WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight • Hacker News Board

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#171

Post by blcknight » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

eddieroger wrote: post #169

hackmiester wrote: post #87

Here is how to get the equivalent data on a Delta flight. $ curl https://wifi.delta.com/api/flight-data | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 448 100 448 0 0 5600 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 5743 { "timestamp": "2023-07-11T14:54:41Z", "eta": "17:48", "flightDuration": 278, "flightNumber": "DAL786", "latitude": 39.723472595214844, "longitude": -97…

Interesting how they chose to make more general `vehicleId` instead of `planeId` or `tailNumber` or something. I wonder if Delta's fleet includes other things that have matching APIs to this one. I also wonder how much of their internal system structure one could learn from the `flightId` if they knew about other systems. It doesn't look like much beyond a composite key of otherwise knowable data, but still interesti…

I doubt Delta made this. It’s an official the shelf product that can do ships, trains, planes, etc.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#172

Post by jedberg » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #81

toast0 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at WhatsApp (until the end of 2019) on many things, including special pricing (aka zero rating); we did not work with airlines, and would not have participated in a project where messages and attachments where treated differently. That said, technically there's two pretty easy ways to do it for WhatsApp traffic, and then there's the way I suspect they're doing it... a) chat runs on different ips than a…

> WA chat is not HTTPS (or even TLS) If you don’t mind, could you expend on this? Are there specific reasons to not be using TLS?

We didn't use TLS at Netflix either, and instead used our own encryption protocol that ran on top of HTTP. We could do this because we controlled the clients too.

The why was because of trust store issues. Every device has its own built in trust store, and especially on devices like TVs and DVD players, they couldn't be updated. After looking at all the devices we supported, there was no common certificate signer amongst all of them.

This meant that we would either have to get multiple SSL certs signed by different parties (some of which weren't all that secure) and present the right one depending on your device type, or we could just roll our own over HTTP. So we chose the latter.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#173

Post by zeroonetwothree » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #133

ardit33 wrote: post #80

It is just 8 bucks for the full service... just buy the internet bro. It is actually pretty good.

Tomorrow it'll be 8 bucks to drink water, 8 bucks to use the bathroom, ... Yeah, you can argue internet isn't a necessity. Neither is the bathroom, you can use a poo bag and a diaper. But we're a civilized society. So we provide bathrooms to anyone that needs them. And internet access.

This seems like a poor slippery slope argument. It’s not as if charging for internet is new, it’s been what? 20 years? And yet they still don’t charge for water

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#174

Post by mynameisvlad » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

catiopatio wrote: post #153

mynameisvlad wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're using push notifications in a novel way to provide the app the necessary information to update itself without needing to be connected to the full internet. That's quite a bit beyond "They're using push notifications" and no other app does that AFAIK. Almost all will use the push notification as a notification and trigger an update on app open which would fail.

Tons of apps do that. It’s a built-in, supported use-case! It’s also the trivial, obvious approach to anyone who asks the question “how can I push data to the application when it’s not running.”

Give me one example, then. Of an app which uses a notification as an actual app data source and not just as a notification which opens the app. And which also updates the primary app view to reflect this new information.

No other app has updated its app state based on the content of notifications. Slack/Discord/Teams et al (the ones that aren't allowed on free messaging plans) will show you previously cached messages and then an infinite spinner when you open it. Fastmail/Gmail/Outlook et al will show you existing emails but not load the new ones.

Could other apps do this? Surely. Do they? No.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#175

Post by jedberg » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #77

atourgates wrote: post #4

I'm an Alaska (relatively) frequent flyer. That airline offers a free "messaging" plan, that lets you send and receive messages on apps like iMessage, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp. Though, it somehow prevents images/attachments from coming through on those platforms. I've always wondered how this is implemented technically, and if it might be possible to setup some kind of protocol/wrapper to send data that looks…

You could try iodine, which is an IP-over-DNS tunnel. This should work unless the gateway has very restrictive rules on where DNS traffic can go. https://github.com/yarrick/iodine

Most captive portals have gotten wise to this trick and block large DNS requests.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#176

Post by warkdarrior » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

> I didn’t know what I’d do with the data at this point, but I started collecting it right away so that I’d have as much as possible to play with later.

And people complain that everything everywhere collects data on everyone.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#177

Post by ejcx » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

I have a similar program I run that does this stuff for United flights: https://github.com/ejcx/uwc/blob/master/uwc.go

The code is horrendous but it has worked for years and I guess when I wrote it originally I didn't want to use a go struct for some reason?

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#178

Post by hot_gril » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:41 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #154

hot_gril wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.t-mobile.com/tv-streaming/binge-on/apps-list.htm... doesn't list all that many providers if we're talking about all video streaming services worldwide. I notice a large one under the gaming category missing, Twitch.

I think they've got to be licensed for US customers, or T-Mobile USA isn't going to include them. Twitch does seem to be a notable missing provider; Amazon video is on the program though, so maybe there's some technical or product thing on Twitch's side.

Even US-only. Broadcast networks category is especially slim. They've anticipated this kind of scrutiny and claim no money is exchanged, but idk. Someone should try adding a random obscure service.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#179

Post by hk1337 » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #92

hackmiester wrote: post #87

Here is how to get the equivalent data on a Delta flight. $ curl https://wifi.delta.com/api/flight-data | jq % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 448 100 448 0 0 5600 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 5743 { "timestamp": "2023-07-11T14:54:41Z", "eta": "17:48", "flightDuration": 278, "flightNumber": "DAL786", "latitude": 39.723472595214844, "longitude": -97…

It would be nice if you could send a POST request to open the door if you want some fresh air.

Someone will probably figure out how to send a request to disable auto-pilot or turn off the fasten seat belt sign.

Re: WiFi without internet on a Southwest flight

#180

Post by hot_gril » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #160

hot_gril wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is net neutrality even law anymore? T-Mobile has had Binge on for a long time, which zero-rates certain video streaming services. And part of that was even under the old net neutrality laws.

Some states implemented their own versions of net neutrality.

Gotta disable in-flight messaging while flying over certain states ;)