41–50 of 221 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Charging businesses to use it would be a path to monetization, hence WhatsApp's partnership with Twilio.
Not a bad point, but what business prefers a mesh to a centralized messaging system?
This reminds me of FireChat which was heavily used during the 2014 Hong Kong protests
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would it being open source solve the problem of addressing?
Addresses can be made non-identifying.
If I am Alice and know Bob, I want to know Bob's address. Using the cell phone number, an address I already have for Bob, solves that problem. Verifying the number via SMS provides some reasonable (but not ironclad) guarantees that it actually is Bob.
Yes, as an address scheme, it prioritizes convenience over other things. If you want wide acceptance, that's a requirement. Wide acceptance can be useful if you need to adopt something in a hurry and you didn't think to set up something in advance. It's also great because it isn't exactly great opsec to look different from the crowd, and using Tor is a giant "HI I AM DOING CRIMES" beacon to the world.
Don't they require a state-run app on everyone's phones as part of their social credit system? It should at least know who is using the mesh app if nothing else?
If worst comes to worst, I hope there's satellite connectivity to HK. Or landlines not under Chinese jurisdiction. EDIT: To clarify, I'm concerned about what could happen if China cuts HK off from the Internet.
Obviously since it’s the only safe option, I can see why the Chinese are using it, but I have to wonder what sort of bandwidth can realistically be supported by any mesh network.
I just tried the app via the US App Store and it requires you to verify through SMS before use. This means that it’s neither anonymous nor fit for use in a disaster zone. Good example of software that would be better if open source.
I am not sure why protestors did not adopt the open source serval mesh project apk and ios app. [1]
In Hong Kong given the density of building it's bit hard to have a line of sight, so it will still be hard to build a local network. But it's still possible to build a completely wireless network over the top of the buildings to communicate with each other.
This communications can be blocked, but then it will still work if enough people switch on their mobile phone and WiFi router to communicate with each other over peer to peer network which is a combination of wired and wireless. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
[1] http://www.servalproject.org/
Obviously since it’s the only safe option, I can see why the Chinese are using it, but I have to wonder what sort of bandwidth can realistically be supported by any mesh network.