Earlier quoted context omitted.
The image you're taking about is the cover art for that album, right?
Yes...
A likely story. This is a safe place pal, we’re all friends here..
Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
131–140 of 599 posts
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the spec is very complex I once printed out the BT5 spec (just the core), for Ss and Gs (on my employer's dime). I had a stack of 3-inch (large) 3-ring binders on my desk, reaching 2ft high (0.6m). It was well over 2,000 pages. It would have been five times that, if I had printed out the various profiles, and whatnot. BT is crazy. The difference between "Classic" and BLE is frustrating. I suspect that soon, all BT…
> I once printed out the BT5 spec (just the core), for Ss and Gs (on my employer's dime). I've never dealt with Bluetooth myself, but once heard/read that a company could follow that spec perfectly and their device wouldn't work with large swaths of devices. The claim was that companies implement something that's Bluetooth adjacent but there are some non-conformances that everybody "just does" to make it work the maj…
Well, the equipment that my company made was really quite primitive, BT-wise. They also only supported Classic (BR/EDR), and only then, for control stuff (shutter release, aperture adjust, etc.). Image data was sent over WiFi, and BT was used to help set up said WiFi.
Apple is probably the biggest offender, when it comes to custom implementations, but BT explicitly allows vendors to do custom implementations, so they aren't actually breaking any rules.
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#133My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…
Reading your comment made me feel like someone had been spying on me in my car. I go through this same thing in my Lexus every time I drive it as well. It is such a relief to know I am not the only one.
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#134The annoying thing I have with bluetooth, is with my headphones, I connect them up, set them as the sound source and just..... nothing. I have to go round all of my devices and disable the bluetooth on them, because some other device is connected too and although that is not playing any sound at all, somehow has priority and doesn't allow any sound to be played by any other device.
> I have to go round all of my devices and disable the bluetooth on them, because some other device is connected too
Sigh. If only there was some kind of mechanism to indicate physically which of the devices you want the sound to come from. A thin string of sorts, that you could attach easily to both devices to indicate that these two are to be connected. But we can only dream...
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#135Because it's RF, shipping firmware can't be open source -- end user tweakable and replaceable. I bet this is one reason BT will never be good. If it could be open source there would be a winning stacks (or a few) that would bubble up on some git repo and be good enough for most everyone.
There’s no reason Bluetooth stacks couldn’t be open source - unlike a GSM modem, a Bluetooth chipset should only be able to transmit in the 2.5GHz ISM band, which is unlicensed. Even if you can change the LO enough to get outside the band, there should be hardware filtering etc.
Of course, commercially available SDRs can transmit in all sorts of bands including licensed ones if you write the code to do so, and there are plenty of open-source applications for SDR, so it’s not like it’s impossible to legally have open firmware for whatever chipsets (even cellular modems)…
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#136My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…
The image you're taking about is the cover art for that album, right?
It's album art for an album he never wanted though. Apple did a stunt some years back where they celebrated the launch of a new U2 album by automatically putting that album on everyone's iPhones. For many people, it's the only music they have in the stock Music app, so it's what gets played when nothing else is currently playing.
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#137My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X: The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is…
I have exactly he same issue with U2 on Apple Music. Exactly the same song. I think it’s because you get it for free.
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#138I've not had problems with bluetooth for years. Printers on the other hand, never seem to work smoothly. How?
Buy better printers, or change your expectations. I haven’t had problems with printers as long as I can remember, except a problem with large spool files created by PowerPoint. I used to work as a technician running computer labs. This job extended to printer repair. I later wrote software to manage printers. Some printers are really very nice to work with and not too hard to repair. Some laser printers are built lik…
[deleted]
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#139I tried to learn why BT is still somehow painful to use, and the article basically does not have an answer. My take from comments here and my experience: - Makers of BT devices can't agree on many important common things (easy discovery / pairing mode, priority, etc), and have little incentive to seek agreement. It's like phone chargers before USB. - Makers of BT devices tend to cut corners and/or add not-entirely-st…
/Opinion:
"Makers of BT devices can't agree on many important common things (easy discovery / pairing mode, priority, etc)." => I think it is not the creators of the devices (peripherals), it is in my expierence the SmartPhones (Apple/Google)
=> iOS won't let you discover BLE Devices which have only generic or costum services/characteristics
=> iOS will hide parts of advertisment/discovery data from app developers
=> iOS won't let you know if a device is bonded/paired via API
=> on iOS if you want to initiate bonding, you have to initiate it from the peripheral
=> Android sometimes "forgets" keys of paired devices
=> Android sometimes scrambles data from characteristic notify()
=> Android sometimes "misses" characteristic writes (ratio 1:1000000)
This is just what I could come up with in a minute. I develop both FW for peripherals and Apps, so my 2 cents
=> It's almost never the peripheral/fw and most time the Smartphone
=> RF noise is (almost) never an issue, glitchses come from phones
Re: Bluetooth remains an 'unusually painful' technology after two decades
#140> More than that, multiple US government agencies have advised consumers that using Bluetooth risks leaving their devices more vulnerable to cybersecurity risks.
It was the security issues that first started me leaving Bluetooth disabled on my phones, but I'm glad that I did since it's so often being used to track us. Bluetooth tracking beacons are inexpensive and require less power than wifi trackers (which are still all over the place). They can run a long time on a battery or using RF to DC, allowing them to be easily and discretely mounted and can be triggered by motion/proximity sensors to extend battery life even further. They can be placed to log your location to within a couple feet, but some beacons can track you from many miles away.
I've had my phone set to disable wifi and Bluetooth when I'm out of range of my usual networks. I can always manually enable either if I need it, but because I've still got a phone with a headphone jack, I've never actually needed to enable bluetooth. Laptops have the same issues. I'm hoping my next laptop will allow me to disable it in UEFI.
UWB and 5G are also things to keep an eye on if you're concerned about being tracked and monitored.