

Hotspots for Obama (or Romney) - OJKoukaz
http://hotspotsforobama.com/hn

======
nostromo
I like HackerNews to be a supportive environment for startups, but this raises
some questions.

Publishers trying to make an honest buck will dislike this. So will cafe
customers that just want coffee and wifi and not your political positions, and
the privacy conscious who now have their browsing data being sent off to an
anonymous third party.

And that's putting the security question aside. (If these guys got hacked,
they could very easily harvest your bank and email passwords; I'd be more
trusting if they're weren't also using an anonymous whois proxy.)

The best businesses find win-wins (Airbnb is good for travelers and real-
estate owners) -- but I only see one win here.

Edit: If this company ends up expanding available public wifi hotspots by
rewriting some ads and providing some revenue back to the wifi provider, that
could be a win-win for customers and cafes and could be a real hit.

~~~
guelo
> Publishers trying to make an honest buck will dislike this.

Publishers most likely won't know this is happening.

> Cafe customers that just want coffee and wifi and not your political
> convictions will dislike this.

It is up to the cafe owner whether they want to do this, or whether they want
to put a political sign on their windows for that matter.

> The privacy conscious who now have their browsing data being sent off to an
> anonymous third party will dislike this.

All advertising networks sends browsing data to third parties. Whether it is
this one or some other one doesn't seem that big a deal.

~~~
rlt3
>It is up to the cafe owner whether they want to do this, or whether they want
to put a political sign on their windows for that matter.

His point wasn't about whether or not the owners could or could not support a
candidate, it was whether or not they should support a candidate.

You're absolutely right, it is up to the owners. And this seems to be pretty
cool. But most coffee shop owners (which seems to be the target) will not want
to alienate part of their already small group of customers.

~~~
theevocater
This may come off as a joke, but dead serious:

It seems you have never gone to get coffee in San Francisco.

~~~
rlt3
Well there are always going to be exceptions to the case. I would also assume
there are a greater number of people going to coffee shops in San Fransisco
than there are in other cities.

------
MartinCron
I'm not going to pass judgment on the ethics or usefulness of this app, so I
thought I would try some constructive criticism.

1\. The top-right page curl to switch between Romney and Obama has mismatched
alt-text.

2\. Instead of being partisan, maybe you would want a "HotspotsForAmerica"
that would just remind people to vote for the candidate of their choice,
instead of telling people who they should vote for.

~~~
blafro
>I'm not going to pass judgment on the ethics or usefulness of this app...
>2\. Instead of being partisan, maybe you would want a >"HotspotsForAmerica"
that would just remind people to vote >for the candidate of their choice,
instead of telling people >who they should vote for.

I'm not going to criticize this comment but ...

~~~
MartinCron
I was contrasting my feedback with the "this is a horrible thing to do"
comments that popped up before mine. But, yeah, point taken.

------
lukifer
This is the tackiest possible way to do this (who hasn't already seen every
political ad 50 times?), not to mention the extreme inpropriety of asking for
a user's router password.

Far easier, and more tasteful: rename your SSID. It's the digital equivalent
of a sign on your lawn.

------
PanMan
How does this work? They have an android app. I guess that connects to your
router to change your DNS. (which then resolves their IP for some ad hosts).
But how does it set their DNS in your router? Is there a standard API for
that? Or did they make a scraper-app for lots of routers?

------
mindslight
Why is everybody expending so much effort to support the Obama+Romney
campaign? Isn't it pretty clear that they're going to win?

~~~
ceejayoz
The "they're identical" meme flies in the face of reality. Compare Antonin
Scalia with Sonya Sotomayor and tell me Obama and Romney don't have
significant differences that'll affect the country as a whole.

~~~
clarkm
I often hear people use this argument, but I'm not sure I buy it. Won't the
Justices just wait until a President of their preferred ideology is in power
before retiring?

Justice Ginsburg is only 79 -- both John Paul Stevens and Oliver Wendell
Holmes retired when they were 90.

