What’s your evidence, Richard Easton??!?

  • @[email protected]
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    691 year ago

    Note that this frequency hopping is no longer used in most WiFi networks today. It is, however, critical to classic Bluetooth, and BLE still somewhat uses it. I have no idea how it’s related to GPS.

    • @[email protected]
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      251 year ago

      Frequency hopping in wifi was never well supported. 802.11a was primarily DSSS and afaik, very few, if any consumer devices supported the FHSS mode.

      • @[email protected]
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        191 year ago

        Indeed. Just speaking from a signals point of view, frequency hopping is not competitive for high bandwidth applications. It is however surprisingly durable in the presence of interference despite its simplicity. We’re seeing this play out in newer Bluetooth standards.

        • @[email protected]
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          91 year ago

          Isn’t it still extensively used for RC stuff like drones and model aeroplanes / cars though? Asking as an amateur.

          • @[email protected]
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            61 year ago

            Yes. It works well because this is an application that requires low bandwidth, and interference could cause you to lose control and is even expected with multiple operators in the vicinity. You definitely want to have resilience to other interfering signals.

          • @[email protected]
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            111 year ago

            It very much is! It’s widely touted as a safety feature, since interference on one frequency means you wont lose control of the flying blender for more than a few milliseconds (well, usually…)

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          From a human perspective, yes, that’s exactly what it does

          If you want to get pedantic about the technical details, it’s not time splitting if you’re not splitting the time…

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            Technically speaking, isn’t differentiating between any two things pedantic? For example the moon, and chocolate, both are things. If you don’t want to get pedantic about it.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              What I mean is if you don’t slice time into slots, you’re not using time slicing. It doesn’t make sense to talk about time slicing at all anymore

              Two devices can transmit at the same time with all sorts of setups, even on the same frequency. And it’s not inaccurate to describe time slicing as “a method to allow multiple devices to transmit and receive simultaneously”

              The question isn’t valid. Being truly pedantic would be pointing out that any number of devices can transmit at the same time, you didn’t say the messages would be received

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        But that’s not part of 802.11n or 802.11g or “a” or what we call “Wifi”… 802.11 in itself is a pretty long standard, including all kinds of different things.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          It actually is. The original standard published by the IEEE 802.11 group was 802.11, often referred to as 802.11 prime.

          To put it simply, it was little more than a proof of concept. The only wireless cards that I know were made at that time, were very expensive and only purchased in very limited amounts by large corporations. Quickly afterwards it was replaced by 802.11a and 802.11b. the big difference between the two, was that b used 2.4ghz and could achieve 11mbps, while a used 5Ghz, and could achieve 54mbps.

          Meanwhile prime was on 900mhz and if memory serves, never achieved more than a few Mbps.

          802.11b was more popular because 2.4ghz was easier to make inexpensively at the time, and so 802.11g also used 2.4ghz, but was able to increase bandwidth by using OFDM. But now I’m off topic, I just find wireless history very interesting.

          The point is 802.11 (prime) was a valid wireless standard.

      • @[email protected]
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        231 year ago

        It may be dropped, but it was used in the beginning

        Wouldn’t that not still make her the mother of Wifi?

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            For the Bluetooth development, the developers of the technology didn’t know about her patent until their IP department was about to file for a patent. They added this patent to the list and then they got connected. As is the case with many, patent and patent connections. It’s a quite common way of how patents are connected, and part of the IP industry. R&D people come up with an idea, these people don’t read tons of patents but solve issues in an intuitive way. Then IP lawers dig into existing patents and make the legal connections.

          • @[email protected]
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            1 year ago

            that’s not how it works. edit: others pointed it out already it seems. you would still call the inventor of a first car the father lf cars even though it has nothing to do with modern cars

            edit2: but considering that she didn’t really invent wifi, just frequency hopping, I would maybe call her grandmother or something

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              Yeah, I think I get it. I mean the analogy is a bit flawed. What she invented is that alike synchronizing the rolls of player pianos, you could build a mechanism that hops frequencies (instead of piano keys) to make remote controlling torpedos resilient against jamming.

              Idk. To me it feels like calling the inventor of three-wheeled vehicles the father/mother of cars, if we want to stay with that analogy. It’s remotely related, not an integral part and nowadays solved differently. But the first car was a tricycle. (Benz Patent-Motorwagen)

              But I don’t want to invalidate her achievements either… It’s one (important) contribution to technology. And it’s not always that one single person invents the whole concept of a radio. Or a car. And get’s to be the whole parent of it. Things build upon each other. Sometimes it needs a lot of contributions of several individuals to make something possible… Nowadays more so than in the old times.

