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My server is a phone now
181–190 of 277 posts
Re: My server is a phone now
#182Nokia went through a phase in around 2006 of seriously believing the future was people liveblogging and serving it over 3G from Symbian based Series 60 devices. This was based on "Apache Raccoon" https://sourceforge.net/projects/raccoon/files/raccoon/PS_1_... which was a port of Apache to Symbian, and a port of Python for scripting, complete with the ability to write multithreaded code (GIL excepted) using Symbian Ac…
I so wanna know more about this, I'll be spending a chunk of the afternoon reading on this story.
The future used to be so cool. Having access to Wikipedia and live reporting always on hand was going to make everyone so informed, easier communications were going to make democracy and grassroots organizing flourish... We were all going to have our own server on our pockets...
We were naive, but I sorely miss the tech-optimism that to some extent carried me through uni.
Re: My server is a phone now
#183Side comment about the difference between “My server is a phone now” and “My phone is a server now.” In linguistics, the terms “theme” and “rheme” refer to the status of information in a sentence [1]. The theme of a sentence is something that is known or can be assumed from the context (that is, old information), while the rheme is information that is newly introduced in the sentence, often as a comment on the theme.…
If you asked any native English speaker what “my X is a phone now” meant, I would wager that nearly all would say that it means that X can now make voice calls, like a phone.
Re: My server is a phone now
#184Side comment about the difference between “My server is a phone now” and “My phone is a server now.” In linguistics, the terms “theme” and “rheme” refer to the status of information in a sentence [1]. The theme of a sentence is something that is known or can be assumed from the context (that is, old information), while the rheme is information that is newly introduced in the sentence, often as a comment on the theme.…
Isn't there a simpler explanation in that "my server" can refer to a role or to a specific machine? The author uses "server" as a role. So "my server is a phone now" translates to "the server role in my setup is now played by a phone". Maybe this is just a rewording of what you said. You clearly know a lot more than me about linguistics.
In that case it would still be more clear to say “my phone is my server now”.
The current title is just a bad English construction. Not a big deal and absolutely forgivable since I don’t expect everyone to know perfect English.
Re: My server is a phone now
#185Nokia went through a phase in around 2006 of seriously believing the future was people liveblogging and serving it over 3G from Symbian based Series 60 devices. This was based on "Apache Raccoon" https://sourceforge.net/projects/raccoon/files/raccoon/PS_1_... which was a port of Apache to Symbian, and a port of Python for scripting, complete with the ability to write multithreaded code (GIL excepted) using Symbian Ac…
I so wanna know more about this, I'll be spending a chunk of the afternoon reading on this story. The future used to be so cool. Having access to Wikipedia and live reporting always on hand was going to make everyone so informed, easier communications were going to make democracy and grassroots organizing flourish... We were all going to have our own server on our pockets... We were naive, but I sorely miss the tech-…
A further example of how stunningly naive this was: they wanted (external NMEA) GPS connected to it (and Bluetooth beacons when indoors, which had to be created for the project) so people could publish their real time location.
Re: My server is a phone now
#186To whom did you call with your server?
Re: My server is a phone now
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if this is a native/non-native English reader situation. I'm the latter and for me the title promised that I will read about a server that now is capable of letting a person call to order a pizza. That was immediate thought. It would be very interesting to see a poll results on how many of us thought that the article is about a server doing phone stuff and not a phone doing server stuff.
I don't think it is, I'm also the latter and happened to assume the opposite. The article was exactly what I expected from the title. I mean, turning a server rack into a phone just isn't something that makes any sense, so it didn't seem like a valid option to consider. I've thrown it at a few LLMs now to see what happens and they also make the same assumption with no extra info, that it's a server now being hosted o…
In this case you have enough implicit context to correctly infer the meaning, but the particular sentence construction strongly implies that the server can now make phone calls.
Re: My server is a phone now
#188In true HN fashion, a surprising amount of the discussion ended up being about the title.
Turkish is my native language, and its sentence structure is pretty different from English, so that occasionally sneaks into how I phrase things. I can see why “my server runs on a phone now” is less ambiguous.
Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the accidental linguistics thread :)
Re: My server is a phone now
#189In true HN fashion, a surprising amount of the discussion ended up being about the title. Turkish is my native language, and its sentence structure is pretty different from English, so that occasionally sneaks into how I phrase things. I can see why “my server runs on a phone now” is less ambiguous. Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the accidental linguistics thread :)
I had an advisor really good at calling stuff like that out as "having an eye for the trivial." The advice helped me reframe my personal reading toward substantive engagement, rather than surface-level nitpicks like the order of words in the title.
Re: My server is a phone now
#190Side comment about the difference between “My server is a phone now” and “My phone is a server now.” In linguistics, the terms “theme” and “rheme” refer to the status of information in a sentence [1]. The theme of a sentence is something that is known or can be assumed from the context (that is, old information), while the rheme is information that is newly introduced in the sentence, often as a comment on the theme.…
This shows a problem with the English language: the same sentence can be understood in at least two ways: "the server can now work as a phone", or "the phone is now my server". It is to solve this kind of issue that many languages have markers to specify what each noun means in the sentence.