4 ms·

"Personal data stores have to be fast, cheap and private." Uh yeah. That's called a Personal Computer - "PC" if you haven't heard of it. The problem is that

by throw7 4y ago

"Personal data stores have to be fast, cheap and private." Uh yeah. That's called a Personal Computer - "PC" if you haven't heard of it. The problem is that technology came along and gave us a "PC" in our hand (cell phones) that wasn't a "PC". What we need is an actual "PC" in our hand. That is: a cell phone that is under the control of the user (and no, a "global single-sign on" sounds absolutely worse than "web3" <- whatever that is).

bhauer 4y ago
For a decade now, or perhaps longer, I've been wanting a first-class general purpose computer in the form factor of a cell phone. Microsoft has danced ever-so-close to providing us this, through several iterations of rumored "Surface Phones," and in showcasing the promise (if not necessarily the execution) of a viable dockable phone in the Windows 10 Mobile era. A few Linux flavors of the same concept have circulated through history as well, but none particularly viable. Failing that, I'd like a computing model that I call PAO, Personal Application Omnipresence, where all of my devices are terminals to my own application server [1]. [1] https://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao https://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  What would you expect? The form factor pretty much requires a low bandwidth input interface.
- femto 4y ago
  That would have been the Ubuntu Edge (2013). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge
- rgarrett88 4y ago
  I'm pretty much there with my z fold and termux.
- anderspitman 4y ago
  Interesting article. Honestly it's sad that you can't just wave your phone in front of any screen or input device and instantly be able to use that device to interact with the phone.
  - TomSwirly 4y ago
    Replace "interact" with "control" and "wave" with "walk" and you see the issue.
    - anderspitman 4y ago
      I am aware of the security implications. But these are implementation details. I still believe the essence of what I'm saying is true.
- antifa 4y ago
  Have you tried Samsung Dex? I doubt it meets all your requirements, but I used an anker USB-C hub to connect my Samsung device to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Then you can run android apps like in a desktop environment. It's at least a novelty.
  - bhauer 4y ago
    That sounds similar to the Windows 10 Mobile docking experience. Interesting, and a novelty, but not quite the execution we seek.
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  I've been looking for something like this for a long time. I have a powerful desktop PC in an inconvenient place, and a much weaker laptop which can be anywhere I am. All I want in life is to pause work on my desktop, pick up my laptop, and resume what I was doing. As an extension, I never want to think about which machine is running my app. I just want it to run wherever there are enough resources, and be displayed on whatever device I'm in front of. Network bandwidth isn't a limiting factor these days. Between all the devices I own, I have more compute power than a high end modern desktop. Why do I have to physically go sit at one machine for one task and a different machine for another? Every individual part of this problem has a solution, but no one has put them all together yet
- beeboop 4y ago
  Maybe not "first class" but there are definitely 6" tablet options running Windows.
superb-owl 4y ago
The problem isn't mobile phones, it's the convenience of the cloud. I can access my email and files from any location, from any device. It's magic. Of course, we've given up our privacy and autonomy for that convenience. The problem is that we seem to keep ending up on the convenience side of the trade-off.
- kodah 4y ago
  If you want the convenience of the cloud but the security of owning your own data there's anything that uses WireGuard. The only tricky thing is selectively exposing via a proxy for things like sharing. Traefik has done wonders in that category though.
  - corndoge 4y ago
    I self host most of my own infra but the sharing problem is certainly present, can you elaborate on how traefik helps?
    - imwillofficial 4y ago
      It's made self hosting proxying very very easy. Worth a look.
    - kodah 4y ago
      Traefik can listen on individual addresses on a machine, which lowers the barrier to making a chained ingress. If chained ingress doesn't make sense, think of how Kubernetes has a load balancer pointing at several nodes and each of those nodes run an ingress internally to route traffic across the private-to-the-node network. For instance, I didn't want my sharing URLs to enter directly on my home IP. I felt that would expose my house to an enumeration of vectors that I couldn't possibly control. I ended up creating a small server in digital ocean that runs Traefik on a public address with various public DNS records pointing at it. That instance of Traefik then points to my home servers Tailscale addresses. I actually go a step further by running Traefik on each server so that I can host multiple services on port 443 on each server, but this isn't absolutely necessary. Hopefully that all made sense!
q-big 4y ago
> a cell phone that is under the control of the user (and no, a "global single-sign on" sounds absolutely worse than "web3" <- whatever that is). The FCC does not allow this because of their certification requirements for the baseband processor. You can either lobby for this to change (good luck :-( ) or go the hacker way and build something that is under control of the user, but violates the laws.
- jacksonkmarley 4y ago
  What exactly does this mean? Doesn't the baseband processor exclusively handle the mobile communications? I thought the parent comment was more to do with OS running on the main processor.
  - q-big 4y ago
    > Doesn't the baseband processor exclusively handle the mobile communications? Formerly, yes. But from 4G phones on, they rather communicate via DMA, i.e. the baseband part of the SoC has full access to the device's memory. Also see the relevant section in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baseband_processor&oldid=1075710204#Security_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baseband_processo...
- jiggunjer 4y ago
  Does the EU have similar legislation?
gonehome 4y ago
We need a personal cloud computer. https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-programming-from.html https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progr... It’s a big project to fix the underlying issues to get us there, but it’s not impossible. It does require more than trying yet another DOA federated system that doesn’t fix the underlying incentive problems that lead to centralization. https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-computing-freedom.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-computing-...
- Sirened 4y ago
  >We need a personal cloud computer. You know, I actually had this back in ~2011 with the now defunct AlwaysOnPC—it was a really weird service which you could pay like $30 once for an then get access to a remote desktop on a random Debian install on some server they had. It was kind of a security nightmare in retrospect (only the kernel was used for isolation, i.e. everyone was on the same machines!) and I'm suprised it didn't die sooner from abuse (bad actors doing illegal shit from their servers) but it was amazing for the few years it was a thing. You could just sign in from your phone, tablet, or even a random computer at the library using a little java applet and get access to all your stuff just as you left it. I eventually moved on and just started remoting into a server back home but it was very cool at the time to have a fully end to end solution for personal cloud computing.

