GoKawiil
Tech News
A smart-home explainer describes why Wi-Fi-connected accessories often stop functioning when the internet or router fails, since they typically rely on cloud servers for instructions and scheduling. It recommends using local hubs instead, such as HomePods, Apple TVs, or Zigbee- and Thread-based bridges like the Philips Hue Bridge, which can store and run automations without an active internet connection.
A tech advisory piece explains why home Wi-Fi speeds often fall short of advertised ISP speeds, citing interference, signal degradation through walls, and bandwidth overhead from multiple connected devices. It recommends using wired Ethernet connections for devices needing consistent high performance, while reserving Wi-Fi for mobile devices and smart home gadgets that lack Ethernet ports.
United has released a tracker letting passengers enter their flight number and travel date to see whether their aircraft has Starlink satellite Wi-Fi, including real-time updates if planes are swapped. The airline says 635 of its mainline and United Express planes now carry Starlink, covering nearly half of daily departures, with installations continuing at 20 planes per week toward completion by end of 2027.
Amazon is selling the NETGEAR Nighthawk RS180 Wi-Fi 7 router for $149.88, a 25% price cut from its regular price. The discount offers buyers a lower-cost entry point into Wi-Fi 7 networking hardware.
GFiber, Qualcomm and Gemtek have announced a Wi-Fi 8 Premium Gateway for GFiber's 20 Gig fiber customers, using Qualcomm's Dragonwing NPro A8 Elite Platform, which combines a penta-core CPU and an NPU. Gemtek will manufacture the device, and GFiber says current 20 Gig subscribers using Actiontec Wi-Fi 7 gateways will be upgraded once certification is complete. The move follows TP-Link's recent preorder announcement for its own Wi-Fi 8 router, even though the IEEE 802.11bn standard hasn't been finalized.
Apple's new Apple TV 4K replaces the 2022 model's A15 Bionic chip with an A19, which Apple says is up to 50 percent faster at CPU tasks and twice as fast at graphics, alongside doubled RAM, AV1 decoding, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. The box now has three built-in mics for hands-free Siri, and a new $59 remote adds Precision Finding for compatible iPhones. The system also now supports four HomePods as a surround setup, up from the previous two-speaker stereo limit.
Apple has released an updated Apple TV 4K, its first refresh in four years. The new model adds Wi-Fi 7 connectivity and a faster processor, along with a feature that lets users ask Siri to help locate a misplaced Siri Remote.
A TP-Link EAP770 Wi-Fi 7 access point, bought in 2023 before the standard was finalized, was found to silently corrupt large file transfers over its wireless link. The owner says TP-Link stopped updating the device after its initial 2023 firmware release, leaving a known fix—two sysfs values—unreachable through the device's restricted shell, which led them to write a custom kernel exploit to apply the fix themselves.
A technical explainer clarifies the common confusion between Megabits per second (Mbps) and Megabytes per second (MB/s) when evaluating internet providers. It explains that a byte equals eight bits, meaning MB/s figures represent data moving roughly eight times faster than the same numeric value in Mbps, since bits measure binary data while bytes describe file sizes.
Wireless backup cameras, priced from about $40 to over $400, use Wi-Fi, dedicated radio frequencies or occasionally Bluetooth to send video to a dashboard monitor without needing mobile data. The dashboard unit draws power from a USB port or cigarette lighter, while the rear camera is powered either by splicing into the vehicle's tail-light circuit or via a built-in solar battery. Cameras wired into the tail lights activate automatically in reverse, while battery- or solar-powered units typically need a smartphone app to turn on.
A Show HN post introduces version 2.0 of carrier-explode, a tool that extracts and decodes carrier configuration settings from iPhone, Pixel and Galaxy firmware. Users can look up APNs, VoLTE, Wi-Fi Calling and 5G settings per carrier, compare two versions or carriers side by side, and see differences between firmware builds. The project offers data via an API in JSON format or as a daily CC0-licensed dataset, with documentation in its wiki.
An IT worker discovered his parents' Wi-Fi-connected Keurig coffee maker had uploaded roughly 1TB and downloaded nearly 10GB of data over 10 days, saturating their network access point. He unplugged the device and replaced it rather than diagnose the cause, though most traffic stayed on the local network and a reboot likely would have resolved it.