Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

briarproject.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 390 posts

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#131

Post by theshrike79 »

killingtime74 wrote: post #110
btbuildem wrote: post #96

Take heed, Americaneez -- and prepare, because this may be in your future sooner than prediction markets would have you believe [1]. LoRa mesh networking seems like the runner-up, but vague reports indicate (Meshtastic) doesn't handle crowds well. I think Bitchat can use Meshtastic, so a LoRa radio paired with a phone could be a base for not just texting individuals, but community messaging. 1: https://polymarket.com…

If there is really a civil war, won't these frequencies just get jammed?

Meshtastic works on commercial frequencies. If they block those then a good number of non-wifi/bluetooth devices will just stop working.

Including, but not limited to: garage door openers, some (older) car key fobs, some RC equipment, wireless weather sensors, remotely readable metering devices (electricity, water) and a crapton of other things.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#132

Post by aaravchen »

FridayoLeary wrote: post #43
jayd16 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://briarproject.org/how-it-works/ Looks like clients re-host posts to their friends in a p2p fashion.

Thanks. Basically it depends on c travelling to another town. Also taking the risk of being caught with the content on it's phone. It looks like a great app and every little helps but hardly a game changer, unless i'm underestimating how bad it is in Iran? If it works via tor it's probably also slow, but that's a small price to pay for not relying on a central server for people with legitimate concerns or problems wi…

I suspect use cases are more likely community organizing and info sharing. It supports forums and private groups that are E2EE, and "blog" posts that can include RSS reblogging.

The forums and private groups do bidirectional syncing and merging of all updates with anyone in the forum/group, so that gives you the equivalent of near-infinite multihop among trusted peers for large forums/groups. And it means every person has a complete copy, so it's nearly impossible to find all copies to censor it. With the blogging of reblogged RSS feeds, you can even have people acting like news carriers for viral-ike person-to-person information transfer as well. Even if that does require a little more manual curation by the "transmission vectors" than forum/group posts.

Remember too that when things get bad enough people become ready to give up thier lives if necessary, and this may just be a way to reduce (but not eliminate) the need to actually sacrifice thier life for their cause. Large groups of people may collectively believe it's worth being individually captured and imprisoned or murdered to ensure the larger group is aware of what's happening.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#133

Post by throwaway2037 »

btbuildem wrote: post #96

Take heed, Americaneez -- and prepare, because this may be in your future sooner than prediction markets would have you believe [1]. LoRa mesh networking seems like the runner-up, but vague reports indicate (Meshtastic) doesn't handle crowds well. I think Bitchat can use Meshtastic, so a LoRa radio paired with a phone could be a base for not just texting individuals, but community messaging. 1: https://polymarket.com…

Not to side track too much from this discussion, but I looked at that PolyMarket event: "US civil war before 2027?" Currently, it is priced at 91.3 USD cents for No. If you bet 100 USD, the payout for No will be 109.43. That is very good return -- ~9.5% for 12 months of lending (as PolyMarket required full payment at the time of trade). That is twice the (retail) risk free rate at the moment. I am actually tempted to buy a large part of the order book. Am I missing something obvious?

Also, if you enjoy troll humor, the comments section is very funny.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#134

Post by emptysongglass »

I tried to set up Briar recently so my partner and I could text on the plane. We tried everything including manual exchange of the special links and QR code pairing and nothing worked. This was even while we still bad ground internet access.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#135

Post by tonyhart7 »

btbuildem wrote: post #96

Take heed, Americaneez -- and prepare, because this may be in your future sooner than prediction markets would have you believe [1]. LoRa mesh networking seems like the runner-up, but vague reports indicate (Meshtastic) doesn't handle crowds well. I think Bitchat can use Meshtastic, so a LoRa radio paired with a phone could be a base for not just texting individuals, but community messaging. 1: https://polymarket.com…

[flagged]

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#136

Post by aaravchen »

subscribed wrote: post #7

Perhaps Americans should start preparing with Meshtastic / Meshcore, just in case....... ..,..the Emperor seems hellbent on bringing martial law into effect.

It seems very unlikely the US would take the approach of shutting down the internet to prevent communication. All the internet infrastructure is hardwired for US surveillance data collection, so it's already a perfect honeypot. Why shutdown your honey pot?

More likely to be useful in the US is communication that is actually private, secure, and not centralized, but the underlying communication channel if unlikely to be relevant. Signal for example would almost certainly have thier IP blocked in the area, or their servers taken down because their completely centralized and therefore easy to block. Realistically something that can leverage an adversarial network to implement mesh communication that can be obfuscated (so it's not easily detected and blocked) is more useful in the US.

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#137

Post by thetoon »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #121
zmgsabst wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is huge — you can’t jam everything everywhere. Talking about just cities, you still can’t jam everything everywhere. But yes, targeted suppression/oppression (depending on your allegiance) will almost certainly use jamming — in fact, I’ve spoken with some Antifa about how they jam EMS frequencies at their events.

This reminds me the way the software was distributed in eastern countries when there was no internet. People went to market to meet other people, and they were peddling/colporting (look up the term in French) cassettes with the software. The same can happen now - people would walk down the streets to certain places, to become hubs of information, but with no physical contact. Of course those places would be were the…

> look up the term in French

Wasn't that also called SneakerNet, back in the time? We used it in western Europe as well (both term and distribution method)

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#138

Post by jddj »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #133
btbuildem wrote: post #96

Take heed, Americaneez -- and prepare, because this may be in your future sooner than prediction markets would have you believe [1]. LoRa mesh networking seems like the runner-up, but vague reports indicate (Meshtastic) doesn't handle crowds well. I think Bitchat can use Meshtastic, so a LoRa radio paired with a phone could be a base for not just texting individuals, but community messaging. 1: https://polymarket.com…

Not to side track too much from this discussion, but I looked at that PolyMarket event: "US civil war before 2027?" Currently, it is priced at 91.3 USD cents for No. If you bet 100 USD, the payout for No will be 109.43. That is very good return -- ~9.5% for 12 months of lending (as PolyMarket required full payment at the time of trade). That is twice the (retail) risk free rate at the moment. I am actually tempted to…

There are a few like this. You can bet on Jesus not coming back in the calendar year for a little pocket money.

Funny, because a bit like the yes side of the civil war scenario, if JC comes back and someone is the sort of person to bet that he will, then do they really need the payout in those circumstances; and will the gambling website be in a position to pay out?

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#139

Post by defrost »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #135
btbuildem wrote: post #96

Take heed, Americaneez -- and prepare, because this may be in your future sooner than prediction markets would have you believe [1]. LoRa mesh networking seems like the runner-up, but vague reports indicate (Meshtastic) doesn't handle crowds well. I think Bitchat can use Meshtastic, so a LoRa radio paired with a phone could be a base for not just texting individuals, but community messaging. 1: https://polymarket.com…

[flagged]

Perhaps heed the HN guidelines and avoid obviously false hyperbole.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kelly

seems better qualified to fight than, for example, the current day drinking daytime host self styled as head of "Dep. of War".

Re: Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark

#140

Post by yard2010 »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #135
btbuildem wrote: post #96

Take heed, Americaneez -- and prepare, because this may be in your future sooner than prediction markets would have you believe [1]. LoRa mesh networking seems like the runner-up, but vague reports indicate (Meshtastic) doesn't handle crowds well. I think Bitchat can use Meshtastic, so a LoRa radio paired with a phone could be a base for not just texting individuals, but community messaging. 1: https://polymarket.com…

[flagged]

Are you saying there is a vacuum? Because vacuum usually get filled with crazy militants
Post reply on HN