47MB for the UI & boilerplate around the business logic.
I get that this may be the easiest way to develop and publish an application today, but it's sad that this is the direction we have taken in recent years.
aeonik 7 hours ago [-]
Modern app bloat in one analogy:
Business logic size: ~20 bytes
Total app size: ~47 MB = 47,000,000 bytes
Bloat factor: 47,000,000 / 20 = 2,350,000
Let’s scale this up and say the business logic is 1 pound.
Then the whole app would weigh:
1 lb × 2,350,000 = 2,350,000 pounds
What weighs ~2.35 million pounds?
- A fully loaded Boeing 747-8: ~987,000 lbs
- Another fully loaded 747-8: ~987,000 lbs
- A blue whale: ~330,000 lbs
TOTAL: ~2,304,000 lbs
The business logic is like shipping a 1 lb object (a book, a flash drive, whatever) by loading it into two fully loaded 747s and strapping a blue whale on top.
Just to run 20 bytes of logic.
anon7000 6 hours ago [-]
Well, if you COULD ship something across the world on a private 747 with extra features to protect your cargo, and it has nearly no environmental downside and has no meaningful downside vs a smaller airplane… you’d probably do it! There’s no incentive in software to get a smaller, more efficient plane, and plenty of incentive to use the big thing for free that has all the extra features
GTP 5 hours ago [-]
> it has nearly no environmental downside and has no meaningful downside
I think this is not the case. E.g., we replace our computers every few years, but not because the new ones can do things that you can't do with your current computer. It's because the software you use to do the same things keeps getting more resource-hungry.
iknowstuff 4 hours ago [-]
Its called externalized cost and its as real in software as it is IRL
GTP 4 hours ago [-]
So the cost is there, it's just not paid (directly) by the developer. But we all end up paying someone else's externalized cost, included said developer that is paying some other developers' externalized costs.
dented42 6 hours ago [-]
That analogy doesn’t really work here. Because there is a downside. It’s slow, takes up a ton of memory, lots of disk space…
When you have so many processes on a modern machine competing for resources, when every app chooses to be bloated and slow it really adds up.
dtech 5 hours ago [-]
That is more a tragedy of the commons thing. For each individual app the comparison holds true
IgorPartola 5 hours ago [-]
And since we do have app stores as gate keepers, this could easily be remedied by the app stores. They wouldn’t even have to penalize you. Just put a score on there for app size (and app responsiveness) compared to the median in that category. Put this near the star rating from the reviews. Executives don’t generally care that you as an engineer want to reduce an app size by 10% but they really really care about how the app looks on the app stores because that’s what they show to people and what they are judged on.
kulahan 5 hours ago [-]
Tragedy of the commons or just a really bad industry?
leptons 5 hours ago [-]
It doesn't "take up a ton of memory" and if you think 47MB is "a lot of disk space" then maybe you need a bigger disk. Most laptops have at least 250GB, so this program would take up about 0.0188% of disk space, which is frankly not a lot. I had PDF files way larger than that. And you only need to run it once, you do not need to keep it loaded and running all the time, so it doesn't "take up a ton of memory".
lostlogin 4 hours ago [-]
This is how we have ended up with huge cars and huge houses etc. Storing huge volumes of unneeded junk isn’t solved by have more space. Store less junk.
leptons 2 hours ago [-]
You can live however you want to live. I will live however I want to. 47MB is not worth worrying about, at all.
BobbyTables2 3 hours ago [-]
47MB is about 3x the space once required by a widely used commercial graphical operating system. It was even enough to also include Microsoft Word with plenty of space left.
How far we’ve fallen.
leptons 3 hours ago [-]
You're living in the past. Hard drives are now up to 36TB. Hard drives are always getting bigger. 47MB isn't worth worrying about, at all.
anonymars 4 hours ago [-]
These crappy WiFi portals are known for having ample download speeds too, right?
BobbyTables2 3 hours ago [-]
People usually think that but when it comes to attack surface, change management, upgrade issues, etc —- the extra stuff isn’t entirely free…
Upgrades shouldn’t ever break things, bugs and vulnerabilities never exist, and Rube-Goldberg machines should work 100% reliably day in and day out.
Unfortunately reality doesn’t work that way…
lostlogin 4 hours ago [-]
> Well, if you COULD ship something across the world on a private 747 with extra features to protect your cargo
Qatar might even give you a plane!
bognition 2 hours ago [-]
This is an absurd way to think of this. Following this same train of thoughts for humans:
The business logic for humans is a single reproductive cell.