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              She didn’t invent frequency hopping, Nicola Tesla did. She invented a system that used a piano roll (from a player piano) to alternate frequencies. Also she shared the patent with another person.

              • @[email protected]
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                11 year ago

                Or rather she was part of a team, with her husband and one more, that patented that idea, never really got it to work in real torpedos, and the technology was forgotten until someone referred to it in a later patent. Then her role as background got expanded to take the role of other more influential women, maybe because she had a nicer picture.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        Just chiming in as a network tech that deals with these terms regularly.

        802.11, sometimes called 802.11 prime, to differentiate the first protocol from the 802.11 (WiFi) group. This protocol was not really every in widespread use. A few early niche cases, but it was quickly supplanted by 802.11a and 802.11b.

        The b standard was one of the first major WiFi versions to see adoption, which used DSSS, or direct sequence spread spectrum. Which fell by the wayside because OFDM was faster and more efficient, which led wifi speed increases from 802.11g, through wifi 4 (802.11n), WiFi 5 (802.11ac), and WiFi 6 (802.11ax). The more recent versions use QAM (wireless N+), which augments OFDM with amplitude modulation.

        Beyond QAM, speed improvements at this point are minimal and usually require wider channel widths to get any significant improvement, so 802.11 has focused on multiple access improvements and since 802.11ac, have been making improvements to MIMO. They started with SU-MIMO, then one-way MU-MIMO, then two way MU-MIMO.

        I haven’t read up on the changes in WiFi 7 yet beyond 6Ghz being added. I’ll look into it after it’s been fully ratified.

        Long story short, they moved to 5Ghz and eventually 6Ghz, because there isn’t enough channel width in 2.4 for WiFi 5, and 5ghz was getting a bit difficult to sustain for the speed they’re trying to hit, so 6Ghz is the next logical step.

  • @[email protected]
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    171 year ago

    That’s an incredibly sensationalistic way to put it. By that logic, the ancient greeks are the forefathers of WiFi, because they figured how to create static electricity using cotton and ambar.

    You can (and should) give credit without overstating their achievement.

      • ⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻
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        231 year ago

        He’s the guy in the comment asking for evidence. Which I don’t think is wrong, but it seems like he could’ve done some research and they could’ve posted a link for anyone who wanted to know more

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          plus he literally tried to snotnose the official twitter of the US Cyber Command posting something that is deeply within their field in their offical capacity for women’s history month. It does rather present him as acting in bad faith

          • ⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻
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            1 year ago

            It’s the 21st Century now. There is no authoritive source of information, they should’ve added a link to back themselves up. Looking through Wikipedia, calling her the “Mother of WiFi” is a bit rich when there were probably other women more directly involved in WiFi who are more deserving of that title. But she is just the character required to appease the Twitter mob for another day

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              She invented the foundation of the technology

              We call Alan Turing the father of modern computing, because he invented the foundation of the technology

              Women more directly involved wouldn’t be the “mother” of the technology, they would be the “creator”

              • ⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻
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                11 year ago

                It’s very loose terminology. We call Oppenheimer the father of the atomic bomb when Einstein, etc laid the foundation for the technology. It’s a stupid thing to be arguing about

                • @[email protected]
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                  11 year ago

                  Einstein didn’t lay the foundation for the technology, he laid the foundation for the standard model. We call him the father of modern physics. He made the math work, the bomb was already being developed by the Germans. He didn’t come up with the idea, he didn’t come up with the technology, he just consulted.

                  Oppenheimer built and led the team that built the bomb. The theories weren’t complete, the technology didn’t exist, no one had laid out an equation that enabled the technology - they did all that in the Manhattan project.

                  Every person called the father or mother of <field of science> is a hero, in both the literary and personal sense. They represent looking at something in a new way - their name is an embodiment of a certain way of thinking.

                  You took a shot at that for no reason

  • @[email protected]
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    231 year ago

    There is a great documentary about her on Netflix. It covers her love of science and her attempts to get her design to the military for the war effort.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    This is mostly wrong: while she did invent what would later be called Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), it isn’t used in modern WiFi or in GPS. It is used in Bluetooth though.

    I should point out that techniques like FHSS are only a part of what makes up a radio communication method. You can’t say it was “the basis of Bluetooth” just because FHSS is one of the many technologies used in Bluetooth. She certainly contributed though.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        It was hardly ever used in WiFi. Two spread spectrum schemes were available in the original WiFi spec, FHSS and DSSS. DSSS was always preferred over FHSS and in practice FHSS was hardly used and eventually obsoleted a decade ago due to lack of use. It was never “the basis” of WiFi as claimed in the meme - that’s simply incorrect.

