Wireless Is a Trap - <AUTHOR> https://www.benkuhn.net/wireless/ <comment><USER6> I totally agree with the writer, I have dedicated the last ten years to specify and implement a new single wire communication protocol for IOT and home automation applications called PJDL (Padded Jittering Data Link): [https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/blob/master/src/strategies/So...](https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/blob/master/src/strategies/SoftwareBitBang/specification/PJDL- specification-v4.1.md)

It performs much better than wireless alternatives.

<comment><USER7> 16kbps over 2km, wow! How sensitive is the system to the quality of connection?

If I hide enamel coated filament just beneath my lawn is that going to be good for a one wire bus to work? Does it even need to be insulated?

<comment><USER6> It works even if you use the human body or water as a conductor, as I showcase in this demonstration (sorry for my strong italian accent): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWlhKD5lz5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWlhKD5lz5w)

This is the implementation: [https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/tree/master/src/strategies/So...](https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/tree/master/src/strategies/SoftwareBitBang)

This is the source code: [https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/blob/master/src/strategies/So...](https://github.com/gioblu/PJON/blob/master/src/strategies/SoftwareBitBang/SoftwareBitBang.h)

It is extremely rugged, it works much better than any alternative I have ever tried. Ah, it is free and open-source ;)

<comment><USER8> The Italian accent made me think of Marconi, also your accent isnt heavy at all, just adds a little bit of color.

<comment><USER6> That is really a good compliment :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _> Dongles. Even though all computers now have built-in Bluetooth, many Bluetooth accessories today still ship with proprietary dongles. I assume this is because the manufacturer was worried about inconsistencies or incompatibilities between their own Bluetooth implementation and your computer's built-in Bluetooth hardware/drivers._

I've never seen this before. Is the author mistaking proprietary 2.4 GHz receivers (that do not use Bluetooth) for OEMs' "own Bluetooth implementation"?

They refer to swapping between built-in Bluetooth and the dongle, which sounds like Logitech's line of dual-mode keyboards that can use either Bluetooth or Logitech's proprietary "unifying receiver," which is based on Nordic Semiconductor's nRF24L, not Bluetooth.

<comment><USER10> Bluetooth implementations are so stupidly quirky I can totally see proprietary dongles as being required to guarantee connectivity.

Fitbit won't pair with my phone, but works OK with my wife's and my tablet. Garmin fitness tracker syncs with all 3 devices, but will stop syncing with my wife's phone within 2-3 days and will need to be paired again.. My bluetooth headphones work with my phone and my wife's phone, but not my tablet. Every 6 months or so I still have to use a paperclip to reset the headphones to be able to re-pair them with my phone after they stop working for no reason.

I've seen similar problems with phones I've owned before.

<comment><USER11> Another example of this is with 'Windows Mixed Reality' VR headsets. The controllers connect with the computer via Bluetooth and will often be noticeably laggy or unreliable when using onboard Bluetooth due to interference from other devices on the motherboard. Switching to an external Bluetooth dongle on a USB extension cable results in _significantly_ improved controller tracking, and this issue is partly to blame for the poor reputation of WMR controller tracking.

<comment><USER12> I suspect that's one of the reasons Valve put a Bluetooth receiver inside the original Vive headset.

<comment> m-ee They also didn't use it to connect to the controllers. They used two nRF24L01 transceivers which use Nordic's proprietary shockburst protocol. Easier to set up and better latency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Somewhere on HN in a similar discussion a bluetooth stack engineer showed up and explained that the entire bluetooth comms stack is a Rube Goldberg house of horrors, so this really no surprise.

And then there are the bufferbloat people who finally tracked down the fact that in various common situations, the normal Wi-Fi protocol has a nasty interaction where it self-degrades to ridiculously slow speeds, and will take 2-5 MINUTES to recover.

We just don't have enough people doing serious whole-stack hardware+software analysis on our wireless stuff. At least outside of cellular telephony - probably because the money is more concentrated there.

<comment><USER14> I maintained a commercial Bluetooth stack for several years. My opinion is that the stack is actually not _too_ bad (although Low Energy complicated it). The problem is that it has to be all things to all people.

There's discussions about codecs elsewhere on here - quality, latency etc. There is a lowest common denominator so that everything works for everyone but the information as to whether you're getting something else is hidden, both at purchase time and run time.

Two things that would help:

Manufacturers actually putting supported codecs somewhere in the purchase information. Why does tech specs on my Bose QuietComfort not have that information anywhere? If you Google you can eventually find a support question and answer.

Exposing runtime negotiation results to the user. In Windows when I'm connected to Wifi it shows signal strength and other basic info via the icon in the taskbar. When I'm connected to Bluetooth why is there not a display listing the profiles and codecs in use ("High Quality Audio mode via Aptx Low Latency", "Headset mode" etc.).

We actually need something similar for USB now as it has the same problem as Bluetooth - one transmission medium for a whole lot of different things all of which have to be able to negotiate to a common denominator. It happens a little bit with just the charging component (phone lets you know it's charging slowly if the charger can't negotiate up enough) - why isn't similar information provided somewhere for the rest of the USB features ("Connected to device X, can't enable feature Y as cable doesn't do Z").

<comment><USER13> That's great for techies like us, but terrible for the 1000x more people who want stuff to "just work".

As an example, Windows partially exposes that with my current setup and it's a right pain, when some apps (e.g. Zoom) decide they preferentially want to use some other bluetooth codec than the one I actually chose.

Most people really just want one thing which says "headphones" and for the software/hardware to Just Work.

<comment><USER15> Maybe most people are _wrong_ after all.

There's all this talk of ethics and of logical fallacies that's making the rounds, and then you have this failure to realize that non-techies are _conditioned_ to see technology as some sort of black magic that you have to be a special kind of not-quite-person in order to be able to make sense of.

No matter what spin you put on it, life in our society is _not_ simple. Any kind of tool tends to work better if you're using it with some degree of understanding how it works.

If only our industry would somehow magically stop enabling entitlement and complacency (and _make it easier_ for users to "do their homework")... then maybe things would actually "just work" much more often.

<comment><USER16> You're missing the actual logical result of life in our society not being simple: people do not have enough time or available energy given the rest of the demands on their life. Civilization has evolved toward specialization, and the basic expectation of specialization is that the output of specialists is useful to individuals in other specialties. It is foolish to expect or require everyone to become an expert on bluetooth configuration options to have some headphones that don't work or a mouse without latency spikes. This isn't entitlement; this is _efficiency_ and the way society is expected to function. It is a very long time since we have expected everyone in our society to be an expert at everything.

<comment><USER17> Good point - however, then at least have an option for specialists to get access to the info.

I also believe we haven't yet explored all options to make certain "specialist" topics more accessible to the general public. E.g., I'm continually surprised how much the actual network traffic between apps/devices and their corresponding servers is hidden. I believe a simple visualisation about what apps/devices are talking with who would do a lot to at least get some basic understanding of what's going on.

People seems to be very capable of learning concepts if they see personal relevance - e.g. teens know very well what the battery, wifi and signal strength indicators on their phones mean.

<comment><USER18> > e.g. teens know very well what the battery, wifi and signal strength > indicators on their phones mean.

I will disagree with this whole-heartedly. Full bars are meaningless, and dBm is hidden (on Android at least). What we see is whatever the OEM chooses, with actual signal strength hidden away.

<comment><USER19> Also, RSSI is typically calculated from the successfully received frames. So you can receive a comfortable -60dBm signal.. for the most of the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's with the hate against wires? Wires always work. My wireless printer never worked. Well it prints once, then I have to power cycle it to print again. Thanks Samsung.

The minimalism point doesn't really cut it: you still need a wire to charge batteries inside things, so it's one more item. And batteries go bad in a matter of years, so you need to buy a soldering iron and a LiPo cell from shady sources unless you're into replacing >$100 devices every three years or so. Or buy external AAA batteries and a wall charger like 90s toy cars.

I don't mind the aesthetics of wires. I love the mess behind my desk and the thought that electrons are being pushed at 40 Gb/s to form an image. Mix and match different colors and braid types for a free steampunk look.

<comment><USER21> My only argument against wires is the inevitable wear and tear. I don't know if this is just me or my poor choices regarding equipment, but I regularly have to replace USB, RJ-45 and 1/4 jack(guitar) cables because they simply die on me.

Same goes for sockets - recently I bought a certain laptop because, among other things, it can be charged also via USB-C (albeit slowly), giving me a fallback socket should the primary fail - had this happen to my previous device.

<comment><USER22> What are you doing to your wires?

Aside from Apple brand cables, which lack strain relief, I don't think I've ever killed a single USB or Ethernet cable. If it weren't for the transition from USB 2 to 3, I'd probably keep the same cables for my entire life at this rate.

<comment><USER21> I ask myself the same question every day.

Anyway the USB-C I got with my phone lasted two years, but I've used it everywhere, my 1/4s broke because I've made the mistake of buying "by Klotz" cables, RJ-45 are mostly Chinese crap so no surprise here.

