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Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

zonemessenger.com

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Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#141

Post by twothamendment »

loader wrote: post #119
theveloped wrote: post #2

Let me know what you guys think. The app was made to get people talking again to the people around them. I threw in automatically generated anonymous nicknames to lower the initial barrier a bit. Any advise on how to market/keep people engaged are most welcome.

I've had an idea like this in my head for awhile now. One use case, you're at home and something just happened, large car accident, loud noise, etc and you want to be able to chat with the people around you while sitting on your couch. When stuff happens around me when I'm sitting at home I find twitter to be too slow to update and it has a lack of information anyways. But then you're just dealing with the same netwo…

Ham radio works for me. The power went out a few weeks ago. In the time it took me to walk across the room and turn on the radio they were already talking about it. I didn't bother to transmit, I didn't need to ask. In the next few minutes I heard reports from across the area, who had power, who didn't. It was way faster than waiting for news on facebook. I had a similar experience when there was a large amount of smoke blowing through. Was it something close or from a neighboring state? Ham radio is pretty simple and you can get started for $50 (radio and test). What does it take? Check out http://hamstudy.org (no affiliation, just a happy user).

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#143

Post by brokenmachine »

ItsDeathball wrote: post #130
debt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the anonymous angle. Why does everything have to be anonymous now? Like, you know if it uses the internet or touches a switch/router/server etc outside of your own home at any point that it's certainly, most definitely NOT anonymous at this point. Anonymous has become a pointless buzzword in this NSA-era we be living in. Just say it's a hyper-local instant messaging app, because any half woke indiv…

There is a difference between the NSA being able to trace your identity vs. a profit-driven corporation being able to connect your identity to your online speech, location, and contacts. The first is governed by due process and need-to-know, the second is essentially public knowledge if the ad-tech revenue is sufficiently tempting. Even in a pseudonymous environment where the venue operator presumably knows who you a…

> NSA -- due process and need-to-know

Lol. Have you read the news in the last 30 years?

I do agree somewhat with your point though.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#145

Post by KarenWint »

wccrawford wrote: post #105
elaus wrote: post #29

How does this work if a person that is 500m away from me is currently chatting with someone 1.2km away… will it seem to me like that person is talking to himself (because his chat partner is out of my reach)?

I played a game that had communication like this, and the conversations were often quite odd because of it, hearing half-conversations a fair bit of the time. And relaying messages to people further away... Though it wasn't anonymous, and people knew where to tell people to send the messages towards.

Looks like it is from a rpg book, not a computer game. My first guess was GURPS by Steve Jackson Games (General Universal Roleplaying System) - but I'm leaning towards one of the oldest roleplaying games (which AFAIK has been "computerized" several times): Traveller.

The "tech level" indicates which level of technology is needed for a particular piece of equipment to be available and/or normal (won't get you burned at the stake for using "magic") - in Traveller it is used to label different worlds in the universe AFAIK - with GURPS it also extends to cross-dimensinal travel, alternate realities, time travel etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller_%28role-playing_game... http://unblockedallgames.com/unblocked-games/happy-wheels

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#146

Post by williamle8300 »

theveloped wrote: post #125
williamle8300 wrote: post #116

Did you make this with Ionic? Pretty smooth UX

Jup. It's build using the Ionic framework. What gave it away?

When you click on the logo the "slide down" animation feels very web-y. The rest of app is really nice though. Everything feels really slick for a HTML/JS app. The keyboard show animation could a little work, but I know that's not easy to do.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#147

Post by bo1024 »

civilian wrote: post #135
bo1024 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell how it works from the site, but a good approach is to randomize the distance threshold a bit each time. For example: if users are within 1km, always connect; if more than 2km apart, never connect; 1.xkm apart, connect with probability x. That kind of thing combined with some rate limits (how often one can attempt to connect to a user) should be effective. (edit) Actually, I think I like mseebach's sugges…

Heh, it's like salting their location.

I'm thinking of ideas like [differential privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy).

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#148

Post by rawnlq »

bo1024 wrote: post #129
theveloped wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to the fact that distance matching is done server side the application doesn't have any knowledge with regard to distance. The only knowledge one has is whether or not one receives messages from an other user. Using triangulation to pinpoint an other users location would therefore require to move in and out of range (while the targeted user is continuously sending messages). Thus significantly more difficult than…

I can't tell how it works from the site, but a good approach is to randomize the distance threshold a bit each time. For example: if users are within 1km, always connect; if more than 2km apart, never connect; 1.xkm apart, connect with probability x. That kind of thing combined with some rate limits (how often one can attempt to connect to a user) should be effective. (edit) Actually, I think I like mseebach's sugges…

I am not sure if your original solution will actually work.

For example an attacker can just spoof enough accounts to sample from your distribution to figure out the true center. Imagine spoofing a grid of users with let's say K fake accounts per dot, then if you plot the histogram of who managed to connect you will see a very clear bump in the 2d histogram in the shape of circle.

The solution in your edit is much better.

Re: Show HN: Anonymous messaging with a 1km radius

#150

Post by wccrawford »

KarenWint wrote: post #145
wccrawford wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played a game that had communication like this, and the conversations were often quite odd because of it, hearing half-conversations a fair bit of the time. And relaying messages to people further away... Though it wasn't anonymous, and people knew where to tell people to send the messages towards.

Looks like it is from a rpg book, not a computer game. My first guess was GURPS by Steve Jackson Games (General Universal Roleplaying System) - but I'm leaning towards one of the oldest roleplaying games (which AFAIK has been "computerized" several times): Traveller. The "tech level" indicates which level of technology is needed for a particular piece of equipment to be available and/or normal (won't get you burned a…

The game I was talking about was DragonRealms. It's definitely a computer game.
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