[HN Gopher] PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights
___________________________________________________________________
PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights
Author : oumua_don17
Score : 532 points
Date : 2024-07-09 12:01 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (robertheaton.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (robertheaton.com)
| phs318u wrote:
| Brilliant! I love stories like this. This is real hacking :)
|
| Am disappointed though to have reached the end of the article
| only to find no mention of stats regarding max speed, efficiency
| etc vs the paid-for wifi.
|
| Also, not sure why you wouldn't just use Base64 encoding for
| which optimised versions already exist instead of rolling your
| own conversion to/from base 26 (or 52).
| exe34 wrote:
| "several bytes per second"
| ubergeek42 wrote:
| > Also, not sure why you wouldn't just use Base64 encoding for
| which optimised versions already exist instead of rolling your
| own conversion to/from base 26 (or 52).
|
| It's mentioned in the article, but base64 includes weird
| characters that might not be allowed in a name field, like
| `+=/`. I also wouldn't be surprised if the airline name field
| didn't allow numbers.
|
| Reminds me a bit of this post:
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
| Retr0id wrote:
| "People's names are not transport protocols"
| jorgen123 wrote:
| Not to forget a stat about the number of "airline account name-
| change" e-mails sent to some (hopefully) junk e-mail account
| for each "name change". Ideally in relation to destination web-
| page design and amount of junk javascript embedded therein.
| DWakefield wrote:
| Sending stock quotes, scores, weather, etc. reminds me of a
| service that Google used to offer via text message. I used that a
| ton before I got my first smartphone: text W[ZIP code] to 46645
| (GOOGL) and it would text back the weather. Same for
| stock:[symbol] and many other things I've since forgotten. Of
| course Google killed it, but it was neat while it lasted!
| CSSer wrote:
| That is a blast from the past! This was around the time of
| slide-out keyboards, right? I remember using this now too.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I still miss those keyboards
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Same. Evo Shift. I miss the days when I wasn't frustrated
| _every_ time I type.
|
| Apparently this is what my gen will rocker rant about.
| CalRobert wrote:
| HTC Touch Pro 2 and I could type better on that than any
| phone since. Even managed to get it running Android (it
| was a Windows Mobile phone which is... old)
| rkagerer wrote:
| Yet the currency conversion site I use which is run by one
| prof, probably on a Pentium III computer stashed under a
| stairwell at their university, has been up and running for
| decades and will probably last a lifetime.
| emchammer wrote:
| I had an alphanumeric pager like this in the 1990s. It had a
| few dozen text channels that were constantly updated with
| topics like news and sport.
| duffyjp wrote:
| I used that all the time from my flip phone. It took forever to
| type out a google search and results could take a minute or two
| to arrive but it was better than nothing.
|
| Primarily I used it to google the address of a place I wanted
| to go so I could enter that in my TomTom. Times have changed.
| justusthane wrote:
| In my days of messing around with PHP, I wrote a Twitter bot
| called "SongBuddy" for the purpose of looking up a song via SMS
| based on some lyrics.
|
| You would send it a DM via SMS (which Twitter supported at the
| time) containing a few lyrics, and it would do a Google search
| of "<your input> lyrics", parse the search results, and in
| theory return the artist and title to you via SMS.
|
| It never worked very well, but I was proud of it!
| dheera wrote:
| I made a backend with Twilio and an AWS instance to give me a
| SMS<->ChatGPT interface.
|
| That allows me to ask ChatGPT questions from anywhere on Earth
| via a handheld satellite communicator (inReach Mini 2). It's
| kind of nice to be able to ask ChatGPT things from the middle
| of death valley.
| ubergeek42 wrote:
| Along the same lines, there are some programming contests that
| use a web based system for submitting solutions. They often
| restrict internet access to just the contest website, but a
| motivated user could use the same trick with the user profile
| fields to sneak information in/out.
|
| As a bonus one of those contest systems allows users to upload a
| profile photo, which would greatly increase the bandwidth!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| What's an airmiles account? I guess it's some kind of frequent
| flyer thing?
|
| By the way, many many paid WiFi networks leak DNS requests like a
| sieve when not logged in or paid and you can tunnel through it
| easily. There's a piece of software for that, iodine I think it
| was called. Never really needed it but it's there and it works.
| ttul wrote:
| Yes indeed. Us greybeards were tunneling ssh through DNS using
| a Perl-based hacking tool thrown together by Dan Kaminsky in
| 2004 called "OzymanDNS". DNS tunneling is now ubiquitously used
| for data exfiltration and consequently all major DNS platforms
| have methods to detect it.
|
| Mind you, this was before the age of WiFi on airplanes. But
| within other gated networks, it used to work quite well. I
| recall getting tens of Kbps.
| rft wrote:
| So that was the name of it! I only had vague recollections of
| me setting up PuTTY with a proxycommand involving some kind
| of compiled to .exe Perl script. Worked out in the end with a
| free VPS and train station wifi. As usual, I spent far longer
| setting this up than actually using it, but it was one of the
| many small things that got me started on my career path.
|
| Thank you for the trip down memory lane!
| hxii wrote:
| This reminds me, and perhaps a perfect example of writing useless
| software[1] and the subsequent HN discussion[2].
|
| Is it a life changer? Probably not. Was it fun to write and
| explore? Most likely!
|
| We definitely need to make more stuff like this.
|
| [1]: https://ntietz.com/blog/write-more-useless-software/
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37911900
| poincaredisk wrote:
| This is awesome and I love hacks[1] like this. On the other hand,
| if I remember correctly, I've checked recently and global DNS in
| skywifi seemed to resolve fine without paying. So I think - at
| least in the plane I was in - just a regular iodine [2] tunnel
| would work
|
| [1] in the original meaning of the word. [2]
| https://github.com/yarrick/iodine
| ale42 wrote:
| iodine worked for me (on another airline/wifi) 6 years ago. Fun
| for the idea and principle, totally useless in practice given
| its speed, unless maybe you run an IM on top of UDP ;-)
| DaSHacka wrote:
| This was my experience too.
|
| Had a Delta flight that used gogoinflight internet. On my
| initial outbound flight I noticed DNS still worked without
| paying, so when I was flying back home, I had set up a simple
| iodine tunnel on my homelab in advance.
|
| I was surprised by how completely unusable it was. Of the few
| sites I even attempted to load, I only just barely managed
| stallman.org after modifying my browsers maximum timeout via
| a flag (and it look ~5 minutes).
|
| SSH was also not usable, even a simple "whoami" took ~1
| minute to finally execute.
|
| So yeah fun as a cool gimmick, but other than _maaaaybe_
| connecting to a single IRC channel, its not practical for
| anything.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Years ago I ran a "public" iodine service - anyone could
| connect, outbound traffic from the server went over Tor (to
| protect me from abuse requests).
|
| I kept a log of all train/hotel/airport/etc networks that it
| worked on, and also offered some other tunneling protocols.
|
| Was a fun project for a while. Wish I'd kept the thing running.
|
| These days DNS tunnelling is a bit harder to do due to some DNS
| servers (notably Google) randomising the case in DNS requests
| which breaks certain encodings horribly.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Why did end up stopping your service btw? Sounds like an
| awesome contribution to the free internet.
| michaelmior wrote:
| Without understanding the nuances of the issues, it sounds
| like the issue of case randomization could be fixed with
| changes to iodine while sacrificing some bandwidth.
| yegle wrote:
| https://developers.google.com/speed/public-
| dns/docs/security... as a security measure.
| slt2021 wrote:
| if dns is allowed on the firewall, shouldn't you just be able
| to just use wireguard via udp/53, without fiddling with dns
| protocol itself?
| Evidlo wrote:
| That's what Iodine's raw mode does (minus wireguard). It
| tries that first.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| It's been a long time since I audibly laughed out loud at a
| network diagram. Possibly never. There is a first time for
| everything.
| jesprenj wrote:
| I was on a ~20 hour ferry ship from Italy to Greece once. They
| had paid wifi using sattelite internet, which I did not want to
| pay. But for payments to work, they allowed access to stripe.
| Turns out, everything on stripe.com was accessible, even dev docs
| etc. So I started to waste their bandwidth by downloading
| gigabytes of images from the stripe website over and over again.
|
| But that's quite unproductive. As it turned out, in order for
| stripe to work, it needs access to fastly CDN. And then I
| remembered that reddit also uses fastly. By connecting to stripe
| and changing the Host HTTP header to reddit.com, I could browse
| reddit! Images didn't work though (i.redd.it is not on fastly). I
| could edit my /etc/hosts and associate old.reddit.com with
| stripe's fastly IP address. After ignoring scary TLS errors, I
| could even log in.
| bauruine wrote:
| That's called domain fronting [0] and is disabled by all big
| CDNs now.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_fronting
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| No, proper fronting is when you mismatch Host: header and
| SNI. It takes a bit more than just editing /etc/hosts, which
| results in TLS error (as grandparent mentioned), but editing
| /etc/hosts cannot be disabled by CDN.