<comment><USER22> Maybe you're pulling by the cable and not the connector? Some of the USB C connectors have very small connectors, making this an easy problem.

The more I think about it, I'd probably destroy lighting cables regularly if it weren't for the fact that I only use wireless charging. You have to unplug that cable a lot, which is pretty hard on the cable and connector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Bluetooth headset latency kills me, especially now so many devices are losing the headphone jack. As a hobbyist musician its unusable, same issue for games.

It's just worse in every respect and the headsets cost three times as much for the equivalent sound quality.

<comment><USER24> I'm waiting for some airpods to be delivered today so this is painful to read. I don't mind a few ms of latency but are we talking noticeably bad latency? The only experience I have is with BT pairing with my car for music. I don't even use voice in the car.

<comment><USER25> For playing music or even calls you won't notice any difference.

The problem is trying to use and app like GarageBand where you need instant response to instrument control. In fact, first time you open GarageBand and it detects you're using Bluetooth it'll give you that warning.

<comment><USER26> > For playing music

What do you mean by "playing"? I play the digital piano with wired headphones, and with bluetooth sound it is absolutely unplayable due to the latency.

<comment><USER27> Playing as in pressing play and listening. He was separately talking about interactive playing with the GarageBand example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Many people dont realize, but WiFi chipset is very important. Get cheap/free stuff from your ISP, and it will give you trouble (especially under load/multiple clients). Buy expensive gear with Broadcomm/Qualcomm hardware in it, and you will be better off. ASUS with rt-merlin firmware is a solid choice.

Also, placement of router is very important. Most people have their wifi in the basement, where their cable/phone line comes in, spending some time, and running a physical wire somewhere to the center of the living space, setting up router on a shelf or a table will go a long way in propagation. I have mine setup in the center of my bungalow, and I have 5Ghz WiFI reaching from my driveway to the backyard, no issues, and never any hickups.

Also, if you pick a high end router (Like ASUS 86U with merlin) -> you get some proper Wifi diagnostic tools built in, like number of packet retransmits, bad FCS, etc, which will help you diagnose your issues.

Multiple people on the same band is not as big of an issue as many claim it is. 5Ghz (no B/G legacy frames), and 80MHz bandwidth ensures that most traffic is very short in actual airtime. Not perfect, but, it is orders of magnitude better than 2.4Ghz, despite there being really only 2 80MHz channels available. There is also, channel 165, which is 20Mhz only, but rarely occupied.

<comment><USER29> FWIW, Xfinity provided me an "xFi" modem/router combo that performed great. I replaced it with a standalone modem + a Unifi Dream Machine from Ubiquiti, and my wifi speeds are significantly slower now. Still worth it to regain control of my network, though.

<comment><USER30> That makes no sense. That device is almost bleeding edge and should be just as fast if not faster than your router. Only thing I can think of is the ethernet port out of the modem isn't gigabit and that's why it's slower.

<comment><USER29> I get full gigabit when wired in, it's definitely the WiFi that is the bottleneck.

With the Dream Machine built-in AP I get 400-500mbps down, compared to the xFi which got nearly full gigabit speeds. This is with direct line of sight to the access point, maybe 8 feet away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I agree, wireless is overrated in "desktop" situations.

One solution that I hope more monitor manufacturers would follow is the recent Dell "hub" monitors with built-in Ethernet (RJ-45), USB-C, downstream power, USB-A, etc.

[https://www.dell.com/lt/business/p/dell-u2421he- monitor/pd](https://www.dell.com/lt/business/p/dell-u2421he-monitor/pd)

Only one cable to connect.

<comment><USER32> I wish something like HDBaseT would catch on.

<comment><USER33> For anyone else wondering [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDBaseT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDBaseT)

> HDBaseT, promoted and advanced by the HDBaseT Alliance, is a consumer > electronic (CE) and commercial connectivity standard for transmission of > uncompressed high-definition video (HD), audio, power, home networking, > Ethernet, USB, and some control signals, over a common category cable (Cat5e > or above) using the same 8P8C modular connectors used by Ethernet.

<comment><USER34> Sure it sounds neat, but it also sounds a lot like that xkcd about standards.

Also, the 8P8C connector is just godawful. I mean, it's fine for the first 3 days until the clip breaks off.

[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)

<comment><USER35> 8P8C has the huge advantage of being pretty easy to terminate with some basic, cheap hand tools. I'd hate to try that with a USB-C connector.

<comment><USER34> That's true, with the caveat that cheap crimptools are often terrible, and good ones are surprisingly expensive.

<comment><USER36> Eh, my "cheap" TRENDNet stip+crimp tool does the job just fine. I'm not a heavy user, but I've done well over 50 terminations with it and every time I've had an issue it's due to myself doing a shitty job inserting the wires into the connector.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've advocated for this for years to anyone who will listen, but it's like preaching in the desert.

It doesn't help that many people are on laptops, and the war on ports (in general, and ethernet ports in particular) has made wired options exceptionally inconvenient. Not only you have to go out of your way to buy extra hubs and adapters that are not included with the laptop, you then have to carry a bag full of dongles everywhere.

<comment><USER38> I only miss is 8P8C port, but only when I'm traveling and want wired connection.

USB C made my life easier. Now I only have to plug one cable into my laptop from my monitor and have everything(wired network, external display, speaker, webcam, microphone, keyboard and mouse).

I don't see a reason to carry a dock with me. A lot of people carrying a Micro USB A to USB A cable and a dock instead buying a Micro USB A to USB C cable which makes no sense

<comment><USER39> Honestly, I hate USB-C. It's flimsy as all get-out. All the USB-C stuff I have seems to maintain a poor connection when moved, and it doesn't feel anywhere near as sturdy as a plain-old USB A. When I'm using a laptop, I want something I can leave plugged in when I pick up and move the computer and not lose connection when jiggled. They should have made something that valued a sturdy, stable connection over slimness.

<comment><USER38> You should feel a distinct click when you plug in your connector. I never had any problem with my laptop.

What you described can be caused by lint inside your USB-C port. I had this problem only with my phone. Try to get it out with a toothpick.

<comment><USER39> I appreciate the help, though I've looked inside my ports before and found neither dust nor lint. The problem seems to be mostly with cheaper stuff. I've mentioned this to USB-C enthusiasts before and gotten back, "Well, just by better-quality stuff." The difference is, I never had any problem with the connection on cheap USB-A devices. If the connector seemingly can't be made both cheaply and well, that is a huge flaw with the standard and means it ought to be abandoned wholesale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I genuinely don't understand what the author is trying to say. It seems like their thesis is this:

> Wifi (and bluetooth, etc.) sucker you in by making it seem like they "just > work." But if you investigate, you'll often find that the wireless link is > operating in a degraded state that performs much worse than a wired > equivalent.

Wireless technologies are founded on exchanging the convenience of wirelessness for reduced performance and reliability. There's no "gotcha." That's the whole idea. Maybe that trade isn't for you, but it's not a secret. If you take any course on physical networks, they go over the advantages of not sharing the medium.

As for the hellishly complicated tech stack that is bluetooth...sure. I don't think it's _because_ bluetooth is wireless. We've had regular articles here on the total mess that is UBC-C[1]. Wired standards are not free from complex protocols and error-filled implementations. All things being equal I imagine that wireless protocols will tend to be worse - but all things are frequently not equal.

There are no free lunches and wireless technology trades performance for convenience. I myself have some wired devices and some wireless devices and am quite happy with the result.

Edit: This feels like saying "Phones sucker into making you think they're a computer. But if you investigate, you'll often find that they have less processing power than many other computers!"

[1] From 15 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435805)

<comment><USER41> >Wired standards are not free from complex protocols and error-filled implementations.

Sure, but once you figure it out for the set of devices you are using, that's it! It just works until it breaks for good. Wireless stuff... not so much. One day it works, the next it doesn't.

<comment><USER42> For certain devices like headsets, even the wired ones I find randomly stop working, I am sure it is not purely random but typically due to opening up X, Y, and Z programs In a certain order. Issue resolved with restarting but that can be pretty disruptive in the middle of a work day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Wireless is OK, you just need to use it correctly.

The trick is to treat it as a cellular system, and use the same methodology used to build cellular networks:

(1) Use only 5GHz for Wi-Fi. Turn off 2.4GHz WiFi - it's an overloaded, noisy spectrum band.

(2) One router per room, alternating channels between rooms.

(3) Use MU-MIMO (802.11ac gen2) or 802.11ax. The efficient MTU for Wi-Fi is much much larger than the MTU used for real time communication. MU-MIMO lets you send multiple small packets destined for multiple users inside one big wifi frame.

(4) Don't use mesh devices. They multiply the "airtime" of each packet by x2-x4 depending on number of hops and number of packet retries.

(5) Leave 2.4GHz for Bluetooth, and "junk" ISM devices (microwave oven, very- low bandwidth devices, etc).

People push wireless to the breaking point, then complain it's broken...

<comment><USER44> >(1) Use only 5GHz for Wi-Fi. Turn off 2.4GHz WiFi - it's an overloaded, noisy spectrum band.