by throw7 4y ago

bhauer 4y ago

For a decade now, or perhaps longer, I've been wanting a first-class general purpose computer in the form factor of a cell phone. Microsoft has danced ever-so-close to providing us this, through several iterations of rumored "Surface Phones," and in showcasing the promise (if not necessarily the execution) of a viable dockable phone in the Windows 10 Mobile era. A few Linux flavors of the same concept have circulated through history as well, but none particularly viable. Failing that, I'd like a computing model that I call PAO, Personal Application Omnipresence, where all of my devices are terminals to my own application server [1]. [1] https://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao https://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao

nonethewiser 4y ago
What would you expect? The form factor pretty much requires a low bandwidth input interface.
femto 4y ago
That would have been the Ubuntu Edge (2013). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge
rgarrett88 4y ago
I'm pretty much there with my z fold and termux.
anderspitman 4y ago
Interesting article. Honestly it's sad that you can't just wave your phone in front of any screen or input device and instantly be able to use that device to interact with the phone.
- TomSwirly 4y ago
  Replace "interact" with "control" and "wave" with "walk" and you see the issue.
  - anderspitman 4y ago
    I am aware of the security implications. But these are implementation details. I still believe the essence of what I'm saying is true.
antifa 4y ago
Have you tried Samsung Dex? I doubt it meets all your requirements, but I used an anker USB-C hub to connect my Samsung device to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Then you can run android apps like in a desktop environment. It's at least a novelty.
- bhauer 4y ago
  That sounds similar to the Windows 10 Mobile docking experience. Interesting, and a novelty, but not quite the execution we seek.
rolenthedeep 4y ago
I've been looking for something like this for a long time. I have a powerful desktop PC in an inconvenient place, and a much weaker laptop which can be anywhere I am. All I want in life is to pause work on my desktop, pick up my laptop, and resume what I was doing. As an extension, I never want to think about which machine is running my app. I just want it to run wherever there are enough resources, and be displayed on whatever device I'm in front of. Network bandwidth isn't a limiting factor these days. Between all the devices I own, I have more compute power than a high end modern desktop. Why do I have to physically go sit at one machine for one task and a different machine for another? Every individual part of this problem has a solution, but no one has put them all together yet
beeboop 4y ago
Maybe not "first class" but there are definitely 6" tablet options running Windows.

