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Posted by seg6 10 hours ago

My server is a phone now(seg6.space)
292 points | 112 commentspage 2
purplemoonx 8 hours ago|
Those saying it's said backwards clearly aren't self-hosters!

iPhone hardware wise is like an amazing alternative to rpi (way better hardware)

But the software makes no sense at all for a server, with screen locking due to inactivity and whatnot, not to mention energy and network priority is designed around a consumer use case on the move.

If you run Linux on it and take advantage from the Apple hardware like the light sensors and accelerometer - maybe it makes sense for measuring wave height, sky color, attached to a buoy or oil rig or something, you can even show it on a map due to its GPS. Assuming the oil rig has WiFi or a cell phone booster.

Idk though, maybe for something that important you just get the right stuff - cool hobby nonetheless.

trvz 3 hours ago||
The main argument you give for it not making sense can easily be changed in Settings. The energy and network considerations have no impact on running a virtual machine in UTM – iPhones will give everything they can as long as thermals are fine.
dd_xplore 1 hour ago||
Apple’s no software is server centric.
louismerlin 2 hours ago||
I did the same, and am working on more!

https://far.computer

craftkiller 6 hours ago||
Cool project, but slightly better: before the rampocalypse I bought one of those aliexpress fanless linux boxes designed to be a router. I put a 32GB stick of ram in it and a 250GB SSD. I run opnsense in a virtual machine to serve as my home router and then I put the rest of my home server stuff on other virtual machines on that same box. It's still fanless/silent. It takes up zero additional space because it is my router. It would already be running 24/7 because it is my router so the additional energy usage of an additional VM is likely minuscule. The latency to my router is basically zero since it is on the same physical box. And it is using a real SSD so it has faster storage with almost certainly better endurance.
iamgopal 5 hours ago||
Router with fanless gpu for AI load , nvme slot will be game changing
seg6 5 hours ago||
Love the idea, great work!
aucisson_masque 2 hours ago||
I see the 'battery backed' as an issue.

Keeping it plugged in like that is going to harm the battery.

That and the fact that my Xiaomi 12 runs USB 2.0 ....

I'm stuck running stuff on MacBook at night when I don't use it because of that.

Electronic price need to become reasonable again, a 8gb raspberry pi 5 is about 200€ right now. It's absolutely insane.

My pi 4 did cost me 40€ a few years ago.

m1keil 1 hour ago||
It's an old phone getting a second life, the health of the battery is probably not a big concern at this stage.
ponector 11 minutes ago|||
It's not a concern untill the phone is bloated because of damaged battery. Also it can catch fire!
aucisson_masque 30 minutes ago|||
yeah but when the battery fails, you loose your "server".

i'm thinking more about long term.

yoyohello13 8 hours ago||
I thought this was going to be a rant about QR code menus.
collabs 8 hours ago|
Can you please tell me more? I'm trying to build a self hosted application (with Claude) so people can scan a QR code and place orders / send messages to the kitchen without having to flag down a server / waiter. It is supposed to save time and money for the restaurant and for the patrons and customers it is supposed to be more convenient. Do you not like this option?
JoshTriplett 7 hours ago|||
Every system like that I've ever used has three fundamental problems:

1) It's optimized for the restaurant first, and the patrons second or not at all, and it shows.

2) Someone thinks "hey, we could sell ads on this", and now it's even more a piece of garbage. (This is also what happened with all the little kiosk-tablets on the tables at some restaurants. We just set them face-down on their screen and talk to a human.)

3) Most of them never anticipate unexpected problems. They might have an "order X" button, but they often don't even have a "call server" button. And when they do, it often doesn't work, because the other end isn't hooked up to something that gets people's attention.

The much lower-tech and more enjoyable solution I've seen used successfully many many times is a call button on the table. Press the button if you want service. Bonus if it has a "press this other button if you want to be left alone".

makeitdouble 7 hours ago||||
I always wondered how actually cheaper a QR menu is, compared for instance to an android tablet you set there or pass to the client so they order.

People immediately see the cost of a tablet, the issues with charging, building the app and updating the data, customers not understanding the interface etc.

Yet, they don't seem to grasp all of these are basically the same for a QR code: you're now maintaining an online service just for your restaurant. People still need to understand your site. You'll be dealing with their browser, extensions, languages etc. And you still need the QR code somewhere on the table, visible, explain that it needs to be scanned (by one person ? everyone ? do they need to keep the tab open ? etc.). These will all be costs, you pay either upfront by hiring experts to make the experience good, or on the go with crappy customer experience, your staff spending more time than needed working around the system and explaining it to your customers, and those not coming back.

There are super cheap and simplistic ways to deal with all of that, and I assume GP has seen many of these.

