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PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights

jesprenj
61 replies
5h27m

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.

zoeysmithe
30 replies
4h22m

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.

jampekka
11 replies
3h6m

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.

ncruces
3 replies
2h10m

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
1 replies
1h16m

yes, lets stare at the water for 20 hours instead

s1artibartfast
0 replies
53m

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__
0 replies
51m

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.

callalex
2 replies
2h36m

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
1 replies
2h19m

I don't, but our economic system is based on and rewards that. It does feel sad.

s1artibartfast
0 replies
1h57m

I dont think it rewards it at all. Things like this are just negative sum activities lashing out.

wang_li
0 replies
1h10m

It's interesting that you can't see that what capitalism does is push everyone to contribute in doing something useful for others.

s1artibartfast
0 replies
1h18m

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?

cmcaleer
0 replies
2h19m

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.

calfuris
0 replies
1h47m

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.

dheera
7 replies
4h14m

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
4 replies
4h10m

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
2 replies
3h40m

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
1 replies
1h46m

Reasonable is determined if you already paid for the shower, and then are denied it. Where does this sense of entitlement come from?

Retric
0 replies
11m

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 to use the bathroom, using the salt on the table, or the price of a doggy bag etc.

dl9999
0 replies
3h13m

Is there some demographic data that shows that "public nuisance hackers" are mostly right-wing libertarian?

woah
0 replies
15m

You should go to Greece and start a new monk-like existence installing networking equipment on ferries for free as well as raising from donations for backhaul

n_ary
0 replies
56m

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).

viridian
5 replies
3h33m

Unless you have a personal history with this user, you are making a lot of unfounded assumptions and sweeping generalizations about them.

DidYaWipe
4 replies
3h29m

How? The guy told everyone straight-up that he wasted bandwidth for no reason.

jampekka
3 replies
3h4m

It made others worse off, rising his relative status and competitive advantage. That's exactly how rational economic agents should behave.

ted_dunning
2 replies
2h33m

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
1 replies
2h20m

Maybe the economy should be structured for the real-world behavior then?

jstanley
0 replies
2h0m

It is.

oceanplexian
2 replies
2h40m

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
1 replies
2h11m

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
0 replies
1h50m

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.

s1artibartfast
0 replies
3h47m

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.

cosmotic
18 replies
4h44m

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.

arsome
6 replies
3h42m

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.

londons_explore
3 replies
3h26m

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
2 replies
2h6m

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
1 replies
2h2m

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
0 replies
1h13m

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.

DidYaWipe
1 replies
3h30m

He DIDN'T pay.

lencastre
0 replies
3h2m

But did you give? You gotta give? See, it’s completely user funded!

yard2010
3 replies
4h28m

Me and my wife merged our facebook accounts to not take up space in facebook

Scoundreller
2 replies
3h12m

idid2

qingcharles
1 replies
1h57m

I'm literally just posting this to add another row to a database.

Scoundreller
0 replies
1h38m

unethical!

mmastrac
3 replies
4h22m

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
1 replies
4h6m

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
0 replies
52m

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.

cosmotic
0 replies
1h36m

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.

justusthane
2 replies
4h24m

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
1 replies
2h41m

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
0 replies
1h7m

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.

DiggyJohnson
2 replies
3h8m

Why was your first instinct to abuse or degrade functionality for a service you didn't want to pay for?

annexrichmond
0 replies
2h39m

And then bragging about it. Wild.

KTibow
0 replies
1h34m

I think it may be more of an emotional than rational response, given he would be stuck on the ferry for 20 hours

stocknoob
1 replies
3h54m

Next, I left the water running in the hotel to teach them a lesson for daring to offer me a paid service.

vsuperpower2021
0 replies
42m

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.

ndespres
1 replies
4h11m

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
0 replies
2h30m

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.

crazygringo
1 replies
4h27m

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
0 replies
4h23m

sign o' the times

throw_a_grenade
0 replies
1h20m

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.

wtcactus
20 replies
4h17m

"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.

