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Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

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Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#41

Post by Ntrails »

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.

> if they don't show up to class they get punished by not learning enough and subsequently failing their exams/assessments

My (UK) University was very clear that attendance was not mandatory, but if you weren't attending lectures you were not going to get any extra help from the lecturers etc

I don't think that's an unreasonable position to take, but it's nice if you _know_ rather than _guess_ who bothered to make it in to class.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#42

Post by Jtsummers »

friedgil wrote: post #36

> Small digression: did you know that, until May 2000, GPS satellites (which are owned and operated by the United States Space Force) provided the general public a signal with intentional error built into it? What the hell? Why?

It was to degrade accuracy. Military (and presumably other gov't and allied gov't owned systems) were able to get more accurate signals. The degraded signals meant that someone couldn't use commercial GPS as a guidance system or for similar applications.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#43

Post by godsinhisheaven »

friedgil wrote: post #36

> Small digression: did you know that, until May 2000, GPS satellites (which are owned and operated by the United States Space Force) provided the general public a signal with intentional error built into it? What the hell? Why?

Something something Yujio Hanma

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#44

Post by torben-friis »

neilv wrote: post #23

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 st…

It’s not about individual people - it’s just scale, paired with Goodhart's law.

No number in a spreadsheet will tell you who’s the genuine student. The moment you’re ranking like that you lost.

Long term human interaction in reduced groups is far better at creating genuine environments. But of course, that system doesn’t scale, and it’s a breeding ground for nepotism.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#46

Post by Aachen »

DrawTR wrote: post #24
1bpp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Pretty sure the laptop I had from like 2012 until 2018 could do that. Haven't tried anymore since (haven't played around with deauths) but I thought this was common functionality

Consumer router firmware UIs, typically owned by ISPs, I'd not expect that yeah. Some don't even let you pick a WiFi band anymore and require other changes to be submitted through an ISP portal on the web somewhere (thinking of Belgium here, not sure which ISP it was)

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#47

Post by MaulingMonkey »

friedgil wrote: post #36

> Small digression: did you know that, until May 2000, GPS satellites (which are owned and operated by the United States Space Force) provided the general public a signal with intentional error built into it? What the hell? Why?

GPS started as a U.S. Department of Defense project, and they had qualms about freely giving the high accuracy positioning information they found so very useful for e.g. targeting bombs and missiles, to every unverified third party in the world. Depending on your preferred flavor of jadedness, one could say it was because of security concerns... or one could say it was because said third parties hadn't paid off the military industrial complex enough!

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#48

Post by flutas »

pkulak wrote: post #3

I use a Firefox preference to pin my location to a spot near, but not at, my house: user_pref("geo.provider.network.url", 'data:application/json,{"location": {"lat": 45.0, "lng": -122.0}, "accuracy": 128.0}'); I _believe_ this also stops wifi data from leaking anywhere.

There's also a plugin that allows varying levels of accuracy per-site. - LocationGuard

chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/location-guard-v3/h...

firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/location-guar...

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#49

Post by neilv »

munchler wrote: post #39
neilv wrote: post #23

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 st…

In this moral framework, would it be acceptable for the lecturer to take attendance orally, or is that also insulting?

The instructor clearly sets their expectations for attendance (whether it's mandatory, or otherwise), and then just expects everyone to follow that.

Re: Precise geolocation via Wi-Fi Positioning System

#50

Post by aidenn0 »

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…

I graduated University in the US in 2004. I never took a class that had mandatory lecture attendance.
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