| cosmotic wrote:
| I presume the only people you're hurting by downloading
| gigabytes of docs are the people on the plain that paid for the
| service. Maybe the company providing the service because those
| people experiencing the slow connection might never buy again.
| You're probably a also costing stripe for their upload
| bandwidth.
|
| And here I am, avoiding downloading things on cell service
| because it might negatively impact other people around me.
| yard2010 wrote:
| Me and my wife merged our facebook accounts to not take up
| space in facebook
| Scoundreller wrote:
| idid2
| qingcharles wrote:
| I'm literally just posting this to add another row to a
| database.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| unethical!
| justusthane wrote:
| Agreed. I applaud the initiative of figuring out they could
| access reddit via the CDN that Stripe uses - but downloading
| gigabytes of images for the sole purpose of "wasting their
| bandwidth"? Why??
| annexrichmond wrote:
| If someone's first instinct is the need to get on Reddit,
| maybe I'm not so surprised.
|
| So much of what comes out of that site are mob attacks from
| impish activities like taking over a poll or comments
| section on a news site way back in the day, destroying
| innocent lives in mob hunts, to manipulating stocks.
|
| Honestly this person probably felt they were truly sticking
| it to the big guy because how dare they charge for
| internet.
| everforward wrote:
| > Honestly this person probably felt they were truly
| sticking it to the big guy because how dare they charge
| for internet.
|
| I get the vibe, though I agree this was an unproductive
| way to pursue it.
|
| I strongly suspect the fee for access is not at all
| related to the cost to provide service; they're
| leveraging the temporary monopoly on connectivity they
| have to get consumers to pay absurd prices. Cruise ships
| are similar; I think it was double digits per day for
| internet.
|
| I don't think it's productive to metaphorically "take the
| ball and go home", but that instinct would probably be
| much lower if the fees for access were something
| reasonable.
| vel0city wrote:
| Marine satellite internet can get pricey especially pre-
| Starlink. Like, potentially thousands of dollars for a
| few gigs even today.
| everforward wrote:
| I went looking because I got curious; I found a reseller
| for Inmarsat's Fleet Xpress plans, which are unmetered: h
| ttps://www.pulsarbeyond.com/media/contentmanager/content/
| Fl...
|
| The highest tier with a price on it is burstable 8x4Mbps
| with guaranteed 1x0.5Mbps for $9k a month, which feels
| about right for a ferry (especially with some aggressive
| caching). They would break even with 30 customers paying
| $10 for access, though really I would be surprised if a
| ferry went far enough out to sea to need specialized
| internet (I am out of my depth, though, so maybe they
| do).
|
| All in all, interesting. The markups still feel high, but
| not nearly as outlandish as I would have thought.
|
| I wonder if at huge economies of scale you can get
| cheaper marine satellite internet if you don't need full-
| ocean coverage. Eg cruise ships seem to sail the same
| routes on repeat, they don't really need coverage of the
| entire ocean. I wonder if Royal Caribbean et al get
| cheaper service because they have pretty static and pre-
| defined routes, making it easier for the satellite
| provider to ensure there are satellites overhead when the
| ships are there.
| vel0city wrote:
| These are uncapped prices? Pretty cheap compared to what
| I was looking at a few years ago. Back then a lot of
| plans had data caps, it would be like $9k for only
| several gigs of data all things said and done. You'd pay
| link speed separate from your data allotment, so a few
| grand for the connection speed and a few grand for a
| bucket of data.
| mmastrac wrote:
| > And here I am, avoiding downloading things on cell service
| because it might negatively impact other people around me.
|
| This is a noble activity and I salute you for it, but I'm
| pretty sure that towers have traffic shaping that manage QoS
| and fairness for you.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I think it's misguided. If the cell carrier can't deliver
| its service to normal people doing normal things without
| inconveniencing other customers, it's the carrier's fault,
| not the users'. No way am I going to treat the service I
| paid for with kid gloves to make Verizon's job easier.
|
| (Not talking about edge cases like BitTorrent or such. But
| if a carrier advertises watching streaming video on my
| phone, I don't feel guilty downloading an app update. If
| their tower couldn't handle that, it's on them, not me.)
| olyjohn wrote:
| Why is BitTorrent an edge case? I paid for the bandwidth,
| if I want to host a... Linux ISO, why shouldn't I? What
| if I pay for, and download 30 movies for offline use onto
| my phone because I know I'm going somewhere that there is
| no service? Why is that wrong? What if I backup my entire
| phone to two separate backup services in the cloud?
|
| ISPs have done a great job shaming people who use their
| service for what it is supposed to be. It's 2024, and we
| should all have fiber to the home by now. But no, they're
| only working on deploying more shitty wireless
| connections to everybody and letting all the land-based
| services rot. Fuck them.
| canes123456 wrote:
| I think you are overreacting. They didn't say either of
| those things are immoral. They said it was an edge case.
| It is an edge case. The vast majority of people don't
| know what a torrent is much and much less are downloading
| torrents on to their phones.
| kstrauser wrote:
| What canes123456 said. Also, I was talking in the context
| of cell connections. I have a vastly different
| expectation for wired connections: use that sucker up to
| whatever level you want and can afford. You paid for it,
| you use it. It's on the ISP to keep their network
| capacity upgraded to meet demand. (But even then, don't
| be a freaking sociopath. I have 10Gb fiber with no cap
| and I use it without a second thought, but don't like
| have a daemon that deliberately saturates it 24/7 or
| something. I run backups when it's convenient for me. I
| stream movies whenever. I download software updates as I
| please. I _don 't_ leave a copy of `iperf3` running just
| because I could, because that would be using up resources
| just for the hell of it, and that's never a good look.)
|
| Wireless is a bit different in that there's inherently
| limited bandwidth. You and I share the same RF fields. If
| I'm monopolizing them, you can't, and vice versa. Now, if
| you have a home 5G hotspot, do what thou wilt. Those are
| advertised to support a household. If they can't, they
| shouldn't advertise it. However, if I were at a baseball
| game with 40,000 other people, and I couldn't text my
| wife because I saw you having 300 torrent connections
| open on a laptop just because you could, I'd still kinda
| wanna throw a beer at you. It's like listening to music
| out loud on the bus. You _can_ ; you _shouldn 't_.
| xp84 wrote:
| Also from the "fuck them" department: I have gigabit at
| home, and about 1.25TB per month quota. The ISP recently
| was advertising me to upgrade to 2Gb. I was intrigued,
| checked it out... exact same quota. My math says that on
| 2Gbps I could use up the month's quota in 85 minutes
| (accounting for network overhead let's generously say 2
| hours).
| cosmotic wrote:
| Those bidirectional video streams where neither party is
| looking at the phone while talking about nothing use way
| more bandwidth than an audio stream or text message.
| There's no way for me to tell if it's causing slowness for
| me, but it certainly can't be helping.
|
| There's no chance the carrier can give every phone in a
| cell full bandwidth at the same time, they rely on only a
| handful of people using their connection at any given
| moment.
| arsome wrote:
| > And here I am, avoiding downloading things on cell service
| because it might negatively impact other people around me.
|
| You paid for that service, they should be able to provide it
| to you. If it negatively impacts other users, that's the
| provider's fault.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| He DIDN'T pay.
| lencastre wrote:
| But did you give? You gotta give? See, it's completely
| user funded!
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think the same whenever I turn on my gardening watering
| system at 7am and the whole 250 person street group chat
| starts complaining about lower water pressure and the fact
| nobody can have a shower.
|
| But, I'm not selfish so I just water the garden at 4am now.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| As a firefighter...
|
| If your neighborhood's water pressure is affected by you
| running a garden watering system that most likely maxes
| out at 15 gallons/minute, then you have a serious
| problem, god help you if there's a structure fire in the
| neighborhood.
|
| Seriously though, if you're not just exaggerating to make
| an example, contact your town/city/whatever Department of
| Works, something is seriously wrong.
| londons_explore wrote:
| London (UK) has deliberately low water pressures because
| the pipe network has a lot of leaks, and the lower the
| pressure the less water leaks out.
|
| It's low enough that some appliances like dishwashers and
| washing machines give 'water supply' errors unless you
| run them overnight. Some houses use pressure boosting
| pumps to get water to the top floor.
|
| Apparently fixing the leaks is expensive and it's free to
| just lower the pressure and pass the problem onto
| householders.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| A kinda rule of thumb is that municipal water systems
| lose 10% of their water through various small leaks.
| Water is generally cheap and your bill is more for
| maintaining the capital cost itself rather than
| gathering/processing the water.
|
| I also use this analogy for smuggling and the resources
| spent trying to stop it: if 10% gets
| lost/intercepted/"leaked", the smugglers just produce and
| send 11% more and demand is met. You can change the
| numbers but it doesn't change the result.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Now do that math for the US southwest, where water is
| ridiculously cheap and also severely limited ....
