone who just has a spare phone in their closet and a bit of html knowledge looking forward to the unicorn that makes wordpress for ios/android
First, nobody is stopping you from doing this. I just spent 30 seconds installing the first app I found on the Play store and 1 minute configuring my router, and now I have a static web server that I can hit from anywhere in the world.
But the real issue is that it's the wrong way to build a personal web server for your phone. The right way to do this is to host a server in a datacenter and install an app or service that pushes content to that server. Other users can hit that server to see that data you push. Tons of advantages of doing it this way (reliability, battery life, capability, throughput, cost, security, support for multiple devices, support for multiple kinds of devices, ...)
The reason that people don't build things like this isn't because they are evil or protecting their "walled gardens", it's just a bad design.
Is there a single person on this planet who wants to host a website but can't and will start doing so if their mobile phone supported it? I'm going to guess no.
99.99999% of people want to host nothing at all (and probably don't know what web hosting is). For the ones that do, it is still a lot more cost effective (and reliable/performant) to buy a $5 VPS or a Raspberry Pi than rely on a device and network connection that aren't meant to be used for web hosting. Cell phones have limited battery life. Mobile network connections are spotty, and they allocate the vast majority of bandwidth for downloads because that's what people are using their devices for.
So the ecosystem doesn't support running websites on mobile devices because (1) it is a terrible idea, (2) the demand is non-existent and (3) there are a hundred better options.
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 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 sense people want more control, but most average users do not. and as someone who works closely with smartphone tech, i want it to just work and i don’t want to worry about whatever nonsense is enabled by disabling security or os-level by guarantees.
just get a fairphone or whatever. it’s not a human right to force tech companies to embrace your vision of computing
> The reason I think this is needed is because a large percent of Internet users cannot afford hosting personal websites. Is there a single person on this planet who wants to host a website but can't and will start doing so if their mobile phone supported it? I'm going to guess no. 99.99999% of people want to host nothing at all (and probably don't know what web hosting is). For the ones that do, it is still a lot mo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is phone battery going to die? Do a traffic dump and check how many thousands of requests its handling for all your personal data from every app installed.
Because phones have all-day battery life because they turn off the radios as often as possible, sending and receiving data in short bursts. Lingering sockets are shut down for non-system services and push messages are exchanged through dedicated messaging providers with power management planning built in. It's one of the reasons running standard Linux, or even de-Googled Android, on a normal Android device can absolu…
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 now to post this comment.
It's a Huawei GR5 Honor from 2017 with original battery that I've de-Googled, and when I picked it up earlier the battery indicated 22℅ remaining which surprised me because I've not used it for some weeks.
When I read your comment I thought I'd ckeck the battery and phone usage logs and I'm now even more surprised. The phone was last used on July 19 (24 days ago) and the battery drain graph shows a very gentle and almost perfectly linear decline from then (until I put it on change and started using it).
Moreover, it estimates remaining battery life in standard/default power mode at 8 days 23 hours (but it's since been on change). Note: the phone was set to standard power mode during those past 24 days. If I switched to 'Power Saving' mode the estimate is 11 days 16 hours, and in 'Ultra Save' its estimate is nearly 33 days (778 hours 44 mins).
Incidentally, the phone has 346 apps installed.
It's amazing what battery life one can achieve when one stops both Gapps and user-installed apps yapping back to Google-Central.
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…
You can argue all you want about what the normal joe shmoe should be able to do but most joes shmoes will use that to hurt themselves more than help.
Limitiations are essentially OSHA of computing, by making it hard to do the wrong stuff it makes most people least likely to hurt themselves.
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.