Milner08
6 replies
4h10m

Did you really not read this as a joke? It seemed obvious that it was one to me.

sghiassy
3 replies
4h8m

I didn’t read it as a joke

brokensegue
2 replies
3h23m

It's clearly a joke

djmips
1 replies
2h17m

Jokes are funny.

cmcaleer
0 replies
2h2m

The mental image of a plane rocking out to rap rock from tinny laptop speakers is funny.

xtracto
1 replies
3h40m

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
0 replies
2h17m

Well it's not funny so it's hard to read as a joke.

xapata
4 replies
3h31m

If the author wrote, "This is satire," it'd ruin the satire.

sghiassy
3 replies
2h9m

If you have to explain that it’s a joke, then it wasn’t funny

sfilmeyer
0 replies
2h4m

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.

mrguyorama
0 replies
1h12m

This doesn't apply to satire. Your lack of media literacy is not evidence of bad satire.

cmcaleer
0 replies
2h3m

To you.

zaat
0 replies
48m

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.

sghiassy
0 replies
4h9m

Hopefully it was a joke like others have said - if not, then he’s incredibly rude and callous

kraftman
0 replies
3h41m

It's very, very obviously a joke.

ides_dev
0 replies
4h11m

Given the tone of this and other articles on the site I'd be inclined to suggest that _this was a joke_.

dynm
0 replies
4h13m

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?)

dkdbejwi383
0 replies
4h9m

I believe this is what the humans refer to as "humour".

c03
0 replies
3h33m

The author sounds so incredibly obnoxious.

beardedwizard
0 replies
3h32m

This response lacks a basic sense of humor.

jmkb
16 replies
4h50m

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.)

xyzzy_plugh
8 replies
4h12m

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.

LegitShady
3 replies
1h55m

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
1 replies
1h36m

Does the connectivity still work? Thinking about pulling out my DX and giving it a spin.

LegitShady
0 replies
30m

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

timo555
0 replies
1h18m

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.

jmkb
1 replies
2h30m

Worth it, I reckon. You can't buy this kind of advertising:

https://xkcd.com/548/

throwup238
0 replies
1h3m

Amazon really missed the chance to call their network Sub-Etha. Or the Sub-Wave network.

zorked
0 replies
4h7m

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.

delecti
0 replies
1h22m

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.

LegitShady
3 replies
4h43m

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
1 replies
3h55m

It's probably a single cell so with some luck you can plonk whatever battery physically fits in there.

LegitShady
0 replies
1h50m

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
0 replies
3h50m

I just replaced two, a new battery inc. shipping runs around $15

not too hard to pop open and swap in

venusenvy47
0 replies
23m

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?

thot_experiment
0 replies
1h27m

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.

CrazyStat
0 replies
4h33m

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.

CamelCaseName
13 replies
4h57m

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?)

nhod
7 replies
4h47m

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).

joezydeco
2 replies
3h49m

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
1 replies
3h21m

You can literally bump the last digit of any T-Mobile number (:

joezydeco
0 replies
3h5m

Yeah that should work...for a while. Eventually numbers get ported out and the space fragments. Area codes don't mean much anymore.

Someone1234
1 replies
4h32m

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
0 replies
4h8m

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.

ydant
0 replies
39m

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.

master-lincoln
0 replies
4h39m

The question was if it's costly to provide, not how much customers have to pay

supportengineer
0 replies
4h23m

On a recent Hawaiian flight there was free StarLink-powered WiFi. It was free and worked incredibly well.

klohto
0 replies
4h48m

maybe when we have abundant Starlink capacity, otherwise any satellite-to-ground roundtrip at a reasonable speed is costly

future10se
0 replies
4h23m

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

dboreham
0 replies
4h20m

but is airplane wifi costly to provide

Depends on the location. Over populated land areas, no. Over oceans far from land, yes.

ale42
0 replies
4h49m

I guess the airlines want to monetize all they can... so probably not.

DWakefield
9 replies
5h52m

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
3 replies
5h37m

That is a blast from the past! This was around the time of slide-out keyboards, right? I remember using this now too.

CalRobert
2 replies
5h30m

I still miss those keyboards

WarOnPrivacy
1 replies
4h57m

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
0 replies
1h8m

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
0 replies
5h33m

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.

justusthane
0 replies
4h19m

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!

emchammer
0 replies
5h31m

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
0 replies
4h38m

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.

dheera
0 replies
4h10m

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.

xiwenc
8 replies
5h18m

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.

dfxm12
5 replies
5h7m

...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 €46 per month for Internet service.

bauruine
4 replies
5h3m

If you pay 1000+ for the flight an additional 40 Euros isn't that bad.

KMnO4
3 replies
4h53m

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
2 replies
4h17m

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!

bugglebeetle
0 replies
3h6m

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?

aeyes
0 replies
3h11m

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.

duronald
1 replies
5h13m

Southwest Airlines offers free IM through iMessage and WhatsApp too. Should be able to tunnel internet traffic through iMessage.

frankus
0 replies
3h46m

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.

BobbyTables2
7 replies
5h4m

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
5 replies
4h58m

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!

crazygringo
2 replies
4h19m

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_
0 replies
2h59m

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.