| rurp wrote:
| Yeah we should probably stop subsidizing the heaviest
| water users. Instead we get high profile efforts that get
| a lot of attention and only save a token amount of water.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Never lose the opportunity to fuck corporations, also it's
| not your duty to preserve others experience, it's not like
| that corporations don't give a phuck about having enough
| bandwidth or don't oversell and then we have to be scared of
| downloading something
| sickofparadox wrote:
| How communally-minded of you. That certainly is one way to
| solve the tragedy of the commons.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| I am of the idea that the main issue are those at the
| top, but volounteers are also contributing to hide or
| make issues less pushy, what is the level of pain you're
| going to be able to support in order to let the community
| feel better, while execs pocket money?
| rexpop wrote:
| There is no such thing as "communally-minded" under
| private ownership. What we have is "rugged individualism"
| and free competition, ie "might makes right." I don't
| like it, but I can't escape it.
|
| It's ironic that you mention "tragedy of the commons."
| Literally, what we _don 't_ have is _a commons._ What we
| have is _enclosure_. So it 's truly not a "tragedy of the
| commons" but a tragedy of private ownership or,
| specifically, a tragedy of the commons' _absence._
|
| Again, there is no use in being "communally-minded"
| within the confines of an entity that has no community
| spirit, eg a ruthless, cynical, bottom-lining private
| corporation. In this context, "communally-minded" action
| cannot and will not be rewarded. It will only be
| exploited.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _which I did not want to pay_
|
| > _So I started to waste their bandwidth_
|
| ...why? Trying to hack it for your own use I can understand,
| but why would you actively try to worsen the performance for
| everyone else paying, or try to run up the company 's bill if
| it's metered?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| sign o' the times
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Guys who love capitalism: I hate paying for services, so I
| downloaded gigabytes of data to spite them and hurt the paying
| customers!
|
| Uh ok.
|
| Sometimes when I'm on a satellite or limited connection and its
| super slow I wonder how many people are pulling shenanigans
| like this. You're just hurting honest working class people
| trying to do work, email/call their kids, manage things like
| doctors appointments, check on an elder they are responsible
| for caring for, relax and download a good book to read on a
| boring flight, etc. There's something really sad that the
| cohort of people able and willing to learn 'hacking' skills
| overlaps with the venn circle of anti-social personality types.
|
| tldr; You should care about other people. I don't know how to
| explain that to you.
| dheera wrote:
| Clearly the solution is to just make Wi-Fi free by default.
| Once this is done, it becomes uninteresting to download
| gigabytes of crap to "hurt" people. Win-win for everyone.
| Just saying.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Except there's 2,500 people on that ship and the satellite
| bandwidth is 15mbps. Now making it free doesnt work because
| the resources aren't there.
|
| If you want free wifi, that's great but the private sector
| isn't going to do it for you. How many of these public
| nuisance hackers are advocating for large socialized
| programs to make wifi a human right on all manner of
| transport? Usually the hacker demographic is right-wing
| libertarian and would never advocate for socialism.
|
| So you dont want socialism but you want socialized
| services? Curious.
|
| If this person's story ended with "Then I started a website
| to advocate for regulations and pricing for better
| transport wifi," then that would be great! Instead he just
| drowned out the internet connection of paying customers who
| are now making angry calls at some poor tech support person
| making minimum wage in a poor country. He did nothing but
| hurt people out of his own immaturity and cheapness.
| Retric wrote:
| These are paying customers, discouraging them from coming
| back is a net loss. Suppose your cabin includes a shower
| but you need to pay every day to actually use it. Nobody
| would think that's reasonable, but because internet used
| to be difficult companies are still tacking on insane
| fees even though the actual costs are minimal.
|
| With Starlink you're looking at a lot more than 15mbps.
| We're at the point where some cruise lines offer free Wi-
| Fi and people still see multi megabit connections anyway.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Reasonable is determined if you already paid for the
| shower, and then are denied it. Where does this sense of
| entitlement come from?
| Retric wrote:
| Commerce includes many unspoken agreements. Order a meal
| at a restaurant and expect to pay list prices +taxes etc,
| you don't expect to be charged for using the salt on the
| table, or the price of a doggy bag etc. Airlines don't
| charge people to go to the bathroom, though they may
| reserve better bathrooms for first class etc.
|
| Companies breaking with these trends face a backlash
| assuming a competitive marketplace.
| dl9999 wrote:
| Is there some demographic data that shows that "public
| nuisance hackers" are mostly right-wing libertarian?
| n_ary wrote:
| > Once this is done, it becomes uninteresting to download
| gigabytes of crap to "hurt" people. Win-win for everyone.
|
| I would disagree. Here in my corner of EU, public buses
| have a limited 30min - 1hour free wifi access. What most
| everyone does immediately getting in the bus is connect to
| the free wifi and start mindless scrolling on TikTok,
| Facebook or Instagram. Around 20-30% of the people are
| super obnoxious and play all the videos over loudspeaker or
| start calling their friends and speaking loudly as if they
| are in their home or something, until someone else yells at
| them. So far, I have only seen two person this month
| appearing to do something valuable(one was writing an email
| and another was checking local news).
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Just because you think entertainment (or rather, _their
| specific_ form of entertainment, since you seem to
| consider reading the news OK but facebook not ok) isn 't
| "valuable" doesn't make it so.
|
| Being able to enjoy entertainment (or, as you'd probably
| see it, "mindlessly waste the time" that you have to
| spend on the bus anyways) is what makes public transit
| bearable.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Why do you put this on people who love capitalism? It seems
| like inserting a tangential pet issue.
|
| If anything, I would guess they are anti-capitalists because
| they are so indignant about someone offering a paid service.
| viridian wrote:
| Unless you have a personal history with this user, you are
| making a lot of unfounded assumptions and sweeping
| generalizations about them.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| How? The guy told everyone straight-up that he wasted
| bandwidth for no reason.
| jampekka wrote:
| It made others worse off, rising his relative status and
| competitive advantage. That's exactly how rational
| economic agents should behave.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| Rational agents in the real world should realize that
| conspiring with others to make the world better gives
| them more benefits than being a greedy shit.
|
| It is only in academic exercises where collaboration is
| made impossible that sociopathic behavior is optimal.
| jampekka wrote:
| Maybe the economy should be structured for the real-world
| behavior then?
| jstanley wrote:
| It is.
| jampekka wrote:
| Isn't that exactly what a homo economicus should do? Remember
| that we are each in constant competition between each other,
| trying to satisfy our unlimited wants and trying to get
| others from satisfying theirs.
| callalex wrote:
| If you think that living life requires you to constantly
| put down others, I just feel sad for both you and all the
| people who have to be around you.
| jampekka wrote:
| I don't, but our economic system is based on and rewards
| that. It does feel sad.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think it rewards it at all. Things like this are
| just negative sum activities lashing out.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Our economic system in no way rewards spite. It rewards
| value. It might not always be able to tell the difference
| between real value and underhanded tactics, but that's
| because the tactics masquerade as better value.
| pjlegato wrote:
| On the contrary, capitalism is based on providing value
| to others. It rewards those who do something that others
| actually WANT... as opposed to what some roomful of
| bureaucrats decide ought to be done.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| Spending time to cost a company a few hundred bucks doesn't
| seem rational. There are higher EV ways to spend your time
| to try to satisfy wants.
|
| Unless your mindset is one of "it's not enough that I
| succeed; others must fail by my hand".
|
| That said I could easily imagine doing some stuff like this
| as a teenager for giggles. There's some small joy in being
| a minor troublemaker in a way nobody would actually care
| about. It's not something I'd brag about though.
| ncruces wrote:
| What selfish purpose is there to download GBs of images
| from Stripe docs?
|
| Even if we're purely selfish, wasting resources just to
| stick it to others is not really a productive use of our
| time.
| adversaryIdiot wrote:
| yes, lets stare at the water for 20 hours instead
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There are more than two options for a 20 hour wait, and I
| don't think that lashing out maliciously and staring at
| water are in my top 100. How about conversation, making
| friends, reading a book, writing emails, letters, or
| journals?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I think it depends on just how much harm your target
| causing. Sometimes taking them down is the right thing.
| Doesn't feel justified in this case though.
| calfuris wrote:
| Homo economicus is motivated by maximizing their own
| benefit, not by spite. Trying to stop others from
| satisfying their own wants may be a useful strategy in many
| cases, but I don't see how it would be useful here.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Genuinely curious where you get that impression.
|
| Who in their right mind wants to stop others from getting
| what they want for it's own sake, or sees the quest for
| happiness as a competition?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Some people are simply not satisfied with maximizing
| their own gain, they also need to minimize everyone
| else's. Someone else's benefit is their loss. To the
| point where they'll make the game negative-sum in order
| to ensure The Other loses.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Some people are sadistic cretins who revel in the
| suffering of others, but I don't think that is the
| mainstream position.
|
| I was pushing back on the idea that "homo economicus" or
| mainstream economics advocates for competitive sabotage.
| I have never heard academic economists advocate for this
| as a rational position.
|
| If anything, the field is biased to over-emphasize
| positive collaboration.
|
| The position of the parent post is some strange
| application of group competition for a scarce resource to
| happiness.
|
| It assumes that someone's goal is not be be as happy as
| possible, but rather happier than others. This is the
| only situation where it makes sense to actively put in
| work to make other people more miserable.