This is an extremely bad idea in some countries, or if you're not careful which channel you select. In nearly all countries some of the 5ghz channels are shared with RADAR and require DFS. In some countries (eg Germany) all of the channels do.

The idea behind DFS is to detect radar pulses and then shut down the network for a period of time, this can be triggered by radar or interference.

<comment><USER43> Radar/DFS is a whole other can of worms.

My rules of thumb for DFS:

(1) If you can use a DFS channel - use it. it's usually less congested than the regular channels

(2) If you're unlucky and DFS is triggered once per month or more, try repositioning the AP or changing the AP model to one less sensitive to radar pulses

(3) If no luck - use one of the non-DFS channels. Every country has those. In Germany, that would be channels 32-48 or 149+

Note that DFS (5.4GHz) is for _weather_ radar. In some countries it's operated only in winter season. You may want to use different channels in summer and in winter :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Many people complacently or willingly use wireless technology for fixed- location devices. While I can appreciate that running Ethernet cable can be a bit frustrating, seeing a desktop computer using wifi makes my head hurt.

Especially in the current work from home era, I've seen a resurgent enthusiasm for desktop computing. The simple rationale is: if you're going to be stuck at home and have a decent home work environment, why suffer the downsides of portable devices? Why not leverage the upsides that come from fixed-location workstations (large displays, faster higher-wattage CPUs and GPUs, wired full- size input devices, wired networking, and so on).

It's been amusing to see how many people have had their eyes re-opened to the advantages of high-end desktop computing thanks to environmental circumstances.

<comment><USER46> WiFi is faster than most people's WAN connection so it's fine.

High wattage machines make rooms uncomfortably hot and expensive to cool.

<comment><USER47> Fast WAN connections are becoming more common. Also while WiFi has decent bandwidth, the latency/jitter/loss are still ass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I enjoy the convenience of wireless. But I do make a conscious effort to put devices that are going to stay in one location on Ethernet if possible. I even specifically bought a certain Roku model mainly because it had Ethernet.

So basically the only things on WiFi are laptops, phones, and devices which don't support Ethernet. For the most part I don't notice issues with my WiFi. I do use the Ubiquiti Unifi access points for providing WiFi in the house.

<comment><USER49> I know people who have to have everything wireless. Little do they realize that all that extra radiation is probably slowly killing them. On top of that is the security risk of having personal data leaking out of your room to whomever decides to eavesdrop on the signal (A threat model which becomes clearer when you see how easy it is to collect signal leak)

<comment><USER50> The sun beams down 1 KILOwatt of light (50% infrared, 40% visible, 10% other) to every square meter on the ground. Most of the infrared and much of the visible light is absorbed by your skin. Your WiFi router on the other hand has a power of 50-150 MILLIwatts, and won't let you set it higher because that's illegal. And your phone etc. run at around 15 milliwatts.

I guess if you built a ridiculously high powered WiFi antenna (which would be illegal) and stood next to it for a while, you would cook yourself. But BT/WiFi ain't gonna do shit to you.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i4pxw4tYeCU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i4pxw4tYeCU)

<comment><USER51> Standing outside in the sun all day everyday is absolutely deadly.

<comment><USER52> If that were the case, there would be no African tribes left alive.

<comment><USER53> Well, things that are deadly don't necessarily kill everyone.

<comment><USER52> By that rationale, walking is deadly. Breathing is deadly. Sleeping is deadly. This is not a valid argument supporting the stance that wifi is deadly.

<comment><USER53> Sorry, I didn't mean to argue that wifi is deadly (because power is so much lower), I'm merely agreeing with the parent that the _sun_ is deadly. I think the links to cancer are strong enough to warrant the term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The wireless mouse has been the exception to this rule for me so far: the G Pro wireless (and some other mice) don't have the latency issues, and have egregious battery life (and the charging cable fails over so it's basically just a wired mouse).

The lack of a cable saves a bunch of space and avoids the floppy cable. Probably irrelevant if you don't game, but definitely quite convenient for FPSes.

<comment><USER55> I just switched from wireless mouse. With high dpi and illumination, battery lasted single day. Wired mouse is much lighter.

<comment><USER47> I run my G603 on a single AAA battery with an AAA to AA adapter. So far I've been exclusively using "dead" batteries from other devices – each lasts a couple weeks! (In low Hz mode at least.. I don't feel any benefit from 1000Hz mode, even in Counter-Strike.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Hotels have universally switched to wifi, but I miss having an Ethernet jack. I think that at least some hotel Internet problems are actually wifi problems and not due to the crappy service provider they use.

<comment><USER57> A lot of hotels still have ethernet, but while the wifi might be free, most often than not, ethernet is not. In many cases some form of tunnelling allows to connect anyway (e.g. IP over DNS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My Magic Trackpad 2 has input lag the first time you touch it after more than, say, a second. Apple support said it might be interference and to turn off any other nearby Bluetooth devices. Oof. Ok, thanks.

Perhaps the next product I buy from them in an Apple Store I'll pay for by wafting my card around the contactless terminal a little before walking out the store saying "if it didn't go through, try turning off any nearby devices!"

<comment><USER58> You can use the Magic trackpad and Keyboard also with the cable. It won't use Bluetooth then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I use my Bose QC35 Bluetooth headphones with my MacBook to watch movies. The system has a comfort meter: when my head is in exactly the most comfortable spot on the couch, the Bluetooth signal drops out completely.

It also drops out when I touch my head or my face.

I have tried reorienting the laptop to no avail. No matter where the laptop is (or, in fact, any components of the system, including the couch between 1m and 2.5m distance from the laptop) it always finds the same comfort spot to drop out completely.

If I move my neck about 15 degrees to an uncomfortable angle, the signal is perfect.

An anecdote, yes, but a relevant one.

<comment> rv-de your body absorbs the EM radiation and shields the receiver from the transmitter.

<comment><USER59> Sure, but that does not strictly explain the phenomenon.

The headphones have clear line-of-sight to the laptop in both the "off" (comfortable) position and the "on" (infinite set of uncomfortable) positions.

The absorption of the radio signals by my large capacitance, I would think, doesn't change much with position. Also, it turns off when I scratch the back of my head.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> There is two changes that had a surprisingly large impact on the perceived flow and effectiveness of my daily work:

1\. Ditching notebooks for fast desktops

2\. Replacing wireless connectivity (esp. networking) wherever possible.

<comment> tokamak-teapot I've been doing the same. I've recently replaced the following:

* Macbook wifi -> wired Ethernet

* Apple Bluetooth trackpad -> wired mouse

* Apple Bluetooth keyboard -> wired

* Bluetooth / Logitech 2.4Ghz mouse -> wired

The one problem this hasn't fixed is keyboard connection to the MacBook. I still have to unplug the USB cable from the (Anker) hub and plug it back in again whenever the MacBook has been asleep. It's better than forcing a re- pairing of Apple's own keyboards (yes I've had two) with their laptop every day or two though.

<comment><USER47> Why would you get rid of the Logitech 2.4ghz mouse? These are great (well, the gaming mice), absolutely no difference in performance vs wired, no pairing required..

<comment> tokamak-teapot I'd sometimes have to remove the dongle and re-insert it for it to be recognised (again) by the OS. When I used it via bluetooth it would keep failing to connect and need manual deletion from the list of paired devices and re-adding.

Also its dongle seemed to interfere with my wireless Apple keyboard. Not sure but it seemed to correlate a few times.

It's much better with its own dongle, yes, but ... I got sick of the occasional issues. No issues with a wired mouse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Can anyone recommend a bluetooth headset (i.e. speakers and mic) which does not have this issue, as mentioned in the article:

"Low quality. Related to the codec issue, many bluetooth devices will play high-quality audio when the microphone is turned off, but degrade to much lower-quality audio when it's turned on. You can test this for yourself if you have a bluetooth headset: play music on it, then open your microphone settings to the page where it shows the mic input volume. You'll probably hear the audio cut out for a second, then return at lower quality. (This happens even with devices you might expect to be high-end, like my Airpods Pro + 2018 Macbook Air.)"

I have need trying to find any, but have failed till now, and do not have unlimited budget to buy and try many options.

<comment><USER62> You need to look out for headsets that support the Hands Free Profile version 1.6 [0]. This version adds optional support for much better audio quality when using the microphone. I'm currently using the Sony WH-1000XM3. Unfortunately HFP 1.6 seems not yet to be supported on Linux (i.e. Bluez/Pulseaudio)

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles#Han...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles#Hands- Free_Profile_\(HFP\))

<comment><USER63> HFP 1.6 does not solve the problem. Surprisingly, there is no solution [1]. HFP 1.6 supports "wide band speech with the mSBC codec," but this sounds terrible compared to the CD quality sound you get from the unidirectional A2DP profile. Some OSes automatically toggle from A2DP to HSP during a phone call (eg. the "auto_switch" option of PulseAudio's module-bluetooth-policy), but you can't use both profiles at the same time.

[1] [https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/duplex-high-quality- audi...](https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/duplex-high-quality-audio-for- bluetooth)

This is why the wireless ModMic [2] talks about Bluetooth codecs but actually requires a custom USB wireless receiver.

