One day, WiFi might even be usable as a method for making a reliable network connection
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
607 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
76008 readers
3889 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Just imagine how much humanity could benefit if sharing and accessing knowledge was freely available for almost anyone
load more comments
(5 replies)
One can dream. For now though it's the one radio my phone doesn't use. Mobile network tunneling through Bluetooth baby! My atrial fibrillation when remain between me and my meth dealer! Shout out to Craig!
Damn. “TikTok would like to access WiFi”
We need new permissions for this shit. WiFi can do presence detection and now heart rate? What next? Eye tracking?
I'm pretty sure applications can only send and receive data, with the finer details being handled by the OS.
But yes, there should be a specific permission to access biometric information.
That makes sense. I assume these exotic ability’s require precise control of the radios. So, for now, until an API made, we should be safe.
"Google enters the chat"
Suddenly your new dishwasher sends your health protocols to your doc. The fancy toilet helped with a consistency analysis and your smart lamps add a sleeping protocol.
Maybe not eye tracking, but probably head tracking.
Apps watch how we move/rotate devices to understand whether we’re walking, resting, lying down, etc., I assume? (The most popular apps I mean with large data teams)
Wish that stuff could be turned off unless it was e.g. a game that made legitimate use of the accelerometer.
GrapheneOS does allow you to turn it off. It has a permission switch for your phone sensors. I don't know if there are other versions of android that allow the same.
Android throttles the hell out of WiFi requests since (I think) Android 9. You need to manually allow WiFi request spamming in developer options to let apps do something like determining location from it.
WiFi can also do pretty precise location. Bluetooth/BLE even more precise (inches or less)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
This tech scares the hell out of me.
Great if we can make MRI quality imaging eventually available, but being able to monitor where people are in their homes remotely and their health status in our world is fucking dangerous.
Real question: how do you stop this?
I don't use wifi at all in my home but I live in an apartment and all my neighbours obviously do.
How in the hell do I stop this from getting into my home?
Turns out the tinfoil hat gang was right the whole time.
Innocuous radio signals are one thing but if my apartment is inundated with radio waves that can literally be used to track my movements and monitor my heartbeat, being forced to allow this is a perverse and sickening invasion of privacy.
If you think the lack of privacy is bad now, just wait till they use this to target done strikes. We're all in for super fun times.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Own the network. Run OSS.
That's about it.
"Howdy neighbour. Your wireless modem/router combo is mine now. Thxkbye"
load more comments
(9 replies)
load more comments
(8 replies)
Insurance companies...sorry you're denied for being a health risk....we can see from your home internet that you're an unhealthy person
Remember kids, you can buy your own home fiber router! Don't live with someone else's equipment between you and the internet.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Wifi sognals can read my heart rate, and be used to track me around my house. But I still can't get a signal in my room one floor up from the router.
load more comments
(4 replies)
Wow, all that with an esp32. No fancy hardware needed.
Which means we can have that data in Home Assistant sooner or later🤔
Inb4 the cops starts doing nonconsensual "polygraph tests" using wifi
Those 5G Conspiracy Theorists probably feel vindicated after reading this lol
https://wballiance.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/WBA-Wi-Fi-Sensing-paper.pdf
Comcast knows when you masturbate.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This is really cool and will be useful. My second thought was oh great now my smart TV can see how excited I am watching their injected ads and how many people saw it too. One of the many reasons to never connect modern TVs to the Internet.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The Paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/11096342/metrics#metrics
This is very cool and useful, but at the same time very concerning. While I see a lot of good use cases for this ranging from hospitals to stress recognition in animals I Am also quite scared, that big corporations will use this to spy on us. Luckily currently it is only possible to measure the pulse at about 3m, but it should be possible to increase the range. It may fall short when multiple persons are in detection range, but as far as I have read from the paper they did not test this.
load more comments
(11 replies)
How much longer until I can be like "Hey, Google; scan the area for lifeforms?"
load more comments
(2 replies)
And I guarantee some organization will figure out how to use this for some police state bullshit.
That's already the original use case. Cardiac signature biometrics, can install in a doorway and do identity verification and track/monitor every individual that passes through the threshold
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Capitalism asks whether you are the kind of person harvesting people's health info without concent or selling aluminum mesh underwear with fearmongering campaign. No other choices.
Cool tech but I question it's usefulness. They focus on clinical in their language but anybody who's on telemetry orders needs waveforms not beats per minute. I care if they're suddenly in afib, not that they're a little tachy after getting up to go to the bathroom.
Well some darker entities probably would appreciate access to this tech. In order to confirm mission complete if you smell what I am cooking.
load more comments
(2 replies)
So how long before our phones can measure heart rate from your pocket, or being held in your hand?
They already can by putting your finger on the camera and lighting up your finger with the led light. Then it detects the rhythmic changes picked up by the camera... At least 10+ years ago. It was a good novelty feature, but turns out, for most healthy people, checking your heart rate gets old after a few runs.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's probably possible right now.
2026: Major grocers found using customer heart rate to personalise prices - higher the pulse, higher the price
load more comments
(7 replies)
So the tricorder in Star Trek was just a fancy, battery powered wifi hotspot??
load more comments
(2 replies)
3 letter agencies have already been using this for cardiac signature identity verification and tracking for a long while
view more: next ›