Let’s build an app to liberate communications but only release it inside a closed garden. Great idea
Eldritch@piefed.social
on 07 Jul 18:52
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I don't trust Jack. But this does seem marginally interesting. Actually decentralized, no servers supposedly. We'll have to see. Again I sure as hell I'm not going to trust dorsey. And he's got it under some cringey edgelord "unlicense" license which basically appears to be MIT just with a different name. The actual concept seems intriguing. But definitely nothing to get excited about currently.
He used different terms in different places. And to be frank, I'm not sure I'd heard about unlicense before. But upon closer look it does seem to be a the goal. Despite not being valid or applicable in a few jurisdictions.
dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 07 Jul 22:11
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One thing I personally like more about this than about Briar - routing of messages.
It seems Briar exchanges state of the groups with the neighboring devices, they with their neighbors, and so on.
That might take a few iterations (thus delay) to propagate a message from, say, one side of the crowd to another, and leave different members with different state all the time.
While here, apparently, messages are routed further immediately. From my own toying around - not the best thing too, but initiating synchronization by sender\relay and not by recipient seems sane.
Maybe should rewrite the toy to be nicer. It seems to be closer to real world things than I thought.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world
on 07 Jul 19:50
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From the description it seems to be rather clean. And perhaps not to be limited to Apple for too long.
Just realized that could be read as “bit chicks”, which would explain such a name choice for an IRC client in the times when there actually were some bit chicks on popular IRC channels.
just_another_person@lemmy.world
on 07 Jul 19:15
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I mean…I guess thanks for the stepping off point? Android has the Briar Project, which couldn’t be distributed for iOS due to Apple’s license fuckery. I’m at least curious enough to look through this and see what they’ve done different.
I think the most useless part of this is using BT only which has a range of what…40ft?
Eldritch@piefed.social
on 07 Jul 19:31
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It's definitely limiting. LoRa wan meshed network is more useful. But most people don't have a LoRa capable device. I could see something like this at a protest or public event at least. If there were enough nodes in the area the network could span hundreds to thousands of feet with the right conditions. But that's a big ask ATM.
There are plenty of situations where that’s useful, especially if you can have group chats with images. Think airplanes, weddings, concerts, sports arenas. And if you have meshing and store and forward when nodes are moving around, you can cover a large area that may not have internet. It’s a legitimate tool that no one has done right yet - and as apple only, this is t yet either.
ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
on 07 Jul 19:56
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Oh great, yet another secure messaging app.
Getting people to move off Messenger or even WhatsApp is tricky enough already for to interview and resistance to change. But even when you can coax them to move, you then often end up in a debate about where to move to. Signal, Briar, Viber, whatever proprietary thing Apple is currently pushing, or the thousands of other options/apps. I guess we can just add this one to that long list.
lepinkainen@lemmy.world
on 08 Jul 14:41
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This is nothing like the ones you list, this is local only no internet
ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
on 08 Jul 16:23
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Okay. But one of my points still stands that there are already a bunch of p2p Bluetooth-based messaging apps out there.
lepinkainen@lemmy.world
on 08 Jul 18:52
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And more is better so people get used to using them and skip the telcos and other stuff that can be tracked
None of them cross the line yet to be “good enough” in practice for all the use cases of an offline messenger. Briar is probably the best, but not useful if even one of your group is on iOS.
ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
on 09 Jul 12:44
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That’s a good point. And to add to it, I’ve tried using Briar as an emergency option if there’s no Internet. And there seems to be a massive flaw in that scenario: you need the Internet to authenticate yourself on the app. So if there’s no Internet it’s useless. I just tried switching off WiFi and 5G on my phone and yup, can’t log in, so can’t use it.
I mean, what is actually needed is a secure messaging app that scrapes wraps existing apps. So when two people send messages through FancyMessages, they are secure. But then if only one person has FancyMessages, and the other has Facebook messenger, then they could still comminicate - the FB user using Messenger as usual, and our hero’s FancyMessages app picking up the FB messages and passing them on through the FancyMessages UI.
Jimny_Crkt@slrpnk.net
on 09 Jul 02:18
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Beeper is like this, but the list of supported messaging apps is limited. It does have FB messenger though.
ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
on 09 Jul 04:53
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This is a great idea, but it would be difficult to manage.