GrantMoyer
0 replies
2h29m

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.

walterbell
1 replies
4h39m

> how afraid we've become

Widespread proliferation of pseudonyms modeling/nudging self-censorship is not a proxy for fear in humans-who-hack.

stavros
0 replies
4h38m

Not in hackers, the population.

canadianwriter
0 replies
4h55m

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.

dakiol
6 replies
1h7m

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.

pythonguython
1 replies
30m

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
0 replies
8m

Strange, from my own measurements, I remember the co2 levels to be sub-600.

prewett
0 replies
45m

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)

n_ary
0 replies
45m

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.

jcul
0 replies
31m

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.

architango
0 replies
48m

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.

moritonal
5 replies
5h20m

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.

TremendousJudge
2 replies
3h11m

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
1 replies
1h53m

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
0 replies
17m

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.

dheera
1 replies
4h12m

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.

poincaredisk
4 replies
5h34m

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

fullspectrumdev
2 replies
4h24m

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
0 replies
4h6m

Why did end up stopping your service btw? Sounds like an awesome contribution to the free internet.

michaelmior
0 replies
1h6m

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.

ale42
0 replies
4h51m

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 ;-)

phs318u
4 replies
6h1m

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).

ubergeek42
1 replies
5h45m

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
0 replies
5h33m

"People’s names are not transport protocols"

jorgen123
0 replies
3h10m

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.

exe34
0 replies
5h49m

"several bytes per second"

Gys
3 replies
4h34m

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
1 replies
4h13m

Nah it was definitely worth picking Python for the quadruple rhyme.

Gys
0 replies
3h43m

JumboGoSlowTelco?

denysvitali
0 replies
3h22m

Considering that some of those paid Wi-Fi services are provided by Boingo, maybe BoinGo is a nice name

wkat4242
2 replies
5h42m

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
1 replies
5h34m

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
0 replies
1h26m

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!

nunez
2 replies
3h54m

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
1 replies
3h43m

Correct, it's a joke.

throwaway2037
0 replies
1h35m

Queue the joke about "coding on a boat" from StackOverflow.

jraph
2 replies
4h53m

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
1 replies
4h40m

its a joke.

jraph
0 replies
4h32m

On a plane, I would guess anyone trying to do this would be stopped by the stewards :-)

api
2 replies
5h26m

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
1 replies
4h47m

Did they forget to block UDP? Or they left it totally open for DNS to work?!

fullspectrumdev
0 replies
4h20m

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 :)

amelius
2 replies
4h1m

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.

throwaway2037
0 replies
1h31m

Thank you to share! I never knew about SMBC (not Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation) before your post...

adyavanapalli
2 replies
4h7m

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!

prmoustache
0 replies
3h19m

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.

actionfromafar
0 replies
3h51m

I'm afraid to get on some kind of terrorist watch list that way.

Havoc
2 replies
51m

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?!?

fransje26
0 replies
25m

I believe it was satire, meant to be humorous..

SlimyHog
0 replies
30m

You realize that this part was a joke and didn't actually happen right?

nunez
1 replies
3h45m

The lengths that people will go to to avoid paying $10-20 for onboard WiFi is nuts.

0cf8612b2e1e
0 replies
2h45m

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?

metabagel
1 replies
2h11m

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
0 replies
2h6m

This reads like an obvious joke.

firefoxd
1 replies
2h31m

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
0 replies
2h15m

Award for good IT citizen goes to you, sir or madam or <insert honorary>.

101008
1 replies
3h47m

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
0 replies
2h52m

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.

ubergeek42
0 replies
5h50m

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!

tverbeure
0 replies
1h5m

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.

theideaofcoffee
0 replies
5h2m

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!

theamk
0 replies
2h48m

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...

stuartjohnson12
0 replies
5h28m

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.

sghiassy
0 replies
4h20m

Did he say that played Limp Bizkit on his speakers and made everyone the plane listen to it?!?

rozenmd
0 replies
4h47m

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.

mrguyorama
0 replies
57m

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.

jacobrussell
0 replies
1h59m

cloud computing

gnarlouse
0 replies
2h0m

This is amazing but honestly I'd rather just pay for wifi.

floam
0 replies
4h33m

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.

demondemidi
0 replies
3h26m

Clever exploit of a website security hole! Except you need to give your credentials to a trusted party.

_joel
0 replies
5h23m

Reminded of using Iodine to break out of captive portals using DNS TXT/SRV etc records https://github.com/yarrick/iodine

UniverseHacker
0 replies
7m

I love the part where he paid for the wifi so he could develop a workaround that he would never need. True hacker spirit.

HumblyTossed
0 replies
4h33m

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.

HanClinto
0 replies
2h29m

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.

ApolloFortyNine
0 replies
2h38m

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