A single sperm weighs 2.3 x 10^-11 grams. If the average male weighs 75kg the. The bloat ratio for a human male is 3.2x10^15
Getting back to the app there is huge value in not needing to run the command yourself. Sure it’s wrapped in a UI that comes with “bloat” but honestly who cares. When was the last time someone needed to worry about hard drive space, when it comes to a 40mb file.
m11a 2 hours ago [-]
Well, the apps often come bundled with a bunch of other stuff. Automatic updates, background workers, telemetry …
All of which sucks up your compute resources and battery. Repeat for every such little utility app you have on your Mac. Some may implement that random stuff inefficiently (eg very frequent telemetry), which sucks even more. Some of it may even be wrong, vibe coded, or copy pasted.
Personally, puts me off installing random utility apps, even if the single utility would be useful.
WD-42 6 hours ago [-]
This is a cool visualization, thanks.
aquafox 6 hours ago [-]
On a related note: Transporting a human in a car is (in relation to weight and size) like using a standard shopping cart to transport two 1L bottles of water. So the next time you walk through a pedestrian area, imagine everyone carrying a bag would use a shopping cart instead. That would be a huge traffic jam -- exactly like what you see on the road!
WD-42 5 hours ago [-]
I've been pretty aware of this ever since I became a cyclist. I will ride down to the corner store to pick up a six pack and some chips, throw them in a backpack and ride back. It's easy. I see people driving their cars to do the same thing. All that weight and space for a 6 bottles of beer. There is massive waste all around us.
lostlogin 4 hours ago [-]
There is also the time component. Off peak and with a decent sized backpack (change of clothes, laptop, food etc) it takes me the same time to go 6km as it does to drive it.
At peak it’s 1/4 to 1/3rd the time.
Cars are slow around town.
tengwar2 2 hours ago [-]
It's a reasonable solution, but let's not forget that simply walking is often at least as good a solution in many countries.
bongodongobob 4 hours ago [-]
Those people could be driving from 20 minutes away or on their way home from work, or running other errands or picking kids up from school or any number of things. Good for you though.
sheepscreek 5 hours ago [-]
I like your username, and what happened to WD-41?
WD-42 3 hours ago [-]
It wasn't the correct answer.
sheepscreek 3 hours ago [-]
What was the question?
d-lisp 4 hours ago [-]
Incrementation ?
BobbyTables2 4 hours ago [-]
Excellent point!
And to top it off, the dual flights and whale would need complex orchestration too!
We just call it Kubernetes…
shepherdjerred 4 hours ago [-]
How many 747's can the average person fit on the 128GB+ smartphone in their pocket?
jofla_net 6 hours ago [-]
says more about sociology, really.
foxglacier 2 hours ago [-]
Human time is money in software, more analogous to mass in physical goods. So you should calculate the time savings for all the people using the app vs entering the code themselves.
Mass is a nonsense analogy that doesn't reveal anything useful.
paxcoder 6 hours ago [-]
While I appreciate criticizing bloat (why are we packing Chromium in every app again?), I would like to warn against watching every "pound". Images, for example, "weigh" a lot more than code but that doesn't mean they don't serve a purpose and add value.
That being said, the fact that quick maths can give you a 6 orders of magnitude difference between functional code and the package is probably reason for concern.
kzrdude 15 minutes ago [-]
And notice the other abstraction too.
This is not 'an app to change MAC address' but an app to 'overcome WiFi time limits'.
dbalatero 5 hours ago [-]
To be fair, the author didn't make this to impress people with byte optimizations, they probably just wanted to publish an app quickly that is useful, and was familiar enough with Electron or JS to do so.
righthand 6 hours ago [-]
It’s not the easiest way just the most evangelized. A Qt app even would be a few lines of code, but we’ve done a good job scaring people that learning other languages is bad because we can’t ship features fast enough with non-evangelized frameworks.
anthk 4 hours ago [-]
Even TCL/TK would be smaller.
righthand 3 hours ago [-]
Every framework under the sun gives you a `main()` func to call your program code. But if all you’ve ever used is blogs telling you how to hack together an electron app, you’d probably assume electron was the gold standard for simplicity sake but in reality is the gold standard for Google’s sake (and whatever marketing company’s).
ryandrake 6 hours ago [-]
I so strongly wish more developers gave even a single shit about this. The current state of desktop app development is truly an embarrassment.
lxgr 6 hours ago [-]
Wow, they optimized the minimal Electron app down to 47 MB?
