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Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

airpass.tiagoalves.me

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Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#81

Post by dented42 »

anon7000 wrote: post #75
aeonik wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, if you COULD ship something across the world on a private 747 with extra features to protect your cargo, and it has nearly no environmental downside and has no meaningful downside vs a smaller airplane… you’d probably do it! There’s no incentive in software to get a smaller, more efficient plane, and plenty of incentive to use the big thing for free that has all the extra features

That analogy doesn’t really work here. Because there is a downside. It’s slow, takes up a ton of memory, lots of disk space…

When you have so many processes on a modern machine competing for resources, when every app chooses to be bloated and slow it really adds up.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#82

Post by commandersaki »

tommoor wrote: post #57
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/.$//'`",

Nice, added it as a bash alias. alias randommac='sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 -z && sudo ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed "s/../&:/g; s/:$//")'

So I tried this out on macOS 26 and the `airport` command is no longer there.

There is a `airportd.sb` file, which appears to be some permissions based thing in s-expression/LISP. Weird.

Edit: Spun up a macOS 15 VM and I got this:

WARNING: The airport command line tool is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. For diagnosing Wi-Fi related issues, use the Wireless Diagnostics app or wdutil command line tool.

I guess they weren't kidding.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#83

Post by jofla_net »

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…

says more about sociology, really.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#84

Post by dizhn »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #35
dizhn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't circumvent the sms code requirement most free wifi services use.

I have never seen this before

There's at least one country with laws that say you have to keep track of national ID numbers (and times) if you want to provide wifi service.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#85

Post by dbalatero »

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.

To be fair, the author didn't make this to impress people with byte optimizations, they probably just wanted to publish an app quickly that is useful, and was familiar enough with Electron or JS to do so.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#86

Post by paxys »

mistercow wrote: post #53
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 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.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#87

Post by thwarted »

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.

Those who don't learn /usr/bin are destined to reinvent it, poorly.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#88

Post by thisislife2 »

mistercow wrote: post #53
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 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.

There is something called the "WebView" in all the major platforms. The idea is that it allows you to use the browser engine only for creating the UI. But people complain its not "enough" because it is not the same on all the platform (it is if you use it just for UI), restricts access to some browser APIs (ignoring the fact that the OS often offers the same, even and more APIs) and Javascript (a crappy language for creating software applications).

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#89

Post by WD-42 »

aquafox wrote: post #69
WD-42 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a cool visualization, thanks.

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.

Re: Airpass – Easily overcome WiFi time limits

#90

Post by thisislife2 »

rafram wrote: post #9
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/.$//'`",

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.

It doesn't need to be - on macOS, it could even just as well have been a simple Xbar Plug-In! ( https://xbarapp.com/ ).
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