Bluetooth 5 Now Available

[1] The paper's conclusion summarizes very nicely, though they write it formally and a little confusingly: the thing is utterly broken. They can read contents, even if they key exchange was not observed/captured, and they can inject traffic. Basically it's obfuscated plain text.

Water is a big one, which I think is one reason that having my phone in my back pocket almost always results in a dropped connection to my headphones over the course of working outside for a few hours, compared to my side or front jacket pocket. Too much water in our tissues.

My smartphone let me answer emails and burning questions on the go, while also letting me give up my car. My VR headset is making me completely rethink what User Experience means to the point of making the current usage of the term UX just downright laughable.

But that's actually beside the point. I don't actually need Bluetooth to change my life. I need it to get rid of the wires in my life.

And if it worked as advertised, I could do that. But Bluetooth devices... they're just always a tad sucky. And the ways in which they just feel bad is in the secret society handshake of doom you have to do every time you want to use the device because it's 2016 and for some reason my devices still can't reliably pair with multiple other devices.

And then once they are connected, the latency in the communication almost makes them useless. I can't use Bluetooth headphones to play games, which is usually when I want to wear headphones. I can't use Bluetooth in any of my motion tracking wearable hardware prototypes, which is ostensibly the sort of thing Bluetooth wants to cover.

Something that might work for me: decouple the Bluetooth pairing from the host computer. Make it a part of the dongle. Make a dongle that is basically the wireless equivalent of a USB hub, and it's to that that I pair my devices. I'd be happy to bring that dongle with me everywhere I bring my Bluetooth devices. That might actually let me use my Bluetooth mouse on my home PC, on my laptop, and on my work PC.

Finally, would someone please design a decent, full-sized keyboard, with Bluetooth support.

> Key feature updates include four times range, two times speed, and eight times broadcast message capacity. Longer range powers whole home and building coverage, for more robust and reliable connections. Higher speed enables more responsive, high-performance devices. Increased broadcast message size increases the data sent for improved and more context relevant solutions.

When will the chips be shipping anyone know?