[HN Gopher] 64bit computing on a budget
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64bit computing on a budget
Author : jandeboevrie
Score : 160 points
Date : 2023-07-02 10:54 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (virtuallyfun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (virtuallyfun.com)
| a1o wrote:
| I would prefer just Linux... But if someone is looking for a
| challenge I wonder when arm64 hackintosh will appear.
| lockhouse wrote:
| I'm not sure that's going to be viable. From my understanding
| there are some unique features of the M1/M2 architecture that
| aren't commonplace. The unified memory, certain specifics of
| the system on chips, and a couple of extra instructions that
| Apple added to facilitate Rosetta 2 support.
|
| Intel Macs were largely generic PCs with a different firmware
| and a few custom chips thrown in here and there. Apple Silicon
| Macs were a big departure from this.
| notpushkin wrote:
| If anybody is trying to unlock a Xiaomi phone but doesn't have
| access to a Windows PC, this unofficial unlock tool port has
| worked well for me: https://xiaomitool.com/
| kazinator wrote:
| In 2023, you can get 64 bit PC's in the back alley dumpster.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| Exactly. Brand new Intel N100 (Four 12th gen efficiency cores)
| desktops are selling for ~$120.
|
| Intel 6th gen desktops can be purchased for the ~$30 he spent
| on the phone and don't require the many hours he spent trying
| to boot an OS on it.
|
| 64-bit Core 2 Duo machines are still perfectly usable and
| people will pay you to take them.
| rr808 wrote:
| I'd love any major competition to Android & iOS. Microsoft is
| resurgent these days, can I get my windows phone back?
| faraggi wrote:
| Absolutely but I'd hate for it to be windows. I'd love a good,
| OSS Linux phone.
| kwanbix wrote:
| Isn't Android good OSS Linux?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Google is slowly cripling everything opensource and
| replacing it with its own closed source stuff. Many, many
| apps won't run without google blobs on the phone and it's
| all by design.
| smoldesu wrote:
| While I don't disagree with your sentiment, this is kinda
| like claiming that Canonical is crippling Open Source by
| offering Snaps on Ubuntu. There is still a _significant_
| portion of Android that is perfectly usable in an open
| fashion. In fact, I might even say that there is no clear
| path for Google to close off Android as a project.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| But even now, many social networks, chat apps, and
| especially banking apps don't work without google play
| services. Yes, you can circumvent some of the
| requirements using different workarounds and hacks (micro
| G, app patching, etc.), but in some cases, even the
| basics (such as notifications on new messages) don't work
| without some google-based blob somewhere.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Banking apps et al have decided that without remote
| attestation, they do not want to expose the functionality
| their customers expect from them. Mostly because of
| confused threat models, and banks being banks are often
| erring on the side of safety. And chat/socials just want
| to evade the bots. An open source platform would have to
| provide similar attestation capabilities, as stupid as
| they are, people in suits will manage risks.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Not just attestation, also location services are usually
| via play services and also notifications (because noone
| wants to implement their own). I agree about the banks...
| if you root the phone after the banking app works, you
| can still extract all the keys, and usually with a magisk
| plugin or two, you can use the app too on a rooted
| phone... but not without google play services.
|
| Maybe we need some more economic conflicts, for huawei
| and xiaomi to switch to their own "play services", and
| the developers will have to code apps that work on all
| android variants, not just google-based ones.
| realusername wrote:
| > There is still a significant portion of Android that is
| perfectly usable in an open fashion
|
| There's not a single phone on earth running AOSP, you
| can't really compare it to Ubuntu. It's not made for
| tinkering or user ownership.
| arsome wrote:
| You can always swap those our with other apps from
| f-droid or something though and if you're willing to run
| an open source phone you're largely going to be dealing
| with the same problems in that department - lack of apps.
| And that's not to mention MicroG which makes many such
| apps work anyways.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This is true for eg. a browser, alarm app and an irc
| client.
