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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: January 16th, 2024

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  • Legislate mandating firewalls and routers have easy to use parental controls for internet settings.

    Sorry but no. That would drive up the cost of all firewalls and routers, for no real reason, except that the manufacturers can because the government says they have to. And most firewalls that offer content filtering need some sort of a subscription to keep the filters up-to-date.

    Never mind the fact that a router’s job isn’t content filtering (it’s routing).

    Todays parents grew up exposed to the internet. If we don’t know how to protect our own kids and teach them how to safely use the internet, then we are hopeless as a generation.

    Btw, Cloudflare WARP is free for a small number of users and has a pretty decent web filter built in. It’s far from easy to use, but it’s free and effective. I use it on my 9yo’s Fedora laptop, and as long as he can’t sudo, he can’t turn it off. And if he even tries to sudo, he will be reminded that he’s not in the sudoers file, and this incident WILL be reported.










  • In OpenWRT, I believe it’s in the settings for the “primary” ssid on each radio, which is usually the first one in the list (per radio) on the wireless settings page.

    Openwrt also has options to block multicast or convert to unicast. Also make sure you are disabling lower speeds on the radio. That will reduce your max range, but devices that communicate slowly are another killer.

    Broadcast and multicast both have to go at the ssid basic rate…the slowest speed supported by the AP. That could be 1Mbps. And then the AP has to repeat it. And depending on the type of traffic, this may also initiate more broadcasts from other devices on the network.

    So if you can reduce broadcast/multicast, or increase the minimum speed, you’ll have significantly more time. Since wireless is a shared medium, “time” is really the most critical resource.


  • Other people’s wifi can affect yours, and vice versa, if they are occupying the same channel(s).

    Most likely something on that channel is spamming multicast. That kills most consumer wifi routers (in default settings). Usually something like a sonos or Google home broadcast group.

    Could also be a camera that’s constantly transmitting, also occupying the channel for a long time.

    But really, it could be anything.

    Use an app like PingTools (Android) that can graph what is on each wifi channel. Check to find the cleanest channels in your area and configure your router to use that channel.

    Failing that, if it’s on your network and you don’t know what it is…change your Wi-Fi password to kick everything off, then slowly re-add devices with the new password until you find the culprit.

    If you’re curious and technically-minded, I highly recommend this write up: https://www.wiisfi.com/

    Also, you may be able to get better speeds by using narrower channels. Especially in busy areas. Easier to find 40-80MHz of clean spectrum than it is to find 160MHz. And even easier if you are open to using DFS channels (but these should generally be avoided). Doubling channel-width also doubles the noise, adding 3dB to the bad side of your SNR.

    What causes speed drops and packet loss is almost always interference/weak signal. Getting high packet loss on an 80 or 160Mhz channel will be slower than a solid, clean signal on a 40MHz channel.

    If you are closing your laptop, don’t. The antennas are usually located in the monitor bezel and are intended to be vertically-oriented, like they would if you were using the laptop. Having it shut means a lot of the signal is directed into the laptop chassis and your desk, which would especially impact upload from the device.






  • AI is in the tool chain now whether you want it or not.

    People who don’t use new tools get stuck behind.

    If you find a carpenter who is bashing his nails in with a rock because he doesn’t trust hammers, or because blacksmithing is bad for the environment, you are going to be dealing with a shitty carpenter who is a lot slower and less effective than one who learned how to use a hammer.

    The genie is out of the bottle. That much is not changing. Accept it, or be a Luddite. Quite literally, because that term comes from people who refused to accept that machines were taking over textile work.

    Denial is the most predictable of all human responses.