Warbiking

October 10, 2007 12:55 PM

David McCallum's Warbike, which chimes away as it passes by (and detects) stray wifi signals. Torontonians can ride the Warbike for free until the beginning of December as part of Interaccess.

Full interview with the artist and more audio available in the first segment from the Spark podcast.

posted by myopicman (18 comments total)

What's this? Warbike? Get back to me when it has more war, less WiFi. I demand canons.
posted by dead_ at 12:57 PM on October 10, 2007

Dang, thought this was by David McCullough.
posted by Senator at 1:01 PM on October 10, 2007

*groan*
posted by nola at 1:02 PM on October 10, 2007

I demand canons.

*all of MuFi gets to work*
posted by DMan at 1:03 PM on October 10, 2007

The wi-fi detector t shirt.
posted by nickyskye at 1:09 PM on October 10, 2007 [1 favorite]

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. IS ON YOUR STREETS WARBIKING YOUR WIRELESS
posted by quonsar at 1:11 PM on October 10, 2007

Meh. I did this years ago. All you need is a laptop, a pair of headphones and netstumbler.

Now get ethereal and ettercap installed on that bike with some kind of heuristical scanner and re-constituter and pipe that into a voice synth and/or a media player and it would be different.

Granted, 80 percent of the active WiFi networks you'd bike through would probably be downloading porn.

Hrm....
posted by loquacious at 1:17 PM on October 10, 2007

Roll that with a portable projector and a copy of driftnet for the epic lulz.
posted by jquinby at 1:35 PM on October 10, 2007

Yes, I was expecting something a little more like this...

Or even this, at a pinch.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:47 PM on October 10, 2007

iPhones hacked to run homebrew and other "stuff" can take advantage of a wi-fi stumbler application.

No WEP cracker yet, however. Too bad, as it seems that PacBell DSL, wrapped up in WEP, comprises 75% of the installations in my neighborhood.

To crack WEP on an iPhone and get free Internets...that would bring all the girls to the yard (sigh).
posted by porn in the woods at 3:09 PM on October 10, 2007

Toronto? Pff. Try riding that thing around Boston if you've got the stones...
posted by Naberius at 3:21 PM on October 10, 2007

nickyskye writes "The wi-fi detector t shirt."

"Out of stock."

Aaaaaaaaaaauuuughghglug!

Man, that would have been perfect for work.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:52 PM on October 10, 2007

Wow, some mouth breather USian cop wouldn't know whether to bust you for hacking or riding a bomb.
posted by 2sheets at 5:55 PM on October 10, 2007

porn in the woods writes "No WEP cracker yet"

Here.
posted by krinklyfig at 6:03 PM on October 10, 2007

Oh, for iPhones? Well, I'm sure that wouldn't be too hard. All you have to do is capture enough packets. Does the iPhone's OS X have the terminal app? I'm assuming it has the BSD userland tools. I bet this wouldn't be too hard to get installed ...
posted by krinklyfig at 6:07 PM on October 10, 2007

Hmm. I thought at first it was detecting unsecured wifi networks and noisemaking as a public service. This... meh.
posted by dreamsign at 7:40 PM on October 10, 2007

I was hoping this was instructions for turning one's bike into a gun.
posted by louche mustachio at 9:09 PM on October 10, 2007

krinklyfig, ThinkGeek says You can place a backorder now and your Wi-Fi Detector Shirt will ship on or before October 26th Or use the Email me when available link above to be notified the moment it comes in stock.

Oct 26 isn't that long away :)
posted by nickyskye at 12:09 AM on October 11, 2007