| wang_li wrote:
| It's interesting that you can't see that what capitalism
| does is push everyone to contribute in doing something
| useful for others.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > You're just hurting honest working class people trying to
| do work, email/call their kids, manage things like doctors
| appointments
|
| Right, so they can do all that important stuff on technology
| that was invented by nerds and hackers over the decades,
| while they were being demonized by society, bullied, put
| down, and shoved aside by the so-called sociable class.
|
| Yeah, I'll continue not shedding tears over Joe Sixpack's
| inability to check his football scores for a few minutes.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| This is such an incredibly bizarre victimhood mindset that
| I feel like I must be misunderstanding it. Degrading a
| utility for everyone else is fine because of some perceived
| wrong by society done to your in group?
|
| If you piss in the punch bowl at a party attended by your
| in group and perceived out group, you're going to be
| justifiably hated by both.
|
| And probably not get invited to more parties.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is a strange form of entitlement, not unlike incels.
|
| Somehow people get in their mind that they are owed X,
| then spiral into bitterness and jealousy when they dont
| get it, and then lash out arbitrarily.
|
| The part that I dont get is where the sense of
| entitlement comes from? Imagine such a deep sense of
| entitlement to free wifi on a boat that you feel the need
| to take revenge on innocents.
| jlaporte wrote:
| OP's actions are super obnoxious of course.
|
| But I'm puzzled by the idea his actions make any sense as a
| _capitalist_ impulse (Of course neither of us know anything
| about OP except his story).
|
| Resentment over what somebody else has is the quintessential
| mental sliver communism uses to drive people to destroy the
| system. Perhaps the OP was just engaging in an outburst of
| his own destructive revolutionary zeal against his fellow
| passengers because they had something he didn't.
| random0031 wrote:
| I don't have anything to back my theories up, but when
| ChatGPT was new, heavily resource-constrained, but was
| catching on and I tried using it for sustainability research
| and I kept getting errors (service down / system overloaded),
| my mind always went to "yeah, people trying to do the two
| plus two is five or generating adult content. Perhaps trying
| to use it to generate bomb recipes. Let's try using ChatGPT
| for research again in a few hours"
| ndespres wrote:
| What, exactly, do you get out of doing something like that? As
| an intellectual exercise I understand probing to see what
| exactly is accessible on a "blocked" connection, but
| intentionally wasting bandwidth seems the virtual equivalent of
| leaving the taps running in a public restroom to waste water,
| or perhaps clogging the toilet and overflowing it.
| kalensh wrote:
| It reminds me of working on campus IT, and the sort of person
| who, at the end of the semester realize there are pages
| remaining in their "free print" allotment, print out every
| page completely covered in black ink to waste as much as
| possible.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| why would anyone do that?? the remaining "free print"
| sheets is perfectly good scratch paper if you leave it
| blank!
| ryandrake wrote:
| I worked at a company that would provide "free pizza"
| during evenings to encourage people to stay a little later
| and get more work done. It wasn't long before people would
| simply grab armfuls of food, entire pizza boxes, and bring
| them to their cars, ending that little perk quickly.
| xeromal wrote:
| They're being a dick plain and simple. Some people are just
| wired that way.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Presumably because they perceive the operator as
| gouging/exploiting the captive audience.
| stocknoob wrote:
| Next, I left the water running in the hotel to teach them a
| lesson for daring to offer me a paid service.
| vsuperpower2021 wrote:
| If hotels tried charging $20 to turn the tap on and I found
| an infinite water glitch, you bet I'd be leaving it on.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Why was your first instinct to abuse or degrade functionality
| for a service you didn't want to pay for?
| annexrichmond wrote:
| And then bragging about it. Wild.
| KTibow wrote:
| I think it may be more of an emotional than rational
| response, given he would be stuck on the ferry for 20 hours
| api wrote:
| ZeroTier, Tailscale, and several other UDP based mesh protocols
| will sometimes work in "free" mode on planes, but it tends to be
| horrifically slow.
| ale42 wrote:
| Did they forget to block UDP? Or they left it totally open for
| DNS to work?!
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Usually: it's left open to unfuck DNS.
|
| Some of them will try force you to use their local resolver,
| but often UDP will be left open (or left open on port 53)
| because it is easier.
|
| When they force a local resolver you can often tunnel over
| DNS requests, though this only works sometimes :)
| slt2021 wrote:
| setup your wireguard server on udp/53 and voila.
| _joel wrote:
| Reminded of using Iodine to break out of captive portals using
| DNS TXT/SRV etc records https://github.com/yarrick/iodine
| moritonal wrote:
| Interesting to see how close the author got to producing an
| abstract "TCP-over-shared-editable-fields", which in itself would
| make a really cool tool.
|
| Imagine a proxy where all you did was design at a high-level a
| way to write/read to a shared resource from two sides, and then
| it handled all the rest for you as a SOCKS proxy.
| dheera wrote:
| I think TCP/IP-over-DNS has been done for getting free internet
| over paid Boingo hotspots in airports.
|
| Eventually free Wi-Fi became the standard and this is not a
| thing anymore.
|
| We have just progressed to fighting the in-flight free Wi-Fi
| battle now. Eventually in-flight Wi-Fi will be free everywhere.
| It already is on several airlines.
| michaelmior wrote:
| Indeed it has with iodine[0] being a popular example.
|
| [0] https://github.com/yarrick/iodine
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I have thought about this for years, ever since ISPs in my
| country started advertising "unlimited whatsapp" on otherwise
| data limited plans. It would only work for text and not images
| or video, but it would have been good enough for general web
| browsing.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Why could you not just proxy the images and videos as uploads
| to WhatsApp? They would be re-encoded possibly, but better
| than nothing...
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I meant that the ISP would block wpp image and video
| traffic, but would allow text through. It has been several
| years since this happened, so I may be misremembering.
| moritonal wrote:
| I belive you're misunderstanding what TCP-over-X means.
| If you can exchange messages, it means you could exchange
| bytes, if you can do that you can send any form of data,
| including HTTPS which is an application over TCP. HTTPS
| could then include video and images, encrypted and
| therefore difficult to specifically block.
| xiwenc wrote:
| KLM, specially on long flights, has a free tier wifi where you
| can use major instant messaging without charge. If you want to
| surf the web, it's pretty cheap. If i recall around 30-40 euro
| for a 9-10hours flight. Or pay less for an hour.
|
| Was considering to "hack" my way out of the free tier. But paying
| was just too easy and it's affordable.
|
| Sorry for boring addition/story.
| duronald wrote:
| Southwest Airlines offers free IM through iMessage and WhatsApp
| too. Should be able to tunnel internet traffic through
| iMessage.
| frankus wrote:
| I'm trying to recall the name of the app that does this, but
| one of the travel-tracking apps uses Apple's push
| notification system (which the network treats as "messaging")
| to send e.g. gate changes to subscribing devices through this
| "messaging only" network.
|
| The APNS payload is a JSON blob that's limited to 4KB, with a
| few required pieces of information but mostly free-form, so
| it's definitely in the scope of e.g. a (text-only) blog post
| split over a few messages.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _...it's pretty cheap. If i recall around 30-40 euro for a
| 9-10hours flight._
|
| I would love to be in a position where I could consider this
| cheap. FWIW, I pay about EUR46 per _month_ for Internet
| service.
| bauruine wrote:
| If you pay 1000+ for the flight an additional 40 Euros isn't
| that bad.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| That's how they get you.
|
| The bias is known as "Anchoring Effect", where your
| perception of subsequent prices is skewed by the initial
| high price.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Except you're on a literal plane flying through the sky.
| This isn't the same as being on the ground with permanent
| cables attached to your internet connection. Not only is
| this incredible that you'd get internet at all, it's
| totally reasonable for it to cost a lot more!
| aeyes wrote:
| Times have changed, with Starlink the cost is going to be
| a rounding error. Free high speed Wifi will probably be
| available on long haul flights within the next 3-5 years.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Assuming there are 300 people on a flight and half of
| them purchase this, that would be $4-6000 per trip for
| internet access. What do you think the actual margins on
| this access are, especially relative to the other eye
| watering and obscene surcharges airlines impose?
| xiwenc wrote:
| With "cheap" i meant it was still affordable. If it was 10x
| then it would not be affordable. Just like a bottle a water
| costs more at the airport, internet access costs more on a
| plane in the sky.
|
| Perhaps i am a bit biased i would expense the bill to the
| company. A few hours of work definitely pays back the prepaid
| internet.
|
| As mentioned, a decade or two ago, this was not possible or
| very limited to the elites. I certainly dont feel or behave
| like an elite. So it is "affordable" to me
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| I certainly applaud the author's creativity, but aren't there
| potential very significant downsides to using abusing an account
| linked to your identity in order to fraudulently obtain services?
|
| And then to write about it under one's own name?
|
| Isn't this kind of thing that goes against the CFAA?
|
| PRs can wait -- not worth criminal charges.