|
| If you want banking apps to work, you're fucked. Even
| getting some of the mainstream social network and chat
| apps to work without google play services is a pain.
| jacoblambda wrote:
| > If you want banking apps to work, you're fucked. Even
| getting some of the mainstream social network and chat
| apps to work without google play services is a pain.
|
| GrapheneOS seems to do pretty well with this. It is a bit
| more involved and you have to check the docs but you can
| generally get banking apps to work just fine.
| zogrodea wrote:
| Android is pretty open as far as I know. You can even run
| Linux distributions on it with Termux - although its future
| is looking unstable with Android's new OS versions changing
| the services it depends on.
|
| I think (guessing) the main thing an OSS advocate might
| take issue with is that decisions are made by corporate
| bodies that might not benefit end-users in every case. For
| example, the aforementioned Termux issue and how Google
| recently deprecated the open source Messages and Dialler
| apps on Android, with vendors like Samsung giving
| proprietary alternatives.
|
| That seems to me to be an issue with some other open source
| projects too (people complain about GNOME for example not
| listening to its users) but it possibly happens there on a
| lower scale since Android's a bigger project (likely most
| people in the world have seen or held or used an Android
| phone once in their lives).
| hospitalJail wrote:
| After multiple Google services being closed, awful, etc...
| I'm urgently wanting someone to Fork android and not
| attempt to bring it back to the Google branch.
|
| I'm not sure how difficult it is to keep an OS going. What
| upgrades have I needed in the last 6 years? Security sure,
| but outside some phone system upgrades and messaging, I'm
| not sure what we even need to upgrade at this point.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Android is not pure OSS and it's heavily tied to everything
| Google. Phones with custom ROMs are hardly available so
| it's far from being the ideal model.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Android is not pure OSS
|
| The kernel modifications are all GPL-licensed and the
| userland is Apache. Android is pure OSS, it's
| distributions are not.
| wongarsu wrote:
| The reason you don't get phones with custom ROMs is that
| those can't get a license for preloading Google Play
| Services, Google Play Store, Google Maps, etc., and
| without those nobody would buy the phone. The monopoly of
| the Google Play Store has allowed Google to keep a tight
| grip on the ecosystem of their "Open Source" OS.
| glogla wrote:
| Interesting idea.
|
| On one hand, I think the world's attitude towards the tech
| companies has changed sufficiently that Google's "sinking
| Windows Phone by making Gmail and Youtube not work on it" trick
| might not work out for them this time.
|
| On the other hand, given the sorry state of Windows - all the
| privacy issues, integrated ads, forced upgrades, whatever else
| - the Windows Phone would probably end up being terrible
| experience.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Gmail was usable on Windows Phone in the built-in mail app,
| YouTube had some okay third party apps, but in my opinion
| what really killed Windows Phone was not having Google Maps.
| People underestimate how critical this app is. Why do you
| think Apple created their own mapping app out of nowhere?
| They were terrified that Google could turn off the switch and
| cripple iOS overnight after watching Windows Phone wither on
| the vine.
|
| There were additional things that caused Windows Phone to
| fail, but I really feel Google Maps was the first nail in the
| coffin.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Microsoft is resurgent these days,
|
| Where is it resurging?
| pavlov wrote:
| Microsoft itself is an Android vendor these days:
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-duo-2/9408kgxp4xjl
|
| Maybe there's a long game here where the Surface line will
| become all-Windows one day again.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Microsoft did partner up with Amazon to provide Windows users
| with Android apps. It's not entirely unimaginable that the
| Amazon Store + Bing Maps + Outlook + Edge + OneDrive + Office
| can become an alternative to Google Play + Google Maps +
| Gmail + Chrome + Drive + Docs.
| kotaKat wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the Surface Duo was supposed to be a
| Windows device (hence the odd selections like native UEFI and
| lack of certain hardware that would be on a contemporary
| Android device in the same class eg NFC).
