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Comment by torlok | Hacker News Reader

Then get more? Sounds like a fantastic way to waste military resources. I have no clue why this mythical US military might and efficiency idea persists after so many failed interventions.

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Here's a funny example of making it harder to find: https://youtu.be/W_F4rEaRduk?t=178

Triangulation is damn easy. If the US can put on bomb on a suspect satellite phone user back in the 2000's (and they did!), they can certainly send a bomb on that today.

Sat phones during the second gulf war (maybe even the first) became a liability. The transmission lit them up like a god damn beacon saying, "Bomb goes here!".

Triangulation, the math isn't the hard part. Where exactly on the continental United States are you proposing dropping ordinance? MOVE in 1985 was controversial even back then.

Good luck if your mesh network is on 2.4/5/6ghz.

It'll blend in with background radiation from home routers.

It can have challenges, but triangulation can be done with signals that have recognizable patterns or features -- even in a sea of other co-channel noise sources.

If you can observe the signal strength of your neighbor's home router while standing next to your own even if the signals differ in strength by some orders of magnitude (which is easy on Android; no idea bout iOS), then anyone else can also do the same.

>the more people who use it, the more robust and far-reaching and reliable it gets.

I was under the opposite impression, that meshtastic's whole problem is that it doesn't scale well at all.

I'm genuinely interested in learning more about the shortcomings of meshtastic if you have a link to share. Groups like the Anarchist Black Cross seem really supportive of the tech for disaster situations. Even Benn Jordan claimed it played an important role during the floods in NC

My understanding is that it relates to the flood routing in meshtastic. I haven't heard a real-world failure example, but another comment on this post mentioned defcon being a case (I don't know anything about that).

I did find this assessment:

https://www.disk91.com/2024/technology/lora/critical-analysi...

And here is Meshtastics explanation of the rationale behind 'managed flood routing':

https://meshtastic.org/blog/why-meshtastic-uses-managed-floo...

I think I first heard about the differences from Andy Kirby, one of the MeshCore creators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNWf0Mh2fJw

Meshtastic uses naive flooding, which is fine for sparse networks (ie you and your three friends out hiking), but which doesn’t scale well at all.

Fair, meshcore is supposedly better for that.

Personally I just using it as a transport layer for Reticulum. Slow and finicky but easier to link distant nodes.

I'd really like to learn more about Reticulum. Are you using a specific app on top of it? Do you have a meaningful user network you communicate with, or is it still more just proving out the system?

The intervention part is an administrative problem the military isn't designed for. For the core mission of collecting intelligence, eliminating targets, and occupying land, the US has an unrivaled track record over the last 85 years.

No, just blast the hell out of the ISM bands on which they operate. This seem certainly feasible for a military apparatus the size of the US.

I'm sure everybody's going to stay on ISM bands to remain compliant with government regulations while being attacked by the government.

This deserves a /s

The economic impact of that would be massive re: business operational impact.

Directional radios would still win out on p2p links.

You must have missed the S-tier op that went down January 3rd.

That was a single mission planned over months. We're talking about a continuous subjudagtion.

The interventions fail only after enormous slaughter, which people are understandably keen to not be subject to

As if compliance had such a great success rate.

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