| stavros wrote:
| It's very interesting how afraid we've become, as a culture, of
| legal repercussions if you "mess with computer stuff in any
| way".
|
| Changing your first name field on a form too often? Welcome to
| prison!
| walterbell wrote:
| _> how afraid we 've become_
|
| Widespread proliferation of pseudonyms modeling/nudging self-
| censorship is not a proxy for fear in humans-who-hack.
| stavros wrote:
| Not in hackers, the population.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _It 's very interesting how afraid we've become_
|
| You make it sound as if this is some kind of irrational
| response to nothing.
|
| When in reality it's an entirely reasonable response to the
| 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act [1].
|
| The interesting observation here wouldn't be about us "as a
| culture", it would be about the government.
|
| Because obviously it's not about "changing your first name
| field on a form too often", it's about using that field for
| an unintended use, in order to bypass controls to give
| yourself access to communications the company didn't
| authorize you for.
|
| I don't know why you think a kind of cultural fear is the
| thing to focus on here, rather than the very real law that
| sends people to very real prison.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I think you're probably right, but the thing that always
| gets me is this: if nothing in their terms or UI prohibits
| you from encoding data into your name and changing it as
| often as possible, then is doing so actually unauthorized?
| I can't imagine that every conceivable activity you might
| perform with a computer system would need to be explicitly
| documented as ok before you can perform it. In other words,
| if the system owner lists things you can do and things you
| can't do, then are you in trouble for doing things not
| mentioned? They never authorized me to use the brightness
| control on the entertainment system, but I did anyway, uh
| oh!
|
| They're charging money for normal easy communication with
| the ground, and they're not charging for slow convoluted
| communication with the ground. I see the problem with
| getting the former without paying, but it's harder to find
| a problem with getting the latter without paying. They
| configured their system to allow it, and then failed to
| list rapid changes and encoding as either authorized or
| unauthorized.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The intent to bypass the paywall is extraordinarily clear
| here. The name field is obviously not being used for its
| intended purpose.
|
| I don't know how a court would actually decide, and that
| would depend on the precise jury as well.
|
| But the point is that it's entirely reasonable to be
| scared that this could land you in jail. Cases are
| decided by people who have common sense.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| I would hope the server literally _authorizing_ the user to
| modify the field after correctly _authenticating_ the user
| implies "authorized use" under the CFAA, but I'm not a
| lawyer and I'm not familiar with the law here.
| canadianwriter wrote:
| He notes in the blog post that he didn't actually use his
| airmiles account more than a couple proof of concepts (the IM
| stage) - he also says not to actually do this - it was just a
| creative bit of hacking.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| This is bonkers and I love it. A great hack in spirit but also a
| good primer on how a fundamental protocol like TCP kinda-if-you-
| squint-sorta powers everything else.
|
| I wish I thought of it on my last trans-atlantic!
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| Sorry if this isn't the thread for it, but is airplane wifi
| costly to provide?
|
| Is there any hope for a future where all airplane wifi is free?
|
| (Maybe if cellphone plans automatically include satellite wifi?)
| ale42 wrote:
| I guess the airlines want to monetize all they can... so
| probably not.
| klohto wrote:
| maybe when we have abundant Starlink capacity, otherwise any
| satellite-to-ground roundtrip at a reasonable speed is costly
| nhod wrote:
| In the US, it's free on Delta for SkyMiles members, which is in
| turn free to join. It's also free for everyone on JSX with no
| strings, and they actually are the first airline I know of to
| use StarLink.
|
| Additionally it's free on most US airlines for T-Mobile
| customers, but only on devices that actually have T-Mobile SIMs
| (so not most laptops).
| master-lincoln wrote:
| The question was if it's costly to provide, not how much
| customers have to pay
| Someone1234 wrote:
| This isn't important; but Delta's "free with SkyMiles"
| offering is for domestic US travel. For international travel
| they're still charging $8/hour. Supposedly they may expand
| the free offering to some flights to Europe though but YMMV.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I have to imagine this comes down to how they provide the
| Internet connection. Over land they can use cell towers.
| Over sea they're forced to use satellites.
| joezydeco wrote:
| On AA, the "free one hour for TMO subscribers" through their
| app doesn't actually check to see if you're using a TMO SIM.
| It only checks the phone number against their customer list.
|
| After burning up the first free hour I switch to my wife's
| number, then my kids, etc. It never complains.
| denysvitali wrote:
| You can literally bump the last digit of any T-Mobile
| number (:
| joezydeco wrote:
| Yeah that should work...for a while. Eventually numbers
| get ported out and the space fragments. Area codes don't
| mean much anymore.
| ydant wrote:
| Re: T-Mobile - On United you can just set your laptop user
| agent to a mobile one and sign on with your phone number.
| Works fine for both the short period and full flight options.
| future10se wrote:
| Zipair, a budget airline subidiary of JAL, offers free Wifi [1]
| on all their international flights. They operate in the SEA
| area.
|
| [1] - https://www.zipair.net/en/onboard/service
| supportengineer wrote:
| On a recent Hawaiian flight there was free StarLink-powered
| WiFi. It was free and worked incredibly well.
| dboreham wrote:
| > but is airplane wifi costly to provide
|
| Depends on the location. Over populated land areas, no. Over
| oceans far from land, yes.
| jraph wrote:
| > I'd forgotten to charge my headphones so Limp Bizkit started
| playing out of my laptop speakers. Fortunately no one else on the
| plane seemed to mind so we all rocked out together.
|
| Eh. I would probably mind but depending on my mood and the level
| of conflict avoidance in me, you wouldn't notice.
| posterman wrote:
| its a joke.
| jraph wrote:
| On a plane, I would guess anyone trying to do this would be
| stopped by the stewards :-)
| jmkb wrote:
| Decades ago, my partner used Google Voice for texting -- really
| handy, texts just showed up in the gmail inbox, and could be
| replied to from there. She didn't like cellphones, but usually
| carried one of the old "Kindle Keyboard" models with unlimited 3G
| data. The Kindle had simple web browser that could load the low-
| spec gmail interface, so in essence she had a fully functional
| SMS device, with no monthly charges.
|
| Notification of incoming texts was the only problem. I jailbroke
| the thing and started trying to schedule network requests,
| thinking I'd add some kind of new message counter on the home
| screen. This proved hard. But it occurred to me that the best
| place for the counter would be right next to the Kindle's device
| name, at the top of the screen. And the device name could be
| updated from her Amazon account.
|
| So I automated a web browser on the home server to log into
| Amazon and update the device name to "My Kindle (x)" where x was
| the number of unread Google Voice texts. The Kindle would update
| the name on the home screen in less than a minute. This worked
| for years!
|
| (Eventually that Kindle was stolen. I wanted to update its name
| to something foul but the device disappeared from her account too
| quickly.)
| LegitShady wrote:
| I loaned my kindle keyboard to a coworker for a trip and it was
| stolen from them in mexico. The joke was at the time it was
| probably the oldest working kindle possible, so I assume the
| thief just took whatever was in the bag.
|
| Later I found another kindle keyboard for $20 in a flea market
| but it only worked for 6 months before the battery died. I
| still have the body around - I wonder how much it would cost to
| get a replacement battery.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| It's probably a single cell so with some luck you can plonk
| whatever battery physically fits in there.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Batteries for it are pretty readily available across the
| Internet so you can get the exact right one. It's about 2
| minutes worth of work to change.
| Palomides wrote:
| I just replaced two, a new battery inc. shipping runs around
| $15
|
| not too hard to pop open and swap in
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Years ago before I got a smart phone I used my kindle keyboard
| to navigate on a long road trip. It could just barely run the
| Google Maps website.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| The AT&T bill (IIRC it was all under a single account) for the
| 3G Kindles was eye-watering. I recall a few byte-shavings
| yielding something like a million dollars of savings.
| zorked wrote:
| Free Internet was a very bold proposition. I used it a lot,
| via roaming, from a country that was in the very-expensive-
| roaming lists.
| jmkb wrote:
| Worth it, I reckon. You can't buy this kind of advertising:
|
| https://xkcd.com/548/
| throwup238 wrote:
| Amazon really missed the chance to call their network Sub-
| Etha. Or the Sub-Wave network.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I still have my Kindle 3g. I love it. The battery on mine is
| toast right now so it's not operable. I was going to buy a
| new Kindle but the prime day preview in Canada doesn't show
| any Kindles on sale and I was hoping Amazon was going to
| release an oasis v2 with USB-c before I replaced this.
|
| I might just pay $30 for another battery and stick with this
| Kindle keyboard.
| wwweston wrote:
| Does the connectivity still work? Thinking about pulling
| out my DX and giving it a spin.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I dont think any of the providers around me still have 3g
| networks for it to connect to, and I know in the US
| amazon said they would lose connectivity in the US 2021
| vasusen wrote:
| Yes, the connectivity should still work, but it might be
| limited depending on the model and the network you're
| trying to connect to. Some older Kindle models may have
| issues with newer Wi-Fi standards. It's worth giving it a
| try, though! You might also want to check if there are
| any firmware updates available for your device.
