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Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

briarproject.org

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Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#91

Post by MonaroVXR »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #9
rchaud wrote: post #4

Peer to Peer data transfer via computing devices is something I wish was be more mainstream. It's not, because the commercial cloud storage mafia has invested heavily in telling people that your data has to traverse their toll roads first. I recently discovered Syncthing Fork which was customizable in a way Google Drive or alternatives were not. And it's entirely P2P, transmitting files between my laptop and my phone…

> Bluetooth transfer There was a brief period while I was at school where people would share mp3 files with each other this way. This was before 2010.

Reporting in with a Samsung E900 with 1GB Micro SD card.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#92

Post by flaburgan »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #7

Briar is really neat, and I hope it will land on Linux, Mac and Windows. Being able to send messages and files directly to anybody on a local network without any account just rocks.

Ubuntu 08.04 was already allowing this using empathy...

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#93

Post by giphyman »

goodpoint wrote: post #70

Briar desperately needs a library for Linux and Windows that can be used to build all sort of applications. Discussion forums, group chat, IM, location-based messaging, email/mailing-list equivalents, blogs and offline websites and more. Not just one app.

Briar is actually built on a library called Bramble that can be used for offline-first p2p data syncing. There was recently a good talk by a Briar Dev going deeper into the Bramble protocol: https://nico.dorfbrunnen.eu/posts/2021/diving-at-xmpp/

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#94

Post by myself248 »

dwb wrote: post #6

I generally lean more toward “i like that iOS is locked down”, but this offline-app-sharing feature is one of the best arguments I’ve seen against that. That said, either I’d want peer-to-peer-shared apps to be signed by an entity I already highly trust, or that the sandbox containing the app was extremely solid (and preferably both of course).

F-Droid can also share APKs peer-to-peer.

If both parties have F-Droid installed prior to the internet going away or being censored or whatever, other apps can be shared locally from a single device that has the app, to any other F-Droid user:

https://f-droid.org/en/tutorials/swap/

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#95

Post by brokenmachine »

Y_Y wrote: post #60
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I heard US telecoms were insanely draconic (why were they allowed to act like that though? lobbying?) In Europe they weren't saints either but they weren't as bad when locking down your phone and mostly just resorted to SIM-lock, instead of locking other features as well.

People outside Europe still pay their network operator to "allow" things like tethering.

Tethering has always been allowed on my Australian phones.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#96

Post by ryukoposting »

rchaud wrote: post #4

Peer to Peer data transfer via computing devices is something I wish was be more mainstream. It's not, because the commercial cloud storage mafia has invested heavily in telling people that your data has to traverse their toll roads first. I recently discovered Syncthing Fork which was customizable in a way Google Drive or alternatives were not. And it's entirely P2P, transmitting files between my laptop and my phone…

Syncthing was a godsend when I was in college, but it was surprisingly hard to convince my peers (pun intended) that it was worth using instead of Google Drive/OneDrive. For most of them, the hangup came down to the setup process- the incumbent cloud-based file sync tools are braindead easy to use. Just log in, and boom, there are your files. Syncthing's setup process is clunky by comparison, but more importantly it's a workflow that people aren't really familiar with.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#98

Post by jiggunjer »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #39
jqpabc123 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, this is a very limited, niche market product.

But is it actually a product ? Don't think so: https://briarproject.org/about-us/

One definition for the word is "Anything that is produced". So yes, all software is a product.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#99

Post by askvictor »

thekid314 wrote: post #85

This sounds like a hobby project. Except Sudan has had its internet cut for 2 weeks. A widely used mesh network app would really change the balance of power between the people and the military coup.

These sorts of things inevitably are hobby projects... until they're not. The people making them are usually quite far-sighted about scenarios they might be used in, but these scenarios are generally not relevant day-to-day for most people. That would be a real breakthrough - make a system like this that is useful enough to get mass adoption in 'normal' times, but can continue working in disaster/coup/war type situations.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#100

Post by askvictor »

redundantly wrote: post #13
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safer how? On PC at least, SD card readers, both internal and external are attached via the USB protocol and are seen by the OS like mass storage devices, just like USB drives, including being bootable, so whatever malware you have for a specific PC target, the payload should basically work the same from SD cards as via USB drives.

Nyet. An SD card in a card slot can only be accessed as a mass storage device. A USB drive can act as a mass storage device as well as a keyboard and mouse and even contain an entire OS on it that could be remotely accessible via WiFi.

SDIO would suggest otherwise, though I have no idea if Android supports it, and what drivers would hypothetically be required. Niche, but might be possible.
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