Definitely! Just send a message to a given topic, it gets distributed through the mesh & users either get it or not (they are not in the mesh at the time).
“Always connected” meshes don’t scale, but fragmented meshes that use store-and-forward for some data are workable. I’d like to see someone do this with Nostr. The main issue is that you’d have to limit the size of data in transit, so rich media is probably not realistic.
Think FIDO protocol rather than the always-on internet we’re accustomed to.
That Radicle site design is an interesting take for a git repo platform. Good use of full width spacing, well thought out navigation, nice code rendering. I dig it.
I'm sort of surprised it's not mirrored there, but not surprised that it's main hosting isn't there. It sort of works best if people find it.
Nostr purity spirals have a great way of resulting in 5 people ever seeing what you're publishing. I love the protocol but when trying to get people using it you sort of need to put apps where they are.
People interested in BitChat should download it just so you have it in case it gets popular or you find someone to use it with. I tested it and it's surreal to text without WiFi or cellular.
I fire it up any time I'm in a crowded area just to see. I do wish it had vicinity based chat rather than the geohashes though, which always make it hard to select which level of granularity you want (this is referring to Internet based chats rather than mesh).
Even nesting geohashes would be cool, though I think the concern is the chaos that happens when you see half a conversation but not the other (as with radio when one party is in range but the other is out). The fact is that geohashes as it is get basically down to the level of acre or so which is just a wildly precise level of granularity (though might be useful if you had a whole 12 story college dorm building all in a chat or something).
> Messages route through nearby devices (max 7 hops)
How far, realistically, could this reach using just iOS and Android devices? If each device can reach ~100m, that means you could theoretically reach somebody 700m (2.3k feet) away? Or would it be further if two devices are at the edge of their radio range?
Walked around Fusion Festival with Bitchat running. Saw about 20 other devices and a few messages. Nobody replied to my messages. So usage isn't zero, but 20 devices out of 80000 people isn't a lot. Most hops I saw was 2, meaning there wasn't enough density to make it any meaningful distance across the festival grounds.
As far as I'm concerned, it was used at several protest and is currently in use in Indian CJP protests. Also Indian government made a request to take down it's repo on GitHub
but it works?? thats actually kinda neat? i tried bringing airtags to a festival with 30k people so our group could find each other and they just shit the bed and didnt work
They have at least added mesh wifi, but yes, the adoption pick up has been fairly slow except in do or die protest scenarios.
It is handy if you're on a plane with someone but your seats are separated because you didn't want to pay an extra $50 to sit next to each other though.
They should add long range WiFi. For example the Espressif long range WiFi protocol (esp-now lr) should get around 2km of range.
With effort, various exploitable WiFi chipsets could probably have support added too. 2km of range makes mesh networking possible even with very low user densities, especially if combined with store-and-forward.
And then there is always the possibility of a hardware dongle with LoRA with 10km range.
This is the cyberpunk future I was hoping we would get…and we got something completely different, some kind of centralized corpo dystopia. I’ve installed it!
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 11.7 ms ] threadJust like IRC.
seems like after November or January 2029 might need it since administration now has a kill-switch so why wouldn't they use it
Think FIDO protocol rather than the always-on internet we’re accustomed to.
A mesh of meshes may also be possible in theory.
Nostr purity spirals have a great way of resulting in 5 people ever seeing what you're publishing. I love the protocol but when trying to get people using it you sort of need to put apps where they are.
Even nesting geohashes would be cool, though I think the concern is the chaos that happens when you see half a conversation but not the other (as with radio when one party is in range but the other is out). The fact is that geohashes as it is get basically down to the level of acre or so which is just a wildly precise level of granularity (though might be useful if you had a whole 12 story college dorm building all in a chat or something).
It could do with a UI tweak though so that by default it shows you the most 'zoomed in' geohash with any activity.
Setup machine with bluetooth receiver.
Funnel packets from Bluetooth receiver over a virtual private network (ie, wireguard, tailscale, netbird).
Then in another state/country/continent with server connected to vpn then rebroadcasts those packets over BLE.
A mesh network overlayed on top of another mesh network.
https://xcancel.com/jack/status/2080565084586135773
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036433
How far, realistically, could this reach using just iOS and Android devices? If each device can reach ~100m, that means you could theoretically reach somebody 700m (2.3k feet) away? Or would it be further if two devices are at the edge of their radio range?
It is handy if you're on a plane with someone but your seats are separated because you didn't want to pay an extra $50 to sit next to each other though.
With effort, various exploitable WiFi chipsets could probably have support added too. 2km of range makes mesh networking possible even with very low user densities, especially if combined with store-and-forward.
And then there is always the possibility of a hardware dongle with LoRA with 10km range.
Tobias Bluth vibes