PS: The weirdest experience I ever had was someone at our table scanning the code, to copy/paste it on the browser on their personal profile (default was work browser). They missed a digit in the url params and ended up opening the order menu of a table at the other side of the restaurant, and just started ordering, then waiting for a pretty long time while the other table was dealing with the mess.

lucb1e 5 hours ago||||
Notice that when someone grabs their phone, they're not just grabbing a web browser but also their personal entertainer. Besides chats, many people also have various apps trying to nudge them into engaging with it. I have never been in a restaurant without menu though, I just imagine that I'd end up on HN while contemplating what to pick out of sheer habit and muscle memory

Besides that, there are people who have no smartphone or an empty battery, can't use a smartphone (one of my grandparents can read a menu with a pocket magnifier, but a touchscreen phone is too cumbersome and so they don't know how to use that; another grandparent has memory issues and never learned how to use a smartphone), don't have signal (you need to provide WiFi), have an allergy and need to ask questions or ensure that some ingredient is really taken out, etc. I'm not against the option to order impersonally but a good kitchen communication system would go a lot deeper than slapping wetware with slopware

fer 4 hours ago||||
I don't think anyone over 30 around me likes that. At that point it's very close to door dashing but less convenient.
ventana 4 hours ago||||
For whatever random reason, all the QR code menus where I live are implemented in a really, really shitty way: unresponsive, with huge latency, making it unnecessarily hard to make a choice. And good luck asking for a modification, like no mashed potatoes please or anything like that.
DANmode 7 hours ago||||
Not when I forget my phone in the car.

Having backup tablets on hand is a good hybrid.

TacticalCoder 5 hours ago|||
> ... without having to flag down a server / waiter.

Using QR codes to not having to talk to a human and to "optimize" humans out of the loop in a restaurant sounds like a great scenario for an episode of black mirror.

QR code menus are one the shittiest experience people going to a restaurant to enjoy a meal can have.

> Do you not like this option?

The entire world fucking hates it. It's totally dumbfucktarded.

Sorry to be blunt.

Kuinox 8 hours ago||
I did a similar thing recently.

I run kube in a VM, and it was ressource constrained.

I hooked an old samsung to my pc and have let claude handle everything.

I only had to unlock the bootloader, flash the image claude uploaded.

It rebuilt postmarketos multiples times to enable various flag, and now there is a kube node running on it.

alightsoul 7 hours ago|
did you commit or open source your changes to postmarket os? also you can't unlock bootloaders anymore on samsung phones. you will need to find an exploit. https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame
Kuinox 7 hours ago||
Claude did the changes, I didn't do anything, I think it's was mostly recompiling with flags.
zniturah 2 hours ago||
Which has likely crashed, as the link is no longer working
conradfr 2 hours ago|
It's working for me.
mintflow 4 hours ago||
Nice writeup but use legacy phone is really need to do some tuning and hacks, but that's fun to do if one like it.

For me I have a 24x7 running intel gen 11 nuc, i am lucky to get it installed with 32G memory and two NVME disks years ago and cannot image add those memory and NVME disk with much higher price

Just run some docker and VM on that, use cloudflare tunnel or tailscale funnel if you want to expose some service to the wild internet

I recently even find a pixel 5 and passthrough it to the openclaw VM on that nuc, let it browse the X to find some posts and relax me from doom scrolling, though seems timeline still bad and no much valued post find.

hoppp 6 hours ago||
I thought about this a few times but the flash storage is a bit sketchy for running a database, I am worried it can die. Tho android does have sqlite built in and works fine.
imhoguy 1 hour ago||
If your phone supports being USB host you can try USB splitter dongle and attach external SSD drive to it.

Also if your phone has SD card slot you can try "industrial" SD cards. They are small in capacity but ideal for write load.

kllrnohj 4 hours ago|||
Any storage device can die, that's why you have a robust backup system, right? Right...? :)

But the flash storage in a phone is going to be the eMMC variety which typically means a proper controller and TLC NAND. Not as robust probably as a "proper" SSD/NVME, but a lot more durable than most micro SD cards. And it'll have health indicators.

lucb1e 5 hours ago||
Just because it's a database doesn't mean it does more write cycles on the flash cells than storing regular files would cause it to. Anytime you change something, it writes either a file, or does an update/insert query which causes a file write. In both cases you've written a few bytes to disk, doesn't really matter what the underlying system is (not majorly anyway, surely one solution will turn out to be some % better than another and cause the average phone's storage chip to last 30 years instead of 40 under some defined typical usage pattern)

You can also just insert an SD card to do the write-heavy operations and swap it out when it wears out (you make backups, right? :D)

bogzz 8 hours ago|
I plan to do this when I buy a new phone, thank you for the great writeup!

Would have been a fun load test had you hosted your blog on the phone.

lucb1e 8 hours ago|
That's a test of the software more than the hardware. I run a lot of stuff on low-powered hardware and the main problems are when the software allocates a ton of memory unnecessarily (Java software is usually the worst offender) or does a million things for each request that are either unnecessary or duplicate.

Any efficient blog software will handle HN fine on anything that you can call a smartphone, so like maybe not a Nokia with GPRS and 6MB on-board storage, but something like the Samsung S2 from 2011 that basically shipped as a Linux box -- just need to adb push ARM binaries for PHP and a webserver

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