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I actually think it's just a poor title, "my server runs on a phone now" would be better. As it is, I expected the server to now have a modem, to be operating as a phone.
that title might be easier to parse, but it's less poetic and less attention grabbing
In 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 :)
Great post. I’m impressed with your English skills. Turkish is a very different language, so I can’t imagine it’s easy to pick up English. Anyway, you inspired me to try doing this with one of my old devices. Gonna put that on my September hacking list.
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I’m impressed with that. I had a Nuc 9 extreme with a 10gb SFP card in it. It averaged 69w. The Mac Mini I replaced it with uses just under 5w. A Mini is possible the worst bang for buck. Also, the horror that that is Desktop Docker can’t be over emphasised. I know there are better ways of using Docker on a Mac, but having got something working I can’t face rebuilding it.
What's wrong with Docker desktop? Been using it everyday for at least 5 years.
OrbStack is my go-to when it comes to running docker on Mac. It also uses macOS native containerization APIs so containers will be a bit more performant than they would (at least use to) be on Docker Desktop.
Another good approach if you’re fine without a GUI or want to bring your own is just ‚brew install docker‘.
I work in a place where we have about 100 phones in a server room that we use for automated testing of mobile apps. A few phones get chucked out every year due to bloated batteries. We’ve even had one or two explosions. We have them well cooled now and in fireproof containers. We try to do some power management like automatically discharging them every once in a while etc…
Is it not worth the effort to take them apart and take the batteries out before you put them into the rack?
That said... there are Chinese rackable phone KVM thing, available on Chinese e-commerce sites, intended for social media fraud farms(faking likes, aiding account thefts, sending scam DMs, calls, SMS, etc). Taking them apart should be already common in those scenes. Reportedly those are operating at some scales globally in various third world scam malls - shopping malls by architecture, but operated by gangs and inhabited by scam shops. So it's readily possible, if necessary.
Side 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.…
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This reminded me about the recent Google blog post where they made a server farm out of a bunch of old phones: "Prior to deployment, smartphones must be processed to remove all but the motherboard, which contains the core compute functionality. Note that the motherboard is responsible for the largest fraction of embodied carbon (approximately 50% based on internal carbon footprinting assessments), so this effort targ…
How did they manage to run the phones without the battery? Apparently you need to desolder the BMS from the battery, and connect a power supply to it. And I guess simulate charging via USB and discharging so it doesn't turn off because it thinks it has drawn more than its battery capacity?
It is incredible the amount of gimmicks some folks will go through, even if it was to stay with reuse Android phone story, Java and Kotlin as regular Android app already provide all the juice required to do the job.
> Java and Kotlin as regular Android app already provide all the juice required to do the job.
To do what job? What job can Java and Kotlin do on a phone to replace a Hetzner VPS?
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It only makes sense if we are measuring raw capability per dollar. Once you factor in noise, physical size, idle power, battery etc, I think the calculation changes. For a home sever that's mostly idle, it is almost like commuting in a pickup truck.
My server is an extremely quiet Xeon workstation: unlike 1U servers, workstation are typically quiet. The good thing with a Xeon workstation is that it supports ECC RAM only and there are plenty used. For there's no market for used Xeon systems, so you can find stuff like 22-cores / 44-threads CPUs for $25 or something. Some mod Xeon systems to use regular PC PSU like Be Quiet! ones and Noctua fans, etc. but my HP Z4…
pmOS is a proper port with native Linux drivers, but there’s also Libhybris / Halium which runs Android drivers in a more typical “Linux” userland. Ubuntu Touch uses that, so it could be a good starting point. Sadly, I don’t see CMF Phone 1 in the devices list: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/