Hotspots for Obama (or Romney)

I like HackerNews to be a supportive environment for startups, but this raises some questions.<p>Publishers trying to make an honest buck will dislike this. So will cafe customers that just want coffee and wifi and not your political positions, and the privacy conscious who now have their browsing data being sent off to an anonymous third party.<p>And that's putting the security question aside. (If these guys got hacked, they could very easily harvest your bank and email passwords; I'd be more trusting if they're weren't also using an anonymous whois proxy.)<p>The best businesses find win-wins (Airbnb is good for travelers and real-estate owners) -- but I only see one win here.<p>Edit: If this company ends up expanding available public wifi hotspots by rewriting some ads and providing some revenue back to the wifi provider, that could be a win-win for customers and cafes and could be a real hit.

I'm not going to pass judgment on the ethics or usefulness of this app, so I thought I would try some constructive criticism.<p>1. The top-right page curl to switch between Romney and Obama has mismatched alt-text.<p>2. Instead of being partisan, maybe you would want a "HotspotsForAmerica" that would just remind people to vote for the candidate of their choice, instead of telling people who they should vote for.

This is the tackiest possible way to do this (who hasn't already seen every political ad 50 times?), not to mention the extreme inpropriety of asking for a user's router password.<p>Far easier, and more tasteful: rename your SSID. It's the digital equivalent of a sign on your lawn.

How does this work? They have an android app. I guess that connects to your router to change your DNS. (which then resolves their IP for some ad hosts). But how does it set their DNS in your router? Is there a standard API for that? Or did they make a scraper-app for lots of routers?

Why is everybody expending so much effort to support the Obama+Romney campaign? Isn't it pretty clear that they're going to win?

On first read I thought this implied it would <i>add</i> Obamads to my browsing experience, but looking more deeply, it just replaces other ads with Obama. Neat idea.

I would love for Barack to win, but this is just dirty. Who's going to pay for web advertising anymore if any malicious DNS in the middle just feels entitled to hijack them for its own purposes?

Add Jill Stein please.

Is there a geolocation map of all of the hotspots that have supported either candidate? I would assume that would be more interesting than the configuration to a lot of people.

If you change your vote based on a hotspot name, I'd like to ask you not to vote.<p>Or drive or be around children for that matter - because you are dangerously ignorant.