Apple changed their documentation at my request but it proves they don't care about privacy

Exactly! If the aggregators don't get you, the trolls will!

BTW, I hid my SSID and now I can't find it anywhere!

Hi Jeff,

I was wondering where you've been as you seem to have retired from the Internet service business in recent years. I see you on the electronics repair ng sometimes, but rarely here nowadays.

I still remember you proved how the router transmit power claims are completely bogus, much as Apple's claims of battery efficiency were.

You, of all people, have my true identity as we've conversed a few times over the years in email and on Usenet about our shared WISP experiences, e.g., surfnet, ridge, etheric, hilltop, xfinity, et al., and you and I both personally know most of the local operators, e.g., mike, loren, dave.

When I moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains from flatland in San Jose, I was shocked there was no wired services, so people only had satellite or WISP.

I ended up inviting the local WISP team to serve me, for free, and as a result, they serve the whole mountain as I have a repeater on my rooftop.

For years, I provided them with good business by setting up all my neighbors with 2.4GHz radios and eventually the 5GHz rocket dishes.

At some point they started doing the installations themselves, so I no longer had to log into every neighbor's router to update the firmware.

I want to THANK YOU for teaching me a LOT of what I know about Wi-Fi networking, particularly you're pretty clear on how they lie about decibels, where we have control over our transmit strength if we like.

You also taught me a lot about changing the BSSID, or not, which was well before Google became big so it's fundamental knowledge you imparted to me.

I very much APPRECIATE all the help you've provided over the decades. You haven't posted much lately, so I'm happy to know you're still around!

I think we're almost the same age, where I'm an octogenarian, while you're most likely still a young kid in your 70's, as I recall (but maybe not).

In summary, I love the sagacious sharpness of your sarcasm, which is, like Paul's, well honed by decades of experience finding things out the hard way.

I'm HAPPY you're still around, as you, & maybe Jon, & perhaps Lawrence, & maybe even Andy, are the only ones seemingly capable of understanding this topic, where if we follow the breadcrumb of the BSSID:GPS pair, the way Apple does it is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the way everyone else does it.

Apple claims "we care about your privacy"... except when they don't.

--

Trolls agreeing with trolls, and yet, they're not only wrong, but they can never seem to add even a single itty bitty iota of value to the topic.

Sigh...

There is no sense in explaining that both of you don't understand the issue, other than to repeat, for the umpteen time, the word "mass" in *Surveilling the Masses with Wi-Fi-Based Positioning Systems*

And, for the other half of this technical topic, that Apple changed their documentation at my request, which is proven by the fact I made that claim on these very newsgroups, that they said they would, before they did it.

I officially retired on Dec 31, 2020, after the CZU fire and the middle of the Covid 19 pandemic. At the time, I was 72 years old, which I thought was a good age to retire.

alt.internet.wireless was intended to cover various methods of radio communications technology (cellular, wi-fi, satellite, point to point, etc) to obtain internet access. Initially, most of the design and testing work was in the US. By the time I retired, it had mostly moved to the far east.

Yeah, that got me rather angry. That was a clear example of Apple hiding what I consider to be a design error by burying the problem under a mountain of technobabble and claiming a rubber bumper had solved the problem.

"Cell Phone Antenna Hand Tests"

"Apple iPhone users angry about the "death grip" won $15 in federal court."

Don't worry. I may have your secret identity somewhere on my computer but at this time, I can't find it.

I moved to the hills in about 1974(?). There were enough lines and phone numbers for everyone. Near the end of the 1970's, the BBS's (bulleting board services) and garage ISP's arrived. Available phone lines and numbers suddenly became scarce. In about 1994, the BBS and garage ISP's moved into problem office buildings, which freed up quite a few phone lines, which were immediately consumed by a student population increase inspired by rapidly rising real estate costs.

Nice. Good to see you made it work. I tried to organize something similar but using buried twisted pair, coax cable, fiber and some Wi-Fi distributing internet, cable TV, satellite TV, and some CATV cameras. It worked fairly well, until a newly arrive resident decided to complain about the service to the county, instead of to us. I was tired of getting midnight support calls and was more than happy to see the service calls disappear with the equipment.

Good plan. I took the middle road by having the neighbors bring their equipment to my house, where I had a proper messy workbench to deal with updates and rat damage. House calls were billable and intended only for installations. The parents tolerated that because it saved them money and gave the local teenagers some networking experience.

That's a rather odd way to describe the problem. Wi-Fi TPC (transmit power control) was NOT required for the early Wi-Fi hardware. By the time it became mandatory, the number of Wi-Fi devices was many times larger than was the systems were originally designed to handle. TPC was one solution for keeping interference down to a tolerable level. I have some opinions on the matter, but they can wait for some other time. "8 reasons to turn down the transmit power of your Wi-Fi"

Remember the "alligator"? Spoiler: An alligator is an animal with a very big mouth and tiny ears. The Wi-Fi equivalent is a radio running very high transmit power but had a deaf receiver. Such a system, will cover a wide area in transmit, but can't hear any small devices (laptops, smartphones, IoT device, etc over the same area.