[2] [https://antlionaudio.com/blogs/news/introducing-modmic- wirel...](https://antlionaudio.com/blogs/news/introducing-modmic-wireless)

<comment><USER64> Yeah. It's possible that Bluetooth LE Audio could improve this, we'll see once they finally get around to releasing the specs. It certainly sounds like it's designed to support bidirectional audio links without the stupid HSP/HFP divide of classic Bluetooth. (There's more mainstream demand for this feature now due to things like voice assistants.)

<comment><USER61> What about dedicated Bluetooth headsets for phones, like plantronics? Aren't they supposed to work bidirectional with high quality audio? Or do they also use the standard Bluetooth profiles/protocols?

<comment><USER64> Bluetooth headsets like the ones Plantronics make are designed for making phone calls, and the limitations of the standard Bluetooth headset protocol weren't a problem for that because standard phone lines were monoaural with the exact same frequency response and bit depth limits so you weren't losing anything extra. The trouble is that people want to use Bluetooth audio for things like gaming, video conferencing, using voice assistants whilst playing music etc which have much higher quality audio. Also, phone calls themselves are slowly improving too with things like HD Voice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I've vastly improved the quality of my wifi by upgrading my routers and my devices. The important thing to remember is that wifi always performs as the worst device on your network. A dead-zone device hurts every device on your network. A G-only device hurts every device on your network.

So, 2 routers in my sms house, hooked together wired. All my priority devices have new dual-band hardware and are on the 5ghz network. Old devices are relegated to the 2.4ghz network, which is quite spotty owing to that.

Unexpected things can do real damage too. I had an older PC that had its wifi dongle plugged into a USB 2 port and it would frequently get multi-second ping spikes. The same wifi dongle worked fine on a USB3 port. I ended up wiring that one in.

Personally I've abandoned all wifi hardware companies other than Asus - <USER4> other one has let me down at least once, if not repeatedly.

In every other respect, Asus seems to be incapable of making devices that rate higher than a B plus, but in the lowered expectations of the world of wifi hardware companies where "occasionally functional" seems to be considered good enough, Asus' spotty quality is a huge step up.

<comment><USER27> > A G-only device hurts every device on your network.

Doesn't need to be on your network, just in your vicinity like from a neighbor.

<comment><USER66> What is the G only device doing that degrades performance on a dual band wireless network?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Buy a router that supports flashing [https://openwrt.org/](https://openwrt.org/) . It saves a lot of time. After about 2 years of trial and error i figured why the network becomes bad and stops working when i run torrent, i never suspected the router would be the culprit and thought ISP had an issue, turns out ISP is very reliable most of the time and its the router that is having problems. The problem with router is the debug logs are a joke and does not tell anything. OpenWrt made significant change to my life. Thanks OpenWrt deveoplers.

</comment><comment><USER68> His point about wifi network polling is spot on. I noticed this exact issue once all of my meetings moved to Zoom. It turns out that location services on my Mac frequently poll all of the nearby networks, causing tons of dropped packets which broke up the audio and video in Zoom. Once I figured this out, which took a while, I had to completely disable location services to resolve it.

Switching to a Unifi router and picking an empty DFS channel also improved my wifi experience significantly since I live in a NYC high rise. For those that don't know, many routers allow you to use a set of 5GHz "DFS" channels that are normally reserved for aircraft radar. By regulation, any router broadcasting on a DFS channel must be able to detect radar interference and switch to a non DFS channel immediately for a period of 30 minutes or so. If you live in an area that aircraft regularly hit with radar this be very disruptive, but if not, these channels often perform better than the dedicated 5GHz channels since most routers don't use DFS channels by default.

</comment><comment><USER69> as a wireless hater (and especially a hater of designed-to-fail rechargeables), I would love it if the trend reversed. I don't want to have to manage charging devices. I want a keyboard that works, always, if it is plugged in.

<comment><USER70> I've got a couple of wireless devices, and all of them charge using either micro USB or USB C, and my Logitech G mouse is the only one with a custom receiver, all the rest are Bluetooth. It's great. I no longer snag cables to the point of breaking with my chair, and if I do, they're just USB cables and are replaceable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Going from 2.4Ghz to 5Ghz was great for stability and speed... until spectrum started pushing 5Ghz as default and crowding the 5Ghz spectrum here. Then I hooked up cat5e and upgraded to gigabit service and it's been bulletproof on my desktop. I can't go back to wireless after wired.

I wonder if 5G is going to feel like Ethernet gigabit instantaneous levels of speed?

<comment><USER71> I love ethernet connections - you plug it in, it goes. Doesn't care what your neighbor is doing, and it's my understanding that there's less overhead in sending-receiving data over it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Related: anybody have experience with powerline ethernet? Are there good adapters that can make high-quality/high-speed ethernet connections over power wiring inside a home? I know these are a thing but I have no idea how good their quality is or how strongly they depend on the wire itself.

<comment><USER73> PowerLine uses very similar technology as WiFi does, except that power cables are significantly more noisy than air. As such, they usually perform significantly worse than wifi. With exception of certain cases like buildings with 19th century 2m thick walls.

In most other cases, quality WiFi equipment performed better and was more stable.

<comment><USER74> This has been my experience. I bought some Devolo powerline adapters a few years ago to try in my apartment, and got quite poor speed (<100Mbps) and network was rather unstable. Switched to WiFi and got better speed and stability.

Last year I moved to a new place and faced the same issue of wanting internet in a different room and tried the Devolos again. Same experience except worse speed. Again I had to fall back to WiFi, which at least gets me ~150Mbps here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I have a wired headset and everything on my home office desk is wired except for my mouse (now mice, since I'm trying out a 3-device logitech M720) and keyboard.

(Incidentally, the "lightspeed" dongles Logitech uses do work at 2.4GHz, but with a proprietary protocol -- which I think someone has already gone to the trouble of documenting, since IIRC it uses only the frame sizes and types it really needs to.)

Headsets, mics, laptops, are all wired (you can get pretty decent USB-to- Ethernet adapters for cheap these days), and give me zero trouble, but I could never go back to wired keyboards and mice because of the freedom and flexibility you get (I'm trying to wean myself off the Apple keyboard/trackpad combo into a Logitech K380/M720 combo to be able to switch devices more easily).

Unless you're a gamer (and really need a wired mouse to shave off those milliseconds), there's really no contest in terms of input devices. Audio, that's another matter entirely (I only use Bluetooth on the go).

OTOH, I have an Airport Extreme base station (set to 5GHz) underneath my desk for those times when I do need wireless (like bringing in a laptop for checking things, or my iOS devices).

</comment><comment><USER76> I kept jumping between wireless and wire because I'm annoyed by wires, and keep getting burned by wireless pitfalls through these years. But each round wireless seems to be slightly getting better over time.

Here are some tips I collected along the way:

1\. 2.4GHz sucks, use Bluetooth when possible. But Bluetooth sucks, too.

2\. You want to have fewer Bluetooth devices when possible, reduce the number of simultaneous connections. For example, I only use my Bluetooth mouse for gaming, and trackpad for the rest, so I would disconnect mouse when I'm not playing video games.

3\. You want to use some categories of Bluetooth devices first. For example, Bluetooth keyboards usually have great experiences so you may want to make your keyboard wireless first. Bluetooth mice and trackpads are Okayish, but not as great. Bluetooth headphones and speakers are usually bad. If you really want to use Bluetooth for Audio, sometimes devices from the same company may have better connections: Beats Studio seems to have a much better connection than Sennheiser and B&O on Mac.

After all, I still love the idea of wireless because it is nice on paper. It is mostly the de facto protocols and implementations that are terrible.

<comment><USER77> >2.4GHz sucks, use Bluetooth when possible.

Huh? Bluetooth _is_ 2.4GHz.

<comment><USER76> I'm sorry for not being clear on this but I'm not sure how to name it in English. I was referring to those wireless devices with a small USB receiver.

<comment><USER14> In the professional wireless development space, we call those "generic ISM band crap".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I recently played doom 1 with my girlfriend on our home wifi (chocolate doom for those interested). Just 2-player LAN coop.

The lag made it unplayable. We plugged in some ethernet cables and it ran fine after that.

</comment><comment><USER79> I'm happier and happier with my wired Shure SE215s. I realize that wireless is super convenient, but for someone who doesn't use their headphones a whole lot - mostly for long conversations and videos, cables don't bother me so much. And another plus is I can just change my cables when they wear out (MMCX standard): less waste, less to throw away.

What does bother me is having to use a dongle with my Pixel 3; the Apple USB-C to 3.5mm adapter is thankfully better (and smaller!) than what Google shipped with the Pixel 2, which suffered from really annoying echo problems.

</comment><comment><USER80> About the network polling addressed in the article, why does any app even need to poll for networks? On every computer, there's only ever one single app that needs to poll for networks, and that's the app that maintains your network connection. For every single other app, network should simply be considered a transparent service that they simply use and don't control. They have no business looking at other wifi networks. They don't even need to know whether they're on wifi or ethernet. Maybe they can ask the network app how crowded the network is, or whether whether they're free to use as much as they want or if they should tone it down a bit (which could be either because it's too busy, there's not enough bandwith, or because it's a metered connection), but other than that, they don't need to know.

