Dark Thoughts Pt II

[grayestofghosts]

Remember when I was unsettled by the internet goings on? And then there was the bombing in Nashville, and there's a whisper that the reason why we haven't heard much more about it from muttering on social media is because a lot of the internet/phone there is still down. Don't like that. Nope.

My heart goes out to the people who were hurt and the missing pets and etc., but I'm quite sure the target was the AT&T hub. Anyway, that's it for me being a crank today. Over and out.

Comments

[brin_bellway]

I don't know if you read my post on rotated stockpiles, but: if you're concerned about comms going down, now might be an extra good time to insulate yourself against supply-chain shocks. (The second-best time is today, as they say.) I read a thing in the news about a lot of stores in the greater Tennessee area struggling because their card readers were down, and that's just the *immediate* effect.

As for me, just now I gritted my teeth and installed Bridgefy (which *does* have an iOS version, btw). I don't like the vibes of the people who make it, and I *really* don't like the cloud-dependent initial setup, but--God help us--to the best of my knowledge it's the only functional distributed smartphone mesh currently in existence. I'll gladly switch to Briar or Serval or Berty if and when they develop enough to be usable, but for now a mesh in the hand is worth two in the bush. I'll have to get my parents to help me test the multi-hop later.

[brin_bellway]

P.S.

>>the only functional distributed smartphone mesh currently in existence

Well, Scuttlebutt maybe? But Scuttlebutt doesn't have a private-messaging feature.

[grayestofghosts]

This comment got me to install Bridgefy... and I cannot get it to work -_-;;

[brin_bellway]

I haven't tested multi-hop yet, but I've done two-device tests with my (slowly failing, but not in a way relevant to this) primary smartphone and the smartphone I bought from [a seller who didn't know what he was doing] to replace it that turned out to be the wrong model (I'm keeping it in reserve in case primary phone breaks enough for me to get desperate while I search for the correct model; when I find the correct phone, I'll re-sell the wrong one). It looks like you can't directly see which strangers are in range: in order to make yourself discoverable you have to send a message over the broadcast mesh, at which point people can tell Bridgefy 'start a private conversation with the person who sent this broadcast message'. Once someone is in your one-on-one chat history you'll be able to see whether they're currently in range or not and send new messages to them.

100m single-hop range is pretty best-case and you'll probably get a lot less. That is, in fact, *why* I'm gritting my teeth and using this corporate, not-super-trustworthy, non-sideloadable, Bluetooth-only mesh rather than Briar's non-profit, very-trustworthy, sideloadable, Internet-capable-where-facilities-exist single-hop: Briar can't even send Bluetooth messages two floors down in the same house, not even when there's a device *who is also a member of the group chat in question* on the middle floor. I don't, when it comes down to it, *need* dissident-level security: my threat model is not governments *seeking to harm* my communication systems, but more like governments *failing to help* my communication systems.

Was that helpful, or are you having a different problem? I love tinkering with this kind of stuff and I might be able to help figure it out.

[grayestofghosts]

No, I mean having two iPhones in my lap with Bridgefy downloaded on them and Bluetooth on, I cannot get them to see each other or receive each other’s broadcasts. I have no idea what’s wrong and it doesn’t seem like there’s any help in the FAQ.

[brin_bellway]

Huh, yeah, I didn't have any trouble with lap-to-lap broadcasts.

You gave both of them a chance to phone home to the Bridgefy server during installation, right? Do their Bluetooths work for other stuff?

[grayestofghosts]

As far as I can tell they’ve done all the normal stuff. I checked the app settings and gave it access to everything. I know Bluetooth works because I use it to connect headphones, but I took the devices out of their cases just in case. I also tried downloading it to my table to see it that would change anything... nope, it just didn’t work at all.