Edit: It looks like Ginsburg has expressed her desire to retire at 82 (in
2015), so unless she changes her mind, it will matter.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Ginsburg was treated for pancreatic cancer three years ago.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/st...](http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/story?id=6813420&page=1#.UImvrbR9ndk)

------
jlees
On first read I thought this implied it would _add_ Obamads to my browsing
experience, but looking more deeply, it just replaces other ads with Obama.
Neat idea.

------
bengl3rt
I would love for Barack to win, but this is just dirty. Who's going to pay for
web advertising anymore if any malicious DNS in the middle just feels entitled
to hijack them for its own purposes?

~~~
bacon_blood
Who's going to pay for web advertising anymore if just anybody can install a
browser extension able to block ads? We should boycott Firefox.

What kind of world is this where I can't fund companies by learning about the
best kind of paper towels or being retargeted about a product I already
bought?

I recently saw an interesting thought about the state of piracy, and it being
a symptom of a flawed business model. What's to say advertising in its current
state is the future of Internet business models?

If enough users don't want to see the current kind of ads, don't they become
far less effective?

~~~
bengl3rt
My issue with it is that it's silent. Unless there is some landing page that
tells every new MAC address once "Listen, some content is being replaced",
they are SILENTLY manipulating peoples' web traffic and presenting it as
canonical. That rubs me the wrong way.

~~~
bacon_blood
Ad providers already silently notice context and provide relevant ads
(manipulating the eventual result of your page load). Isn't that just as
creepy? (especially when it happens inside e.g. Gmail)

~~~
jlgreco
No, because in that case I am getting exactly what I expect. An ad from an ad
network that the site I am visiting chose to use. That is not unexpected 3rd
party manipulation.

Would you be okay with me going into coffee shops and running a NewsTweek node
on their wifi that swapped out all the advertisements with ones that I could
get paid for? Of course you would not, and not merely because I was not the
operator of the hotspot.

~~~
lunixbochs
The mere existence of a NewsTweek shows how you should really not have high
expectations about traffic going over open wifi.

Do you honestly think changing advertisements is the worst case for a mitm
device?

~~~
jlgreco
Do you honestly think I was suggesting that such a use is the worst case for a
mitm device?......

Once again however, it seems we are in a situation where people on HN do not
recognize that there are two distinct meanings of "expect" (for the remainder
of this post, the second will be emphasized). Consider the following:

    
    
      A parent of a teenager in highschool finds their child watching
      TV instead of studying for an exam.  The parent shakes their head
      and says, *"I expect you will do well on that exam tomorrow!"*.
      They expect the child to do well on the exam, but they would be a
      fool to *expect* the child to do well on the exam.
    

A user of public wifi can expect their wifi traffic to not be tampered with,
but they would be fools to _expect_ that.

...Now, back to the actual point at hand, _in reality_ , tampering with public
wifi traffic, not merely logging/dissecting it, is fairly rare. There is no
reason to fault non-technical users _(the majority of society!)_ for having
_technically_ unfounded _expectations_. Their _expectations_ may be foolish
(in this case, there is little doubt of that), but that does not give
technically inclined members of society a license to prey on them.

------
beatpanda
Add Jill Stein please.

~~~
beatpanda
And given the political character of HN probably a lot of people here are
voting for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate.

~~~
pilom
Socially liberal, fiscally conservative, and vowed to stop the drone killings.
The only reason not to vote for him is the whole "3rd party" thing (not that
that will stop me).

~~~
_delirium
Another reason could be those of us who support a national healthcare system
(though I generally like Johnson's non-economic views).

------
tmarthal
Is there a geolocation map of all of the hotspots that have supported either
candidate? I would assume that would be more interesting than the
configuration to a lot of people.

------
ck2
If you change your vote based on a hotspot name, I'd like to ask you not to
vote.

Or drive or be around children for that matter - because you are dangerously
ignorant.

