Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- I love the take about it. But nowhere is mentioned how have they installed Linux on those boards and which kind of distribution. I would also run Linux on retired phones, just I can't because some of them have a locked bootloader and the unlocking method doesn't work anymore, because the producer has retired the toolby madduci
- I liked Jennifer Switzer's junkyard computing paper and it's cool to see her still working this idea.by 2OEH8eoCRo0
- And who made the phones to retire? Google and other makers by closing firmware and bootloaders. And also by requiring more and more resources after each OS update and upgrade.by zx8080
- Speaking as someone who has a cluster of four RPi Zero W’s mounted in an Ikea picture frame running as a Docker Swarm cluster, I LOVE this idea.by rbanffy
- That’s cool, do you have a write up about it?by cloud8421
- Very weird that this is coming from Google, given that they made their phone platform specifically to not let you install your own operating system. And now, they're making it illegal to install custom apps too: https://keepandroidopen.org/by Elfener
- There is nothing about Android as a platform that forbids installation of your own OS. That's a phone oem choice and the fact Pixel phones can be unlocked proves as much. In fact this is the reason this project is even possible.by surajrmal
- You say that as if Google is a single hive mind with every team and vertical perfectly aligned like the Borg.
The article is pretty clear in the opening lines that this is a Google Research grant to the University of California, not even primarily done by Google employees.
by jubilanti - >given that they made their phone platform specifically to not let you install your own operating system.
???
You can still install alternate OSes (eg. grapheneos) on their latest phones.
>And now, they're making it illegal to install custom apps too: https://keepandroidopen.org/
Besides the questionable use of "illegal" (what are they going to do, send you to jail?), that's not even accurate. You can still install apps after a 24 hour wait, or no wait at all if you use adb.
by gruez - It is ridiculous that I can pick up pretty much any average computer, install Linux on it and be on my way in an hour or so but have to go through so many hoops to do the same on Android and even then the results are mixed. We have been really shafted by the phone makers by the brainwashing that they are somehow extra special things. They are just computers with a radio in it. It is shameful.by noisy_boy
- Somewhat relevant: some of us have been using drawer-bound smartphones for web hosting.by louismerlin
- This is coming from the same Google that's recently restricted third-party AOSP source access to biannual releases, severely limited the scope of Pixel sources (basically just GPL now) and started concealing their change history, AND is currently pushing developer verification and Play Integrity on Android :D
Not sure if I should take this as a joke or a sign of an internal power struggle. If it's the former, there's still some catching up to do before you can match Samsung's "Upcycle", but you're on the right track.
by m132 - Sometimes I have weird fantasies about a post apocalyptic world where factories burned down and people have to live with the tech that’s available. No network, just off site solar power or generators, only local devices. I think it’s interesting to think about how far we could get with this.
Does anyone have recommendations for novels, movies or video games with that topic?
by planb - Are we still at the fantasy stage?by goodpoint
- Book of Eli has vibes along those linesby tetris11
- Besides published material, Cuba comes close. Kept frozen in time by eternal restrictive sanctions.by rapnie
- Not exactly what you're describing, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Second_After kinda fits the vibe. Warning: it's really depressing, but a good read if you're in the right head space for it.by bshacklett
- I suspect it might be too ‘soft’ for a lot folks around here (sadly), but “Monk and Robot” is charming.
In general, you should look into the ‘solarpunk’ genre, especially post-apocalyptic solarpunk.
by jrmg - Not fiction but you might find this interesting: https://collapseos.org/why.htmlby josh-sematic
- There are many who indulge in such fantasies, but I would instead give a warning. The reason you have such fantasies is likely because you, yourself, are competent in the necessary skills. But from there it is only a hair-thin line that separates you from having feelings of actively wanting such a catastrophy to occur, because it would make you and your skills valuable. Beware of such self-indulgence.