Y're welcome. If you know the fundamentals, you can use them to build a model of how the network works. In the other direction, knowing how the higher levels of the network works, without knowing the fundamentals, leaves you trying to reverse engineer the fundamentals from the upper network layers. That's much more difficult than starting with fundamentals.

Y'er welcome. It's good to know someone was listening.

Well, that's a problem. I'm getting old (78 currently), tired and lazy. Debating the finer points of some technology eventually turns into an endless time burn. Your endless discussion with "Carlos E.R." is a good example. Carlos seems to baiting you with less than brilliant one-line comments, which usually results literary effluvia from you. All that does is waste everyone's time. Yours is wasted because you write more than anyone is willing to read. My time is wasted, but I just don't have the time to read the entire thread. I suspect the typical Usenet reader thinks in a similar manner.

Hint: Adjust your quality and quantity to that of your audience. Too much is sometimes worse than too little.

Close. I'm 78. I look and feel somewhat younger for a rather odd reason. From my parking space by the road to the upper level of my house is about 50 stairs. Everything that goes in and out of the house needs to navigate those stairs. My cardiologist believes that the stair climbing is largely responsible for my tolerable health. Unfortunately, exercise is not a cure of geriatric (old age) problems. For example, I discovered that I was lactose intolerant about a month ago. I've also had to deal with some more serious medical problems (and medical fire drills). Eventually, I'll need to build a firewood and funicular lift.

Thanks.

Apple's success has been primarily from their "walled garden" philosophy. The implication is that everything inside their "walled garden" is different for what is outside. Also, if something is the same both inside and outside of their "walled garden" (i.e. standards), Apple will do everything they can to make their part of the problem as different as possible. USB-C chargers perhaps?

I'll pass. I had dinner at midnight last night and don't want a repeat performance. Good luck.

Baiting! Interesting idea, but no, I have no such intention. Not knowingly, at least.

Agreed. (You) Refusing to get engaged in his sprees of insults, misrepresentations, lies, etc., is in *no* way 'baiting'. Quite the opposite. Any and all baiting is purely on 'Arlen''s side.

That said, (obviously) no ill feelings at all towards Jeff.

I concur. Although, the curt responses from Carlos are a symptom of being vilified for days by Arlen.

Good point. I didn't read the entire thread. All I saw was long and repetitive comments by Arlen and short, one-line replies by Carlos. I interpreted the short replies as an attempt to extend the discussion without adding anything of value. I also tend to ignore one-line replies because they tend to contain little or nothing of value. Whether this was intentional trolling by Carlos, or frustration dealing with Alren, is unknown.

I have a simple solution to the problem. When I'm involved in a discussion that has devolved into on-line comments (which incidentally seems to be the fashion with text-messaging style comments), I just stop adding my fuel to the fire. Similarly, when the argument has reached an impasse, I also stop as further repetition will serve no useful purpose. When the discussion inevitably changes topic, I immediately question my continued involvement. Basically, if I don't think it's worth reading, I won't write anything. Those are a big part of why I avoid posting comments in newsgroups and forums.

Gone to help a friend with his camper resurrection project.

Jeff,

You already said it yourself :

Arlen is well know for ignoring everything he doesn't want to hear, and keep reposting his own "truths" - even if they have been shown to be wrong.

And as you probably have noticed by now, everyone who does not agree with him is either dumb, or a troll.

Regards, Rudy Wieser

The reasons I typically reply with a short text are usually:

• After reading the post, I have an unanswered question. I don't need to reply to it all, specially if it is a repeat and doesn't address the question that I made perhaps on a previous post, so I insist on the question. I don't say more because I want focus.
• I don't accept some stated fact as a fact, and just say so and ignore the rest of the text as superfluous.
• The other person is insulting long and wide. I stop reading and ignore the rest of the post.

In this long thread, I stopped answering to de escalate.

I would ask Jeff Liebermann to please read the entire thread before forming an opinion about me. Or, if you do not want all that work, just read the posts by, for example, Keith Thompson, and Arlen answers, then conclude if Keith is a troll as Arlen says. I do not want to explain anything, to not influence you.

Dear Jeff,

Did you get a ...00 phone number for your landline? Somehow, I managed to get a home /landline/ number in Iceland that ends in 00, and you can give me a call. As I don't live in Iceland anymore, this number is now S.I.P. and I'll have to turn the "phone" on so give me some advance no- tice before you attempt at calling me.

Alternatively, I can give you a call using my U.S. based S.I.P. number and you'll merely have to tell me when is a good time to call you.

Best wishes, and happy phone numbers!

No. I've had the same phone number since about 1974. It's in the signature. However, it's no longer a "land line" using copper wires from Ma Bell. It's been an Ooma VoIP number since Apr 2022. I use Xfinity for internet connectivity. I've been retired since the end of

Ooma uses SIP (session initiation protocol). To make a SIP call, I need to connect one of my SIP phones or adapters, and call direct. However, I have ports 5060-5062 blocked because I got tired of having my SIP phones probed and crashed.

At this time, I don't want to talk to anyone, especially if I need to reconstruct my SIP phone setup. I've been working on projects that are going too slowly but which hopefully will end by November (or December).

In that case, I simply wish you happy retirement, and success in your projects. Have a nice life!