I got into tech from the ground floor, electronics and circuits. Working my way up, I realized unless I write it all myself 99.999% of devs don't see every one of these issues a problem, nor a problem they can solve. It compounds. The only solution I can see right now, is to opt out.
I don't don't want a Google device, I don't like them, I don't want to pay Google a dime. So I'm left with basically no options for a usable smartphone base. That's the TLDR.
In college I worked with a team that was building a device to track packets. What we learned is that so long as a device had a radio in it and the radio/modem was powered on, we could know your physical proximity to a single array antenna within about 2 meters. Since then I realized there is no way out.
I then learned how digital radios work, wrote firmware for them. Any antenna with an amplifier can pick up signals the analog end is tuned to. It's the system (os/driver) developer's job to filter out useless information. Which means that so long as you have a radio tuned to the same frequency everyone else is using (wifi, bluetooth, 4G-5G) the modem sees every packet that matches the preamble and decides to handle it, or drop it. So every wifi device, for example, reads every wifi packet from every device in it's radius. It sees the hardware (mac address) of every device and decides to pass it or discard it.
If you wanted to listen, it's called promiscuous mode, most wifi hardware supports it and most linux and windows network drivers support it. You can install a program right now, on any wifi enabled linux device, and see the approximate proximity (based on rssi) and the hardware address of every wifi enabled device around you. You could record all day long. You can know who is driving by your house, how often, what direction they were headed (and approximately how fast they were going) if they stopped at a red light, or even how much wireless activity was happening and then suggest they were using their phone while parked. No special hardware required.
If you have a radio, it can be monitored.
If you record audio, they can recover the 60hz (and harmonics) noise from the power grid and determine your approximate location and time.
ChipTuner
npub1qd…3fqm7
2026-01-16 17:03:14 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…mmch
Author Public Key
npub1qdjn8j4gwgmkj3k5un775nq6q3q7mguv5tvajstmkdsqdja2havq03fqm7Seen on
wss://nos.lolPublished at
2026-01-16 17:03:14 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "I got into tech from the ground floor, electronics and circuits. Working my way up, I realized unless I write it all myself 99.999% of devs don't see every one of these issues a problem, nor a problem they can solve. It compounds. The only solution I can see right now, is to opt out. \n\nI don't don't want a Google device, I don't like them, I don't want to pay Google a dime. So I'm left with basically no options for a usable smartphone base. That's the TLDR. \n\nIn college I worked with a team that was building a device to track packets. What we learned is that so long as a device had a radio in it and the radio/modem was powered on, we could know your physical proximity to a single array antenna within about 2 meters. Since then I realized there is no way out. \n\nI then learned how digital radios work, wrote firmware for them. Any antenna with an amplifier can pick up signals the analog end is tuned to. It's the system (os/driver) developer's job to filter out useless information. Which means that so long as you have a radio tuned to the same frequency everyone else is using (wifi, bluetooth, 4G-5G) the modem sees every packet that matches the preamble and decides to handle it, or drop it. So every wifi device, for example, reads every wifi packet from every device in it's radius. It sees the hardware (mac address) of every device and decides to pass it or discard it. \n\nIf you wanted to listen, it's called promiscuous mode, most wifi hardware supports it and most linux and windows network drivers support it. You can install a program right now, on any wifi enabled linux device, and see the approximate proximity (based on rssi) and the hardware address of every wifi enabled device around you. You could record all day long. You can know who is driving by your house, how often, what direction they were headed (and approximately how fast they were going) if they stopped at a red light, or even how much wireless activity was happening and then suggest they were using their phone while parked. No special hardware required. \n\nIf you have a radio, it can be monitored. \nIf you record audio, they can recover the 60hz (and harmonics) noise from the power grid and determine your approximate location and time. \n\n\n\n\n\n",
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