|
| Microsoft was getting frustrated they couldn't get a good
| Windows experience on the metal and ended up contracting
| Movial, a software/embedded engineering firm, that they ended
| up partially acquiring to basically accelerate the Android
| port to the hardware and get it shipped.
|
| https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-acquires-the-surface-
| duo-d...
|
| At the same time they were rushing the half-baked Android
| release out to the Duo they were all together working on what
| they actually _wanted_ to ship in the Duo 2. (I was a Day 1
| Duo user. I promptly returned it only two months into the
| ownership experience.)
| lockhouse wrote:
| Windows Mobile the OS was so good. What let it down was that it
| was lacking many critical apps.
| xp84 wrote:
| Hypothetical: now that the web technologies are so much more
| powerful than they were 10 years ago, wouldn't we all be much
| better off if most things ceased to be "Apps" anyway and
| became websites?
|
| The interesting thing I see is that most companies that ship
| a Mac app (that isn't a game) now ship a web app in a thin
| Electron wrapper. And even though at least on iOS things seem
| slightly less HTML-ish, nobody uses any standard controls/UI
| anymore anyway, because everything must be branded and
| distinctive. I would kind of love to have a few competing OSs
| which were each supportable by essentially a checkbox in the
| cross-platform mobile app tooling people already seem to be
| using.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I don't know why you were downvoted, you are absolutely
| right. Lots of apps could be web pages and they would be
| tiny and have much better control of permissions and
| updates. Apple knows this which is why they try to make
| sure it doesn't happen and threaten their app store.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Never used Windows Mobile, but WindowsPhone 7 & 8 were great.
| Moving to Android was a major step town in ergonomics for me.
| lockhouse wrote:
| Once I learned that Android was supposed to be a BlackBerry
| OS clone that got pivoted at the last minute in a panic to
| compete with iOS it all makes sense.
| samstave wrote:
| What you don't want a Facebook Phone? But it had that nice
| littel round LCD on the front to show your face icon for anyone
| calling you!
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| I feel these used/screen-broken phones are an under-used
| ressource that have usually a much better specs/prize ratio, but
| are held back by the lack of documentation (and lack of support
| from distros? Raspberry Pi OS is quite solid).
|
| Has anyone turned one of those into a home-server? If so, which
| steps have you followed?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I installed nix-on-droid (and android app) and then ran my
| server in the environment that it provides, that way I didn't
| have to muck around with bootloaders and whatnot.
| dist1ll wrote:
| You might get a kick out of junkyard computing [1]. The idea is
| to turn a bunch of thrown away phones into a compute cluster.
|
| [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3575693.3575710
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I think the problem is more there matter of booting a
| replacement OS on them, and getting drivers on a supported
| (read: gets security fixes) kernel.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Pretty much. Try to get anything but the default OS working
| on a smartphone and you're in for a world of pain. Or even on
| most non-Pi SBCs for that matter. There is no kernel, no
| drivers for any of the onboard chipsets, there's just a big
| go fuck yourself from the manufacturer.
| mcny wrote:
| Personally, my biggest qualm is the spicy pillow syndrome.
| Spicy pillow means the battery swells up so it is no longer
| safe to connect to power unattended (to say the least).
|
| I tried using nexus 4, then nexus 5 phone as a ip webcam,
| always connected to power. Result spicy pillow. Tried using
| an iPhone 6 as a two step Authenticator so I could see the
| two step code at a glance from my computer by keeping the
| screen always on, connected to power. Result: spicy pillow.
| Tried a ZTE phone as another webcam again, same result.
|
| Ah but wait, the battery in the zte is user removable so can
| I use this phone which gets USB-C power without a battery?
| Yes, with an asterisk. I still need to connect the spicy
| pillow on boot and once booted, it will happily run from the
| 65W laptop charger with USB-C. Seems like certain things like
| flash photography will be too much for my charger to handle
| but for an ordinary IP webcam, it works just fine. It runs
| android, is several versions out of date, is connected to the
| Internet, yada yada.
