6 ms·

I don't understand the riddle at all. The neighbour "cast light out onto the street and in to the windows of the neighbouring houses". In a very real and obviou

by wzdd 5y ago

I don't understand the riddle at all. The neighbour "cast light out onto the street and in to the windows of the neighbouring houses". In a very real and obvious sense, the neighbour's light is no longer theirs at that point. Even by the naive definition of stealing ("taking something which doesn't belong to you"), the Reader is not stealing. By contrast, Wifi bandwidth, Internet access, electricity, and so on, are limited resources which someone has to pay for. If the Reader connected their Kindle to their neighbour's power supply then they are unambigously stealing electricity. Viewed in this way, an employer requiring their employee to consume electricity, potentially deprive other users of their home Internet of wifi bandwidth, and so on, is quite clearly imposing an extra cost on their WFH employees which they are not imposing on their office workers. This doesn't seem ambiguous to me, it's just not become an issue yet because the harm is relatively small.

charcircuit 5y ago
Both light and and wifi are EM waves. Stealing wifi is just you stealing their "light" and them stealing "your light."
- 3np 5y ago
  Presumably it’s not “WiFi” being taken here but access to the internet and use of the limited bandwidth. The EM waves is just how they get there.
- dqpb 5y ago
  This analogy only holds for packet sniffing. If the stealer is actually connecting to the wifi and making their own requests, then they have literally stolen a percentage of limited bandwidth of the channel.
DangitBobby 5y ago
I'd trade the stolen electricity and internet for my stolen commute time, gas money, and vehicle wear any time.
- droopyEyelids 5y ago
  By this logic, your employer should have subjected you to something much worse originally, so you'd be happy to pay the vehicle wear and tear, gas, and commute time.
  - Supermancho 5y ago
    Correct. This isn't revealing. Norm conditions were worse originally (in factories and other industries) and had settled in a less worse condition recently. Now it's less worse again and people are happier. Unsurprising.
jdironman 5y ago
Exactly what I came to say. They pay for a limited resource. The download and upload rates. Which is indeed limited in availability. With the light its not much different than driving around and enjoying looking at others Christmas lights. You didn't buy their lights, they bought them, but you derive value / joy from them which was their purpose.
curiousgal 5y ago
> the harm is relatively small Try working from a Third World country, you connecting to your company's bandwidth-hungry VPN means anyone sharing the wifi won't be able to do anything.
- bmicraft 5y ago
  VPNs don't usually consume any significant bandwidth overhead at all which makes me curious as to what service your employer is using?
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    I’ve heard many WFH setups that record your screen and monitor your camera to make sure you’re actually working. There could be monitoring stuff bundled with the VPN that does consume many resources (or IT dept is screen recording remotely).
  - loa_in_ 5y ago
    It's not the VPN itself but the software that makes the traffic
bamboozled 5y ago
Maybe more simply put, they’re using the “wasted” light ?
- foxfluff 5y ago
  Exactly. If neighbor doesn't want their light "stolen", then they can use a curtain and stop throwing the light onto the street. If they don't want rats to "steal" their peanuts, they can grab them from the bag without dropping and leaving a handful on the road.
Jerrrry 5y ago
Candle-light is more expensive than bandwidth is today. Also, bandwidth is the use over a specified allotment. Aside from the obvious analog that your neighbors wifi is literally a light you cannot see, if they aren't maxing out their bandwidth, then it makes similarly no difference that you use it. It's not 10 years ago, the neighborhood using your router for Facebook doesn't dent the bandwidth. So how is it not comparable to stray light?
- foxfluff 5y ago
  > if they aren't maxing out their bandwidth, then it makes similarly no difference that you use it That is a big assumption right there. The neighborhood streaming 4k cat videos from youtube could make a massive dent, and I can easily use all the bandwidth I have for my own needs. That's before we consider the potential consequences of them "borrowing" my IP address and all. Of course it's on me to keep my network secure so I don't let that happen, but in theory they could find the next vulnerability that lets them in.
  - Jerrrry 5y ago
    >if they aren't maxing out their bandwidth The analogy is only in the contextually relevant case of a limited resource and the consumption. The juxtaposition of individual vs collectivism, and the inevitable tragedy of the commons, was the relevance. Of course, any technical analogy on HN gets pedantically deconstructed into atomic trivialness. Anywho - if you don't broadcast your SSID, or, even less dismissively, don't Faraday cage your house, then anyone interacting with the electromagnetic field that you haphazardly allow to escape the privacy of your residence is within their rights to do so.
    - vntok 5y ago
      > Anywho - if you don't broadcast your SSID, or, even less dismissively, don't Faraday cage your house, then anyone interacting with the electromagnetic field that you haphazardly allow to escape the privacy of your residence is within their rights to do so. Are you seriously arguing that anyone is allowed to tamper with your mobile phone signal as long as you're at home and they're outside the walls?
AmericanChopper 5y ago
The author is mixing a lot of largely unrelated topics. Emitting light from your residence is just an externality that can be positive or negative depending on the situation. The question “who should pay for lighting?” is a classic question that comes up when discussing street lights in the context of theoretical user-pays economics models. As in “what services can potentially be implemented in a user-pays model? for instance you can’t practically charge somebody for benefitting from a street light”. Using somebody else’s wifi is related to neither of those topics, because that’s about consuming somebody else’s limited resources without their permission. The legality and morality of that question relates to whether the wifi broadcaster should expect that to occur when using unsecured wifi, and whether they should have any obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent it if they don’t want it happening.

by wzdd 5y ago

charcircuit 5y ago

Both light and and wifi are EM waves. Stealing wifi is just you stealing their "light" and them stealing "your light."