2 hours ago [-]
mistercow 6 hours ago [-]
I keep thinking that this could be solved by just building Electron into the OS as a shared framework so we don't have to have a separate copy for every app, but the more I dig into it, the more I realize I'm just reinventing the web browser.
thisislife2 5 hours ago [-]
There is something called the "WebView" in all the major platforms. The idea is that it allows you to use the browser engine only for creating the UI. But people complain its not "enough" because it is not the same on all the platform (it is if you use it just for UI), restricts access to some browser APIs (ignoring the fact that the OS often offers the same, even and more APIs) and Javascript (a crappy language for creating software applications).
paxys 5 hours ago [-]
You are describing PWAs, but they'll never have the same API access & permissions as a native app.
Those who don't learn /usr/bin are destined to reinvent it, poorly.
tomrod 5 hours ago [-]
What does this mean? I've always understood /usr/bin to be the storage dump for system binaries. Do you see or use it another way?
GTP 5 hours ago [-]
They likely mean that you already have in there all what is needed to change your laptop WiFi card's MAC address, without needing an additional application.
unixhero 5 hours ago [-]
Yes but you need a space station OS (Unix) to enjoy the terseness of 47-200 bytes of business logic.
ps: I love both space stations and Unix
yjftsjthsd-h 54 minutes ago [-]
I guess, but the OS is a fixed cost that you already have
CommenterPerson 6 hours ago [-]
Are they doing something additional with the 47MB - 200 bytes? Like selling you to the brokers?
WJW 6 hours ago [-]
Not even. It's just overhead.
rafram 8 hours ago [-]
Why does a Mac-only app that shows a menu bar icon and a notification popup need to be Electron…? That’s 30 lines of Swift, max.
outofpaper 8 hours ago [-]
People forget to think about Swift let alone tools like Platypus.
WJW 6 hours ago [-]
Talk is cheap. If it's so easy, I'm sure the author would welcome a PR :)
CamperBob2 5 hours ago [-]
I mean, these days, you ask an LLM and it spits out code that will, for something this simple, probably work the first time.
WJW 4 hours ago [-]
Should take you no more than 5 minutes then.
CamperBob2 3 hours ago [-]
Whatever. I'm not the one who used 47 MB to distribute a single line of code.
zymhan 52 minutes ago [-]
So you've done nothing, and think that's somehow more admirable?
CamperBob2 3 minutes ago [-]
This isn't about me. Let's not make it about me.
1 hours ago [-]
jeroenhd 7 hours ago [-]
If you don't know Swift, but do know Electron, it's easier to do it in 30 lines of Javascript.
People who don't like the developers work can always write and publish their own application, of course.
whatevaa 7 hours ago [-]
It's hard work writing free stuff for others, much easier to criticise stuff instead of getting your hands dirty.
gopher_space 4 hours ago [-]
Is ActionScript still a thing on Macs? I feel like that tech was almost criminally overlooked while being the backbone for a lot of processing pipelines back in the day.
rafram 3 hours ago [-]
It (AppleScript) is, and you can actually write JS instead these days, with a criminally underdocumented Objective-C bridge (JXA).
gopher_space 3 hours ago [-]
Ahh thanks! Went down a brief rabbit hole with JXA and had forgotten how opaque Apple is when you're developing for them.
mattl 4 hours ago [-]
You mean AppleScript?
thisislife2 5 hours ago [-]
It doesn't need to be - on macOS, it could even just as well have been a simple Xbar Plug-In! ( https://xbarapp.com/ ).
rafram 4 hours ago [-]
Or Alfred script, Raycast plugin, Shortcuts shortcut, shell alias, and the list goes on. There are a lot of decent options; "50+ MB Electron app" is, in my opinion, not one.
SR2Z 7 hours ago [-]
If you want a frontend for you app, you probably just use Electron and get it over with in a few minutes instead of digging through the docs for Qt or some other framework.
Is it worth it? Probably not, since this is a single-platform app to start with, but JS+HTML are easy to theme and customize, and Qt is... not quite as simple.
rafram 7 hours ago [-]
Where did you get Qt from? This is, again, a Mac-only app that doesn’t even have any windows. It’s just a menu bar icon and a notification. That’s incredibly simple to build with plain old Cocoa and Swift.
anthk 4 hours ago [-]
Or AppleScript maybe.
righthand 6 hours ago [-]
No one has to dig through electron docs though right? There is nothing simple about an electron app regardless how little logic you personally programmed on top of it.
juancroldan 7 hours ago [-]
Now that you can build such an app with AI in under 20 minutes with a manageable codebase you can properly understand and control, I don't think that's a good excuse anymore
whatevaa 7 hours ago [-]
If you don't know the language, how can you properly understand and control it?
therein 7 hours ago [-]
In 2025 you unfortunately just vibe with the code nowadays.
paxys 7 hours ago [-]
> with a manageable codebase you can properly understand and control
Yeah, that definitely describes every AI codebase I have seen..
ajsnigrutin 8 hours ago [-]
1) the dev only had a hammer and he nailed the screw in
2) the dev has 64gigs of ram and a newest CPU and doesn't care about performance issues for people on older computers... that's why you need gigs of ram just to read a weather report online.
palata 7 hours ago [-]
Electron is an overkill way to not have to learn how to do stuff properly, if you ask me. And people love not to learn.
