[zenmac]

One of these bluetooth messaging app was made by a developer who was on a cruise ship with family, and the Internet over satellite costs an arm and leg. So he wrote an app to communicate with his families over bluetooth.

Also why would one want to have the data go over some servers thousands miles away when the device is right next to you? Seems like bluetooth is the perfect way to communicate for devices that are close to each other.

[lormayna]

On a similar situation, someone try Meshtastic and it works great

https://old.reddit.com/r/meshtastic/comments/1qd2z97/mestast...

I doubt that BLE can propagate well over a cruise ship.

[maqp]

Yeah I can imagine a jam-packed cruise ship might be useful provided the signal propagates from deck to another (unlikely), but it's quite a niché use case.

>Also why would one want to have the data go over some servers thousands miles away when the device is right next to you?

Why would that matter? Use Signal to protect the content, or use Cwtch to protect content and metadata. If you need to exchange secret communications that mustn't go through some server, why not discuss f2f with no phones around? You'd also eliminate attack vectors where your (chances are, Chinese Android) device spies on you, as well as anyone who has compromised it to read messages from screen.

[fc417fc802]

> Why would that matter?

Reliability? Why should we want to centralize things unnecessarily? It's nice as a fallback but then so too is P2P.

[cyxxon]

I remember a different app thats was used on e.g. festivals where the local broadcast cells where overwhelmed when a quite rural area suddenly had to server 50000 to 100000 additional people and 3g and 4G basically stopped working. I think it was called Firechat or something.

[tomtomtom777]

Still, wouldn't a wifi meshnet be a better choice for these scenario's?

[zenmac]

Went down that rabbit hole a while ago. iOS works fine, but think they may have discontinued ad-hoc, or at least on macOS. Android has a bit issue with ad-hoc hot spot at that time. [1] But theoretically it should be able to do that.

https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/28551/why-cant-a...

[bronco21016]

Can that be setup on a phone?

I imagine in a situation like Iran, carrying a backpack full of WiFi gear to stay connected to the meshnet is a red flag.

Establishing a bunch of base stations is likely to raise red flags too.

It's pretty trivial for a nation-state that is jamming GPS to go around and jam WiFi or analyze WiFi spectrum for a meshnet operating in and around a protest area.

[mlrtime]

On a cruise ship, isn't the cheap walkie talkies still a thing? Or did those die with cell phones?

For me the cell phone without internet is almost useless, not much I can do on it, might as well sue a purpose built device. They're also very cheap.

Even better if Nextel still worked on phones (but without service).

[fc417fc802]

> For me the cell phone without internet is almost useless

Projects like this one are a step towards fixing that. Personally I choose to keep both street and topographical maps of the entire continent locally on my phone. There are plenty of uses for a computer without a WAN connection.

[Elfener]

The fact the even simple encryption with walkie-talkies is basically illegal might be problem (though I have no idea how/if that applies to at-sea ships).

[6510]

The boat could do a captive portal and provide it's own LAN?

[nly]

It's a cruiseship. Your family are at the nearest bar. Just get off your ass and go and give them the message.

[cheema33]

> Just get off your ass and go and give them the message...

If I need to have all 4 members of the family meet me at the pool, first I need to go find each one of them. They could all be at different place. And then tell them individually to meet me at the pool? Is that the better solution you are proposing?

[marliechiller]

This seems a bit reductive. You could use this argument for any small town

[exe34]

I've checked, they're not there. Now what?