I’ll just wrap my router in aluminium foil, that’ll do it.
MIT is just a factory for making cool tech that seemingly exclusively gets abused by our government/large corporations (aka our actual government)
Help us map your home and your habits. You can reject this free offer for $9.99 dollars per month. Terms and conditions apply.
Terms and conditions include us ignoring your privacy preferences (may depend on geographic location and/or political leadership)
So that’s how they figure out when to call you.
Awesome tech, if (and only if) you control it end to end, with no corporation involved in that process.
That’s why you buy your own router.
I’m using chromecast for streaming to my television. But I accidentally cut my internetcord and guess what doesn’t work without internet eventhough it doesn’t strictly need internet? Exactly, I’m getting rid of the chromecast soon.
When you can. Depending on the country and ISP, using your own router isn’t always feasible unless sacrifying most of your bandwidth
When streaming content to a chromecast it usually makes a direct connection to the content source, not going through the device you’re casting from. In limited cases like when sharing your screen to the chromecast it does only go from your device to the chromecast without internet, but that’s rarely used because it’s power and data intensive to your device. I guess you’re right on the internet not being ‘strictly’ needed but it’s used for a reason.
Should still buy your own router though, and move away from google services 👍
Yeah “google bad” but this isn’t one of those instances. They’ve been very upfront about the functionality of the Chromecast for a very long time
“We’re evil. Deal with it.” -Google
Your telling me a streaming device doesn’t work without internet. I’m shocked shocked I fell you.
It should be able to work on lan as well, in my opinion
Are you trying to cast or screen share? Screen share should work over LAN I think.
Screenshare does work over lan, according to the documentation, but the chromecast doesn’t even start up properly. It onky says (full screen) there is no internet connection.
Please, everyone:
This tech is still relevant in 2025?
What tech? Wifi?
I thought OpenWrt was kind of dead. Everyone uses pfsense as their open source router.
IMO, pfsense is for if you want to use an x86 PC as a router, while OpenWRT is for if you want your ARM-based commodity home router to run open source firmware.
it’s not just for routers. you can (and should) use it on your access points.
I have six APs in my house for 100% WiFi coverage inside and outside my home.
I’m actually so incredibly lazy I use a firewalla purple. And I love it. You’ll never take it away from me! Hiss!!!
Are you thinking of ddwrt? OpenWrt is alive and thriving
ddwrt is what I was thinking of
Can second the other comments. OpenWRT is alive and well in parallel to PfSense. Different use cases for each.
Any open source implementations of this?
Yeah this has been around for some time now, here’s a paper on the implementation of it.
I’m guessing it assumes you’re carrying your phone and infers motion from changes in the signal?
Or just uses the phone connecting and disconnecting to signal departure and arrival, in which case Home Assistant has done that for awhile now.
It seems to be using the WiFi signal to “scan” you
All this is implying is that they are capturing this data anyways and offering you a peek at it for money with the guise that its for your safety.
There is likely no way for you to shut it off tracking you everywhere in your own home unless you pay them to access the settings for this feature.
They likely can track you behaviors with this and know when you take a shit, when you jerk-off/fuck your spouse, when you watch media, etc using machine-learning on the wifi specrum of your locations, signal shape, and duration.
Fuck this crazy invasive shit to piss.
Ask for just a plain modem and buy your own WiFi router. If that isn’t an option, disable the routing functions and turn off the WiFi and buy your own router.
You cant use xfinitys fastest internet plan without using their hardware these days.
I haven’t had a provider supplied modem or router in well over a decade. Not everyone has the know how to do this but it’s not hard to learn and they should learn.
How hard it’ll be depends on the provider. My provider’s customer support explicitly told me that it is technically allowed but it is their policy to offer absolutely no help with that whatsoever for “liability reasons”, and I’d be on my own if I got my router stuck in a misconfigured bridge mode where I can’t access any settings anymore to fix things. They also told me to find my subscriber credentials on my own if I wanted to use a 3rd party modem.
My provider offers no help for it past the Dmarc either.
For the average person it’s just plug and play or a guided setup. Most folks won’t ever need or make any customizations to the setup.
For what you’re talking about, that can be more difficult. I work in IT so not only do we have our own modem and router in place but I also run a home server setup.
Does owning my own hardware prevent the service provider from getting this data?
Yeah, they used something like fluctuations in the WiFi signal, so you can turn it off. I suppose they could broadcast secretly without an SSID, but there are apps that will show it, so I doubt they would.
They can also see more than just movement: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/a42575068/scientists-use-wifi-to-see-through-walls/
Could also Faraday cage the isp supplied router.
They would have to have access to the wifi piece specifically, so asside from them hacking the router, which is unlikely…
It makes it a lot less likely.
Or don’t! (at extra cost)
With only one payment you can allow us to invade your privacy… Even more than we already do.
Pretty sure it’s, “with one more monthly payment, we will give you some insight into a small price of information we already know “
yeah im like. oh they are collecting it but if you pay they will give you a copy.
Pretty sure this was mentioned in Cryptonomicon (1999).
Reminds me of The Dark Knight when Batman activates something similar using cell signals.
We really ought to stop fucking creating the Torment Nexus, jfc.
I believe this is what you’re referring to
So I guess those directional MIMO arrays can now give information back to the host controller. That is kinda creepy but also it could be super useful in the right circumstances.
Device-free passive localization has been around for over 15 years.
So when’s it gonna be in Home Assistant?
The idea of DfP has been around for over 15 years but its only recently become possible outside of a laboratory environment. It isn’t in HA yet because no one has bothered to write a module for it and there’s almost no WiFi gear that supports it; either natively or through exposing the data necessary to make it work.
Hmm, maybe they need to build it into OpenWRT first, then.
Either way, the bottom line is that it’s completely unacceptable to exist as a feature unless it’s 100% Free Software and running 100% locally.
It relies on AI to map the environment. I highly doubt Verizon’s will be running locally, and I’m positive it’s not fitting in firmware ROM.
She kinda bad tho
Alert: the Wi-Fi has detected high-waisted mom jeans.
colonel im trying to infiltrate a home but the clap of my asscheeks keeps being detected by the wifi signal