superb-owl 4y ago

The problem isn't mobile phones, it's the convenience of the cloud. I can access my email and files from any location, from any device. It's magic. Of course, we've given up our privacy and autonomy for that convenience. The problem is that we seem to keep ending up on the convenience side of the trade-off.

kodah 4y ago
If you want the convenience of the cloud but the security of owning your own data there's anything that uses WireGuard. The only tricky thing is selectively exposing via a proxy for things like sharing. Traefik has done wonders in that category though.
- corndoge 4y ago
  I self host most of my own infra but the sharing problem is certainly present, can you elaborate on how traefik helps?
  - imwillofficial 4y ago
    It's made self hosting proxying very very easy. Worth a look.
  - kodah 4y ago
    Traefik can listen on individual addresses on a machine, which lowers the barrier to making a chained ingress. If chained ingress doesn't make sense, think of how Kubernetes has a load balancer pointing at several nodes and each of those nodes run an ingress internally to route traffic across the private-to-the-node network. For instance, I didn't want my sharing URLs to enter directly on my home IP. I felt that would expose my house to an enumeration of vectors that I couldn't possibly control. I ended up creating a small server in digital ocean that runs Traefik on a public address with various public DNS records pointing at it. That instance of Traefik then points to my home servers Tailscale addresses. I actually go a step further by running Traefik on each server so that I can host multiple services on port 443 on each server, but this isn't absolutely necessary. Hopefully that all made sense!

q-big 4y ago

> a cell phone that is under the control of the user (and no, a "global single-sign on" sounds absolutely worse than "web3" <- whatever that is). The FCC does not allow this because of their certification requirements for the baseband processor. You can either lobby for this to change (good luck :-( ) or go the hacker way and build something that is under control of the user, but violates the laws.

jacksonkmarley 4y ago
What exactly does this mean? Doesn't the baseband processor exclusively handle the mobile communications? I thought the parent comment was more to do with OS running on the main processor.
- q-big 4y ago
  > Doesn't the baseband processor exclusively handle the mobile communications? Formerly, yes. But from 4G phones on, they rather communicate via DMA, i.e. the baseband part of the SoC has full access to the device's memory. Also see the relevant section in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baseband_processor&oldid=1075710204#Security_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Baseband_processo...
jiggunjer 4y ago
Does the EU have similar legislation?

gonehome 4y ago

We need a personal cloud computer. https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-programming-from.html https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progr... It’s a big project to fix the underlying issues to get us there, but it’s not impossible. It does require more than trying yet another DOA federated system that doesn’t fix the underlying incentive problems that lead to centralization. https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-computing-freedom.html https://zalberico.com/essay/2022/09/28/tlon-urbit-computing-...

Sirened 4y ago
>We need a personal cloud computer. You know, I actually had this back in ~2011 with the now defunct AlwaysOnPC—it was a really weird service which you could pay like $30 once for an then get access to a remote desktop on a random Debian install on some server they had. It was kind of a security nightmare in retrospect (only the kernel was used for isolation, i.e. everyone was on the same machines!) and I'm suprised it didn't die sooner from abuse (bad actors doing illegal shit from their servers) but it was amazing for the few years it was a thing. You could just sign in from your phone, tablet, or even a random computer at the library using a little java applet and get access to all your stuff just as you left it. I eventually moved on and just started remoting into a server back home but it was very cool at the time to have a fully end to end solution for personal cloud computing.