WJW 6 hours ago [-]
Send in a PR then?
ipaddr 4 hours ago [-]
A pr that deletes the repo and bans the person from github?
WJW 4 hours ago [-]
No a PR that actually makes the world a better place. Be the change you want to see and all that.
encom 7 hours ago [-]
Because that's all anyone knows, and PC development is dead.
>content-length: 47262814
Sigh...
tommoor 6 hours ago [-]
Nice, added it as a bash alias.
alias randommac='sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 -z && sudo ifconfig en0 ether $(openssl rand -hex 6 | sed "s/../&:/g; s/:$//")'
commandersaki 6 hours ago [-]
So I tried this out on macOS 26 and the `airport` command is no longer there.
There is a `airportd.sb` file, which appears to be some permissions based thing in s-expression/LISP. Weird.
Edit: Spun up a macOS 15 VM and I got this:
WARNING: The airport command line tool is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.For diagnosing Wi-Fi related issues, use the Wireless Diagnostics app or wdutil command line tool.
I guess they weren't kidding.
bc569a80a344f9c 5 hours ago [-]
Looking around briefly, you can replace it with this:
`networksetup -setairportpower en0 on && [... set MAC ...] && networksetup -setairportpower en0 off`
I think it's pretty safe to assume that modern Macs will always have en0 as the WiFi adapter, but if you wanted, you could use `networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder` to find the associated device.
JonathonW 4 hours ago [-]
Modern Macs do not always have en0 as the WiFi adapter (it's en1 on current iMacs and on the Mac Studio; en0 is the ethernet jack).
But you're unlikely to be taking one of the machines that has built-in ethernet to the airport or coffeeshop.
bc569a80a344f9c 4 hours ago [-]
Duh, also true on my Mac Mini. But yeah, “modern Mac laptops” probably makes the statement correct enough and still describes the entire set of targets.
I feel like using Electron for such a little thing is way overkill. The newer laptops are very powerful so I don't think anyone would have any performance issues, but on older macbooks, having too many little Electron apps running in the background makes the fan go brrrrrrrr
virtualritz 7 hours ago [-]
And you could ask an LLM to whip up the Swift code or whatever to wrap this line into a Dock app etc., if you want that convenience.
hk1337 8 hours ago [-]
What exactly is that doing? Is there some backend limitation for WiFi interfaces that making it think it’s Ethernet is faster?
sodality2 8 hours ago [-]
It just resets the MAC address, making the router believe it's a new device, thus not subject to the "x minute" free WiFi.
dizhn 7 hours ago [-]
That won't circumvent the sms code requirement most free wifi services use.
catlifeonmars 7 hours ago [-]
I have never seen this before
ssl-3 17 minutes ago [-]
I've only seen it once.
I was doing some work in a small-ish county jail/sheriff's office in the States. As part of that work, I needed some Internet access.
Because jail (thick, reinforced walls and lots of steel) the cell phone coverage was basically shit -- otherwise I'd have just used my phone like I would normally have done approximately anywhere else.
It was a fun dance: Requesting access via wifi, getting sent a code via SMS, and then going outside, turning off wifi to establish an actually-working network connection, retrieving the code (yay Google Voice), and then going back inside, turning on wifi, entering the code, and actually using it.
There was some other detail (perhaps relating to very short timeouts or re-registration issues or MAC randomization) at some stage of the operation that seemed extra-insulting, but my mind has forgotten whatever it was.
I have no idea what this song and dance was intended to provide, prevent, or enforce.
rafram 4 hours ago [-]
It's required by law in some countries, and it leads to some very funny chicken-and-egg situations with airport WiFi.
Istanbul Airport added a workaround: a physical passport scanner that stores your info and generates a code as an alternative to SMS verification. The whole thing just feels like a VPN ad.
dizhn 5 hours ago [-]
There's at least one country with laws that say you have to keep track of national ID numbers (and times) if you want to provide wifi service.
popularonion 6 hours ago [-]
Never seen it in the US, but it was fairly common when I was on vacation in Europe
rs186 6 hours ago [-]
I think they are extremely rare, and I would rather just use my mobile data instead of giving them my phone number.