3np 5y ago
Presumably it’s not “WiFi” being taken here but access to the internet and use of the limited bandwidth. The EM waves is just how they get there.
dqpb 5y ago
This analogy only holds for packet sniffing. If the stealer is actually connecting to the wifi and making their own requests, then they have literally stolen a percentage of limited bandwidth of the channel.

DangitBobby 5y ago

I'd trade the stolen electricity and internet for my stolen commute time, gas money, and vehicle wear any time.

droopyEyelids 5y ago
By this logic, your employer should have subjected you to something much worse originally, so you'd be happy to pay the vehicle wear and tear, gas, and commute time.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  Correct. This isn't revealing. Norm conditions were worse originally (in factories and other industries) and had settled in a less worse condition recently. Now it's less worse again and people are happier. Unsurprising.

jdironman 5y ago

Exactly what I came to say. They pay for a limited resource. The download and upload rates. Which is indeed limited in availability. With the light its not much different than driving around and enjoying looking at others Christmas lights. You didn't buy their lights, they bought them, but you derive value / joy from them which was their purpose.

curiousgal 5y ago

> the harm is relatively small Try working from a Third World country, you connecting to your company's bandwidth-hungry VPN means anyone sharing the wifi won't be able to do anything.

bmicraft 5y ago
VPNs don't usually consume any significant bandwidth overhead at all which makes me curious as to what service your employer is using?
- withinboredom 5y ago
  I’ve heard many WFH setups that record your screen and monitor your camera to make sure you’re actually working. There could be monitoring stuff bundled with the VPN that does consume many resources (or IT dept is screen recording remotely).
- loa_in_ 5y ago
  It's not the VPN itself but the software that makes the traffic

bamboozled 5y ago

Maybe more simply put, they’re using the “wasted” light ?

foxfluff 5y ago
Exactly. If neighbor doesn't want their light "stolen", then they can use a curtain and stop throwing the light onto the street. If they don't want rats to "steal" their peanuts, they can grab them from the bag without dropping and leaving a handful on the road.

Jerrrry 5y ago

Candle-light is more expensive than bandwidth is today. Also, bandwidth is the use over a specified allotment. Aside from the obvious analog that your neighbors wifi is literally a light you cannot see, if they aren't maxing out their bandwidth, then it makes similarly no difference that you use it. It's not 10 years ago, the neighborhood using your router for Facebook doesn't dent the bandwidth. So how is it not comparable to stray light?

foxfluff 5y ago
> if they aren't maxing out their bandwidth, then it makes similarly no difference that you use it That is a big assumption right there. The neighborhood streaming 4k cat videos from youtube could make a massive dent, and I can easily use all the bandwidth I have for my own needs. That's before we consider the potential consequences of them "borrowing" my IP address and all. Of course it's on me to keep my network secure so I don't let that happen, but in theory they could find the next vulnerability that lets them in.
- Jerrrry 5y ago
  >if they aren't maxing out their bandwidth The analogy is only in the contextually relevant case of a limited resource and the consumption. The juxtaposition of individual vs collectivism, and the inevitable tragedy of the commons, was the relevance. Of course, any technical analogy on HN gets pedantically deconstructed into atomic trivialness. Anywho - if you don't broadcast your SSID, or, even less dismissively, don't Faraday cage your house, then anyone interacting with the electromagnetic field that you haphazardly allow to escape the privacy of your residence is within their rights to do so.
  - vntok 5y ago
    > Anywho - if you don't broadcast your SSID, or, even less dismissively, don't Faraday cage your house, then anyone interacting with the electromagnetic field that you haphazardly allow to escape the privacy of your residence is within their rights to do so. Are you seriously arguing that anyone is allowed to tamper with your mobile phone signal as long as you're at home and they're outside the walls?

AmericanChopper 5y ago

The author is mixing a lot of largely unrelated topics. Emitting light from your residence is just an externality that can be positive or negative depending on the situation. The question “who should pay for lighting?” is a classic question that comes up when discussing street lights in the context of theoretical user-pays economics models. As in “what services can potentially be implemented in a user-pays model? for instance you can’t practically charge somebody for benefitting from a street light”. Using somebody else’s wifi is related to neither of those topics, because that’s about consuming somebody else’s limited resources without their permission. The legality and morality of that question relates to whether the wifi broadcaster should expect that to occur when using unsecured wifi, and whether they should have any obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent it if they don’t want it happening.