5 ms·

I cant see through walls with a lightbulb. I can with wifi. This standard makes my wifi router into an internet connected, closed source blob, light bulb and c

I cant see through walls with a lightbulb. I can with wifi. This standard makes my wifi router into an internet connected, closed source blob, light bulb and camera that is impossible to obscure (without killing my internet connection). Sure, I can wire my whole house for ethernet. And, while I’m behind the drywall, I might as well rip off all the drywall put a layer of Al. Here’s a business idea - drywall with aluminum fibers embedded in. For those of us who don't want our sexy times recorded by our router. EDIT: made wifi’s ability to see through walls explicit per _jal’s comment.

transpute 5y ago
> drywall with aluminum fibers embedded QuietRock has drywall that combines soundproofing with RF shielding (steel plate), but it's expensive and targeted at military use cases, https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530RF_datasheet_0.pdf https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530R.... Aluminum radiant barrier can be layered with standard drywall. There is conductive carbon paint for RF shielding, e.g. http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-residential-bedroom/ http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-resid... & https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html Other materials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926
_jal 5y ago
To put a slightly finer point on it, I can't see through your walls with my lightbulb, but I probably can see through your walls with my router. Your creepy neighbor in the apartment next door is getting a new toy.
- jagger27 5y ago
  2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz have decent wall penetration, but 60GHz doesn't. It can bounce off walls to get around corners, so it doesn't necessarily need line of sight.
  - transpute 5y ago
    Wi-Fi Sensing works with 2.4/5/6 GHz which pass through walls, it is not specific to 60Ghz.
    - jagger27 5y ago
      Yes, and? 5 and 6 GHz already struggle with thick walls (like those found between units in apartment buildings). Presence detection is one thing, but you can't see what I'm having for lunch through several walls with a single 2.4 GHz AP. 500 terahertz = 600 nm (visible light) 60 gigahertz = 5 mm 6 gigahertz = 50 mm 5 gigahertz = 60 mm 2.4 gigahertz = 125 mm
      - tagoregrtst 5y ago
        “Yes and” - Unless 2.4 and 5 GHz are taken off the standard, my router will see me through the walls. - At 60 GHz, if I have wifi, my router can see me - To make our concerns clear to you, even at 125 mm resolution, you can tell if I like my wife to drill my bottom with a strap on. Or you can tell if I piously say my prayers at night (something that is increasingly political). Or if the immigrant next door spanks his kids. Or if his 15 year old daughter is “exploring” her body. And for what benefit exactly? So an ad agency can track me and know Im struggling with my diet, hovering over the fridge door?
        obmelvin 5y ago
        > Or if the immigrant next door spanks his kids. Plenty of non-immigrants (won't even dignify that with a label like Americans, because immigrants can become Americans too) spank their kids or hit their wives etc.... I think your fears are real, but I also think it's important to be careful with your examples :)
pizza 5y ago
Another idea in the opposite direction: somebody should build a $20 firewall/tappable ethernet cable with some kind of builtin eBPF support + a universe of community packages. The community would then share privacy-enhancing I/O profiles for every kind of device. If years later e.g. my adversarial lightbulb pivots to brokering kompromat SIGINT, I want to filter that out, and I want not to be the first one to write a filter like that.. Does it change the internal state of the lightbulb’s logic? No.. but hopefully it would even be able to simulate the state loop of the lightbulb well enough to guess what to filter out. Of course there may also come a time when somebody starts to sell $20, 60 ghz-spectrum-only-visible “human activity fakers” to disrupt the collection of such data. Maybe with a “Honey, I’m home!” package being the most popular, lol
- 1MachineElf 5y ago
  When I read this comment and the username that wrote it, I can't help but wonder if it's a reference to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
  - pizza 5y ago
    Funny, when I first signed up it was a reference to a joke that a pizza with radius z and thickness a, its volume is pizza. It's only since then that I've read Snow Crash (a book I do think about quite often..) maybe I should retcon my etymology lol
bigbillheck 5y ago
> drywall with aluminum fibers embedded in. For those of us who don't want our sexy times recorded by our router. The ancients had a solution for this (brick walls).
throwawayForMe2 5y ago
Along with plaster-and-lathe there was also plaster on a wire mesh. Old houses with these kind of plaster walls get terrible cell phone reception.