It reminds me of the instant messenger wars during the late 1990s/early 2000s.
AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) had a virtual monopoly on the industry, and so when Microsoft started breaking into it with MSN Messenger they cracked AIM’s protocol so their users could communicate with AIM users. This enraged AOL, and there was a wild cat-and-mouse updates battle for a few months. AOL would push an update to block Microsoft, then Microsoft would push an update to get around that. Sometimes there were multiple updates from both sides per day.
And then there was Trillian messenger just sneaking through the middle providing access to both, mostly unnoticed (at least for a while).
rottingleaf@lemmy.world
on 07 Jul 20:34
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I actually liked the way this particular thing works, I’ve visited the repository and it’s much like a real version of my toy of two months. (Except my toy doesn’t work for anything real)
Yes, I didn’t think you were, just shared … In any case under Linuxulator with Linux JRE it swears a lot, but seems to work.
Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io
on 07 Jul 21:46
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Well that's odd, on the apple App Store there is a 4 year old Social Networking app called BitChat, that appears to mostly be in Japanese. I think I'll stick with Signal.
This reminds me of the times I was saving text files on my phone and sending them to random classmates, which makes me think that if two people (especially between iOS and Android) want to communicate in BT, there is no need for a third party app.
garretble@lemmy.world
on 08 Jul 00:48
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Really not interested in anything the guy with the terrible facial hair wants to make.
thisphuckinguy@lemmy.world
on 08 Jul 21:53
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💯
fittedsyllabi@lemmy.world
on 08 Jul 00:50
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So he took a page from Apple, copied Firechat, and will offer it to users who use Apple products. Yeah, okay, nice, I’m in.
Right but turning the VPN off invalidates the purpose of using a VPN. And even if it didn’t, it’s not convenient to disable on both devices and then turn it back on. The whole purpose of this software is convenience.
Aside from the fact that he made twitter (which I blame in large part for how our political/news media landscape, as well as modern discourse, has become so thoughtless), left and made blue sky, then left blue sky and endorsed twitter?
The dude supports a ton of toxic shit and can get entirely fucked.
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
on 08 Jul 21:56
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Seems rehashed, with more enshittification likely to be baked in. Typical tech bros.
I’m happy to see a niche decentralized thing from Jack more than if it was another commercial start-up. And I have nothing against yet another bluetooth chat. But I’m not impressed. In the whitepaper nothing is written about spam protection, so it wouldn’t work as a reliable P2P app at scale. And the UI… It’s mere a toy for Jack’s personal nostalgia about “the good old times”. And nostalgia driven development doesn’t work in general, I would say.
zapzap@lemmings.world
on 09 Jul 00:05
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If you’re in Bluetooth range can’t you chat with your mouths? Or is it for secretly chatting when you’re in a group of people? I don’t get the use case.
I have no idea if this is correct. But imagine if you have a setup like Apple’s AirTag. Except when you receive a signal (message) you also relay it to whoever’s path you cross for the next X amount of time. The more people using the app the bigger the mesh network gets.
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 09 Jul 00:16
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Bluetooth ranges are quite large now.
But an example even if someone is a foot away would be a concert or event where it’s to loud.
potentiallynotfelix@lemmy.fish
on 09 Jul 02:42
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Could be useful on a plane: If you have different seats than someone and don’t want to pay for your airline’s ridiculous data prices. Although, most airlines I fly on(american, delta, air canada, united) all have free RCS/Facebook/Whatsapp, but not necessarily Signal, Telegram, Matrix, or your preferred secure service.
It’s not about you being in bluetooth range of the person you want to talk to, it’s about all the people sitting in between you both that pass the message along without touching the internet.
So you can be on a cargo ship, or on a remote island, with 20 other people and all use chat. If 1 person has internet, then you can all chat globally as well.
It’s the same basic method of how airtags work. Everyone with an iPhone connects to the airtag and passes data to Apple. It’s just done in the background, so users don’t ever notice.
KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works
on 09 Jul 02:29
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Bitch@
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
on 09 Jul 04:05
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Have a look at meshtastic. Yes, you do have to get a separate device, but range on it can be several tens to hundreds of miles depending on the mesh density.
iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com
on 09 Jul 05:22
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In practice range seems to be a few kilometers, in places with lots of nodes.
Yeah my first thought when I read the headline was “why not just use meshtastic?”
