Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
view the rest of the comments
I like how they quickly glance over the fact that you need line of sight to connect and call that a good thing because people behind a wall cant steal your data.
Within the same room, it is possible to use a frequency of light that will reflect off of almost anything. I just got a window AC unit with a remote that defies physics. Like I can have a desk, and closed plantation shutters (slats and doors) in front of the receiver on the front of the unit, point the remote anywhere in the wrong direction and still activate the thing. It's just an IR LED transmitter setup. I've never seen one that is quite this powerful. It is uber cheapo general electric bottom of the consumer grade junk category too.
This is the NSA's wet dream tech. Anyone with line of sight could intercept the data stream.
Imagine trying to communicate with your squad but the NSA has a mirror up inbetween the relays
For low datarates sure, but at high speeds the dispersion caused by light taking multiple paths will be unacceptable. The reason single node fiber is so thin is to make sure light can only travel along one path. If you want multi gigabit speeds, you will need a direct line of sight.
I put my smart IR blaster behind my tv and it still works. It can even reaches the AC unit in my room if the door is open.
I have a remote for a TV that does the same thing. Can point any direction and it works.
Because it works through Blutooth.
Nah. If I cover the IR emitter, it doesn't work.
Ah, ok. I had misunderstood you at first. Now I get what you meant.
That's a feature!
It absolutely is a good thing when security is concerned. WiFi is easy to snoop even if you're not physically in the room, if you know what you're doing. Sure there are encryption standards that are very good to tamp down on this. However, what's even better with LiFi is you must be physically in the room to intercept any transmissions that are being sent.
This is by design one of the largest advantages to LiFi. There are other practical uses as well, but it's not like LiFi is designed to explicitly replace WiFi.
I could easily imagine having both this and traditional wifi on a device, so that it can fall back to radio frequencies if higher frequency light fails it. Wifi is super cheap these days.