Definitely does not happen on "free trials" on in-flight Wi-Fi for obvious reasons.
dizhn 4 hours ago [-]
A now deleted comment reminded me that this is mostly for in-flight wifi where it makes much more sense. Mostly no SMS there either.
7 hours ago [-]
101008 4 hours ago [-]
Wow. Don't you need to pay a Apple license as well to distribute apps in Macs?
tengwar2 2 hours ago [-]
Not for Mac. MacOS is an open garden: there is an app store; or you can install signed apps (requires Apple cooperation); or you can install unsigned applications. MacOS gives you a nudge to the app store (which has genuine advantages) and a much stronger nudge away from unsigned non-app-store apps, but it is still an open garden. iOS is closed garden, which makes some sense for the security guarantees it can give for financial applications.
cozzyd 6 hours ago [-]
the hilarious thing is it shells out for the random mac...
ammar2 8 hours ago [-]
Glad this feature is built into most modern operating systems these days.
For MacOS (Sequoia+) you can just forget the network and reconnect to get a new MAC address [1].
Android's documentation for if it decides to generate a new address per connection is a little vague [2], but I'm guessing forgetting and reconnecting works as well, you may also need to flip the "Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization" bit in developer settings.
On Windows, flipping the "Random hardware address" switch seems to cause it to generate a new seed/address for me.
Per [1], this only works once per 24 hours on new iOS/macOS versions, and only once per two weeks on older ones though.
km3r 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah I had to flip the developer setting toggle, but worked flawlessly for my flight (American Airlines has a watch an ad for 20 minutes of free internet that only works once per MAC)
fendale 4 hours ago [-]
Are you saying that on IOS 18 if you enable developer mode then each time you forgot the network it gets a new Mac? But without developer mode it does not get a new Mac each time you forget it? The Apple docs linked elsewhere in this thread suggest it only gets a new Mac once per 24 hours when you forget the network normally. I’m going on a long boat trip in the next week where this trick might work for me if so!
bapak 8 hours ago [-]
I think the rotating address is limited to 3, right? The script here generates one at random.
purplehat_ 7 hours ago [-]
Here's an equivalent little script for Debian Linux (but should work on most distros), based on classhasclass's comment:
NEW_MAC=$(printf '02:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x\n' $((RANDOM%256)) $((RANDOM%256)) $((RANDOM%256)) $((RANDOM%256)) $((RANDOM%256)))
sudo ip link set wlan0 down
sudo ip link set wlan0 address "$NEW_MAC"
sudo ip link set wlan0 up
You should replace `wlan0` with whatever you see in `ip link show` for your wireless interface, for me it is `wlp0s20f3`. I replaced the `openssl rand` command because it was generating some invalid MACs; this is hopefully only valid ones.
righthand 6 hours ago [-]
KDE Plasma has a “Random” button next to the MAC address field in the Network Manager UI. I’m on Debian Testing so not sure when it was added.
vachina 6 hours ago [-]
I used to strap 20 virtual eths to my Linux box because my dorm gave only like 512kbps per account, and then aggregated the 20 interfaces.
xrisk 5 hours ago [-]
How was the auth done? And for that matter what logic did the traffic shaping use?
kazinator 8 hours ago [-]
This has been an option in Android network settings forever: randomize your MAC. I think it's enabled by default now?
It's a basic privacy feature; you can be fingerprinted by your device's MAC.
jck 8 hours ago [-]
Yep. Android does this by default, but each ssid gets a randomized MAC which persists. It is still straightforward to trigger a MAC change manually tho. It is useful for privacy but imo useless for the public wifi limits use case since they almost always require an OTP via SMS to log in.
rahimnathwani 6 hours ago [-]
For devices running Android 11 or higher, users can enable non-persistent MAC randomization globally for all Wi-Fi networks (that have MAC randomization enabled) through the developer options screen. The option to enable non-persistent MAC randomization for all profiles is found at Settings > Developer Options > Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization.
tengwar2 2 hours ago [-]
OTP via SMS: depends on the country. These days it's not very common in the UK. They often ask for an email address, but my experience is that most of the time they don't check it for validity.
matsemann 6 hours ago [-]
Could you describe how? Quick searching doesn't show it to be "straightforward" as far as I can find.
hhh 8 hours ago [-]
you have both options in ios/macos, fixed random mac per ssid, and rotating
NoahZuniga 8 hours ago [-]
No, this setting randomizes your MAC address between networks, but you keep the same MAC for a specific network. So if you want the network to think you're a new user, you'll need to change this specific network MAC address, and this isn't a setting enabled by default (and oftentimes is not even a setting)
khimaros 7 hours ago [-]
GrapheneOS has per-connection (as an alternative to per-network) randomization which is enabled by default
rahimnathwani 6 hours ago [-]
Android 11 or later allows the choice in Developer Options.
netsharc 8 hours ago [-]
It's also in the Apple devices, you just have to "forget network" and reconnect for the device to tell the network of its new fake MAC address.
alt227 5 hours ago [-]
How does that work with MAC address conflicts and clashes? I naively thought every MAC address had to be unique.