Mniot@programming.dev
on 09 Jul 04:27
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I once did some programming on the Cybiko, a device from 2000 that could form a wireless mesh network with peers. The idea was that you could have a shopping mall full of teens and they’d be able to chat with each other from one end to the other by routing through the mesh. It was a neat device!
I wanted a cybiko so bad as a teen. It seemed like it would be so cool if everyone I knew bought one. Of course no one did, but I still think they are awesome.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world
on 09 Jul 05:09
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Ingenious name. I feel like Bitchat should be connected somehow with PenIsland.
There is already a really good foss app that does exactly that, it’s called briar and is as secure and private as it gets. The downside with p2p communication apps being, that they eat your phones battery for breakfast. Still a good option for activists or journalists I think. It’s a good way to get around the “server in the middle” problem. Still more convenient to run your own (xmpp) server at home imho…
** for Android (and Windows/macOS/Linux) but not iOS.
And apparently never going to be as some key component is written in Java. Other technical obstacles should be solvable (like f.ex. getting continuous running in bg by exploiting location services like iSH can do)
Thanks, I did not realise that. So this app is for Mac to Mac communication only. If seems for briar you need to run a server still or messages will get lost between mobile users. How does this new app solve that problem? On mobile phones disconnects will happen regularly as network coverage changes and different network towers connect and disconnect when you are on the move.
You might as well spin up your own xmpp server at that point, as that protocol is tried and tested for over 20 years and very lightweight and battery friendly as well…
cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone
on 09 Jul 10:04
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threaded - newest
Let’s build an app to liberate communications but only release it inside a closed garden. Great idea
I don't trust Jack. But this does seem marginally interesting. Actually decentralized, no servers supposedly. We'll have to see. Again I sure as hell I'm not going to trust dorsey. And he's got it under some cringey edgelord "unlicense" license which basically appears to be MIT just with a different name. The actual concept seems intriguing. But definitely nothing to get excited about currently.
Bro, Public Domain.
He used different terms in different places. And to be frank, I'm not sure I'd heard about unlicense before. But upon closer look it does seem to be a the goal. Despite not being valid or applicable in a few jurisdictions.
spdx.org/licenses/Unlicense.html
opensource.org/license/unlicense
these two institutions endorse the license
youtube-dl and yt-dlp are under unlicense. it’s just boilerplate legalese for public domain
One thing I personally like more about this than about Briar - routing of messages.
It seems Briar exchanges state of the groups with the neighboring devices, they with their neighbors, and so on.
That might take a few iterations (thus delay) to propagate a message from, say, one side of the crowd to another, and leave different members with different state all the time.
While here, apparently, messages are routed further immediately. From my own toying around - not the best thing too, but initiating synchronization by sender\relay and not by recipient seems sane.
Maybe should rewrite the toy to be nicer. It seems to be closer to real world things than I thought.
From the description it seems to be rather clean. And perhaps not to be limited to Apple for too long.
In the context of the US fascist dictatorship and Apple being the dominant smartphone there, starting with Apple makes sense.
If it can be done within Apples curated monopoly, it will be technically possible on Android (probably).
Bit chat
Bitch at
Being Jack Dorsey, I’m going with the latter.
“IRC vibes” -> maybe intended, see BitchX.
Just realized that could be read as “bit chicks”, which would explain such a name choice for an IRC client in the times when there actually were some bit chicks on popular IRC channels.
‘Where my bitchat?’
Ive read it called bitch@
I mean…I guess thanks for the stepping off point? Android has the Briar Project, which couldn’t be distributed for iOS due to Apple’s license fuckery. I’m at least curious enough to look through this and see what they’ve done different.
I think the most useless part of this is using BT only which has a range of what…40ft?
It's definitely limiting. LoRa wan meshed network is more useful. But most people don't have a LoRa capable device. I could see something like this at a protest or public event at least. If there were enough nodes in the area the network could span hundreds to thousands of feet with the right conditions. But that's a big ask ATM.
Meshtastic requires bespoke hardware, it’ll always stay a marginal tool
This requires: an iPhone.
And someone will make a bridge from this to Meshtastic in a while anyway
There are plenty of situations where that’s useful, especially if you can have group chats with images. Think airplanes, weddings, concerts, sports arenas. And if you have meshing and store and forward when nodes are moving around, you can cover a large area that may not have internet. It’s a legitimate tool that no one has done right yet - and as apple only, this is t yet either.
