Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits • Hacker News Board

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#151

Post by leptons » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:36 PM UTC

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #142

leptons wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't "take up a ton of memory" and if you think 47MB is "a lot of disk space" then maybe you need a bigger disk. Most laptops have at least 250GB, so this program would take up about 0.0188% of disk space, which is frankly not a lot. I had PDF files way larger than that. And you only need to run it once, you do not need to keep it loaded and running all the time, so it doesn't "take up a ton of memory".

47MB is about 3x the space once required by a widely used commercial graphical operating system. It was even enough to also include Microsoft Word with plenty of space left. How far we’ve fallen.

You're living in the past. Hard drives are now up to 36TB. Hard drives are always getting bigger. 47MB isn't worth worrying about, at all.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#152

Post by gopher_space » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC

rafram wrote: post #148

gopher_space wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is ActionScript still a thing on Macs? I feel like that tech was almost criminally overlooked while being the backbone for a lot of processing pipelines back in the day.

It (AppleScript) is, and you can actually write JS instead these days, with a criminally underdocumented Objective-C bridge (JXA).

Ahh thanks! Went down a brief rabbit hole with JXA and had forgotten how opaque Apple is when you're developing for them.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#153

Post by sheepscreek » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC

WD-42 wrote: post #149

sheepscreek wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your username, and what happened to WD-41?

It wasn't the correct answer.

What was the question?

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#154

Post by foxglacier » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

aeonik wrote: post #46

paxys wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 bytes for the business logic. 47MB for the UI & boilerplate around the business logic. I get that this may be the easiest way to develop and publish an application today, but it's sad that this is the direction we have taken in recent years.

Modern app bloat in one analogy: Business logic size: ~20 bytes Total app size: ~47 MB = 47,000,000 bytes Bloat factor: 47,000,000 / 20 = 2,350,000 Let’s scale this up and say the business logic is 1 pound. Then the whole app would weigh: 1 lb × 2,350,000 = 2,350,000 pounds What weighs ~2.35 million pounds? - A fully loaded Boeing 747-8: ~987,000 lbs - Another fully loaded 747-8: ~987,000 lbs - A blue whale: ~330,000…

Human time is money in software, more analogous to mass in physical goods. So you should calculate the time savings for all the people using the app vs entering the code themselves.

Mass is a nonsense analogy that doesn't reveal anything useful.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#155

Post by leptons » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:53 PM UTC

lostlogin wrote: post #110

leptons wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't "take up a ton of memory" and if you think 47MB is "a lot of disk space" then maybe you need a bigger disk. Most laptops have at least 250GB, so this program would take up about 0.0188% of disk space, which is frankly not a lot. I had PDF files way larger than that. And you only need to run it once, you do not need to keep it loaded and running all the time, so it doesn't "take up a ton of memory".

This is how we have ended up with huge cars and huge houses etc. Storing huge volumes of unneeded junk isn’t solved by have more space. Store less junk.

You can live however you want to live. I will live however I want to. 47MB is not worth worrying about, at all.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#156

Post by tengwar2 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:54 PM UTC

WD-42 wrote: post #89

aquafox wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note: Transporting a human in a car is (in relation to weight and size) like using a standard shopping cart to transport two 1L bottles of water. So the next time you walk through a pedestrian area, imagine everyone carrying a bag would use a shopping cart instead. That would be a huge traffic jam -- exactly like what you see on the road!

I've been pretty aware of this ever since I became a cyclist. I will ride down to the corner store to pick up a six pack and some chips, throw them in a backpack and ride back. It's easy. I see people driving their cars to do the same thing. All that weight and space for a 6 bottles of beer. There is massive waste all around us.

It's a reasonable solution, but let's not forget that simply walking is often at least as good a solution in many countries.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#157

Post by tengwar2 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 9:59 PM UTC

101008 wrote: post #119

classichasclass wrote: post #3

Alternatively, if you don't want to run the whole Electron app, the money is this line: sudo.exec("/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 -z && ifconfig en0 ether `openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/$..$/\1:/g; s/.$//'`",

Wow. Don't you need to pay a Apple license as well to distribute apps in Macs?

Not for Mac. MacOS is an open garden: there is an app store; or you can install signed apps (requires Apple cooperation); or you can install unsigned applications. MacOS gives you a nudge to the app store (which has genuine advantages) and a much stronger nudge away from unsigned non-app-store apps, but it is still an open garden. iOS is closed garden, which makes some sense for the security guarantees it can give for financial applications.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#158

Post by tengwar2 » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 10:02 PM UTC

jck wrote: post #18

kazinator wrote: post #6

This has been an option in Android network settings forever: randomize your MAC. I think it's enabled by default now? It's a basic privacy feature; you can be fingerprinted by your device's MAC.

Yep. Android does this by default, but each ssid gets a randomized MAC which persists. It is still straightforward to trigger a MAC change manually tho. It is useful for privacy but imo useless for the public wifi limits use case since they almost always require an OTP via SMS to log in.

OTP via SMS: depends on the country. These days it's not very common in the UK. They often ask for an email address, but my experience is that most of the time they don't check it for validity.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#159

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 10:08 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #43

classichasclass wrote: post #3

Alternatively, if you don't want to run the whole Electron app, the money is this line: sudo.exec("/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 -z && ifconfig en0 ether `openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/$..$/\1:/g; s/.$//'`",

200 bytes for the business logic. 47MB for the UI & boilerplate around the business logic. I get that this may be the easiest way to develop and publish an application today, but it's sad that this is the direction we have taken in recent years.

[deleted]

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#160

Post by bognition » Sat, Jun 21, 2025, 10:09 PM UTC

aeonik wrote: post #46

paxys wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 bytes for the business logic. 47MB for the UI & boilerplate around the business logic. I get that this may be the easiest way to develop and publish an application today, but it's sad that this is the direction we have taken in recent years.

Modern app bloat in one analogy: Business logic size: ~20 bytes Total app size: ~47 MB = 47,000,000 bytes Bloat factor: 47,000,000 / 20 = 2,350,000 Let’s scale this up and say the business logic is 1 pound. Then the whole app would weigh: 1 lb × 2,350,000 = 2,350,000 pounds What weighs ~2.35 million pounds? - A fully loaded Boeing 747-8: ~987,000 lbs - Another fully loaded 747-8: ~987,000 lbs - A blue whale: ~330,000…

This is an absurd way to think of this. Following this same train of thoughts for humans:

The business logic for humans is a single reproductive cell.

A single sperm weighs 2.3 x 10^-11 grams. If the average male weighs 75kg the. The bloat ratio for a human male is 3.2x10^15

Getting back to the app there is huge value in not needing to run the command yourself. Sure it’s wrapped in a UI that comes with “bloat” but honestly who cares. When was the last time someone needed to worry about hard drive space, when it comes to a 40mb file.