BobbyTables2 3 hours ago [-]
They must be unique in a LAN segment. And only the lower 3 bytes in a MAC are “unique” as the upper 3 are the vendor ID and relatively fixed.
In practice people put fewer than 256 devices on networks (class C), so they have less than 1/65536 possibility of complete failure. And far less because they have a mix of OUIs.
But yeah, if you put a few hundred or thousand security cameras or other device from a single vendor, all on the same network, conflicts are certainly possible.
MAC conflicts are also a bit nasty to troubleshoot, and less obvious than IP conflicts.
diggan 4 hours ago [-]
There are like 50 trillion possible addresses, unlikely to clash in one network :)
^ seems like the way to go. open source and more features.
mannyv 7 hours ago [-]
If you really want to screw with these set your MAC address to 00:00:00:00:00:00
It’s an illegal address, but most equipment will take it because test devices occasionally come from the factory with that MAC. But higher level stuff might barf on it because it’s technically illegal.
netik 7 hours ago [-]
The trivial defense against this is time limited passwords for Wifi access. Deny all access until a valid password is entered, only permit that password and MAC address pair for n minutes.
Buy a coffee, get a new password, etc.
pimlottc 6 hours ago [-]
On a technical level it’s trivial, but you’re taking about having a shop replace their wifi router and/or update firmware, create some way for staff to see the current password and/or integrate with POS systems to print it on the receipt, update signage, etc. Hardly trivial for the average non-techie business owner.
reaperducer 6 hours ago [-]
So "trivial" that this is how it was done years ago, but then coffee shops gave up on it because it turned it not to be so trivial after all.
Their employees' time is more effectively spent making coffee than repeatedly providing low-level tech support for random password problems.
13 minutes ago [-]
glerk 8 hours ago [-]
Alternatively, disconnect from the wifi, use this command and reconnect:
sudo ifconfig en0 ether 02:11:22:33:44:55
Just ran into this on icelandair.
pcl 7 hours ago [-]
That’ll buy you one new turn of the crank; you’ll need to change numbers once every expiration period.
glerk 7 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure the electron app has the same limitation (popover notification says “join the network again for free wifi”, besides you wouldn’t be able to change the mac address if the network interface were actively in use)
avidiax 9 hours ago [-]
I feel this would be more useful as a utility to manage your MAC addresses.
That would let you, for example, clone a MAC address or IP address between your computer and a phone, and maybe automatically resolve contention.
That way, you can split purchased WiFi (such as on a plane) between multiple devices.
jagged-chisel 4 hours ago [-]
That’s only going to work on one device at a time. Don’t think that your phone and laptop with identically MAC addresses are going to magically share the connection.
tptacek 2 hours ago [-]
Or you could just comply with the terms you tacitly agree to when using these services. Use this stuff or don't, but if you do, you don't get to complain about GPL infringement anymore.
balls187 4 hours ago [-]
Haven’t ever encountered any place that had a wifi time limit. In the late 2000’s internet cafes had time limits but that was enforced on their own devices.
Is there a specific scenario where time limited wifi is common place?
mcshicks 4 hours ago [-]
I think the name refers to the limits some airlines have. JAL for instance offers one hour free on some flights.
andy99 4 hours ago [-]
I was trying to understand how this could be used for flights. I've seen either having to enter your last name and seat, or loyalty plan number to get in-flight wifi. Are there really airline wifis that give every mac address a free amount of time?
A lot of airlines now offer free "messaging" - usually just text on common messaging apps like WhatsApp. I've been meaning for years to write some kind of server that could give me useful functionality over chat messages.
mcshicks 3 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure it will work on JAL at least right now. They just asked for an email. But it was also a new service so maybe to wanted people to try it. It occurred to me at the time that two devices with two emails should work for twice as long. For what I wanted to do on that flight, i.e. check and send a few messages the one free hour was fine. But yeah of course they could change it so that would not work.
josu 4 hours ago [-]
Airplanes. Some airlines offer 30 minutes of free wifi or something.
johnebgd 3 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of Perfigo Smart Access before Cisco bought them. Network security with a MAC address whitelist. If you knew a whitelisted computer you’d have the same access it permitted. This was back before captive portal took off…
nixpulvis 6 hours ago [-]
I used to use this little macOS script at coffee shops.
