Is that some sort of hatch in the pavement? You order something on Prime, and moments later, a slab embossed with Amazons' logo opens, a deliveryperson jumps out and deposits the package into your outstretched arm.

Almost. It's anyone with Amazon IoTs sharing wifi with each other.

It's ambient network access, a desirable behaviour which I anticipate our descendants (or their descendants) will take for granted.

Imagine gradually choking as you wait for a friend to open their front door - oops, you forgot their air doesn't know you're allowed to use Oxygen, hope they get here in time to explicitly authorise you to breathe...

Because of the Network Effect the grand total number of Networks you care about will always be... one. So, it doesn't make sense to have a dozen fiercely independent WiFi networks in the same physical volume all of which are, in fact, just offering access to the same network (the Internet) but with separate credentials needed for each.

There have been very slow steps on the obvious way forward here. If you've been a student somewhere civilized in the last couple of decades you might have seen EduRoam. Under EduROAM your credentials from say, the University of Florida, or Stanford work at MIT and NYU, but also in Oxford, and in Tokyo. No more need to maintain separate "guest" networks so that the visiting lecturer's laptop works. But most of us, most of the time, are using dozens of little pointless fiefdoms.

Right, but do you want that one network to be run by a single company called Amazon?

All these guides showing you how to create a quick VPN on something like Lightsail. All this does is change your ISP to be .. Amazon!

Also putting all your big-tech eggs in one basket isn't a great direction for the Internet.

You will still have to identity particular users, because you want to sell access, because you want to identity those who break the rules and attack other users. But most importantly, users want to separate their networks from one another.

OTOH the technology can move from private radios to the model of cellular networks, where you don't care which tower you connect to, and the security / authorization lives at a different level.

That’s exactly what is being pitched! Sounds pretty great to me. Just move auth upstream, like eduroam/ cellular. Doesn’t preclude people from making their own separate access points, but would make doing so antiquated for most people.

Only if you tolerate devices with non-free software.

Like any TV?

Never needed a TV once since I was old enough for P2P to be invented

Yeah or anything else with non-free firmware.

So, everything practical.

If you bought it, you own it. Does your DVD player hardware come with a license agreement?

I can't tell if I'm missing something here because for some reason I think you're expecting the answer to be "no"?

But, yes DVD players come with license agreements, EULAs.

Hunh? So you are saying that if I buy the DVD player at https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-dvd-player-with-hd-upconve... that I'm agreeing to an "EULA" that doesn't seem to exist on the site and that is apparently not mentioned at all before purchase?

Please tell me you're joking.

Do you live in the USA? Very likely yes that DVD player will come with a EULA (End User License Agreement) in/on the box when it arrives.

Other places I'm not sure, but I'd guess you'll get one anyway.

Will they hold up in court? Who knows. But look and you're likely to find one they'll at least pretend applies to you.

(And to be clear, yes I agree that this is _ridiculous_)

If you're in the EU, that DVD player won't have a EULA attached. If you're in the US, it will.

The last one I bought came with a printout of the GPL2.

You tell me because I don't own a DVD player. :)

Yes.

Commercial displays are a solution here, though they're expensive.

Don't put your wifi credentials into your TV, then you've effectively got a giant monitor/commercial display.

If you're feeling especially crafty, open the back of your TV and disconnect the wifi/bluetooth board. It's a discrete board in all of my TVs of different brands. I assume they build them this way so they can use the same network board design/production for years and just upgrade the main logic board in newer models.

I can't find any references right now, but someone once mentioned TVs shipping with SIM cards embedded so that they could collect telemetry even if you didn't connect it to your network.

Even if it isn't/hasn't happened, there's nothing to stop someone like Samsung sticking cellular modems in their TVs to work around you doing this.

If we think about it like Air-Tags too, popular enough product, it'll just connect to one of your neighbour's TV's which _is_ online.

I remember years ago, Vodafone gave me a "free" femtocell because signal in my home was poor. They neglected to mention the fact it broadcast a public cellular signal which allowed other Vodafone customers to use _my_ internet bandwidth.

> there's nothing to stop someone like Samsung sticking cellular modems in their TVs to work around you doing this.

True. Although, if they put that SIM card on the bluetooth/wifi network board that I'm disconnecting then I'll be ok.

I would be surprised if they used cellular technology for this though (from a cost perspective). I'd expect a lorawan/helium like implementation.

>Don't put your wifi credentials into your TV

Amazon has a solution to this. If your tv is within wifi range of an amazon device, your TV will be able to connect to a network. It might even be your neighbors device.

Can't say I'm planning to buy a TV anytime soon but that's good advice, thank you.

Expensive compared to the advertising-subsidised consumer version, maybe.

Expensive compared to retail-volume models. This is also a fight against manufacturing economies of scale.

Samsung sells "Commercial signage displays" to people, $1k for a 65" display.

e.g. the Samsung QB65R on Amazon

So yeah it's like $100-200 more expensive, but hardly seems.. unapproachable?

Or your neighbors do.

Yup.

Even radiuz was probably better.

https://wifinetnews.com/archives/2004/06/radiuz_combines_wpa...