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Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

airpass.tiagoalves.me

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Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#221

Post by mistercow »

paxys wrote: post #86
mistercow wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep thinking that this could be solved by just building Electron into the OS as a shared framework so we don't have to have a separate copy for every app, but the more I dig into it, the more I realize I'm just reinventing the web browser.

You are describing PWAs, but they'll never have the same API access & permissions as a native app.

Yeah, and I think it’s worth asking why there. Why do we not just have a standard for PWAs with privileged OS access?

There are two obvious answers. The first is portability. And sure, but Electron provides an answer here, so why can’t we provide one with PWAs? We could even have OSes define this interface for different browsers to target in a standardized way. Yes, you need platform specific code, but that’s often the situation with Electron too.

The other answer is security. But how is Electron / any other installed app any better? Because we require more explicit consent before installing a “real” app than for installing a PWA? OK so, just let’s just do that for PWAs too.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#222

Post by LauraMedia »

ryandrake wrote: post #66
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.

I so strongly wish more developers gave even a single shit about this. The current state of desktop app development is truly an embarrassment.

There is a deeper problem in this: The DX for native applications is too annoying, undocumented or hard for most people.

I tried to build some of my tools without Electron, it's always a battle of multiple documentations for multiple systems and creating a bespoke system or having to deal with UI documentations that are glorified API references without examples.

The last few tools I built used PhotinoNET, which gave me an electron-esque framework but not bundling it's own chromium, instead using the browser already on the system. And even that required a complicated build script so I can just export a simple flatpak, exe and dmg...

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#223

Post by bjelkeman-again »

spiritplumber wrote: post #214
WD-42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A long time ago in San Antonio TX I was pulled over by the cops while biking back to my little apartment with a bunch of groceries. They were unwilling to believe that an adult would leave the car home to get groceries by bicycle. (I'm from Italy originally).

We experienced the same when we walked down the hill to go shopping in Laguna Niguel, CA. Stopped by cops for walking to the store. Nothing more happened.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#224

Post by [deleted] »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #13
rafram wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does a Mac-only app that shows a menu bar icon and a notification popup need to be Electron…? That’s 30 lines of Swift, max.

1) the dev only had a hammer and he nailed the screw in 2) the dev has 64gigs of ram and a newest CPU and doesn't care about performance issues for people on older computers... that's why you need gigs of ram just to read a weather report online.

[deleted]

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#225

Post by rafram »

WJW wrote: post #219
josh_carterPDX wrote: post #202

This reminded me of an old app that would scan the MAC addresses of devices already connected to a paid WiFi network. You would then just change your MAC to one that already paid for the WiFi, and then reset it once you were done.

Wouldn't that lead to interference with the original device using that MAC address? Ie both of you getting packets meant for the other etc?

Yes. It’s a bad (maybe even illegal?) thing to do. The victim device will start losing packets, and it’ll look to them like the network is just unreliable. Eventually they give up and disconnect, and you take full control.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#226

Post by scarface_74 »

preciousoo wrote: post #172
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/.$//'`",

Is this possible on mobile (read iPhone) devices without root?

Settings -> WiFi -> choose your WiFi network -> private WiFi address -> set to “rotating”

It will change every time you disconnect/connect

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#227

Post by PaulHoule »

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.

A few years back I did an eval of ways to make cross platform apps, specifically to escape Electron, and came to the conclusion that ‘they all suck’ except maybe JavaFX.

Thing is, most x-platform frameworks still require a big download. Java and Python runtimes are in the same ballpark as Electron.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#228

Post by scarface_74 »

balls187 wrote: post #112

Haven’t ever encountered any place that had a wifi time limit. In the late 2000’s internet cafes had time limits but that was enforced on their own devices. Is there a specific scenario where time limited wifi is common place?

Virgin Atlantic lets you have 20 minutes of WiFi free and then you can pay for the flight or for an hour.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#229

Post by PaulHoule »

anthk wrote: post #130
righthand wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the easiest way just the most evangelized. A Qt app even would be a few lines of code, but we’ve done a good job scaring people that learning other languages is bad because we can’t ship features fast enough with non-evangelized frameworks.

Even TCL/TK would be smaller.

Yuck! Funny though I wrote a program for making red-cyan anaglyph stereograms using TkInter/Python. Stereograms work best when you can put important objects at the plane of the paper/screen and this is done by sliding the left and right images relative to each other.

Tk has no color management, unlike newer frameworks, which was good in this case because I asked for (255,0,0) and got (255,0,0). When I exported to JPEG and views on a web browser though I got something like (186, 16, 16) because on my wide gamut monitor the native primaries are more saturated than sRGB primaries so some white gets blended in to make them less saturated. Turns out in Windows, screenshots are in the color space of your monitor! It’s something you’d never notice unless you made stereograms because that little bit of green and blue goes to the wrong eye.

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