Jack Dorsey just Announced Bitchat(A secure, decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging app for iOS and macOS that works over Bluetooth mesh networks) Licensed Under Public Domain.
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Have a look at meshtastic. Yes, you do have to get a separate device, but range on it can be several tens to hundreds of miles depending on the mesh density.
In practice range seems to be a few kilometers, in places with lots of nodes.
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There is already a really good foss app that does exactly that, it's called briar and is as secure and private as it gets. The downside with p2p communication apps being, that they eat your phones battery for breakfast. Still a good option for activists or journalists I think. It's a good way to get around the "server in the middle" problem. Still more convenient to run your own (xmpp) server at home imho...
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Have a look at meshtastic. Yes, you do have to get a separate device, but range on it can be several tens to hundreds of miles depending on the mesh density.
Yeah my first thought when I read the headline was "why not just use meshtastic?"
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Interesting. I wonder why Briar won't have an iOS client?
I'm sure the background limitations are a big part, but I wonder if there's also limits to what they can do with bluetooth
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There is already a really good foss app that does exactly that, it's called briar and is as secure and private as it gets. The downside with p2p communication apps being, that they eat your phones battery for breakfast. Still a good option for activists or journalists I think. It's a good way to get around the "server in the middle" problem. Still more convenient to run your own (xmpp) server at home imho...
** for Android (and Windows/macOS/Linux) but not iOS.
And apparently never going to be as some key component is written in Java. Other technical obstacles should be solvable (like f.ex. getting continuous running in bg by exploiting location services like iSH can do)
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I once did some programming on the Cybiko, a device from 2000 that could form a wireless mesh network with peers. The idea was that you could have a shopping mall full of teens and they'd be able to chat with each other from one end to the other by routing through the mesh. It was a neat device!
I wanted a cybiko so bad as a teen. It seemed like it would be so cool if everyone I knew bought one. Of course no one did, but I still think they are awesome.
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Ingenious name. I feel like Bitchat should be connected somehow with PenIsland.
If you want to bitch at someone, there's an app for that
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You can blame whatever or whoever you want, the problem remains.
I just changed the routing for local networks to ignore the VPN
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don't nazis already have telegram
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don't nazis already have telegram
Now they have a second option.
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If you're in Bluetooth range can't you chat with your mouths? Or is it for secretly chatting when you're in a group of people? I don't get the use case.
It's not about you being in bluetooth range of the person you want to talk to, it's about all the people sitting in between you both that pass the message along without touching the internet.
So you can be on a cargo ship, or on a remote island, with 20 other people and all use chat. If 1 person has internet, then you can all chat globally as well.
It's the same basic method of how airtags work. Everyone with an iPhone connects to the airtag and passes data to Apple. It's just done in the background, so users don't ever notice.
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Neat idea 10 years ago "discovered" recently by a tech bro who thinks he's the first one to think of it. He got his clicks, I guess.
No one has got it right yet though. Being apple only, he hasn’t either.
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Okay. But one of my points still stands that there are already a bunch of p2p Bluetooth-based messaging apps out there.
None of them cross the line yet to be “good enough” in practice for all the use cases of an offline messenger. Briar is probably the best, but not useful if even one of your group is on iOS.
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I mean...I guess thanks for the stepping off point? Android has the Briar Project, which couldn't be distributed for iOS due to Apple's license fuckery. I'm at least curious enough to look through this and see what they've done different.
I think the most useless part of this is using BT only which has a range of what...40ft?
There are plenty of situations where that’s useful, especially if you can have group chats with images. Think airplanes, weddings, concerts, sports arenas. And if you have meshing and store and forward when nodes are moving around, you can cover a large area that may not have internet. It’s a legitimate tool that no one has done right yet - and as apple only, this is t yet either.
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None of them cross the line yet to be “good enough” in practice for all the use cases of an offline messenger. Briar is probably the best, but not useful if even one of your group is on iOS.
That's a good point. And to add to it, I've tried using Briar as an emergency option if there's no Internet. And there seems to be a massive flaw in that scenario: you need the Internet to authenticate yourself on the app. So if there's no Internet it's useless. I just tried switching off WiFi and 5G on my phone and yup, can't log in, so can't use it.
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For all those little bitches.
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** for Android (and Windows/macOS/Linux) but not iOS.
And apparently never going to be as some key component is written in Java. Other technical obstacles should be solvable (like f.ex. getting continuous running in bg by exploiting location services like iSH can do)
Thanks, I did not realise that. So this app is for Mac to Mac communication only. If seems for briar you need to run a server still or messages will get lost between mobile users. How does this new app solve that problem? On mobile phones disconnects will happen regularly as network coverage changes and different network towers connect and disconnect when you are on the move.
You might as well spin up your own xmpp server at that point, as that protocol is tried and tested for over 20 years and very lightweight and battery friendly as well... -
I don't trust Jack. But this does seem marginally interesting. Actually decentralized, no servers supposedly. We'll have to see. Again I sure as hell I'm not going to trust dorsey. And he's got it under some cringey edgelord "unlicense" license which basically appears to be MIT just with a different name. The actual concept seems intriguing. But definitely nothing to get excited about currently.
One thing I personally like more about this than about Briar - routing of messages.
It seems Briar exchanges state of the groups with the neighboring devices, they with their neighbors, and so on.
That might take a few iterations (thus delay) to propagate a message from, say, one side of the crowd to another, and leave different members with different state all the time.
While here, apparently, messages are routed further immediately. From my own toying around - not the best thing too, but initiating synchronization by sender\relay and not by recipient seems sane.
Maybe should rewrite the toy to be nicer. It seems to be closer to real world things than I thought.
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I just changed the routing for local networks to ignore the VPN
I don't know how to do that
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Let's build an app to liberate communications but only release it inside a closed garden. Great idea
In the context of the US fascist dictatorship and Apple being the dominant smartphone there, starting with Apple makes sense.
If it can be done within Apples curated monopoly, it will be technically possible on Android (probably).
