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Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

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Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#21

Post by renewiltord »

p1necone wrote: post #7

Is it common for North American universities to take attendance? Seems like a whole lot of effort to gain little and infantilize your students. They're paying tuition, and if they don't show up to class they get punished by not learning enough and subsequently failing their exams/assessments. And if they don't fail their exams/assessments then clearly mandating lecture attendance for them wasn't necessary anyway.

You misunderstand. The customer is the government, which pays for student education through 'student loans'. The government is an absentee farmer who pays a farm labourer to produce a crop many years in the future. The labourer would rather take the money and plant nothing, so the absentee landlord farmer wants him to send photos of the seed being planted.

But why won't the crop grow on its own? It is strongly incentivized to live! And yet it does not. So you need to send photos of tilling the soil, planting the seed, watering, so that one day we might come there and see a harvested crop.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#22

Post by jbmchuck »

denysvitali wrote: post #6

I've recently vibe-coded "where-am-i", a small CLI that returns your approximate location using the technology described here. https://github.com/denysvitali/where-am-i Tbh, I think this geolocation method is amazing, and I'm grateful it exists, because GPS indoor really sucks.

Honest question - what's your use case for needing GPS indoors? I generally know where I am when I'm indoors :)

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#23

Post by neilv »

The root problem is that a lot of higher education is nurturing a culture of cheaters right now.

Your future doctors, scientists, government officials, etc... will have had to compete and gain coveted academic and career opportunities, in an environment that both has been heavily gamified, and is being overrun by cheaters.

Insulting measures like this TopHat practically endorses the culture of cheating, by telling students that they can't be trusted, and turning into yet another cheating challenge/task.

Schools with any integrity should be bending over backwards to find, nurture, and support students of integrity.

And to save those who only got admitted by being sketchy, but first semester is a chance to unlearn the bad lessons from before.

Not by treating them as criminals to be monitored, but by treating them like the respectable people they should aspire to be, and which the school expects and requires that they be.

And, for any hopelessly shitty students, who fail to honor this first semester extension of trust, the school should smack them to the curb. Lost tuition income, lost named buildings/chairs, and expensive lawsuits from helicopter parents, be damned.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#24

Post by DrawTR »

1bpp wrote: post #17
DrawTR wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SSID (name, like the article mentions) is different than the bSSID (mac address of the access point), so I don't think it would be that easy to spoof.

Shouldn't be any harder than the name.

Do most consumer APs/routers allow you to just change the MAC address on the fly? I don't think the ones I've owned have ever allowed that. But that would certainly be interesting to try (if you were somewhere without any other address interference that would tip it off)

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#25

Post by shortrounddev2 »

ginko wrote: post #13

Maybe it’s because I studied in Austria where universities generally provide very little handholding to students but I don’t understand the point of compulsory attendance in university lectures. If students think they can pass exams without attending the lectures then they should be able to do that. I certainly did that once or twice when I realized I needed some more credits before the end of the term. It’s a differ…

Compulsory attendance used to be far less common in colleges, but teenagers in America mature far more slowly than they used to and undergrads are still effectively children. Universities need to babysit them or they'll wreck the dropout rate

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#26

Post by IshKebab »

bitwize wrote: post #12
ralsei wrote: post #2

Good article, but you could also just use a VPN to trick it.

A device can triangulate its own location locally, given the WiFi hotspots around it, and transmit that information via a JavaScript API. A VPN won't flummox this mechanism.

Some simple Tampermonkey patching would though.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#27

Post by HPsquared »

jbmchuck wrote: post #22
denysvitali wrote: post #6

I've recently vibe-coded "where-am-i", a small CLI that returns your approximate location using the technology described here. https://github.com/denysvitali/where-am-i Tbh, I think this geolocation method is amazing, and I'm grateful it exists, because GPS indoor really sucks.

Honest question - what's your use case for needing GPS indoors? I generally know where I am when I'm indoors :)

It's useful in shopping malls, airports, train stations, car parks and so on. Anywhere you need to navigate a large complex.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#28

Post by michaelt »

ginko wrote: post #13

Maybe it’s because I studied in Austria where universities generally provide very little handholding to students but I don’t understand the point of compulsory attendance in university lectures. If students think they can pass exams without attending the lectures then they should be able to do that. I certainly did that once or twice when I realized I needed some more credits before the end of the term. It’s a differ…

My university didn't take attendance either, but some in my country do. As I understand it, the reasons are:

1. Some students think they can skip class and catch up through self-study, but actually they can't. The same I'd-rather-be-partying attitude that stops them attending lectures also stops them finding time to self-study. College is the first time students' time management is put to the test, and some students can't handle it. Giving them some external motivation to get out of bed does them a favour, in the long term.

2. Some courses are discussion-and-debate oriented. Less so in engineering, moreso in arts subjects. If Socratic debate is a key part of the class, students who don't show up will of course lose grades - and accurate record keeping makes sure that's done fairly.

3. Some governments require certain reporting to ensure people getting student visas are, in fact, students. Taking attendance for foreign students is one way to satisfy this.

4. When someone fails a course they'll often lodge an appeal. Perhaps they'll say the course was badly taught, or the exam covered material that wasn't in the lectures. Knowing whether the student attended the lectures helps adjudicate such complaints fairly.

A highly ranked university that attracts smart, self-motivated students has less reason to take attendance - whereas a university with lots of students skipping class, failing and complaining has more reason.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#29

Post by denysvitali »

jbmchuck wrote: post #22
denysvitali wrote: post #6

I've recently vibe-coded "where-am-i", a small CLI that returns your approximate location using the technology described here. https://github.com/denysvitali/where-am-i Tbh, I think this geolocation method is amazing, and I'm grateful it exists, because GPS indoor really sucks.

Honest question - what's your use case for needing GPS indoors? I generally know where I am when I'm indoors :)

Maybe indoors is the wrong term: as soon as you don't have direct sky visibility it's relatively hard to get a position.

Some examples: on a train, on the underground, in a train station, in a mall, in an office building, ...

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