Lately I keep running into these sort of weird, stupid problems in OS design, and it's making me want to write my own OS (which I won't do, because I lack the skill and knowledge).

I agree with much of the rest of the article too. I've always been annoyed that Apple doesn't sell a wired touch mouse. I love the touch mouse, I just don't love running out of battery while working. And I certainly don't like the way their more recent mice need to be charged with a wire inserted at the bottom! Who ever thought that was a good idea?!

In some situations, wireless can be very convenient, but when you're not walking around, wired is usually better in many ways.

</comment><comment><USER81> I bought a wired Jabra headset for this pandemic times, but nobody actually cares - and we chat without video. Went back to the cheap BT headset - <USER3> are too many advantadges of this freedom: can make a coffee, get the baby... while "in the meeting".

But the real most important point: I want to bet on the wireless future because I hate wires. I love seeing my table clean when I had a wireless Mac keyboard. And if Apple can make a keyboard that works reliably over BT for several months, then that should be our target...

</comment><comment><USER82> > _However, every time I can remember helping someone track down the source of > their connection problems, the culprit has turned out to be their wifi._

This is not my experience. I'd estimate wifi to have been the problem only 20–40% of the time. I've found a poor ISP to be the problem much more commonly. And then the last few percent of cases is other miscellaneous network topology problems typically from failing wired hardware, buggy router or dying dumb switch.

(I'm excluding "too far away from the router" from my reckoning, because in such cases that's been known to be the problem, and it feels unfair to criticise wifi for that unless you're going to criticise ethernet cables for not being where you want them. Notwithstanding this exclusion, I have found that being near the edge of a wireless network's reach is great at messing with both the router and computers; where I am at present, if I go a few metres further away from the router, my Surface Book's wifi connectivity stands a decent chance of kinda breaking after a while, so that it starts losing 5–30% of packets and getting average round-trip times to the router of 150ms—which together make it very close to completely unusable—until I next _restart the computer_ (restarting the wifi adapter isn't enough). I haven't determined who's at fault, the router, the adapter, or Windows 10.)

</comment><comment><USER83> That was a great story about actually managing to debug a wireless problem. I wish there were better diagnostic tools commonly available that would clearly explain these things. I'm not sure if in the author's case there is some software that would listen for extensive polling and flag that as an issue - even better if it could log running programs at the time and try and guess which one is causing the issue.

I'm constantly having problems with my mac laptops and after many hours (10+) of internet searching I still have no idea why the wifi doesn't always work reliably. Some days or weeks (months?) it is great. Other days every hour it is disconnecting. Sometimes resetting the router helps, sometimes it doesn't. The whole situation is extremely frustrating.

Some issues: Why am I getting a DNS issue when my wired desktop never has a wireless issue?

Sometime I swear that the laptops becomes much less reliable at the opposite end of my house as my router but the signal strength is generally still excellent (4 bars).

Anyway, I'm not asking to have my particular issues solved (although that would be much appreciated!!!!). The real issue just seems to be that debugging these issues is extremely difficult and not based on principles but just random things that people can try (e.g., delete your plist files).

</comment><comment><USER84> The other interference problem is that all devices talking to a particular access point are all transmitting on the same frequency. As wireless is a shared transmission medium they all have to take turns and if two or more devices happen to try to transmit at the same time they'll corrupt each other's message and have to go through the random exponential back off to try to find clear air, leading to random changes in latency & throughput.

<comment><USER85> >all devices talking to a particular access point are all transmitting on the same frequency

Not necessarily. I just bought a Triband wifi6/ax router for like 150 quid.

5GHz band A -->> Main computer

5Ghz band B -->> iPhones & tablets & laptop

2.4ghz band -->> Everything else that is potentially noisy (ahem sketchy IoTs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I exclusively use a wireless mouse. No latency, never have to charge it or change the batteries.

I like wireless but I hope there's a better interface than Bluetooth at some point.

<comment><USER87> I use a wired mouse on my desktop with 1000 polls/sec and latency of about 5 ms.

On my laptop (which is 9 years newer and has similar benchmark results) I use a wireless mouse which has 125 polls/sec and latency of 20 ms.

Yes, one can tell the difference. It is possible to buy low-latency wireless mice. Next time, I will.

Bluetooth is a trash fire. I was hoping wireless USB would take off, but that's dead now.

<comment><USER88> The difference is the screen refresh rate.

On 60Hz my wired and wireless mouse feel exactly the same.

On 240Hz, yeah, there is a lot of difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I've vastly improved the quality of my wifi by upgrading my routers and my devices.

The important thing to remember is that wifi always performs as the worst device on your network. A dead-zone device hurts every device on your network. A G-only device hurts every device on your network.

So, 2 routers in my sms house, hooked together wired. All my priority devices have new dual-band hardware and are on the 5ghz network. Old devices are relegated to the 2.4ghz network, which is quite spotty owing to that.

Unexpected things can do real damage too. I had an older PC that had its wifi dongle plugged into a USB 2 port and it would frequently get multi-second ping spikes. The same wifi dongle worked fine on a USB3 port. I ended up wiring that one in.

Personally I've abandoned all wifi hardware companies other than Asus - <USER4> other one has let me down at least once, if not repeatedly.

In every other respect, Asus seems to be incapable of making devices that rate higher than a B plus, but in the lowered expectations of the world of wifi hardware companies where "occasionally functional" seems to be considered good enough, Asus' spotty quality is a huge step up.

</comment><comment><USER85> Bluetooth - yeah fully agree. Having endless troubles just getting the headsets reliably connected. And my standing desk seems solid enough to physically block bluetooth signals which is an issue if tower is below desk & mouse above.

Wifi on the other hand I find pretty stable. As long as you're on 5ghz. Haven't gotten the new ax/wifi6 to work yet though despite buying relevant tech

</comment><comment><USER89> On the topic of wired vs wireless... Has anyone had experience doing anything ridiculous such as getting a 40Gbit Ethernet adapter for say, their macbook? [https://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATTO/TLNQ3402D00/](https://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATTO/TLNQ3402D00/)

<comment><USER90> Kind of amazing that a macbook pro has four 40 Gb/s ports... and none of them are ethernet. Compare to 1 Gb/s ethernet which was rapidly adopted by Apple laptops as well as desktops. (Though you can currently get a Mac mini (!) with 10 Gb/s ethernet built in - if you can find something to connect it to.)

I've used thunderbolt cables to connect laptops together for fast data transfer. I think in order to get decent performance I had to get disable the software ethernet bridge.

<comment><USER91> > _and none of them are ethernet._

Might have something to do with the fact that 8P8C is as thick as the entire laptop.

<comment><USER92> That can be easily worked around with flat retractable sockets PCMCIA Ethernet cards had in the past.

<comment><USER91> You mean this? [https://twitter.com/Infoseepage/status/938837890494169088](https://twitter.com/Infoseepage/status/938837890494169088)

Looks really bad for longetivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Wow you would think that article was written in 2008!

I have had a very good experience with 802.11ac for all applications, and Bluetooth 5.0 (iphone 11 pro), and Bluetooth 4.2 with apple keyboard and mouse. Wireless headset to a macbook is pretty bad, pretty awesome to the iphone. I do not have dongles.

Knowledge of interference and the wireless devices you use is important.

I spend a non-negligible amount of time when choosing a wireless router, and will immediate benchmark it. The routers from the ISPs are still pretty bad in comparison to the ones you can buy for $70 - $120.

If I am using a desktop I will also benchmark the dongle.

You also have to acknowledge proximity to power cords and transformers, which will degrade your experience.

It always requires a holistic solution to optimize and I don't know if the writer's problems can be fixed. Even two years ago I kept one or two devices on Ethernet if they were close to the router. But I have since removed them.

<comment><USER94> Any recommendations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> After going from a house to an apartment, when we moved back into a house - <USER5> was a new build - we made sure that every room was wired for gig-e. We didn't want to take any chances on wireless. My wife uses an iPad with a 6 foot stand to teach online fitness classes. She even got an Ethernet adapter for the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER96> My opinion on WiFi is that as long as the end user(s) have a decent router/access points (AP), it's great. If the end user has a crappy $25 router or are trying to cover a ridiculously large area with a single AP with a very sub-optimally placed AP (e.g. think bottom of a closet), then yeah they're gonna suffer. Almost no one needs a $200 prosumer router nor a Ubiquiti setup, but everyone needs something better than a $25 router. My experience is that the sweet spot is around $70.

Bluetooth is definitely a disaster though. Apple has made great strides with their AirPods and the (It Just Works)™ philosophy behind their products, but even the AirPods aren't perfect. Once every month or so, my AirPods just refuse to connect for whatever reason and I have to restart the device outputting sound to get the connection working again.

</comment><comment><USER97> Yes, latency and quality degradation suck.

But in most cases, for most people, _wires suck even more_.