A few years ago I saw a tip somewhere here on how to scan which MAC addresses are connected to nearby wifi and hijack their mac address and steal their internet connection.
boston_clone 8 hours ago [-]
Can you not manually set your MAC address in the network configuration portion of macOS settings anymore? Does this not accomplish that same task, just with an abstracted layer of “randomness” for address generation? Another commenter already de-bloated the entire application into a bash one-liner
jagged-chisel 4 hours ago [-]
“Randomness” and “one less thing for me to think about”
ClawsOnPaws 4 hours ago [-]
Since this is only available for mac, couldn't this fairly easily be solved with shortcuts?
crustycoder 8 hours ago [-]
On android it can be toggled on If Developer Options are enabled.
Doesn't Mac already have this with rotating MAC addresses? I also ran into an access point that detected this and required me to turn it off to continue.
myself248 8 hours ago [-]
I wonder how it detected it. Perhaps the randomly-generated ones are mostly in invalid/unassigned MAC space?
jasongill 8 hours ago [-]
There is a "local bit" in MAC addresses per RFC 7042, so MAC addresses that have their second character as E, A, 2 or 6 are "local" which effectively means "randomly selected by software". So my current macOS selected MAC address of 16:6a:d2:20:e6:eb is "local" due to the second digit in the address being 6
bapak 8 hours ago [-]
Oof, I wonder if this is the reason why I constantly have issues with my M1 Mac connecting to cafe hotspots. Regularly I find places that let me connect and then kick me off less than a minute later.
boston_clone 8 hours ago [-]
I had no idea about this; generally i thought it was done by OUI like the GP suggested - they have a small cached table of valid OUIs and warn on prefixes not in that subset. Thanks for sharing!
polivier 7 hours ago [-]
On Linux you can use `macchanger` to change your MAC address from the terminal.
satellite2 3 hours ago [-]
Fantastic. Now we're promoting script kiddies scamming airlines. That's a new low for hn
ndgold 8 hours ago [-]
Nice little helper friend
alpenbazi 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
deadbabe 6 hours ago [-]
This is so unethical and no one gives a fuck, society crumbles when people just feel entitled to take more than their fair share.
chrisfosterelli 6 hours ago [-]
This is hacker news. Hacker ethos is rooted in the intellectual challenge of overcoming software systems and electronic hardware. It's the same ethos that stole long distance phone minutes, traded warez, and got free satellite channels. You don't have to do those things but you probably won't convince those who do that their 20 extra minutes of wifi will be the downfall of society.
47MB for the UI & boilerplate around the business logic.
I get that this may be the easiest way to develop and publish an application today, but it's sad that this is the direction we have taken in recent years.
Business logic size: ~20 bytes Total app size: ~47 MB = 47,000,000 bytes
Bloat factor: 47,000,000 / 20 = 2,350,000
Let’s scale this up and say the business logic is 1 pound.
Then the whole app would weigh: 1 lb × 2,350,000 = 2,350,000 pounds
What weighs ~2.35 million pounds?
TOTAL: ~2,304,000 lbsThe business logic is like shipping a 1 lb object (a book, a flash drive, whatever) by loading it into two fully loaded 747s and strapping a blue whale on top.
Just to run 20 bytes of logic.
I think this is not the case. E.g., we replace our computers every few years, but not because the new ones can do things that you can't do with your current computer. It's because the software you use to do the same things keeps getting more resource-hungry.
When you have so many processes on a modern machine competing for resources, when every app chooses to be bloated and slow it really adds up.
How far we’ve fallen.
Upgrades shouldn’t ever break things, bugs and vulnerabilities never exist, and Rube-Goldberg machines should work 100% reliably day in and day out.
Unfortunately reality doesn’t work that way…
Qatar might even give you a plane!
The business logic for humans is a single reproductive cell.
A single sperm weighs 2.3 x 10^-11 grams. If the average male weighs 75kg the. The bloat ratio for a human male is 3.2x10^15
Getting back to the app there is huge value in not needing to run the command yourself. Sure it’s wrapped in a UI that comes with “bloat” but honestly who cares. When was the last time someone needed to worry about hard drive space, when it comes to a 40mb file.
