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A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

bitchat.free

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Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#311

Post by gh02t »

oldgregg wrote: post #258
lxgr wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is not allowed to be used for data transmission. Is this even true? I still have two Gotennas from before they pivoted to military use cases, and they were legal to use both in the US and in Europe (on different bands auto-configured via GPS, as far as I remember). REI also currently stock…

Get bought out by military control grid --> Instantly kill popular consumer devices.

It's unfortunate, GoTenna was (still is) pretty cool. Beartooth is similar and you can just buy them, but they unfortunately still have military-level pricing for what is pretty simple hardware.

Though in their defense, I'm not sure GoTenna was ever "popular." Probably not enough to pay the bills, given their pivot.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#312

Post by ssl-3 »

rm30 wrote: post #296
ssl-3 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FidoNet has a lot of it solved, for sure. But doesn't it rely upon pre-configured paths between nodes in order to handle message routing? If so, then: Wouldn't it fall down completely when operating in the ever-shifting and inherently disorganized environment that a sea of pocket supercomputers represents?

I don’t take concepts as a 'full package'. I evaluate what is worth taking based on the requirements. The brilliant part of FidoNet is the asynchronous persistence. In a 'sea of supercomputers,' a real-time mesh (like Bluetooth) fails because it requires an end-to-end path right now. Store-and-Forward allows a node to hold a message until it 'sees' any valid peer, turning every 'meat-bot' into a mobile post office. M…

Yes. There's a lot of things to work out.

Here's one scenario:

Node A has a message to send to node H, but A is disconnected (no peers). Node A stores this message for eventual delivery.

Eventually, node K (ie "any valid peer") appears. Node A gives them the message that is intended for node H and rinses its hands of it.

Does node K's possession of this message actually improve the odds of node H ever receiving the message?

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#313

Post by squarefoot »

londons_explore wrote: post #271
squarefoot wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small USB pluggable module that supports LoRa plus an app using Codec2 or similar low rate codec for voice encoding could fill the gap, although having it bundled with the phone would make it a lot less cumbersome to use. For non phone portable solutions, the LilyGo T-Deck Plus/Pro come to mind, but they're not phones so that would imply a 2nd device to carry around.

Yet compared to the 5G radio that can do gigabit speed and 20+ kilometers of range....

But needs towers, which in some disaster situations could be not working, or in others simply not trustworthy. If 5G phones radio modules were modified to allow point to point communication, the usable range would still be a small fraction of what is attainable with towers and their high gain antenna arrays.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#314

Post by catlifeonmars »

rm30 wrote: post #260
digiown wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the walkie talkies work if there are hundreds in a small area all transmitting data with each other? Besides, there's just not that much bandwidth there.

The smartphone is just an advanced walkie-talkie, currently limited only by the mobile operator, the law, the radio chipset, and the OS. In a true emergency, who can stop you from modifying that architecture? Once you treat the device as an independent radio node (using its DSP power to run custom modems) you can establish a mesh network with a range of several kilometers. We have a '4x4 car in our pockets; we’ve jus…

Since I’m not able to edit my original comment: rm30 is actually referring to something much more interesting than jailbreaking the LTE/NR stack.

> For instance, many chipsets have an integrated FM receiver that is essentially a high-sensitivity VHF radio.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#315

Post by dzhiurgis »

modeless wrote: post #217

It's criminal that cell phones are bristling with incredibly advanced radio technology and yet they are by law not allowed to communicate directly with each other over a distance of more than a couple hundred meters without assistance from a licensed and centrally controlled base station. Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is…

A alternative example of this is how Apple doesn't have a way to browse your iPhone's gallery without syncing to their super slow iCloud first.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#316

Post by h4kunamata »

Reading some comments, people do not understand.....

Anything that does not involve having govs and the middle man, will never be allowed, legally.

Long frequency radios, phone-to-phone communication, decentralized payment systems, anything. If the gov cannot track you or cannot make you pay tax for it, it will never become popular for obvious reasons.

It is legal in 2026 for Sony and others to delete digital content you bought and paid tax for because it doesn't belong to you, yet, it is illegal to download such content via torrent. That tells you a lot.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#317

Post by Aloha »

modeless wrote: post #217

It's criminal that cell phones are bristling with incredibly advanced radio technology and yet they are by law not allowed to communicate directly with each other over a distance of more than a couple hundred meters without assistance from a licensed and centrally controlled base station. Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is…

There is nothing stopping a phone manufacturer from putting a 900 MHz ISM radio in their hardware.

Also, the walkie talkies certainly can legally do data transmission.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#319

Post by [deleted] »

Aloha wrote: post #317
modeless wrote: post #217

It's criminal that cell phones are bristling with incredibly advanced radio technology and yet they are by law not allowed to communicate directly with each other over a distance of more than a couple hundred meters without assistance from a licensed and centrally controlled base station. Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is…

There is nothing stopping a phone manufacturer from putting a 900 MHz ISM radio in their hardware. Also, the walkie talkies certainly can legally do data transmission.

[deleted]

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#320

Post by AngryData »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #304
foltik wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not worthwhile? “It’s too hard” isn’t a great argument for why our phones should just become useless during power outages, natural disasters, ..

It’s not “too hard”. It’s physically impossible without regulation. There is but one limited RF spectrum that we all share. One bad actor (intentional or misconfigured) can render the entire RF spectrum in their area unusable. The radius of their impact only depends on how much kWHs they have access to and it doesn’t take much to cripple radio communication in a large metropolitan area. Until some clever cookie can f…

Theoretically people could cripple RF comms on accident, in reality that almost never happens despite many people possessing devices able to do so. My mikrotik router will let me broadcast all sorts of illegal signals with a few clicks inside their GUI, and yet I never heard about problems with people crippling city blocks with bad router settings. Or from their weird microwave setups. Or trying to run and operate some dilapidated 60 year old radios.
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