Oh great, yet another secure messaging app.
Getting people to move off Messenger or even WhatsApp is tricky enough already for to interview and resistance to change. But even when you can coax them to move, you then often end up in a debate about where to move to. Signal, Briar, Viber, whatever proprietary thing Apple is currently pushing, or the thousands of other options/apps. I guess we can just add this one to that long list.
This is nothing like the ones you list, this is local only no internet
Okay. But one of my points still stands that there are already a bunch of p2p Bluetooth-based messaging apps out there.
And more is better so people get used to using them and skip the telcos and other stuff that can be tracked
None of them cross the line yet to be “good enough” in practice for all the use cases of an offline messenger. Briar is probably the best, but not useful if even one of your group is on iOS.
That’s a good point. And to add to it, I’ve tried using Briar as an emergency option if there’s no Internet. And there seems to be a massive flaw in that scenario: you need the Internet to authenticate yourself on the app. So if there’s no Internet it’s useless. I just tried switching off WiFi and 5G on my phone and yup, can’t log in, so can’t use it.
I mean, what is actually needed is a secure messaging app that scrapes wraps existing apps. So when two people send messages through FancyMessages, they are secure. But then if only one person has FancyMessages, and the other has Facebook messenger, then they could still comminicate - the FB user using Messenger as usual, and our hero’s FancyMessages app picking up the FB messages and passing them on through the FancyMessages UI.
Beeper is like this, but the list of supported messaging apps is limited. It does have FB messenger though.
This is a great idea, but it would be difficult to manage.
It reminds me of the instant messenger wars during the late 1990s/early 2000s.
AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) had a virtual monopoly on the industry, and so when Microsoft started breaking into it with MSN Messenger they cracked AIM’s protocol so their users could communicate with AIM users. This enraged AOL, and there was a wild cat-and-mouse updates battle for a few months. AOL would push an update to block Microsoft, then Microsoft would push an update to get around that. Sometimes there were multiple updates from both sides per day.
And then there was Trillian messenger just sneaking through the middle providing access to both, mostly unnoticed (at least for a while).
I really like this despite using nothing Apple.
Briar if you’re on Android
That’s what my friends and family use!
Briar is the much better and much more mature version of this.
I actually liked the way this particular thing works, I’ve visited the repository and it’s much like a real version of my toy of two months. (Except my toy doesn’t work for anything real)
My mobile stuff is on Android, but Briar desktop (despite being a Java application?..) swears at “unknown OS FreeBSD” and doesn’t run.
Sorry, I’m not a dev on the project, just have an interest in secure communications.
Yes, I didn’t think you were, just shared … In any case under Linuxulator with Linux JRE it swears a lot, but seems to work.
Well that's odd, on the apple App Store there is a 4 year old Social Networking app called BitChat, that appears to mostly be in Japanese. I think I'll stick with Signal.
This reminds me of the times I was saving text files on my phone and sending them to random classmates, which makes me think that if two people (especially between iOS and Android) want to communicate in BT, there is no need for a third party app.
Really not interested in anything the guy with the terrible facial hair wants to make.
💯
So he took a page from Apple, copied Firechat, and will offer it to users who use Apple products. Yeah, okay, nice, I’m in.
Where my bitchat
Smack by Bitchup
Move bitch get out the way
I read it like that first and thought it was one of these illegal apps to track your partner without them knowing.
So he’s made a shitty version of Briar and crammed crypto into it?
Just wait for AI enhancements.
Briar doesn’t have an iOS client an never will
This doesn’t have an android client 😀
Like I said, Briar is better
Interesting. I wonder why Briar won’t have an iOS client?
I’m sure the background limitations are a big part, but I wonder if there’s also limits to what they can do with bluetooth
I wanted something like this for weddings or group camping type events for sharing photos to multiple others at once.
Isnt that what QuickShare and Airdrop solves?
And LocalSend
QuickShare, AirDrop and LocalSend all use WiFi, which can be a problem when using a VPN (it is for me).
Turn it off temporarily?
Right but turning the VPN off invalidates the purpose of using a VPN. And even if it didn’t, it’s not convenient to disable on both devices and then turn it back on. The whole purpose of this software is convenience.