        Don’t get me wrong. FHSS is cool and it’s a great achievement. It just has little bearing on WiFi and absolutely no relationship to GPS.

        Better examples of FHSS would be Bluetooth (which you already mentioned), cordless phones, R/C toys and some military communications.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          fair, rescinded.

          you did put a false quote in your top comment tho. thats my main issue: “invented bluetooth/wifi” was nowhere in the original post. that’s a straw position you constructed yourself then took down easily because obviously it’s not true.

    • Toes♀
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      61 year ago

      You got me curious, is that true across all the different options for wifi such as 802.11b and a?

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        Yes, it’s been obsoleted in wifi since 2014. DSSS was always the preferred option and FHSS was never used much in WiFi.

  • @[email protected]
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    121 year ago

    She took on where Heinrich Hertz left off, and made it to the top of the Tinseltown heap!
    C’mon… you know you wanna see a musical on the life of Heinrich Hertz.

    Considering the man spent over a year working in a blacked-out room, trying to detect the faint spark of electricity transmitted wirelessly, it’s gonna have a song or three about fumbling or stumbling in the dark.

    • @[email protected]
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      31 year ago

      Considering the man spent over a year working in a blacked-out room, trying to detect the faint spark of electricity transmitted wirelessly, it’s gonna have a song or three about fumbling or stumbling in the dark.

      Bruce Springsteen has you covered with “Dancing in the Dark”.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    To be fair, I’d be skeptical if you told me Andy Griffith was the father of 3D printing.

    Though I’d google it instead of asking for evidence first.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    Calling Hedy Lamarr “the Mother of Wifi” because she invented FHSS is like calling E. A. Johnson, who invented the first capacitive touchscreen in 1965, “the Father of the iPhone”.

    • @[email protected]
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      151 year ago

      Capacitive touchscreens are the essential technology not just in the iPhone but in all smartphones. Without them we’d still be using flip phones and BlackBerry chiclet keyboards. I think it’s fair to call Johnson the father of the smartphone!

        • @[email protected]
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          11 year ago

          There is, but most of that technology was in phones and other devices before smartphones came along.

          • @[email protected]
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            31 year ago

            And touch screens were in devices other than smart phones before smart phones came along.

            So again, father of the touchscreen, sure. But he did not make smartphones happen. He has nothing to do with 99% of the technology in smartphones.

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              He invented the capacitive touch screen. The resistive touch screen was in many devices long before smart phones (bank machines being a common example). The resistive touch screen was fine for those applications but it was useless for the smart phone (too slow to respond). The capacitive touch screen’s first killer app was the smartphone, namely the iPhone.

            • @[email protected]
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              31 year ago

              Sure, but the touchscreen is arguably the thing that defines a smartphone. It is the part you interact with and the only part the user really sees.

              We had phones before capable of surfing the web and taking and editing pictures. Like Blackberry. But those aren’t really seen as smartphones, more like slightly smarter dumbphones.

    • @[email protected]
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      461 year ago

      i’m pretty comfortable with calling him that. capacitive touchscreens are a big deal sounds like he deserves the praise.

      • @[email protected]
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        61 year ago

        Shout out also to John Underkoffler who was the technical advisor on Minority Report (and later Iron Man). The gesture controls in that movie heavily inspired the first smartphones.

          • @[email protected]
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            21 year ago

            He did a TED talk in 2010 and there are several articles about him. Not much news in recent years, I guess he wasn’t very succesful in turning his motion control concept into a viable product. I interviewed him about eight years ago.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        Capacitive touchscreens are a big deal but it kind of minimizes the work of the other technology that goes into a smartphone, like wireless internet, low power mobile CPUs capable of 3D graphics, lithium-ion battery packs, etc., to say nothing of the design engineers that worked on the exterior, the hardware, and the operating system and deserve credit for the iPhone way more than he does. Crediting the holder of a patent from over 40 years before the iPhone hit the market with the creation of the iPhone is stretching the truth at best.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          children generally are able to have multiple parents.

          if i give credit to Alice for being Bobby’s mother, i’m not minimizing the parenthood of any of Bobby’s other parents. just giving credit where due.

          i would not hesitate to give a couple dozen people the title of father/mother/parent of the iPhone. seems quite appropriate and fair.

  • @[email protected]
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    1501 year ago

    This post is inaccurate. Neither WiFi nor GPS use FHSS, nor is Lamarr anything close to singularly credited with FHSS’ invention (the earliest patent is credited to Nikola Tesla). This also implies that the Allies used her parent - they did not.

    Also Richard Easton is the son of the man who invented GPS and had every right to be skeptical of this claim, and it looks like Internet dipsh*ts have bullied him into deleting his twitter account over this.