7 ms·
I recently took a flight with family- on a budget airline that did not have Wifi, so we could not hop on WiFi and message each other using Signal. I wondered wh
by LWIRVoltage 2y ago
I recently took a flight with family- on a budget airline that did not have Wifi, so we could not hop on WiFi and message each other using Signal. I wondered what other options there would be in the air- and remembered Bluetooth Communication apps- and had everyone install Briar- it came in haandy!
I like the built in Bridge option as well, (when the app communicates over the internet) to help avoid revealing the traffic is Tor traffic.
I have been impressed by the range of Briar- with a clear line of site, easily hundreds and hundreds of feet- i tested it to well over 500 outside- and on the plane , my family was scattered, but that was no issue at all. (More recently though i've detected my own Bluetooth MotoTag trackers from my luggage in Cargo holds while on planes, so Bluetooth indeed works well on planes.)
-I have heard of but have never used BridgeFy, which I know was a well known famous Bluetooth app that competed with Briar in the past. To my understanding it isn't quite as secure or open source.
There is a informative post here
https://old.reddit.com/r/Briar/comments/gxiffy/what_exactly_are_the_capabilities_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Briar/comments/gxiffy/what_exactly_...
where a developer noted Briar's capabilities at that time- it seems due to some changes on the OS/phone Hardware end, and whatnot- and due to the phones only passing messages to contact nearby - Briar is not a true mesh networking app. It is a shame- i feel a true Bluetooth mesh networking app would be unstoppable in availability -though it might be a bit of a battery drain.
It is a shame Briar isn't on iOS also -
I also wish Signal would eventually consider communicating over any medium accessible- they would probably run into similar issue Briar has.
What will it take to get a Peer-to-Peer capable Bluetooth/Wifi/Celluar network using/(more possibly in the future)- proper optional mesh networking, Tor capable, VPN friendly, wholly end to end encrypted ,perfect forward secrecy including, fully open source App providing messaging (with the 'accounts' that Briar uses?), for Android and ios?(And Let's throw in PC Mac and Linux, so laptops could have a extremely user friendly user accessible way of doing this as well.)
Better yet, add Calling capability- i don't know how rough doing video calls would be over some methods like modern day Bluetooth- but even a rough capability would be used a little and be worth adding to the collection of things one could do(Briar is only Messaging at the time of this post- which is something notable for sure,as very few apps let you transmit solely thru Bluetooth<I have not heavily looked into the shared Wifi communication abilities of Briar at this point in time> - but more could be added in some form...I observe apps do exist that allow for Bluetooth calling or act like "Bluetooth" Walkie Talkies)
- Karrot_Kream 2y agoHow was your actual UX with Briar? I tried to get family to use Briar during a flight and it was pretty poor. Messages wouldn't show up and we were worried about disconnecting from personal Bluetooth headphones while keeping using Briar. It worked okay and at one point my partner and I chatted about landing plans when the person next to us was asleep. But we found that just passing the phone around with typing worked just as well. It worked okay for the other family but again, was a pain.
- LWIRVoltage 2y agoIt worked well! Most messages did go through! The caveat- I don't think anyone was also using Bluetooth headphones 500 feet outside was the test i did with a clear sightline- the inside of the plane was not quite as far, but the messages did go through - and we couldn't have passed the phone around when one family member was 5 seats behind me, the next was about 20 rows in front of me
- mmwelt 2y agoUnfortunately, iOS simply does not allow apps like Briar to run reliably in the background[1]. Unless Apple changes its thinking about iOS, Briar or other similar apps would never work reliably. [1] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/685525 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/685525
- tough 2y agoThere's AltStore sideloading, would that enable it?
- ivanmontillam 2y agoIt's not an issue of sideloading or censorship in iOS. It's a product decision related to background apps (they kill the running process with no recourse to bring it up again on its own).
- 2y ago