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Comment by xyst | Hacker News Reader

Keep a dummy phone. Load up spyware. Write script to refresh amazon.com every 30 seconds. Throw it in a drawer. Let the passive income roll in.

If other companies start paying for your “data”. Load them up. Rinse and repeat.

edit: disable microphone if paranoid or wrap in a sound deadening material.

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Yeah, only a few decades of that and the phone will pay for itself! /s

It depends on where on earth you are, but here in Australia, for example, you can buy smartphones for about $10 when on special, or sometimes for free.

Does $2/mo even cover the power bill to have a smartphone on 24x7 though?

Solar power [1] and DNS-tunneling [2], which apparently works even with an expired SIM with no mobile or data plan at all.

[1] Obviously using the solar generated power for something else to save on electricity might be more effective, but where is the fun in that?

[2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.xapek.andiodine/

Yeah, just a few milennia of that and the solar panel will pay for itself!

It depends on where on earth you are [1]:

> $12.30: 5W 5V Portable Solar Panel Power Bank Phone Charger

[1] https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/403705119852

So are you going to go and do this very complicated setup for $2/month apparently valuing your time at less than that?

Came on, where is your sense of adventure? :) seriously, this kind of rabbit holes are one of the best parts of HN, and every body understand they are just rethoric exercises.

Obviously you wouldn't do it with just one phone - you'd get a cluster of several hundred/thousand.

I could definitely picture myself as a teenager getting a bunch of shitty old Android devices to make $20 a month, though. My younger cousins will fill out surveys with fake info to make a few bucks here or there.

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of $10 smartphones. Oh, wrong website.

Can I run it on numerous emulated phones like I did with AllAdvantage installs in the 90s?

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