All of which sucks up your compute resources and battery. Repeat for every such little utility app you have on your Mac. Some may implement that random stuff inefficiently (eg very frequent telemetry), which sucks even more. Some of it may even be wrong, vibe coded, or copy pasted.
Personally, puts me off installing random utility apps, even if the single utility would be useful.
At peak it’s 1/4 to 1/3rd the time.
Cars are slow around town.
And to top it off, the dual flights and whale would need complex orchestration too!
We just call it Kubernetes…
Mass is a nonsense analogy that doesn't reveal anything useful.
That being said, the fact that quick maths can give you a 6 orders of magnitude difference between functional code and the package is probably reason for concern.
This is not 'an app to change MAC address' but an app to 'overcome WiFi time limits'.
ps: I love both space stations and Unix
People who don't like the developers work can always write and publish their own application, of course.
Is it worth it? Probably not, since this is a single-platform app to start with, but JS+HTML are easy to theme and customize, and Qt is... not quite as simple.
Yeah, that definitely describes every AI codebase I have seen..
2) the dev has 64gigs of ram and a newest CPU and doesn't care about performance issues for people on older computers... that's why you need gigs of ram just to read a weather report online.
>content-length: 47262814
Sigh...
There is a `airportd.sb` file, which appears to be some permissions based thing in s-expression/LISP. Weird.
Edit: Spun up a macOS 15 VM and I got this:
WARNING: The airport command line tool is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. For diagnosing Wi-Fi related issues, use the Wireless Diagnostics app or wdutil command line tool.
I guess they weren't kidding.
`networksetup -setairportpower en0 on && [... set MAC ...] && networksetup -setairportpower en0 off`
I think it's pretty safe to assume that modern Macs will always have en0 as the WiFi adapter, but if you wanted, you could use `networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder` to find the associated device.
But you're unlikely to be taking one of the machines that has built-in ethernet to the airport or coffeeshop.
I was doing some work in a small-ish county jail/sheriff's office in the States. As part of that work, I needed some Internet access.
Because jail (thick, reinforced walls and lots of steel) the cell phone coverage was basically shit -- otherwise I'd have just used my phone like I would normally have done approximately anywhere else.
It was a fun dance: Requesting access via wifi, getting sent a code via SMS, and then going outside, turning off wifi to establish an actually-working network connection, retrieving the code (yay Google Voice), and then going back inside, turning on wifi, entering the code, and actually using it.
There was some other detail (perhaps relating to very short timeouts or re-registration issues or MAC randomization) at some stage of the operation that seemed extra-insulting, but my mind has forgotten whatever it was.
I have no idea what this song and dance was intended to provide, prevent, or enforce.
Istanbul Airport added a workaround: a physical passport scanner that stores your info and generates a code as an alternative to SMS verification. The whole thing just feels like a VPN ad.
Definitely does not happen on "free trials" on in-flight Wi-Fi for obvious reasons.
For MacOS (Sequoia+) you can just forget the network and reconnect to get a new MAC address [1].
Android's documentation for if it decides to generate a new address per connection is a little vague [2], but I'm guessing forgetting and reconnecting works as well, you may also need to flip the "Wi-Fi non-persistent MAC randomization" bit in developer settings.
On Windows, flipping the "Random hardware address" switch seems to cause it to generate a new seed/address for me.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-euro/102509
[2] https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/wifi-mac-random...
In practice people put fewer than 256 devices on networks (class C), so they have less than 1/65536 possibility of complete failure. And far less because they have a mix of OUIs.
But yeah, if you put a few hundred or thousand security cameras or other device from a single vendor, all on the same network, conflicts are certainly possible.
MAC conflicts are also a bit nasty to troubleshoot, and less obvious than IP conflicts.
https://github.com/halo/LinkLiar
It’s an illegal address, but most equipment will take it because test devices occasionally come from the factory with that MAC. But higher level stuff might barf on it because it’s technically illegal.
Buy a coffee, get a new password, etc.
Their employees' time is more effectively spent making coffee than repeatedly providing low-level tech support for random password problems.
sudo ifconfig en0 ether 02:11:22:33:44:55
Just ran into this on icelandair.
That would let you, for example, clone a MAC address or IP address between your computer and a phone, and maybe automatically resolve contention.
That way, you can split purchased WiFi (such as on a plane) between multiple devices.
Is there a specific scenario where time limited wifi is common place?
A lot of airlines now offer free "messaging" - usually just text on common messaging apps like WhatsApp. I've been meaning for years to write some kind of server that could give me useful functionality over chat messages.
https://gist.github.com/nixpulvis/d83c0ae70a4c3a06797b
https://gothub.dev.projectsegfau.lt/alobbs/macchanger