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Comment by advael | Hacker News Reader

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I keep trying to remind people that one of the real unsung advantages of a cli is how easy it is to tell others how to do something. If I never have to describe an icon to someone again, it will be too soon.

The OP talks about transferring from a PC to a phone (and vice versa). I have no idea how to use scp on my phone or how to move a file from my PC to my phone with scp.

Honestly, if you can teach me how to do that in less than a minute, I would (no sarcasm) really appreciate it.

Once I found Termux i use SSHelper less often, using scp and later rsync on either. But I'm on Android...

SSHelper will tell give you a GUI where you configure optional password and get the IP and port. Then scp is -P<port> <user>@<IP>:<path>

  scp -P22222 myfile anyuser@192.168.1.10:/data/user/0/com.arachnoid.sshelper/SDCard/.

where the only trick part is how Android managed storage, but it's just more letters (/data/user/0/com.arachnoid.sshelper/SDCard/<path>).

Once I found Termux I embraced it since it's a nifty linux thing straight on my phone with it's own configurable sshd and it's exactly the same as above except with a different path and lots more options.

That's fair, the duopoly on the mobile platform is such that you are only allowed to do what google or apple deigns to allow, so I suppose one must take it up with them

Android: install termux, `pkg install openssh`, and preferably run `termux-setup-storage` to give it access to storage folders.

iOS: I think https://ish.app/ ?

(If you're in the ~1% of smart phones not on Android or iOS, either this is trivial (postmarketos rocks) or you're on your own)

It also requires running a ssh server on the PC, and the even harder issue of having an externally accessible IP address that will allow ssh connections to the PC from the internet - I can do the former but I'm not entirely sure if the latter is even possible with my ISP.

I was responding to a comment that said,

> I have no idea how to use scp on my phone or how to move a file from my PC to my phone with scp.

so I'm comfortable assuming that they have an sshd and can reach it (though I grant, having an IP line-of-sight can be annoying).

Only if there is direct connectivity (or router has port forwarding set up), there is no firewall or port is open, one computer has ssh server running, another one has ssh client jnstalled, you know the username on remote computer, you know password or have ssh key set up, and if copying from remote machine, you know exact filename or at least a location. None of that is given, especially if one of the ends is a cell phone.

I agree. The state of mobile tools is severely hamstrung by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the ecosystem is on closed platforms

I'm not sure how you would propose to solve the other problems, such as "the computers can't communicate directly" or "you don't know where the file you want is" but that doesn't seem like a problem with there being proper tools available

that could be complicated for people. some have never used a terminal before. people will literally write "command src dst" https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-direc...

Right. So my point is that if we define a non-technical user as "someone who doesn't know how to do the thing yet", and any amount of teaching them to do the thing is thus implicitly deemed an unacceptable cost, then the problem simply has no solution

As the defacto I.T. support man for family and friends of varied skill levels… sometimes it’s really daunting trying to get them to do things that seem very intuitive to the technically experienced. I’m not saying we should just give up ok trying to show people new tools but I can empathize with the terror of even imagining handing a terminal off to some of these people, hah! A simple GUI goes a long way for people who don’t, for example, know how to write a file path or don’t know the difference between a forward slash and a backslash!

Nah, you just make your interface use verbs the target audience is already familiar with. They might not by familiar with command line text verbs, but they're probably familiar with point & click or drag & drop verbs.

Having just last night gone back and forth with multiple screenshots and careful explanations to guide someone through importing a picture from email to the ios photos app… maybe I’m lazy but it’s just exhausting. I agree that with effort it’s do-able, but it IS tiring :)

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