Sounds like the problem is your vpn client if you cant chose what traffic goes into it
You can blame whatever or whoever you want, the problem remains.
I just changed the routing for local networks to ignore the VPN
I don’t know how to do that
Airdrop is two people at a time. Say we had a group of 8 people I don’t want to do 7 air drop exchanges to get all the photos.
He should try a cheeseburger once in awhile.
Lmao
Yeah, fuck Jack.
Why?
Aside from the fact that he made twitter (which I blame in large part for how our political/news media landscape, as well as modern discourse, has become so thoughtless), left and made blue sky, then left blue sky and endorsed twitter?
The dude supports a ton of toxic shit and can get entirely fucked.
Seems rehashed, with more enshittification likely to be baked in. Typical tech bros.
I’m happy to see a niche decentralized thing from Jack more than if it was another commercial start-up. And I have nothing against yet another bluetooth chat. But I’m not impressed. In the whitepaper nothing is written about spam protection, so it wouldn’t work as a reliable P2P app at scale. And the UI… It’s mere a toy for Jack’s personal nostalgia about “the good old times”. And nostalgia driven development doesn’t work in general, I would say.
If you’re in Bluetooth range can’t you chat with your mouths? Or is it for secretly chatting when you’re in a group of people? I don’t get the use case.
I have no idea if this is correct. But imagine if you have a setup like Apple’s AirTag. Except when you receive a signal (message) you also relay it to whoever’s path you cross for the next X amount of time. The more people using the app the bigger the mesh network gets.
Bluetooth ranges are quite large now.
But an example even if someone is a foot away would be a concert or event where it’s to loud.
Could be useful on a plane: If you have different seats than someone and don’t want to pay for your airline’s ridiculous data prices. Although, most airlines I fly on(american, delta, air canada, united) all have free RCS/Facebook/Whatsapp, but not necessarily Signal, Telegram, Matrix, or your preferred secure service.
It’s not about you being in bluetooth range of the person you want to talk to, it’s about all the people sitting in between you both that pass the message along without touching the internet.
So you can be on a cargo ship, or on a remote island, with 20 other people and all use chat. If 1 person has internet, then you can all chat globally as well.
It’s the same basic method of how airtags work. Everyone with an iPhone connects to the airtag and passes data to Apple. It’s just done in the background, so users don’t ever notice.
Neat idea 10 years ago “discovered” recently by a tech bro who thinks he’s the first one to think of it. He got his clicks, I guess.
No one has got it right yet though. Being apple only, he hasn’t either.
The best app to Bitch At things.
Bitch@
Have a look at meshtastic. Yes, you do have to get a separate device, but range on it can be several tens to hundreds of miles depending on the mesh density.
In practice range seems to be a few kilometers, in places with lots of nodes.
Yeah my first thought when I read the headline was “why not just use meshtastic?”
I once did some programming on the Cybiko, a device from 2000 that could form a wireless mesh network with peers. The idea was that you could have a shopping mall full of teens and they’d be able to chat with each other from one end to the other by routing through the mesh. It was a neat device!
I wanted a cybiko so bad as a teen. It seemed like it would be so cool if everyone I knew bought one. Of course no one did, but I still think they are awesome.
Ingenious name. I feel like Bitchat should be connected somehow with PenIsland.
If you want to bitch at someone, there’s an app for that
There is already a really good foss app that does exactly that, it’s called briar and is as secure and private as it gets. The downside with p2p communication apps being, that they eat your phones battery for breakfast. Still a good option for activists or journalists I think. It’s a good way to get around the “server in the middle” problem. Still more convenient to run your own (xmpp) server at home imho…
** for Android (and Windows/macOS/Linux) but not iOS.
And apparently never going to be as some key component is written in Java. Other technical obstacles should be solvable (like f.ex. getting continuous running in bg by exploiting location services like iSH can do)
Thanks, I did not realise that. So this app is for Mac to Mac communication only. If seems for briar you need to run a server still or messages will get lost between mobile users. How does this new app solve that problem? On mobile phones disconnects will happen regularly as network coverage changes and different network towers connect and disconnect when you are on the move. You might as well spin up your own xmpp server at that point, as that protocol is tried and tested for over 20 years and very lightweight and battery friendly as well…
don't nazis already have telegram
Now they have a second option.
For all those little bitches.