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In 1895 a young Italian studying Maxwell's equations wondered if perhaps you didn't need wires to send an electromagnetic message, and after months of tinkering
by breck 2y ago
In 1895 a young Italian studying Maxwell's equations wondered if perhaps you didn't need wires to send an electromagnetic message, and after months of tinkering beamed the first radio message which rang a bell on the other side of his parent's attic.
The first person he showed this to was his mother, who to her credit didn't accuse him of witchcraft but gave him a hug and supported him in all his future ventures.
He then went on to start a company building useful things on top of this discovery, including the first transatlantic wireless radio that saved tens of thousands of lives and is no doubt in part responsible for many of you alive reading this today.
Fast forward a century and skip the long hours and blood, sweat, and tears of millions of scientists and engineers and technicians and factory workers who have further built this technology so instead of just sending Morse code wirelessly at a few words per minute, we can send all of humanity's information to everyone on earth in seconds.
Wifi is one of the most beautiful creations and technological storylines in all of history.
Let's keep it open and free and not sully it with ads and passwords.
- devilbunny 2y agoWiFi is wonderful magic, but I’m not giving you the password to my private network.
- breck 2y agoWhy not make your community better by having your router also broadcast an open public network?
- patrick451 2y agoFor the same reasons I don't invite the entire neighborhood into my kitchen for dinner every night. If people want wifi, they can buy it themselves.
- cess11 2y agoThey might be dissidents that don't want their internet traffic associated with their physical identity, which makes it quite hard to "buy it themselves" in places where cash isn't used or ID cards are commonly registered.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- patrick451 2y agoIn which case I don't want their activity associated with my ip. Dissidenting safely is their problem, not mine.
- stackghost 2y agoBecause freeloaders and/or malicious actors will abuse my generosity
- wizzwizz4 2y agoFreeloaders? Well, yeah: isn't that the whole point? We're all freeloaders, in some sense, unless you think you've earned the water you drink and the air you breathe. By giving back to the Freeloader-available Resource Pool (the commons), you're becoming less of a freeloader. Malicious actors? That relies on there being malicious actors physically near you, which isn't necessarily a valid assumption. Set up a DMZ, try it, and see.
- sandworm101 2y agoYour view will change once you see your home IP address on the search warrant. And no, i am not going to invite the public to share in my vpn too.
- wizzwizz4 2y ago(A) That's not how search warrants work. (B) Having your computers spuriously seized for a police investigation is a risk shared by every computer user, but those investigations cost money. They don't tend to seize your hardware frivolously, except to intimidate (fairly common for security researchers, for some reason). If you have a public Wi-Fi network, and there's no reason to believe you're a culprit, they're more likely to ask you to keep MAC address logs, or shut down the public Wi-Fi network, than assume you dunnit and try to prosecute with insufficient evidence. You're at far more risk running a Tor exit node than a public Wi-Fi network, and most Tor exit nodes don't get raided by the police. Your neighbours are probably not cybercriminals. It's probably okay to be nice to them.
- sandworm101 2y ago>> having your computers spuriously seized for a police investigation is a risk shared by every computer user Not where i live. We have layers of rules specifically designed to prevent random actions by police.
- inkubus 2y agosomeone can do some bad tnings on internet with help of your wifi?
- senectus1 2y agoI fear what they're up to... Download or broadcasting CP primarily. who knows what freaky stuff my community gets into.
- UncleSlacky 2y agoMarconi always gets credit, but Tesla invented it: https://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html https://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html
- breck 2y agoNo. Your source makes clear that Marconi sent the first message (Tesla failed to send a radio message in 1895, Marconi succeeded). Read "My Father Marconi" by his daughter Degna. Fantastic book. Other than that, a very fascinating read, the link you shared. Patent stuff is silly, but were way less silly back then, and had more positive 2nd order effects back then. It was cool how Tesla and Marconi held each other in high regard, and built on each other's works.
- grecy 2y agoI would genuinely love to offer free use of my wifi to anyone that needs it. 1. My billing is usage based, the bills could be astronomical 2. Laws around who is at fault are the person paying the bill. My IP address doing who knows what could easily land me in jail. Sadly, the cons outweigh the pros
- nuancebydefault 2y agoFree WIFI tragically will fall into the 'tragedy of the commons'. How much a better place the world would be if we could freely share ANYTHING without getting abused, sabotaged, taken advantage of, taken for granted, getting hate for revoking, whatever we offer?
- forgetfreeman 2y agoOr living in fear of a multitude of hypothetical behaviors that objectively most folks just don't engage in. I kept an open network for folks waiting for the bus near my house for close to 10 years. No sabotage, no abuse, no hassles of any kind.
- foobarian 2y agoThis hits home as we just came from Marconi beach on Cape Cod where one of the antennas was. There is no antenna left, just a plaque marking the spot. In a way it's a little sad how behind this area is at this point compared to the energy of the times.
- gwbas1c 2y agoThat's my favorite beach. Whenever I'm there I have to walk to the memorial. If you ever go back, take the time to walk the hiking path behind the bathrooms. It goes into a gorgeous redwood grove. The boardwalk reminds me of the "tree" level in Myst.
- breck 2y ago? I could be wrong but I've never seen redwoods in Massachusetts.
- devilbunny 2y agoI just thought of this, so separate reply. Didn’t CSIRO enforce their WiFi patents pretty thoroughly?