| daemonologist wrote:
| I have a keyboard 3G on v3.4.3 and the cell connectivity
| does not work anymore. It does still mention in the
| device info that it has 3G capability but if you try to
| do anything requiring a network connection it prompts you
| to connect to wifi. (Interestingly it also has the cell-
| style right triangle with five bars to indicate signal
| strength.)
|
| I recall Amazon announcing a few years back that it would
| stop working; not sure if they pushed a firmware update,
| stopped paying the bill, or if 3G just isn't available
| anymore.
| timo555 wrote:
| Was wondering if anyone was going to chime in about still
| having this old Kindle. I still have mine and use it daily.
| Battery lasts 3 weeks as long as the wifi is off and the
| free 3G still works too. Purchased it in July 2011. I also
| want a new e-reader but I also want to see how long I can
| keep this thing going.
| delecti wrote:
| I was at Amazon in a Kindle adjacent team (the lockscreen
| ads) starting in 2012, and I can second this sentiment. For
| the first couple years, there were multiple tweaks made to
| minimize enormous roaming bills for customers taking their US
| region "global unlimited free 3g" kindles to really remote
| parts of the world. Things like not enqueuing push downloads
| of books/ads if they were roaming.
| bredren wrote:
| How profitable was this behavior and its paid removal?
|
| I have always felt that the default display of ads on Lock
| Screen cheapened the devices---even the flagship oasis
| model required an additional purchase to remove the ads.
|
| That seemed completely at odds with the premium pricing and
| marketing.
|
| Also, it seemed like there was always some way to call
| Amazon support and make claims about location or some other
| detail that would make support disable the ads for free.
| Are you aware of those requests and manual handling?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Oh my god! I did this too!!! I didn't have the clever Kindle
| name change integration but I did use a keyboard Kindle with
| infinite 3G to text for a while.
| venusenvy47 wrote:
| I still use Google Voice for texting, but only from their
| dedicated web page. I never heard about being able to text from
| Gmail. I assume this feature is gone?
| dark wrote:
| no, it still exists.
| vasusen wrote:
| Google Voice still supports texting from their web page, but
| the feature to text directly from Gmail was discontinued a
| few years ago. It was a convenient feature, but now you have
| to use the Google Voice app or web page for texting.
| e808 wrote:
| Oh that 'free' 3g was amazing! I was able to hobble through
| gmail through the browser, and even wrote a kindle-friendly
| Zork website so one could play text games on it allowing you to
| choose from a bunch of zmachine roms. Had some traction getting
| mentioned on a few news websites.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Recently I found Cloudflare's WARP app let me bypass the chat-
| only restriction on some long-haul airlines. You'd get like 5kbps
| bandwidth, but it was enough to read HN.
| Gys wrote:
| > At first I thought that I'd write them using Go, but then I
| realised that if I used Python then I could call the final tool
| PySkyWiFi.
|
| Hmm, GoFlyWiFi? GoHighWifi?
| ziml77 wrote:
| Nah it was definitely worth picking Python for the quadruple
| rhyme.
| Gys wrote:
| JumboGoSlowTelco?
| denysvitali wrote:
| Considering that some of those paid Wi-Fi services are provided
| by Boingo, maybe BoinGo is a nice name
| floam wrote:
| I "hacked" free WiFi on a very long flight to Beijing about 10
| years ago when I was in my 20s. I was visiting my girlfriend's
| family and didn't actually have more than $20 to my name at the
| time.
|
| It was a simple matter of joining the network, and then dumping
| the traffic in monitor mode. I could log MAC addresses of other
| devices on the network.
|
| I made a list of addresses and then spoofed someone else's
| address that must have paid, and blamo, I'm online.
|
| I would rotate to another address when Internet access
| deteriorated: this meant the other guy was trying to use the
| Internet at the same time.
|
| Yeah, I know I'm awful.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| At a company I used to work for long ago locked the network down
| pretty good, so a coworker used ping requests and a server at
| home to get around it.
| sghiassy wrote:
| Did he say that played Limp Bizkit on his speakers and made
| everyone the plane listen to it?!?
| wtcactus wrote:
| "I'd forgotten to charge my headphones so Limp Bizkit started
| playing out of my laptop speakers. Fortunately no one else on the
| plane seemed to mind so we all rocked out together."
|
| People like this lack basic civility. I'm sure a lot of the
| people around Robert _did mind_ , they were just too polite to
| ask him to stop imposing his gratuitous noise on them.
| dynm wrote:
| I read this as a joke. (Which I thought was funny precisely
| because so many people do lack this kind of basic civility--but
| I'm pretty sure not the author?)
| ides_dev wrote:
| Given the tone of this and other articles on the site I'd be
| inclined to suggest that _this was a joke_.
| Milner08 wrote:
| Did you really not read this as a joke? It seemed obvious that
| it was one to me.
| sghiassy wrote:
| I didn't read it as a joke
| brokensegue wrote:
| It's clearly a joke
| djmips wrote:
| Jokes are funny.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| The mental image of a plane rocking out to rap rock from
| tinny laptop speakers is funny.
| xtracto wrote:
| I did not read it as a joke. Granted,I'm not American and
| English is not my first language.
|
| In a way it made me think "wow, it had to be an American who
| doesn't care about others than him and is rude and self
| centered"
|
| Which is stupid a stupid generalization I know. And also goes
| to show the ambiguity of written language. And how strong our
| preconceptions can impact our judgement (as it did mine
| initially).
|
| I'm overthinking this haha.
| djmips wrote:
| Well it's not funny so it's hard to read as a joke.
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| The dry sarcastic humor of the author made it very obvious
| to me that this was satire. I have a very similar sense of
| humor, at least partly. And I'm a native American English
| speaker.
|
| Giveaways:
|
| >I logged in to my JetStreamers Diamond Altitude account
| and started clicking.
|
| Satire! It's not called that, but it's a similar marketing
| wankery version.
|
| >This clickable rascal would allow me to access the entire
| internet through my airmiles account. This would be slow.
| It would be unbelievably stupid. But it would work.
|
| "It would be unbelievably stupid but I'm going to do it
| anyway!"
|
| >Several co-workers were asking me to review their PRs
| because my feedback was "two weeks late" and "blocking a
| critical deployment." But my ideas are important too so I
| put on my headphones and smashed on some focus tunes.
|
| Even this was a sarcastic/satirical leadup.
|
| >I'd forgotten to charge my headphones so Limp Bizkit
| started playing out of my laptop speakers. Fortunately no
| one else on the plane seemed to mind so we all rocked out
| together.
|
| Limp Bizkit is a very famous (or infamous) band that gets
| notoroiusly mocked. The odds of even a single person
| rocking out with that playing out of laptop speakers is
| tiny. Two people? Everyone on the plane? 0.0% chance.
|
| I don't know why I put so much effort into explaining this.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| I believe this is what the humans refer to as "humour".
| sghiassy wrote:
| Hopefully it was a joke like others have said - if not, then
| he's incredibly rude and callous
| kraftman wrote:
| It's very, very obviously a joke.
| c03 wrote:
| The author sounds so incredibly obnoxious.
| beardedwizard wrote:
| This response lacks a basic sense of humor.
| xapata wrote:
| If the author wrote, "This is satire," it'd ruin the satire.
| sghiassy wrote:
| If you have to explain that it's a joke, then it wasn't funny
| sfilmeyer wrote:
| What's the bar, though? If out of a million people reading
| a joke, 80% find it funny, 20% find it meh, and one
| solitary person needs the joke explained to them, I think
| it's still fair to call it a funny joke. There are multiple
| comments in this thread missing the satire so it's obvious
| the percentage is a bit higher than that, but I'd wager the
| majority of people didn't need the joke explained to them.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| To you.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This doesn't apply to satire. Your lack of media literacy
| is not evidence of bad satire.
| sghiassy wrote:
| There's enough people in this thread saying the same, to
| prove I'm not an outlier in my interpretation
| mrguyorama wrote:
| HN is not a representative sample of normal people and
| has a long understood inability to recognize satire, or
| even just particularly strong sarcasm. HN not getting a
| joke is not evidence of it being a bad joke.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've never seen an online community fail to grasp sarcasm
| as badly as HN. I deliberately make one out of 50 posts
| ultra-sarcastic (to the point where no normal person
| could possibly believe I'd hold whatever view I wrote),
| and they always, _always_ go straight to -4.
| jmhammond wrote:
| Coming from a family with several people "on the
| spectrum," I want to point out that _some_ people with
| ASD have trouble with sarcasm.
|
| I would also contend that HN, like my workplace
| (university math department) skews towards folks with
| ASD.
|
| Usual caveats of "when you met one person with autism,
| you met one person with autism..." etc etc.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Hell, even jokes that have been properly marked get
| downvoted and flagged here.
| zaat wrote:
| While I didn't find the joke funny, it does thematically match
| the piece - the hacker who supposedly see the possibility to
| get free internet as a viable opportunity. Later in the piece
| the author does distance himself from that image, revealing the
| tone in the opening was merely a stylistic choice, a writer's
| device, as clearly he is not the kind of a person who will in
| practice exploit the airline systems.
| adyavanapalli wrote:
| Most flight WiFi networks don't block DNS traffic, so if you set
| up a custom DNS server, you can tunnel everything through DNS.
| It's slow, but it's free internet!
