Firechat and nearby communication | Hacker News Reader

Firechat and nearby communication

breizh-entropy.org

128 pointsfirehosed28 comments

Despite what the author continually says, the interface does not say "Real Name" in the author's screenshots. As far as I have heard, no one has been prevented from having an account due to a "Real Name" policy. This is in stark contrast to Facebook, the major player in the "Real Name" game.

I don't like Firechat requiring a signup, but the facts of what is required should not be confused. Pseudonymous use appears to be accepted.

As an open source alternative, have a look at the Project Serval http://www.servalproject.org/

This seems long dead, also didn't find a link to the source code.

Source code: https://github.com/servalproject

Activity: (1) https://github.com/servalproject/batphone/commits/developmen... (2) http://developer.servalproject.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=cont...

Browse to FireChat's domain here[0] for a complete view of the "Everyone" chat in your client IP's region.

[0] https://opengarden.com:4176/

I took a look at FireChat, but bluetooth is a bit too 'nearby' for me. Very cool that it's off the grid, but only useful if you're basically right next to them anyways.

I wanted something like: talk to everyone nearby in a football/hockey/tri-d chess stadium, but bluetooth falls a bit short. What would be really cool is if you could set up a relay system through other devices.

I've made (i.e. works, but not polished yet) something similar: http://www.shoutium.com which has ranges of 1-100KM around your current location. It does require internet, so it probably isn't aimed at the firechat crowd anyways. Very few users unfortunately, guess I'll work on advertising after the iOS version is done -_-

Slight (http://slight.la) is one way of leaving messages in a location; those running the app receive a notification when new messages are left nearby.

Ahhh, nice, I was thinking of adding this.

Does anyone know an alternative for Android?

I wonder of LTE Direct, which goes up to 500m would help that, but I'm worried the carriers will be able to control it somehow, which will make it kind of pointless in terms of decentralizing the technology.

I'm also very disappointed in the Wi-Fi Alliance for not creating a better long-distance Wi-Fi. That's its future right there - disrupting cellular, and getting more people to prefer Wi-Fi over cellular. But that's only going to happen if we can easily create "mesh networks" across the country.

YikYak is similar to what you're talking about, though it's anonymous by design. IIRC it's limited to a 10-mile radius.

http://www.yikyakapp.com/

Something I don't understand: can someone explain why FireChat needs an account when it doesn't require internet access?

I believe an accounts basically stores your public key on their servers, so other people can verify with FireChat who it is that sent the message.

In an offline context, you'd be able to get a lot of messages and tell that it's the same person talking, but you'll have no way to see whether that really is the person or not. FireChat's public key servers allow those with access to see- according to FireChat- who is talking.

How are you supposed to verify with FireChat who sent the message when you don't have an internet connection though? Are you supposed to route your (presumably encrypted) request through other (presumably connected) phones? What's the point of requiring an account when the their entire selling point is that you can use the app in places with no internet access at all, like the wilderness?

This is easy to implement using cryptography. E.g. when firechat assigns a username, they sign your certificate for said username using their key.

Then, when sending messages, they have to be signed with your key (or outright encrypted), and the receiver verifies the key is correctly signed using firechat's key.

You can impersonate other users.

I saw this a few days ago in F-Droid's „Recently Added“ category, a bluetooth chat app called Gilgamesh:

https://github.com/n8fr8/gilgamesh (https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=info.guardianpro...)

Don't know if it's anonymous or encrypted (is that is even possible?) but other then Firechat (and most other apps linked here until now) it's Open Source.

Would love to know what someone with a more technical expertise than me thinks about this.

There is an XMPP standard for link-local messaging. It's supported in Empathy through the telepathy-salut library. In other words, it's installed by default on Ubuntu (though you need to turn it on) and presumably other distributions.

It'd be nice to see mobile apps supporting this standard, too.

I downloaded this a few months back hoping that in NYC there would be enough user density to make it useful, but it seems I was too early. Interesting use case that protesting would be using it.

Would definitely be interesting to see it being used for entertainment purposes. But it appears its a "last resort" kind of app, especially with Hong Kong's situation.

If people are growing more and more concerned with privacy that could be the nudge. Or if they offered something standard SMS cannot (speed, feature, etc.)

A couple months ago I installed this on two devices and could not get it to work off-net nor did I see a good description of how it is supposed to work in that case. I assume Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on but not connected to an access point.

I have seen mesh alive with XO-1s.

Is Firechat dead?

"The server at opengarden.com is taking too long to respond."

seems to be. I tried to connect using openssl and I imagine lots of other people are too :)

Is there something similar that is based on Wifi connections instead of bluetooth? Wouldn't that offer a greater range?

Edit: Nevermind, the article explains that firechat does in fact use Wifi in addition to Bluetooth to transmit messages:

  From the first IP, I understand that Firechat is also looking to create bond
  between WiFi device. It periodically sends UDP packet to the multicast
  address 239.192.0.0 and will also forward message just as it does with
  bluetooth. So not only every message sent are forwarded by bluetooth, they
  are also forwarded by WiFi !

This domain is flagged as "malicious software/botnets"... be careful clicking on this link!

I'd like to see someone make an app which only works in the nearby mode and requires no registration.

Shortwave https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shortwave-short-range-anonym...

Anyone use the SDK ?

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