A $4 Pico W becomes a driverless USB Wi-Fi adapter, after Gemini said no (gitlab.com)
The trick is a MAC-address swap: the Pico W's USB side adopts the radio's station MAC, so Ethernet frames cross verbatim with no NAT, no wpa_supplicant, no vendor driver. It enumerates as a standard CDC-NCM device on macOS, Linux and Windows alike.
Then the numbers land: 4.75 Mbits/sec, capped by the RP2040's full-speed USB. The thread splits between people who find that fine for an air-gapped box and people noting a $5 dongle is faster and cheaper.
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