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I'm afraid to get on some kind of terrorist watch list that
| way.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I once found out on a plane ssh wasn't blocked even if I wasn't
| paying so I just used a remote vps that I had already setup as
| a socks proxy to browse the web.
| slt2021 wrote:
| how about spinning up a wireguard server on udp/53 and connect
| to it with wireguard client. I haven't tried it myself but it
| could work. Gonna try it next time I am going to fly
| amelius wrote:
| Hacker: Those stupid website makers, they didn't think of this
| hole.
|
| Website makers: There's a hole here, but we make it super slow so
| nobody in their right mind would use it and even if they do then
| there's no problem whatsoever. It would only waste their time.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-10-30
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Thank you to share! I never knew about SMBC ( _not_ Sumitomo
| Mitsui Banking Corporation) before your post...
| Vicinity9635 wrote:
| >Author and programmer Sam Hughes, by the way, pushed this to
| the limit and invented Base 65,536, which includes basically
| every character from every language. It is ridiculous and
| unnecessary, but when has that ever stopped programmers?
|
| https://youtu.be/gocwRvLhDf8?t=103
| nunez wrote:
| > Several co-workers were asking me to review their PRs because
| my feedback was "two weeks late" and "blocking a critical
| deployment." But my ideas are important too so I put on my
| headphones and smashed on some focus tunes. I'd forgotten to
| charge my headphones so Limp Bizkit started playing out of my
| laptop speakers. Fortunately no one else on the plane seemed to
| mind so we all rocked out together.
|
| He's not serious, right? Right?
| fwip wrote:
| Correct, it's a joke.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Queue the joke about "coding on a boat" from StackOverflow.
| 101008 wrote:
| I pay for WiFi on long-haul flights because I am bit scared of
| flying and it keeps me distracted and connected to the world and
| friends and relatives (maybe I am scared because I feel
| isolated?).
|
| Anyway, on my last flight I tried WiFi Hotspot and I was able to
| give WiFi to my girlfriend and dad, just paying for one account
| on my device. It isn't free but at least it allows everyone on my
| party to be connected.
| phcreery wrote:
| WiFi-to-WiFi hotspot is a good idea, I don't think all phones
| can do that though. I once used my rooted Android to spoof my
| Wifes MAC address to use her in-flight WiFi she paid for after
| she was not using it anymore.
| netsharc wrote:
| If I understand correctly, if your WiFi chip comes with 2.4
| and 5 GHz bands, it's "trivial" to connect to the network
| using the one band and provide the hotspot on the other one -
| it already has 2 antennas - at least the issue wouldn't be
| the hardware.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Lots of hardware supports being operated in access point
| mode and station mode at the same time -- on the same
| radio/antenna(s).
|
| Even the venerable (and ancient) WRT54G could do this with
| appropriate firmware.
|
| IIRC, I've even used this functionality with Windows ICS on
| my laptop many moons ago
|
| It's not necessarily an efficient function, but efficiency
| isn't always the most important thing.
|
| (These days, I often travel with a Mikrotik device that
| I've set up to be a hotspot abuser, so as to provide myself
| and whoever is with me a slice of Internet while having the
| immediate appearance of being a solitary device. It does
| this trick very well indeed.)
| nunez wrote:
| The lengths that people will go to to avoid paying $10-20 for
| onboard WiFi is nuts.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Not that I condone stealing, but it really surprises you that
| people do not want to pay for service that has a $0 marginal
| cost to the company?
| demondemidi wrote:
| Clever exploit of a website security hole! Except you need to
| give your credentials to a trusted party.
| theamk wrote:
| A very important quote:
|
| > NB: at this point I didn't want to send any more automated data
| through my airmiles account in case that got me in trouble
| somehow. [...] I therefore proved to myself that PySkyWiFi would
| work on my airmiles accounts too by updating my name ten or so
| times in quick succession. They all succeeded [...] I then wrote
| the rest of my code by sending my data through friendly services
| like GitHub Gists and local files on my computer
|
| > I'm going to keep talking about sending data through an
| airmiles account, because that's the point I'm trying to make.
|
| Disappointing! I would not be surprised if things break when
| updating name millions of times (and you do need millions of
| updates for basic website) - maybe there is a history table, or a
| queue, or a easily overloaded service...
| remram wrote:
| I was wondering about this. How well would the protocol cope if
| the name field suddenly changed back to the previous value,
| because the database is not that consistent? In addition to
| counters, you'd probably need signaling to indicate a missing
| packet, at least.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| A lot of cruise ships will let you pay for a messaging tier which
| unblocks messaging apps, but blocks everything else. I found this
| repo that uses whatsapp messages as a form of proxy. [1] It's
| pretty cool as a PoC, but in reality is much too slow to use for
| more than maybe checking the news.
|
| [1]https://github.com/aleixrodriala/wa-tunnel
| firefoxd wrote:
| Couple weeks ago, I took my kids to a class at the mall, then
| decided to use their free wifi. I logged in successfully with my
| laptop, but it said no Internet.
|
| I checked the default gateway and it took me to a cisco modem. It
| had all sort of diagnostic tooling including the list of devices
| connected to the modem. However, it showed no Internet
| connection. I googled the model on my phone, and the admin is
| supposed to be the serial number with blank password and there
| was an example of the pattern. Surprisingly, one of the devices
| connected to the modem had a name that looked like said pattern.
|
| And just like that, I was in. I toggled the Internet button, 15
| seconds later it turned green. I set a new password on the
| device.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| Award for good IT citizen goes to you, sir or madam or <insert
| honorary>.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Except for setting a new password on the device. Now nobody
| else can perform the same public service next time the
| Internet goes down on that modem.
| HanClinto wrote:
| This is exactly the sort of post that gives me a ray of hope that
| the Internet still has some of its old magic in it.
|
| Thank you for this. Very well done.
| metabagel wrote:
| > I'd forgotten to charge my headphones so Limp Bizkit started
| playing out of my laptop speakers. Fortunately no one else on the
| plane seemed to mind so we all rocked out together.
|
| After reading this, I'm not interested in anything else the
| author has to say. People won't always tell you when you are
| being a jerk.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| This reads like an obvious joke.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| This is amazing but honestly I'd rather just pay for wifi.
| jacobrussell wrote:
| cloud computing
| dakiol wrote:
| Am I the only one who is always tired in the plane no matter what
| and cannot anything but close my eyes and wait til the flight is
| over?
|
| The idea of pulling out my laptop or even a book is just...
| tiring. There's a lot of noise as well (airbus anyone?) and I
| don't have noise cancel headphones, so concentration is
| difficult. Without taking into account that I have spent at least
| 2h away from home among trains, trams and security controllers.
| The bad (unhealthy) food available in airports doesn't help
| either. Half the year the weather doesn't help either(it's either
| too hot or too cold). Plus the 10 kilos backpack I have on my
| back is making me sweat no matter what.
|
| So, basically, I'm never in the mood of doing anything in a
| plane.
| architango wrote:
| Definitely not just you. My wishful thinking compels me to
| bring a book on a plane, but I usually end up either trying to
| sleep, or playing yet another stupid game of iPhone
| Civilization.
| n_ary wrote:
| You are not the only one. I feel super hazy during flights and
| shut my eyes for the flight to land. I tried reading books and
| getting some work done too but my brain just checks out after
| 5-10 minutes.
|
| Also, for some odd reasons, aircraft meals gives me bloating
| issues every single time and need medication immediately after
| I have landed.
|
| Interestingly, I have flown in business class twice and was
| able to do some reading partially before my brain checkedout.
|
| On long distance train rides, it is. easier for me to actually
| get some work done given that am sitting facing the direction
| on which the train is going. However, if the train gets fairly
| crowded, then my brain again decides to checkout.
| prewett wrote:
| Sounds like a pair of noise cancelling headphones would be a
| good investment in your quality of life, then! Or you can get
| those noise-reduction things that look like headphones but just
| attenuate noise for construction sites. My brother tipped me
| off to that, it's great! (You can also listen to music / movies
| without having the volume on too high, too)
| arjvik wrote:
| Funnily enough, a pair of AirPods Pros were the first thing
| that let me sleep on a flight!
| jcul wrote:
| I can burn hours reading on a plane, if I'm not really tired.
| But I feel the same as you about working on a laptop.
|
| The shaking, not enough space to type properly etc.
| pythonguython wrote:
| Totally agree. I've always assumed that high CO2 levels and low
| air pressure must have some effect on drowsiness and cognition
|
| Edit: some googling shows that commercial flights can reach
| 1500 to sometimes 3000 ppm co2. Pressure is around 0.75 atm at
| cruising altitude. My understanding is that would be noticeable
| lgats wrote:
| Strange, from my own measurements, I remember the co2 levels
| to be sub-600.