Seriously. I can't walk around my apartment to tidy it up while on an audio call on my computer if I'm wired. When I walked around the city with wired headphones to my phone, the wires would constantly snag or something or other. Wires are constantly getting tangled, or I have to spend time carefully rolling and clipping them and unclipping them and unrolling.

Wires _suuuck_. They suck _baaad_.

If I'm doing something professional with audio or AV where quality/latency are paramount, then sure I'll use wires and dongles as necessary. They're a "pro" thing.

But for everyday use? Wireless is still generally good enough, and the pros _waaay_ outweight the cons. Which is why the world has been switching en masse.

<comment><USER98> It's a tradeoff. Like everything else, it depends.

I'm not wiring up my house for ethernet any time soon, I found a 5g band that performs well and can call it good.

But I've all but given up on wireless headphones. If I had a dollar for every time my airpods died or disconnected and refused to reconnect during a video call, I'd have enough dollars to buy new airpods now that their batteries are nearly shot. There's still a time and a place for them, but it mostly involves walking the dog.

<comment><USER97> It _does_ frustrate me so much how wireless things can be finicky.

For example, my AirPods Pro worked flawlessly, except for about one month where they'd have a hard time switching between devices. But then it fixed itself.

Separately, AirDrop had always worked flawlessly between my Mac and iPhone and iPad, for years. Except two weeks ago it stopped working entirely between any of them. Tried rebooting everything, no help. Still won't work.

I've never gotten Sidecar to work, even though I meet all the requirements. On the other hand, my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse have always worked flawlessly every day I've ever used them.

It's all so random and luck of the draw... and you can never tell if the problem is because of Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth, or device software settings, or device hardware configuration, or settings on your Apple ID, or _what_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Is it possible to use the perf tools([http://www.brendangregg.com/perf.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/perf.html)) and debug top down to find the program that causes the issue rather than guessing the programs and debugging bottom up ?

</comment><comment><USER99> Ugh. I had the exact same issue with Qt and it took me forever to track it down[0].

Even though it's been fixed since 2017 I can confirm that there's still lots of network-using software out there that isn't using the most recent Qt library. Installing any of it will destroy your ability to have lag-free video chats or do any other real-time streaming.

I've always been in the "wires wherever possible" camp and it's things like this that are keeping me there. Hopefully headphone jacks don't go totally extinct anytime soon...

[0] [https://cmetcalfe.ca/blog/diagnosing-periodic-high-ping- time...](https://cmetcalfe.ca/blog/diagnosing-periodic-high-ping-times-on- macos.html)

</comment><comment><USER100> I mostly agree but would say wired is a better technology than wireless in terms of safety, reliability and cost. I only use wireless for an occasional phone call usually on the road in case of car trouble, with my keyboards and with my Visonic home security system sensors.

Timothy Schoechle of the National Institute for Science, Law & Public Policy in Washington, DC recently wrote a paper called "Re-Inventing Wires: The Future of Landlines and Networks" on this subject. It's available as a PDF download from [https://gettingsmarteraboutthesmartgrid.org/pdf/Wires.pdf](https://gettingsmarteraboutthesmartgrid.org/pdf/Wires.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER38> I still prefer a wired connection, but I don't think wireless is evil. The main problem is people use crap equipment, most likely provided by the ISP. Most of this equipment has chips that overheat a degrade the performance. Most of the ISP only provides AIO router+modem combos. People use it instead of buying a good router+wireless access point.

This reminded me to this article I read a few years ago: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/review-ubiquiti- unif...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/10/review-ubiquiti-unifi-made- me-realize-how-terrible-consumer-wi-fi-gear-is/)

</comment><comment><USER101> I wanted to point out it isn't really "Wireless" fault. It is the problem of Consumer WiFi and Bluetooth.

I could get a faster Speedtest transfer from 4G on my iPhone 11 then standing next to my WiFi 6 router. And my WiFi 5Ghz actually has more Spectrum ( but slightly more noisy as I live in apartment ). And in terms of reliability 4G works better than even the best "Enterprise" WiFi network. And these Enterprise WiFI network gear ( Ruckus , Aruba etc ) are already zillions times better than consumer grade WiFi.

You then have ISP wanting to sell you Wireless Router combined with their ONT / Modem. If they actually provide something better then I would be happier. But they dont. The only good thing is that you now only have to restart one devices rather than two to test or "reset" your network. I think I recently learned in Germany the law mandate consumer to have the right to buy their own ONT / Modem. So you dont have the crap that most ISP give you due to Cost reason.

There is no reason why we cant have standalone 4G / 5G in the Unlicensed Spectrum. Qualcomm actually made a case with MultiFire [1], unfortunately due to politics and interest it may never actually take off.

WiFi 6 / 802.11ax was suppose to incorporate lots of learning from 4G/LTE/3GPP Rel into it. But as is typical of design by committees and vendor's interest we now have WiFI 6 that doesn't support most of the original promised features. That is why you start seeing marketing push as WiFi 6+, which is different to WiFi 6E. If all these mess sounds familiar, yes it was called USB.

That is one reason why I really like Apple's MiFi programme and standards. Stop giving options and choices to vendors. Stop giving them margins of error in the name of cost reduction. If you are going to make 100 Million unit a year, stop trying to cut the cost down by pennies, up the BOM by a dollar. Make something better. I will paid. Lots of people will paid. And one billion of iPhone user will paid.

I want quality, not crap.

( Ok I have gone off topic )

[1] [https://www.multefire.org](https://www.multefire.org)

</comment><comment><USER102> I will always preference wired over wireless, but I am currently unable to run an ethernet to my desktop (my partner is not keen on having a tripwire run straight across the house). So I did the same ping test that OP did and noted a few spikes, I had 10 pings over 250ms out of 600, all of these were distributed unevenly over time. Guess I could be subject to such wireless degradation. But I can't say for sure without trying an ethernet cable. t : ms 32: 1725.0, 33: 662.0, 68: 406.0, 100: 980.0, 101: 285.0, 312: 454.0, 342: 746.0, 464: 453.0, 480: 1852.0, 481: 841.0

</comment><comment><USER84> The other interference problem is that all devices talking to a particular access point are all transmitting on the same frequency. As wireless is a shared transmission medium they all have to take turns and if two or more devices happen to try to transmit at the same time they'll corrupt each other's message and have to go through the random exponential back off to try to find clear air, leading to random changes in latency & throughput.

</comment><comment><USER103> > That means in dense areas (e.g. apartment buildings), routers will often ... > interfering with each other.

Obviously the radios wouldn't interfere with each other if we could prevent the radio waves from leaking into other apartments. If only we had something that could be added to the router that would _guide_ the radio _waves_ directly to the wireless devices instead of indiscriminately radiating in every direction. Some sort of _wave guild_.

/lol

</comment><comment><USER104> Regardless of the product advertisement Jabra 75 does NOT support native Bluetooth connection to computers (although Jabra is not quick to admit it) [https://medium.com/@daniel_36042/jabra-we-know-our- bluetooth...](https://medium.com/@daniel_36042/jabra-we-know-our-bluetooth- headsets-dont-work-with-laptops-sorry-no-refunds-80ed4cb2fc6f)

</comment><comment><USER105> what's wrong with wireless keyboard and mouse? battery life is like one year and I don't have also any issues with response times (not gaming though)

but yeah, I don't see myself using wireless headphones which would not be perfectly in sync with video and I am using wifi only because installing cable through whole apartment would be too troublesome and not sure if network over powerline would be faster and more reliable than wifi

<comment><USER106> Personaly I don't understand the advantages. I've never had an issue with the cable that runs from the keyboard over the side of my desk. Maybe for the mouse as it moves around (although I usually use a wired trackpad) but I'm not too convinced. Maybe if I tried using one for an extended period of time I would change my mind. In general I'm not too worried about the reliability in the wireless sense but I don't like the idea that these things can run out of battery. I like as many of my devices to just work without any maintenance required. (even if the maintenance is minimal)

Furthermore I generally don't have batteries on hand. (Right now the complete list of things I own that use batteries is the TV remote and the thermostat) So when I get the low battery warning I need to go and buy some.

On the other hand I completely get the case for Bluetooth headphones. I love being able to run to the kitchen without losing my music or still being able to hear someone else speaking. Also when using them with a phone the cable running down to my pocket does actually get in the way. Synchronization shouldn't be an issue because any not-terrible Bluetooth speakers will report their delay to the computer so that everything remains syncronized. I do have one set of cheep earbuds that don't report it to my phone correctly but this is rare (and I probably should have sent them back).

<comment><USER38> The main advantage for me is that I can pack it away when I need more desk space. (eg.: planning something on paper)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> When we first opened our office we had a small kitchen interestingly when we turned it on the wifi access in the whole office went down for the duration of the microwave running. Turns out if you have 2.5ghz WiFi it can be interfered with some microwave ovens that maybe have poor insulation... also the signal meter on the computer measures the signal as strong the whole time but packets drop like crazy

</comment><comment><USER108> This depends a lot on your particular situation and equipment. I ran the ping test exactly as shown, with wi-fi and wired, and there is negligible difference in average latency or standard deviation.

