<story><title>PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights</title><url>https://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xyzzy_plugh</author><text>The AT&amp;amp;T bill (IIRC it was all under a single account) for the 3G Kindles was eye-watering. I recall a few byte-shavings yielding something like a million dollars of savings.</text></item><item><author>jmkb</author><text>Decades ago, my partner used Google Voice for texting -- really handy, texts just showed up in the gmail inbox, and could be replied to from there. She didn&amp;#x27;t like cellphones, but usually carried one of the old &amp;quot;Kindle Keyboard&amp;quot; models with unlimited 3G data. The Kindle had simple web browser that could load the low-spec gmail interface, so in essence she had a fully functional SMS device, with no monthly charges.&lt;p&gt;Notification of incoming texts was the only problem. I jailbroke the thing and started trying to schedule network requests, thinking I&amp;#x27;d add some kind of new message counter on the home screen. This proved hard. But it occurred to me that the best place for the counter would be right next to the Kindle&amp;#x27;s device name, at the top of the screen. And the device name could be updated from her Amazon account.&lt;p&gt;So I automated a web browser on the home server to log into Amazon and update the device name to &amp;quot;My Kindle (x)&amp;quot; where x was the number of unread Google Voice texts. The Kindle would update the name on the home screen in less than a minute. This worked for years!&lt;p&gt;(Eventually that Kindle was stolen. I wanted to update its name to something foul but the device disappeared from her account too quickly.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>delecti</author><text>I was at Amazon in a Kindle adjacent team (the lockscreen ads) starting in 2012, and I can second this sentiment. For the first couple years, there were multiple tweaks made to minimize enormous roaming bills for customers taking their US region &amp;quot;global unlimited free 3g&amp;quot; kindles to really remote parts of the world. Things like not enqueuing push downloads of books&amp;#x2F;ads if they were roaming.</text></comment>
<story><title>PySkyWiFi: Free stupid wi-fi on long-haul flights</title><url>https://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xyzzy_plugh</author><text>The AT&amp;amp;T bill (IIRC it was all under a single account) for the 3G Kindles was eye-watering. I recall a few byte-shavings yielding something like a million dollars of savings.</text></item><item><author>jmkb</author><text>Decades ago, my partner used Google Voice for texting -- really handy, texts just showed up in the gmail inbox, and could be replied to from there. She didn&amp;#x27;t like cellphones, but usually carried one of the old &amp;quot;Kindle Keyboard&amp;quot; models with unlimited 3G data. The Kindle had simple web browser that could load the low-spec gmail interface, so in essence she had a fully functional SMS device, with no monthly charges.&lt;p&gt;Notification of incoming texts was the only problem. I jailbroke the thing and started trying to schedule network requests, thinking I&amp;#x27;d add some kind of new message counter on the home screen. This proved hard. But it occurred to me that the best place for the counter would be right next to the Kindle&amp;#x27;s device name, at the top of the screen. And the device name could be updated from her Amazon account.&lt;p&gt;So I automated a web browser on the home server to log into Amazon and update the device name to &amp;quot;My Kindle (x)&amp;quot; where x was the number of unread Google Voice texts. The Kindle would update the name on the home screen in less than a minute. This worked for years!&lt;p&gt;(Eventually that Kindle was stolen. I wanted to update its name to something foul but the device disappeared from her account too quickly.)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zorked</author><text>Free Internet was a very bold proposition. I used it a lot, via roaming, from a country that was in the very-expensive-roaming lists.</text></comment>