It is self-indulgence, because we can see similar fantasies in people with other skills; people collecting guns often secretly long for a collapse of law and order, people who live in the countryside and have horses imagine themselves to be cowboys in a car-less world. People who like to tinker with old cars imagine Mad Max scenarios. Et cetera. None of these scenarios are especially likely to occur; they only persist in people’s imaginations because many secretly hope for them to come to pass.
by teddyh - Pump 6 and Other Stories has a few in that vein, sort of. Eg there are no petrol engines, instead compression springs, treadle operated computers, etc. There are some pretty grim stories in there, some may find them distasteful.
https://windupstories.com/books/pump-six-and-other-stories/
Also I guess Silo / WOOL by Hugh Howey is perhaps closer to what you wrote literally but probably not quite the vibe maybe.
- This is neat. This group’s approach of treating the devices as many weaker servers (basically a raspberry pi cluster) sounds like the most realistic way to reuse phone hardware at scale, especially with the backing of the actual hardware vendor.
It’s a genuine shame how locked down iPhones are compared to even Android. Hypothetically you could run Linux inside UTM[0] but outside the EU Apple makes it intentionally difficult, and there’s still memory restrictions and performance penalties.
My group’s senior year project was a computing cluster on phones (specifically targetting LLM inference) [1]. Instead of installing a new OS we built separate apps per OS. Our devices were older, so the Android phones had worse hardware and the iPhones had more software restraints.
[0] https://getutm.app/ [1] https://github.com/orgs/rmcluster/repositories
by wky - Really interesting project. Do you have a link to a writeup/paper?by _fzslm
- I doubt that many data centers or enterprises are interested in building phone clusters. I hope that this project will produce something that homelabs and self-hosters can build with 3D printers. That seems like the most probable end consumer.by stephenlf
- I would love to see regulation that required making bootloaders unlockable to enable this sort of thing. People have been making clusters of consumer hardware for decades: I’m sure people remember the PS3 supercomputers of the mid 2000s.
I personally have lots of batch jobs like CFD simulations that could easily run on a fleet of phones with no real reliability issues, and I’d love to reuse old hardware and give it a second life. I’m already considering running old servers from e.g ETB but the cycles per watt on a phone are probably much better.
by noodlesUK - Make it a seven year rule: hardware vendors must release necessary source code for firmware, blobs, etc.
I think there should be a 20 year rule for all released commercial software to release the source code outside of national security concerns.
by AtlasBarfed - Isn't the story that some gaming consoles were sold at or under cost price and the markup was on the game sales? I don't know if it's fair to require that needs to be unlocked
Yet I 100% agree on a generic computing device and they're not really that different in the end. Maybe that it needs to be unlockable after it has been on the market for 4 years or so (all units, no matter when they were sold, no matter if support ended)
Or maybe undercutting the competition like this to make it back later on games is not a profit model we should want? And that everything should just be unlockable insofar as it has X amount of memory, CPU power, capable of doing IP traffic... something like that. (Seems silly to require a firmware unlock on your toaster)
by lucb1e - This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems preventing users from maintaining their phone with security updates, and very limited support length from OEM's leads to VERY insecure devices after they drop out of support.
You should not be connecting these old devices to an internet accessible network.
Google notably does well here with 7 years of support, but others such as Sony are 4 years, and Xiaomi on non-flagship devices are similar, or Samsung on their lowest budget models...
by zipy124 - Agreed. All parts of a device that we buy must be user replaceable. Phones can have decades of life. After their initial use as a first phone, they become a hand me down for their children, and they can become further hand me downs for people in third world countries or continue to live on as computers that can take on a variety of other roles.
The OS must be user replaceable so we can run what we like. If this is not possible, we should at least be allowed to a run a VM on the phone (we can assume <5% loss of performance).
Silicon lives matter. We must make sure our device has many afterlives until its eventual death (5 decades later).
- > This is ignoring the fact that the main reason retired phones are e-waste is proprietary firmware blobs and locked-down systems
Couldn't Google somehow fix this? Since they control the substrate (Android) and they would be doing it for their convenience
by binyu