Even when using ethernet, the PC connects through an Orbi mesh router, two hops away from the base station. A round trip to local IP addresses is between 9-10ms. Switching to wi-fi adds 2-3ms to that.

</comment><comment><USER109> They mention that the polling increases latency. But by how much?

Is windows affected by this? Because I've never noticed it have an impact on video calls.

<comment><USER110> It mostly depends on the actual network hardware, drivers and the access point, not the OS.

When a WiFi device does a 'scan' (which it needs to do to know if there might be a better AP to connect to, amongst other things), it has to retune the radio to another frequency. That means it can't listen on the original frequency, and packets get lost. Depending on the network design, they might be retransmitted from the access point (layer 2 retransmit, a few milliseconds), or by TCP after a timeout (1 network round trip, hundreds of milliseconds often).

A third option is your laptop tells the AP that it is going into a power saving mode and won't be listening. Packets are then queued for it while it retunes and does a scan.

Best would be to have multiple radios, one whose only job is scanning. Then there would be no latency impact at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> One of the worst parts of being a network-worker in a University, is managing the wireless and the expectations of how wireless should perform at every square inch of the campus. I understand the frusterations of the students, but at the same time learn a bit about the pros and cons of the technology you're so dependent on.

</comment><comment><USER112> Wireless transmission is pretty interesting. When doing the OSI work and getting to the 'physical' layer for WiFi, I was surprised to see how transmission worked and how often you'd have conflicts when broadcasting packets on the same frequency range.

</comment><comment><USER113> To windows 10 users with bad wifi experience: windows power management has become more agressive, it caused dropped VPN connections continuously until I put power management to High performance for all power profiles. It took me aLmost a year to figure out the cause.

</comment><comment><USER114> I ran ethernet cable in hopes of eliminations video call dropouts, but I still have plenty of issues.

<comment><USER115> You may have local issues. I ran a series of iperf3 tests in a small but non- trivial network and was surprised. There was a 100Mbps switch that had been forgotten about. Also a wifi network running off a Power over Ethernet link which was 3Mbps compared with 50Mbps over fairly poor Wifi it was supposed to be superior to, which looks pretty darn good to the POE link. A cheap switch and two LAN cables later things are so much better.

<comment><USER87> 100 Mbps is enough for 15-20 HD video calls using modern codecs. Gigabit is great for backups, but for ordinary use 100 Mbit is fine.

If you're getting lag and dropouts with a wired connection, the problem is most likely bufferbloat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> The issue with WiFi is over-crowdedness. Suggestions to fix this are to actually get everyone to lower the power on their wifi transmitters (hard to control). Also, making sure youre on the right non-crowded channel (easier to control).

</comment><comment><USER117> Ive wanted an alternative for 1-wire since I really do not need very quick updates, but I do want really long and questionable wiring! This looks like a perfect fit!

</comment><comment><USER118> I agree, wireless Internet is pretty terrible.

However, I find that I prefer everything else wireless.

I wish there were more solutions for mechanical wireless keyboards, in fact.

</comment><comment><USER119> Agree. I have a lot of cables around my desk.

It's not just video calls. My backup is done to a Synology NAS, upstairs. That's all wired.

</comment><comment><USER120> > Dongles. Even though all computers now have built-in Bluetooth, many > Bluetooth accessories today still ship with proprietary dongles. I assume > this is because the manufacturer was worried about inconsistencies or > incompatibilities between their own Bluetooth implementation and your > computer's built-in Bluetooth hardware/drivers.

No, in most cases where you see dongles (keyboards, mice, gamepads) it's because the dongle is not speaking Bluetooth to the device, but rather a "raw" pre-paired fixed-frequency RF wire protocol. Devices connected by such dongles (usually marketed as just being "wireless" rather than being "Bluetooth" devices) are basically electrically connected to your computer—just with an RF-modulated bridge stage for the electrical signal path. There's no "wireless controller" or "modem" in these peripherals; they're just letting the signal path flow out the antenna.

The disadvantage of these (besides the inconveniences of a dongle) is that these "raw" RF protocols provide no consideration for interference with one- another, besides maybe being e-fused to each operate on a different randomized sub-channel of the commercial-use 2.4GHz band. This means that you can't have very many of these devices operating in the same "shared medium" (e.g. the same open office); and in fact, a channel collision for these devices won't just _interfere_ with one-another; they'll often—lacking any device-ID header or per-device encryption key—just plain _interoperate_ with one-another, with your "wireless" keyboard dongle picking up the typing of some coworker's "wireless" keyboard! (They're a lot like RF TV remotes in this regard.)

Note that devices that market themselves as Bluetooth but _also_ come with a dongle are either 1. lying, and don't actually use Bluetooth; or 2. have Bluetooth and "wireless" as separate modes. There are good reasons to offer both as separate modes:

• Compatibility. "Wireless" devices just look like USB devices, so you can use them to e.g. config your BIOS; or talk to any machine that can speak USB1.0, e.g. some old Win98 beige box. And plugging the dongle into a KVM is just like plugging a USB-connected device into a KVM; you can switch your keyboard's "focus" between hosts using the KVM, without the host itself needing to re- pair with the peripheral. Switching Bluetooth peripherals around by having the Bluetooth controller on the KVM is much more fraught process.

• Battery life. Bluetooth, at least before BTLE, burned energy to a far greater extent than the "wireless" protocols—mainly because the "wireless" protocols aren't spending any energy on background activities like identity announcement for re-pairing, or frequency-hopping for better SNR. (This is why you see "wireless" peripherals that last months on AAAs, but all Bluetooth devices shipping with Lithium cells: the Bluetooth peripherals need charging frequently-enough that the number of AAAs they consume would be untenable.)

• Latency. No e-sport player would ever use a Bluetooth peripheral, since the Bluetooth input path often adds one or more in-game frames of latency (relative to the USB input path), before the input hits the game's physics engine. "Wireless" peripherals have no such problem.

<comment><USER121> Thanks so much, this is a really useful correction!

</comment></comment><comment><USER122> Switched on friday back to wire.

My VPN was acting up and my video calls as well.

</comment><comment><USER123> I don't like wireless either, for many reasons (the reasons they list there are only some of them; there are more).

<comment><USER87> Yah, the main thing he doesn't mention--and in most households, it's the primary thing--is retry hogging by devices that have a poor connection to the access point.

High end access points use a time slicing algorithm (tdma-ish) and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) mandates something along those lines. So Wi-Fi will eventually improve a little.

But for all the household all-in-one modem-router-switch-accesspoint boxes, one device with a poor connection can hog most of the access point's time, doing re-transmits of corrupted data.

If you're video calling over wi-fi, turn off _every other device_ that uses the wi-fi.

<comment><USER101> >High end access points use a time slicing algorithm (tdma-ish) and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) mandates something along those lines.

You will be surprised to learn not every WiFi 6 has support of OFDMA turned on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> And try getting a home builder to install Ethernet. They just look at you with a blank stare.

<comment><USER124> maybe try a different builder then.

those are cables and sockets, standardized to the point of beeing a commodity. no magic involved at all.

<comment><USER38> You shouldn't run it parallel to the electrical line, because it will generate interference. Other than that it's pretty straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> Url changed from [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8hxvfZiqH24oqyr6y/wireless-i...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8hxvfZiqH24oqyr6y/wireless- is-a-trap) to the canonical source.

</comment><comment><USER126> You're just using the wong kind of wireless. I only use the best: copper.

<comment><USER127> Not fibre?

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> I avoid wireless because of EMF sensitivity that my wife has. Just to be sure, I've secretly switched on the wifi some days to see if she mentions any symptoms and definitely she does. I personally haven't felt a difference, but it is fun running a wired network - switches all throughout the house and gave me the motivation to set up Pi Hole and a print server.

<comment><USER129> Here we go again: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity) "The majority of provocation trials to date have found that such claimants are unable to distinguish between exposure and non-exposure to electromagnetic fields. A systematic review of medical research in 2011 found no convincing scientific evidence for symptoms being caused by electromagnetic fields. Since then, several double-blind experiments have shown that people who report electromagnetic hypersensitivity are unable to detect the presence of electromagnetic fields and are as likely to report ill health following a sham exposure as they are following exposure to genuine electromagnetic fields, suggesting the cause in these cases to be the nocebo effect." Wikipedia article has links to scientific studies.

<comment><USER128> Eh, I don't really care. I am not harming anyone by offering this for her. If she feels better and I have fun then it's a good time.

<comment><USER130> > I am not harming anyone by offering this for her. If she feels better and I > have fun then it's a good time.

Some would say you're harming your wife's understanding of reality, but that's a private matter for you and her.

However, by sharing it on the Internet, you are potentially spreading this bullshit, and you must expect reasonable voices to counter your claim.

<comment><USER131> Reasonable voices would not be so quick to comdemn. Please try to understand that we are just beginning to discover the non-thermal effects of electromagnetic fields, and the science is not looking too good for the wireless industry, which will fight tooth and nail to discredit any findings that would cut into their billions.

