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Hi fellow Alaska frequent flier. So about that! There's this iOS app called Flightly that does a brilliant little hack where the app updates itself in (almost)
by dag11 3y ago
Hi fellow Alaska frequent flier.
So about that! There's this iOS app called Flightly that does a brilliant little hack where the app updates itself in (almost) real time on the "free messaging" plan. The way it works (according to a friend) is that their servers send your phone a push notification every couple of minutes from take-off until landing, containing some serialized info such as lat,long,alt,eta,etc. And then the app immediately swallows the notification and deserializes its content without you ever seeing it. The notification works because in order for Alaska to give you notifications at all for your messaging apps, it needs to give you access to _all_ push notifications as they all get sent over an encrypted connected through Apple's server and it can't pick and choose which apps' notifications it lets through.
I've often wondered if it'd be possible to pipe any sort of internet over notifications but I'm not sure if e.g. inline responses are viable, and also that'd probably be heavy enough usage of push notifications I'm sure it's violate someone's TOS.
- dgellow 3y agoReally hoping someone implements this, it’s the funniest project idea I’ve seen in a while :)
- el_benhameen 3y agoI’ve always wondered why I get slack and email notifications when I’m on a Southwest flight with free messaging without paying for wifi. You’ve finally solved my mystery!
- keanebean86 3y agoI had an idea to use Facebook messanger as a proxy. Specifically to use the cheap messaging plan on a cruise ship for real internet access. My home computer would be a gateway that monitors fb and fetches/returns websites. I never even tried because it just sounds like a violation of multiple ToSes. Not to mention message size limitations, throttling, my fb messages being pages of encoded text, etc. I feel like it would need to work like Opera mini to maybe be usable. Even then interactions would be uncomfortably slow. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini
- ddalex 3y agoCheck out https://github.com/aleixrodriala/wa-tunnel https://github.com/aleixrodriala/wa-tunnel tunnel over whatsapp
- amalcon 3y agoThis reminds me of the old tools that tunnel more or less whatever over DNS. I.e. behind the scenes, the tool would look up "base64encodedpacket.domainyoucontrol.example.com", and it would respond with encoded data going the other way. This is because captive portal WiFi often permitted DNS to pass through unimpeded, for various reasons. I always appreciated the hack, even though I could never bring myself to use it due to the obvious cache pollution problem on the various DNS servers.
- fragmede 3y agoAlso Internet over ICMP, for when captive portals used to let those through.
- xeromal 3y agoThis reminds me of a web browser years ago that would use MMS to transfer web pages to the user without using internet service. This was in the early days. I think it was a Java app for the Motorola razor IIRC
- interestica 3y ago> There's this iOS app called Flightly I guess it's Flighty (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flighty-live-flight-tracker/id1358823008?platform=iphone https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flighty-live-flight-tracker/id...) I love that people are into this. In the days before iPhones, I had "Microsoft Streets and Trips" + a USB GPS unit + Laptop. It was fun having it on a flight and seeing movement data in realtime. It was less fun answering questions from people who thought looking at the GPS data was somehow nefarious.
- geostupid 3y agoHa! I've used a high-end GPS to see my location and other fun facts in flight. I learned to keep it in my pocket as despite my attempts to explain it was only a receiver, I was told by the flight attendant to "PUT IT AWAY." Not being one to push back as to be removed for that flight, I did just that. Streets and Trips was fun on a laptop for long car drives as you could live reroute in the car much like any old app can do these days but seemed somehow magical back then.
- joezydeco 3y agoFAs can be really strange about that kind of stuff, not just out of ignorance. My kid liked to suction cup his GoPro to the window to take a time lapse movie of the flight and one FA told him he had to take it off the window because he was, and I quote: "modifying the structure of the aircraft and that's not FAA-approved".
- bunabhucan 3y agoProbably just didn't want kid spit on the window.
- edrxty 3y agoHad this happen to me with some duct tape and a malfunctioning strobing light next to me on a red-eye. I'm an aircraft builder but she didn't want to hear my explanation about how TSOs and the FARs work. I just waited until they stopped paying attention.
- adrr 3y agoPush notifications have background notifications that are used to update apps while they aren't loaded. We used them update our catalog/home screen on shopping app, its makes the app feel much more responsive when they open the app and content instantly appears instead of waiting for some API calls. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/setting_up_a_remote_notification_server/pushing_background_updates_to_your_app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
- lupire 3y agoDoes that work on Android? I've never seen a non-authorized notification in a Chat or Mail app on a flight.
- hackernewds 3y agoso why would I use this Flightly app? seems it delivers messages all the same?
- madeofpalk 3y agoIt works not because Alaska wants to give you notifications for your messages, but because iMessage literally is transported over APNS.