transpute 5y ago

> drywall with aluminum fibers embedded QuietRock has drywall that combines soundproofing with RF shielding (steel plate), but it's expensive and targeted at military use cases, https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530RF_datasheet_0.pdf https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530R.... Aluminum radiant barrier can be layered with standard drywall. There is conductive carbon paint for RF shielding, e.g. http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-residential-bedroom/ http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-resid... & https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html Other materials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926

_jal 5y ago

To put a slightly finer point on it, I can't see through your walls with my lightbulb, but I probably can see through your walls with my router. Your creepy neighbor in the apartment next door is getting a new toy.

jagger27 5y ago
2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz have decent wall penetration, but 60GHz doesn't. It can bounce off walls to get around corners, so it doesn't necessarily need line of sight.
- transpute 5y ago
  Wi-Fi Sensing works with 2.4/5/6 GHz which pass through walls, it is not specific to 60Ghz.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    Yes, and? 5 and 6 GHz already struggle with thick walls (like those found between units in apartment buildings). Presence detection is one thing, but you can't see what I'm having for lunch through several walls with a single 2.4 GHz AP. 500 terahertz = 600 nm (visible light) 60 gigahertz = 5 mm 6 gigahertz = 50 mm 5 gigahertz = 60 mm 2.4 gigahertz = 125 mm
    - tagoregrtst 5y ago
      “Yes and” - Unless 2.4 and 5 GHz are taken off the standard, my router will see me through the walls. - At 60 GHz, if I have wifi, my router can see me - To make our concerns clear to you, even at 125 mm resolution, you can tell if I like my wife to drill my bottom with a strap on. Or you can tell if I piously say my prayers at night (something that is increasingly political). Or if the immigrant next door spanks his kids. Or if his 15 year old daughter is “exploring” her body. And for what benefit exactly? So an ad agency can track me and know Im struggling with my diet, hovering over the fridge door?
      - obmelvin 5y ago
        > Or if the immigrant next door spanks his kids. Plenty of non-immigrants (won't even dignify that with a label like Americans, because immigrants can become Americans too) spank their kids or hit their wives etc.... I think your fears are real, but I also think it's important to be careful with your examples :)

pizza 5y ago

Another idea in the opposite direction: somebody should build a $20 firewall/tappable ethernet cable with some kind of builtin eBPF support + a universe of community packages. The community would then share privacy-enhancing I/O profiles for every kind of device. If years later e.g. my adversarial lightbulb pivots to brokering kompromat SIGINT, I want to filter that out, and I want not to be the first one to write a filter like that.. Does it change the internal state of the lightbulb’s logic? No.. but hopefully it would even be able to simulate the state loop of the lightbulb well enough to guess what to filter out. Of course there may also come a time when somebody starts to sell $20, 60 ghz-spectrum-only-visible “human activity fakers” to disrupt the collection of such data. Maybe with a “Honey, I’m home!” package being the most popular, lol

1MachineElf 5y ago
When I read this comment and the username that wrote it, I can't help but wonder if it's a reference to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.
- pizza 5y ago
  Funny, when I first signed up it was a reference to a joke that a pizza with radius z and thickness a, its volume is pizza. It's only since then that I've read Snow Crash (a book I do think about quite often..) maybe I should retcon my etymology lol

bigbillheck 5y ago

> drywall with aluminum fibers embedded in. For those of us who don't want our sexy times recorded by our router. The ancients had a solution for this (brick walls).

throwawayForMe2 5y ago

Along with plaster-and-lathe there was also plaster on a wire mesh. Old houses with these kind of plaster walls get terrible cell phone reception.