| pythonguython wrote:
| The study i saw this on was a review of data from 200ish US
| domestic flights. Maybe you were close to a vent, or some
| other variable im not thinking of, or just an outlier
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Possibly increased ventilation post-COVID?
| RebeccaTheDev wrote:
| I used to get my laptop out and try to do things. But ever
| since the seat pitch started shrinking, I find it really hard
| to get anything larger than a tablet out without it needing to
| rest on me or risk having the screen broken if the person in
| front of me leans back. The last one happened to a coworker a
| few years ago.
|
| So these days I usually just pull out my iPad and noise
| cancelling headphones and catch up on my movies or TV shows.
| wnolens wrote:
| Interesting, I'm the total opposite.
|
| I feel the rare permission to live as if I'm in cryo stasis and
| time doesn't matter and no one expects anything from me.
|
| The plane noise is like white noise which helps me focus,
| chilly temps keeps me alert and I'm cozy in a sweater. I bring
| snacks I enjoy.
|
| And I get to coding. Or working on presentations. Or
| journalling.
|
| Also I cannot sleep in a chair/on a plane no matter what (even
| if utterly exhausted, I'm swaying an and out of consciousness
| every few seconds). That is so dreadful that I always avoid
| red-eye. In fact I just avoid being tired on a plane in
| general, typically booking a morning/daytime flight, have a
| little caffeine (I usually avoid it, so it's a jolt), no big
| meals, ...
| jwr wrote:
| No, you are not the only one. My body does the same thing, and
| I think this is related to lower amounts of oxygen in the air.
| It's not about the noise (noise canceling headphones do
| wonders), it's definitely about the air.
|
| But apparently there are people who are not affected by this at
| all and can do useful work on airplanes.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The noise isn't the _only_ issue but it certainly contributes
| - I 've noticed fixing the noise issue with
| headphones/earplugs does wonders. I would expect the air
| pressure (=oxygen availability) to contribute too, and
| another factor are the movements and vibrations.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I'm intensely jealous. I used to go to the doctor and get
| medication specifically to _make_ me sleepy on the plane. I
| 've decided not to take that kind of thing anymore and dread
| the next time I have a long flight.
|
| I can deal with all the airport crap, but sitting on the
| plane for two 12 hour stretches is horrible.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > I can deal with all the airport crap, but sitting on the
| plane for two 12 hour stretches is horrible.
|
| What's wrong with it? Perhaps I'm weird, I love flying and
| always look forward to my next flight, bonus points if its
| a long one.
|
| It forces me to unplug from the internet, so I always bring
| along my kindle to take a decent chunk out of my book
| backlog.
|
| Of course I have my laptop too, though its not useful for
| much besides cataloging my knowledge base and getting a
| head start on essays for school.
|
| I'm curious why many people seem to dislike flying. I
| wonder if its more of an introvert/extrovert split or a
| young/old one. I want nothing more than to be able to do my
| own thing undisturbed, and flights are the perfect avenue
| for that.
| junon wrote:
| I'm the opposite. I can't sleep or even get tired regardless of
| how tired or sleep deprived I am. Makes trans-Atlantics worse,
| and traveling with others almost feels like getting mocked when
| they fall asleep for eight hours at a time.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Yes, travel is tiring/stressful, air travel doubly so (first
| the airport gauntlet, then a box full of noise, vibrations and
| with about 70% of normal oxygen levels available to your body
| due to the lower pressure).
|
| However, you can make it suck less. Stow your backpack overhead
| so you have at least some leg room. Have comfortable clothes,
| possibly adjustable ones (zip-off pants, t-shirt plus a
| separate warmer layer you can take off). Wear earplugs -
| possibly from the point on where you leave your home - to
| reduce the added stress from noise. If you have noise
| cancelling over-the-ear headphones, those go _over_ the
| earplugs, then you crank the volume up (given the surrounding
| noise, this should not leak enough noise to be annoying for
| your seat mates). If you don 't, consider noise-insulating in-
| ear headphones + earmuffs.
|
| I tend to fall asleep on planes easily (usually aided by sleep
| deprivation because I procrastinated packing for way too long),
| but when I wake up, I tend to be perfectly in the mood for some
| dumb entertainment.
| tverbeure wrote:
| In the early nineties, before logging into work from home was a
| thing, my friend created an email based terminal tunnel: he'd
| send emails with Unix commands to this account, executed the
| command, and returned an email with the result.
|
| There were no security checks whatsoever: everyone who know the
| magic word that triggered the start of the commands could do
| whatever they wanted on the Alcatel servers.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I was recently on a cruise ship in the Caribbean, and they sold
| "Starlink powered" internet service for $40 a day. Interestingly,
| they seemed to let notification service traffic through. Any data
| delivered through a platform based notification made it through
| just fine, including large images in a youtube notification.
|
| I assume it was to entice you to buy the wifi for some important
| notification. Or just so you would GET that important
| notification in the first place. Either way, probably eminently
| abusable on android at least.
|
| That said, who the hell buys overpriced internet connectivity on
| a 7 day cruise? I have an addictive personality and spend pretty
| much all my free time on Youtube or Reddit, and it was refreshing
| to be without. I especially felt sad about all the young teens
| who were obviously scrolling tiktok or instagram. What parent
| buys their child a $3000 cruise ticket and then also pays an
| additional $300 per child for them to completely not do it?
| Cheaper than a week of babysitting maybe.
| Havoc wrote:
| Cool hack aside this part really grates me
|
| > Limp Bizkit started playing out of my laptop speakers.
| Fortunately no one else on the plane seemed to mind so we all
| rocked out together.
|
| No they were just being too polite to speak up and say this is
| inconsiderate AF.
|
| It's bad enough when people do this on public transport, but on a
| fuckin plane?!?
| SlimyHog wrote:
| You realize that this part was a joke and didn't actually
| happen right?
| fransje26 wrote:
| I believe it was satire, meant to be humorous..
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I love the part where he paid for the wifi so he could develop a
| workaround that he would never need. True hacker spirit.
| neontomo wrote:
| not nearly as impressive, but i got past the software lock at a
| gaming internet cafe as a 16 year old by hitting (i think it was)
| Win + I to open a windows accessibility screen, which had a link
| to a Microsoft page. when clicked it opened a web browser and
| bam.
| yegle wrote:
| Oh memories!
|
| There was a Windows built-in input method (Zhi Neng ABC) that
| will show a small floating bar wherever there's an input. So
| you can trigger that bar, right click and select "Help" to open
| the default CHM viewer, then you can open any URLs from there.
|
| Or alternatively the input method has a secret sequence that
| will crash any apps: v UP DEL ENTER and boom.
| amenhotep wrote:
| 220 comments and no "Bob Wehadababyitsaboy"? Surprising!
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> my feedback was "two weeks late" and "blocking a critical
| deployment."
|
| >> I'd forgotten to charge my headphones so Limp Bizkit started
| playing out of my laptop speakers. Fortunately no one else on the
| plane seemed to mind
|
| Talent or not, managers commonly say that 10% of people cause 90%
| of the headaches. I guarantee the others on the plane minded very
| much, but were just to polite to say anything.
| hoytech wrote:
| Reminds me of the "Bob Wehadababyitsaboy" GEICO commercial:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JxhTnWrKYs
| knodi123 wrote:
| amazing how many people have that commercial burned into their
| memory.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| I still use the browser dev tools trick with T Mobile's free 1
| hour for mobile clients. change laptop user agent to mobile --
| log in for planes's wifi -- turn off user agent change. I assume
| the plane is provisioning internet access by mac address.
| breck wrote:
| Many times have I hacked to get free in flight and hotel wifi,
| often using brute force algos.
|
| Never have I thought of an idea as hilarious as this.
|
| Well done.
| vzaliva wrote:
| I vaguely recall a story from a long time ago when companies like
| AOL and CompuServe sent you CDs in the mail with demo versions of
| their products. You could dial up using them and access a subset
| of their services before purchasing full access. Someone figured
| out that although the rest of the internet was firewalled, they
| still relayed DNS requests to the original DNS servers (maybe
| needing a low TTL) and used this to tunnel via a custom DNS
| server. Et voila! Free ISP :)
| slt2021 wrote:
| boingo wifi lets you connect to AppStore and Android store to
| download Boingo mobile app.
|
| use this knowledge to get free internet access :-)
| praveen9920 wrote:
| Few years ago, dean of our college decided to block lan network
| after 10PM because of "gaming impact attendance" blah blah.
|
| Anyway, the way they implemented this is by blocking all traffic
| from/to ip addresses but not blocking tcp and completely forgot
| about ipv6 as it was not pretty new. So, I created a simple p2p
| chat Application which will work with ipv6. Only problem is that
| we had to share our ipv6 addresses with our friends which they
| have to maintain in contacts. It worked great until we figured
| tunneling to computer which is outside the network was much
| easier.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| It's all fun and games until they shut down your frequent flyer
| program account. That seems to be the way airlines prefer to dish
| out punishment.
| umrashrf wrote:
| Somebody's getting fired at air miles
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-09 23:00 UTC)