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323998588_Wi- Fi_is_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323998588_Wi- Fi_is_an_important_threat_to_human_health)

Wi-Fi is an important threat to human health [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305691437_Electroma...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305691437_Electromagnetic_Fields_Act_Similarly_in_Plants_as_in_Animals_Probable_Activation_of_Calcium_Channels_via_Their_Voltage_Sensor)

Electromagnetic Fields Act Similarly in Plants as in Animals: Probable Activation of Calcium Channels via Their Voltage Sensor

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283017154_How_to_Ap...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283017154_How_to_Approach_the_Challenge_of_Minimizing_Non- Thermal_Health_Effects_of_Microwave_Radiation_from_Electrical_Devices")

How to Approach the Challenge of Minimizing Non-Thermal Health Effects of Microwave Radiation from Electrical Devices

<comment><USER130> > [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323998588_Wi- > Fi_is_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323998588_Wi-Fi_is_..). > > > Wi-Fi is an important threat to human health

Pall's methodology and understanding of EM has been critized broadly and repeatedly. Here's an "official" rebuttal to the paper you cite: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328436881_Response_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328436881_Response_to_Pall_Wi- Fi_is_an_important_threat_to_human_health)

The rest of the papers you cite are by the same highly controversial biochemist.

At any rate, the discussion at hand is whether "EMF sensitivity" is a real condition. It patently is not. Anyone with such a condition would easily be able to collect the large monetary rewards that have been made available, and simultaneously immediately lift the social stigma they must feel. The fact that they do not speaks volumes.

<comment><USER131> Yea, cherry picking, me. Note that the rebuttal does not refute Pall's biomechanical thories, or say that there are no non-thermal effects, but that we need more thorough research, and that this research is not being funded. The precautionary principal (ignored in the USA, it seems), would indicate that we should be cautious and not quick to dismiss.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pwnage jailbreak tool for iPhone OS 2.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/07/19/pwnage-jailbreak-tool-for-iphone-os-2-0-released

<comment><USER2> So the big question everyone is asking is, now that this new release doesn't include Installer.app, what is the point? Would I still be able to SSH to my iPhone and run a tunnel to use it in a tether like fashion with my laptop?

<comment><USER3> it doesn't include installer.app because installer.app has been outdated and buggy for a long time.

it comes with a new utility called cydia to do package management, from which you can install openssh.</comment></comment>


A prototype for stemming the flood of misinformation during breaking news events - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gabestein/a-prototype-for-stemming-the-flood-of-misinformation-during-breaking-news-events-4310392d05d4 <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this. I don't know if it would actually work technically, and the politics of media coordination would be the hardest part. But I'd be interested in what y'all think.</comment>


International Journal of Proof-of-Concept or Get The Fuck Out - <AUTHOR> https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/ <comment><USER2> I enjoyed this comment in issue 0x00:

      I met a professor of arcane degree
      Who said: Two vast and handwritten parsers
      Live in the wild. Near them, in the dark
      Half sunk, a shattering exploit lies, whose frown,
      And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
      Tell that its sculptor well those papers read
      Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
      The hand that mocked them and the student that fed:
      And on the terminal these words appear:
      "My name is Turing, wrecker of proofs:
      Parse this unambigously, ye machine, and despair!"
      Nothing besides is possible. Round the decay
      Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
      The lone and level root shells fork away.
        -- Inspired by Edward Shelley

[https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/pocorgtfo00.pdf](https://www.alchemistowl.org/pocorgtfo/pocorgtfo00.pdf) (page 5)

</comment><comment><USER3> Please don't be put off by the title - these are great little magazines. You may also want to try booting one or two in qemu...

<comment><USER4> You may also want to try interpreting the magazines as raw PCM audio and running them through a few demodulation schemes.

<comment><USER3> Seriously? That's very cool

<comment><USER4> Yep. See issue 0x03 for advice.

<comment><USER3> Spoilers: [http://www.g0hww.net/2014/03/decoding-pocorgtfo03pdf-with- mu...](http://www.g0hww.net/2014/03/decoding-pocorgtfo03pdf-with-multimon- ng.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As our duty. [https://redletter.link/pocorgtfo/](https://redletter.link/pocorgtfo/)

<comment><USER6> Reporting for worship: [http://pocorgtfo.samdb.xyz/](http://pocorgtfo.samdb.xyz/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also, issue N-1 is included in issue N (recursively) if you unzip it.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Gospel of Weird Machines? What excellent style the alchemist owls have! Simple website, strong language, and a careful selection of titles: "the right reverend preacher pastor." But _why_ is a raven like a writing desk?

<comment><USER9> They both have inky quills.</comment></comment>


Mechanical Sympathy: HTTP/2.0? - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/mechanical-sympathy/http/mechanical-sympathy/CWyAD-oF9Uw/ycO0vxGqMvsJ <comment><USER2> Here's the cost of releasing an HTTP/2 standard that sucks. I'd say more, but PHK said it better here:

[https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2014AprJun...](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http- wg/2014AprJun/0815.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR: Enqueue work items into per-connection queues and process sequentially; use a pool of work-stealing threads to harvest work from the per-connection queues to optimize the case where slow work items block. A promise to report back on how well it worked out. Dated 5/1/14\. No response as of 1/13/15.

<comment><USER4> In other words, treat HTTP like the de-facto OSI-layer-5 protocol it is, with packets being decoded into a ring buffer and various drivers at higher layers then poll()ing or select()ing them into their processes.

Except that this is occurring in userspace for some reason, instead of just having an HTTP driver in the networking stack like you can have e.g. an SCTP driver in the networking stack.</comment></comment>


The SQLite Database File Format - <AUTHOR> https://www.sqlite.org/fileformat2.html <comment><USER2> [http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.db.sqlite.general/9054...](http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.db.sqlite.general/90549)

Apparently the latest and greatest SQLite is sometimes 50% faster than 3.7.17 released in July of last year. Impressive!

I also love using SQLite for testing compiler optimization passes. Their TCL test suite coverage is quite good. Unfortunately, I think you have to splurge tens of thousands of dollars to get the C-based test suite. I believe you can only test full branch coverage with the C test suite.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is SQLite used as the internal database for some popular systems?

<comment><USER4> In case you've been living under a rock .. [https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html](https://www.sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html)

<comment><USER5> That text needs an update. There's no mention of Android and Symbian is all but dead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://howfuckedismydatabase.com/sqlite/](http://howfuckedismydatabase.com/sqlite/)

<comment><USER7> by "concurrent users" the site means "concurrent users for writes" because for reads concurrent users is fine in sqlite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an odd, random thing to be on the front page. Did any event in particular happen to make this come up?

<comment><USER9> There was this submission[0] yesterday. Probably someone wanted to learn more about it and stumbled upon this amazing document.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8378894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8378894)

<comment><USER10> The format _is_ amazing, however the document is not well written. You have to read about half of it to begin to understand how the format works. I had to read it whole for a project and it was really time consuming, though I don't think I could write it any better than it is right now.

There were some blog posts that were far clearer to understand the file format, but unfortunately I lost track of them.

<comment><USER11> As a pedagogical exercise, to help me understand the design, I wrote some Go code to read a sqlite database and dump table contents. I remember having to peek at the source code to figure out a few things that weren't explained well in that document.

I'd previously written code to read the lucene database format (python code that time), which was also a good learning experience. I ended up leveraging some of that knowledge for a work project.

And I've also played around with reading/writing git archives.

<comment><USER12> I'd like to improve the document so that reference to the SQLite source code is not required. Can you explain (perhaps via private email) what the file format document did not describe sufficiently for you to implement a reader in Go?

<comment><USER11> It was over a year ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy. I do remember that near the end of the process I looked at the source code to answer a question or two. I'll skim over the docs again and see if I can remember what I was confused about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also very interesting: [http://www.sqlite.org/testing.html](http://www.sqlite.org/testing.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem with SQLite is that there's no official RFC, it's a pseudo database.

When you're weighing up what to implement, it certainly helps when there is an agreed upon technical specification.

<comment><USER15> This seems to be a valid comment, but I'm not sure I understand it. Can you show some examples from other databases? How are they doing it right?

<comment><USER16> I assume that they're referring to the great browser wars, where Web SQL was abandoned in favor of IndexedDB because the former was essentially a call out to use SQLite as it is. Many argued against a single implementation because it didn't have an underlying high level specification that would allow for other implementations.

<comment><USER15> Why are you assuming I am referring to anything? I simply said I don't completely understand the parent comment and would like some examples. Maybe you intended to respond to another comment?

<comment><USER16> And I was obviously trying to address your question, speculating what jpswade was talking about.

If you fail to get the basic context of a thread, maybe the internet isn't for you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Storm Bar - An open source command bar for the web - <AUTHOR> http://stormbar.net/

<comment><USER2> So I type 'help', and a box pops down that says

Help! Get help on using Storm Bar

 _and nothing else_. I can't click anything. What am I supposed to be doing with this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, the interface should be more explicit. Hit enter to select the first result and the help box should pop up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Someone please tell me what this is and why I can't click anything.</comment>