I wouldn't view swapping Hetzner for Cloudflare as a gain in freedom.
But then how else would you write your self-congratulating blog post?
My server is a phone now
251–260 of 275 posts
Re: My server is a phone now
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with Docker desktop? Been using it everyday for at least 5 years.
It’s sluggish, it’s incredibly bloated with all the services that Docker (the company) wants to sell you and the UI is badly designed. 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…
I'll check it out. Yes, no UI needed. I run Docker Desktop but I don't think I've used the UI more than on ce.
Re: My server is a phone now
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Asking out of curiosity, did you use any LLM assistance to write the body of the article? It's not to judge, I just noticed some peculiar language patterns and I was wondering whether that's something from your native language or from AI.
No worries at all, I don’t mind the question. But it could be a mix! My writing process involves bouncing ideas off LLMs about wording and sentence structure whenever I feel like I’ve reached a checkpoint in the writing process. For a long time, even though I consider myself fluent in English and primarily speak English every day, both at home and at work, I’ve still felt like I’m not quite where I’d like to be in te…
I personally didn't notice any strong LLM tells in the writing. In fact, I enjoyed the writing style quite a bit. Especially the following sentence near the beginning of the article:
> At that point I had neither a server nor a phone
I don't know why I like it, I just do. Perhaps it is the slightly humorous tone. Anyways, nice article!
Re: My server is a phone now
#254Crazy timing. I did the same thing last week!
I have an old oneplus 6 and all I did was plug it into my computer and told Claude what I want and it just worked.
I even told it to make sure the battery doesn’t charge above 80% to not fry the battery and it couldn’t find the setting so wrote something to make it work.
I feel like this whole thing would have taken a weekend pre AI - instead I did it on a whim and spent about 5 minutes on it and it took less than 2 hours of wall clock time.
Re: My server is a phone now
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it not worth the effort to take them apart and take the batteries out before you put them into the rack?
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…
Hahaha I did this with AI last week. It’s confirmed. We have AGI!
Re: My server is a phone now
#256Just a heads up, proxmox now supports ARM, so with the authors setup, it could potentially run Proxmox along with LXC for containers. LXC does provide a security boundary, more than Docker but less than a full blown VM.
any guides on transorming an android phone into a proxmox node?
Re: My server is a phone now
#257I still think the best bang for your buck is an old desktop PC. Something like an i5 with 8GB RAM and an SSD will suit 99% of home server uses with capacity to spare. Even in this environment of inflated hardware prices, you can get one for a reasonable price. Although I do see the appeal in getting unconventional hardware to do what you want, just for the love of the game.
I mean, it's hard to beat almost free. The phone was being unused, therefore it was free hardware for this project.
Re: My server is a phone now
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's what I thought when I read this. It will probably destroy this battery very quickly. But in other hand, it is probably a pain in the ass to remove the battery and do some workarounds to make sure the phone correctly behaves without it.
> It will probably destroy this battery very quickly. 'Very quickly' seems to be measured in decades from what I see Most people I know have their laptop docked, either near-permanently at home or taking it between home and a desk with dock (so it's nearly always plugged in when in use) The 'servers' I've had were all old laptops - yes, with battery (don't have to buy a separate UPS if one is already included). I've…
I had a laptop as a server for a really long time, and I also poked around using a phone for some server things (not as main server) and after some time it was unusable (the whole phone was suffering because wasn't prepared for a battery that fucked).
Anyway, my point is, maybe his phone has some mechanism similar to laptops to prevent this kind of thing, but in the end it's a phone. It's not the intended use for it.
Re: My server is a phone now
#259I 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?
At that point why not just one one of those android tv boxes that are basically android phones without the battery and screen?
Re: My server is a phone now
#260I have similar idea of using my old Xiaomi Mi A1 as a server, but I have never actually done it. The author's first idea and mine was similar, replacing Android with PostmarketOS. And here is the difference, I was not brave enough to actually install PostmarketOS to my phone. Especially after looking at the Postmarket Wiki where not all features for my phone are flagged as supported. In the end, I abandoned the idea…
If the OS came pre-installed I'd be weary of Chinese call home/ your device being used as a residential proxy for DDOS farms
Correction for my previous comment, it is not Raspbian, but Armbian. The Armbian was not pre-installed from the factory, it was an Android TV Box that some tech-savvy guy in my country reinstalled. And in the end, I reinstall the Armbian in a micro-SD card, so the pre-installed OS was not used at all.