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Comment by Descon | Hacker News Reader

I wish there were cheap Bluetooth jammers to prevent speakers from playing when hiking

I strongly suspect those would be very illegal and could result in serious side effects, such as for people who use continuous glucose monitors.

Oh wow but a GPS jammer is okay so someone could get lost and possibly killed, or even crash a plane?

i’m delighted to report that it’s actually possible for people to talk about a second, related topic in a comment section without invalidating the problems of the main post being commented on

Many people do not understand this concept!

Who said a GPS jammer is okay? They are highly illegal in the US and the FCC will hand out large fines when they find one. GPS jammers are cheap though and so it is unlikely the FCC will catch the majority of users.

Though most GPS jamming is by countries at war. Russia has a large GPS jamming operation around Ukraine, and this often affects GPS in other parts of Europe as well. I have no information, but I would be surprised if Iran wasn't also jamming GPS (off and on depending on the current state of their war). You can safely assume every military in the world has some GPS jammers that they have plans to use if it makes sense to them.

> Who said a GPS jammer is okay? They are highly illegal in the US and the FCC will hand out large fines when they find one. GPS jammers are cheap though and so it is unlikely the FCC will catch the majority of users.

FCC will hand out fines if they can find the owners. Reading through the comments here about the hardware size and capabilities nowadays for pretty much off-the-shelf solutions, it is not a far fetched thought that an adversary can plant thousands of jammers in dense urban environments and then turn them on whenever they want to. Imagine what a blanket jamming can do in NYC airspace.

I think that quite often it has more to do with making sure the missiles and drones can't easily hit their targets. Not that this is an excuse for jackasses doing it just for shits and giggles. Fuck those people.

Even this highly theoretical harm can be avoided if you jam bluetooth with 50% duty cycle. Like, 2s on then 2s off.

Clearly you don’t have a family member who uses CGM’s. They are extremely sensitive to RF disruptions, and often fail for mind bogglingly dumb reasons.

2s on / 2s off would completely disable all of their functionality until the interference was gone. And possibly much longer - they are finicky.

So they are sensitive to RF but for some reason all the RF around you, from the power lines in the walls, the WIFI, the towers, they are immune to those?

This is such a first world problem. The speakers the post refers to are probably in a third world country where no medical equipment uses Bluetooth so jamming it poses no danger.

The reason why they don't use Bluetooth is because, they don't exist at all. People either die first before receiving the device, or the condition that requires it is rare in that part of the world

surely there's a failsafe if they're that sensitive and finicky.

Counting my lucky stars I don't need one, but if I did, I don't think I'd rely on it if it's that incapable of staying up.

Bluetooth operates in an unlicensed band. If any medical device relies on any unlicensed band for any life-critical thing that is horrible design.

I would absolutely support consequences to any device manufacturer if a death is caused by a jamming of unlicensed frequencies. (In my opinion, medical devices should be able to keep you alive in any jamming scenario if feasible. But using licensed bands is just bare minimum.)

How is additional paperwork supposed to help? Jamming is already illegal and usage of ISM bands is quite strictly regulated.

> How is additional paperwork supposed to help?

Additional paperwork reduces the likelihood (in actual, observable practice) that unintentional interferers exist to impact your critical-to-life application.

Furthermore, by moving your critical-to-life application away from common frequencies of interest, you avoid being collateral damage to jammers targeting unrelated applications.

I am a volunteer coach in a rec soccer league for 6th graders. Bluetooth jamming could literally kill one of my diabetic (type 1) players during a game because of this scenario.

That sounds like a serious flaw in his hardware.

Heh yeah the 'oh god 2 minutes with my own thoughts !? Must blare music to stop the pain' or 'look at me, the main character' crowd lol

Check this out: https://github.com/sammwyy/bleeding

BLEeding is a tool that allows you to jam Bluetooth (BR/EDR) and BLE devices. It can be used to spam DeAuth requests or L2CAP ping requests. It supports Linux, macOS, Windows and Raspberry PI.

Should be easy to purchase a 2.4GHz jammer, about as easy as to get in trouble for using it though.

How do you _realistically_ get in trouble for using it? Jam 2.4 at an airport or near military base?

This guy was caught for jamming cell phones on his commute to "keep people off their phones". I heard of a similar case of someone doing the same on their bus commute but don't have a link for that handy atm

https://www.pcmag.com/news/fla-man-fined-48k-for-jamming-cel...

This took months to investigate and was only detectable because the defendant did it along the same route each day. Random, sporadic jamming is essentially not prosecutable.

Wouldn’t they also stop AirPods from working?

Whenever I hear leaking earbuds on public transport, it's invariably AirPods

Where do you hike where it’s a problem? I mean if I meet perhaps 10 people max over 2 hours. If all of them were blasting music it still wouldn’t worry me at all.

Japan.

Many (surprisingly more reachable ones) parts of European Alps. But very few actually do that, I think they would experience a lot of aggression from others (certainly from me)

We encountered this on the Inca trail in Peru. All it takes is one rude person.

If passing one person the trail playing audible music ruins your entire experience I'd check on your mental health. Seriously. I too can get mad at ridiculous things (line cutters, rude drivers, loud movie goers) and have to make a conscious effort to stop, take a deep breath and ask myself why I'm letting this innocuous thing effect my day.

Imagine the scenario where you end up hiking within earshot and in the same direction as another group.

Tip: Take a small break and within 60 seconds you'll be out of earshot. Also, I realize we're not going to agree on this and that's okay.

The same thing works for terrible drivers on the road, pushy customers at the supermarket, and all kinds of other bothersome interpersonal situations.

They can be optional. Just grant yourself a moment to let them go away.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Isn’t it unlikely that both groups share the same hiking speed for a while? And even if you have the same speed, take a break or pass them quickly.

This feels like a deliberate straw man. I never said it ruined my entire experience. Also, you go on to talk about mundane everyday interactions. I think if you flew to a different continent to do a multi-day hike meant to be a once in a lifetime thing deep in the Peruvian mountains, and someone was blasting music, you might be bothered. But your inability to empathize at all with another person makes me suspect you might just be a different variant of who we are talking about.

I encountered this two weeks ago on the Springwater Corridor along the river in Portland, OR. There were families out just trying to walk/bike/enjoy nature and every minute or so an idiot blasting music at the highest volume would go by, disrupting the whole experience. The first two I didn't mind, but after that it got very annoying.

I can't help but think it's intentionally deviant behavior, because any semi-ordinary person would at minimum reduce the volume to a reasonable level. But no, these folks have it dialed to the max, they want everyone within a 100 yard radius to know their shitty taste in music.

These takes are unreasonable IMHO. When you pass someone on the trail, even with a BT speaker blasting you hear the music for what.. maybe 15-20 seconds? Is that really ruining your day? Sometimes when I walk or bike with my wife we bring a BT speaker and I can BARELY hear it and I'm walking side-by-side with her getting no more than 15-20 feet away. Let. People. Enjoy. Things.

Edit: Moderated some of my language.

> Let. People. Enjoy. Things.

Except silence, which is so unnatural that it should be disrupted and criticism of its disruption should be silenced.

Or just sounds of nature. I'm out hiking to enjoy this place and experience. It's like I'm enjoying a meal, and some jackass coming along throwing random seasonings on it - fuck off with it.

Why not use the even smaller speakers that you put in your ears, and then you can hear it. And it's inaudible to every other human.

FWIW, both Spotify (Jam) and Apple Music (SharePlay) have a feature to sync audio playback and give both participants the ability to control the music from their phone. It was probably targeted at CarPlay/shared speaker situations, but it works great for this.

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