|
| What I personally want when/if this EU directive that
| requires manufacturers to use user replaceable batteries
| takes effect is the next step that requires devices to be
| able to boot and operate (at least actions that are
| physically/electronically possible) without a battery as long
| as the device is connected to power. Something like how
| laptops used to be? They still ran just fine without a
| battery. The OS and firmware make no assumption that a
| battery exists to boot. This possibly requires the use of a
| super capacitor, something like the dash am in my car? I
| don't know enough about electronics...
| wongarsu wrote:
| One way to work around this (and the way cameras do it)
| might be a power adapter that uses the battery connector.
|
| That should even be reasonably DIYable. 3.3V power supplies
| are readily available, and that voltage matches a (nearly
| empty) Li-ion battery. Make it beefy enough to handle peak
| currents at startup, add some minimum circuitry to satisfy
| the phone's charger and battery protection, and you should
| be able to run phones and tablets indefinitely.
|
| Edit: some reports on stackexchange about people using this
| setup: https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/3098
| 86/how-t...
| chasil wrote:
| You can reduce this risk with a Magisk module known as the
| "Advanced Charging Controller."
|
| This tool will allow a limit to be placed on the charging
| percentage; I have my phone set at 80%, so the battery
| never spends time at 100% charge which is the most
| damaging.
|
| https://themagisk.com/advanced-charging-controller-acc/
|
| https://github.com/VR-25/acc
| andrepd wrote:
| ACC is simply a must-have for me right now. Battery
| degradation is massively limited if you don't charge over
| 80%, especially with the ridiculously unnecessary "ultra
| fast charging" most phones come with nowadays. And it is
| still plenty to last through the day.
| pluijzer wrote:
| A low tech approach is to put the charger in one of these
| mechanical timer switches.
| lxgr wrote:
| That would constantly charge and discharge the battery -
| probably much worse than just keeping it at 100%
| continuously.
| Tepix wrote:
| You don't need Windows for "computing"... seems like overly
| complicating things.
| cpach wrote:
| We all know that, don't we? They probably just thought it was a
| fun project. To each their own.
| chuckSu wrote:
| [dead]
| hospitalJail wrote:
| With the ads/news showing up on my computer, I can't imagine
| any reason you'd want Windows (11) outside some crappy software
| that is windows only.
|
| Apple was a 'never buy'.
|
| Google has turned into an 'avoid if possible'
|
| Microsoft is now a 'avoid'.
|
| Maybe I need to try harder with Linux and degoogled Android, I
| have worked hard enough on making Windows tolerable. I can't
| imagine Linux could possibly be worse(although I still have my
| USB/wireless mouse disconnect randomly on rpi4 and haven't been
| able to fix it)
| [deleted]
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Having followed this blog for a long time, I can assure you
| very little on it is about the easiest way to compute.
| zeristor wrote:
| Just as the Raspberry Pi supply seems to be opening up a lot.
|
| Although Zero2Ws are a bit tricky to get hold of
| lockhouse wrote:
| Are there any decent ARM64 computers with good mainline kernel
| support that are easy to purchase for less than $50?
|
| Nearly everything I've seen is either unobtainium, only supported
| by very specific kernel builds, expensive, or some combination
| thereof.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| > Turns out that the phone was still locked, the seller had
| neglected to logout from his Xiaomi account. Even worse though he
| had forgotten his login and password.
|
| I thought this bit was phrased a little too kindly. While it's
| unclear whether it was the case here or not [0], usually when you
| buy a locked phone off eBay and the seller has "forgotten" to log
| out of their cloud account and has "forgotten" their password
| (and login too, to boot!) it's because the phone was stolen.
|
| [0]: OP claims "seller went above and beyond" to get the phone
| unlocked, which I _initially_ interpreted as "figured out the
| locked account info" but then continued to read and learned that
| the use of an unlock tool was involved.. making me once again
| doubt the veracity of the "forgetful seller" story.
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(page generated 2023-07-02 23:01 UTC)