disagree with the choice of Signal ⛔,
For default e2ee social messaging multiple platforms
matrix maybe, if using a FOSS client
XMPP = best but hopeless
Signal is fine start, but "tox" messenger uses DHT
Tox can be very useful,
not cluttered like those aspiring to be 'social media'
I retract any support of [matrix].
While preparing to set up a server
too many indicators arose against it.
matrix.org is a censorship 'Honeypot'.
Retroshare
Still on my list of to-dos..........
What's wrong with Signal? Made by Moxie Marlinspike (respected), open source, free, and from what I've heard it has excellent encryption tech, and it is ready to use now.
Plus a general red-flag gut feeling
seems to be waving in the background
of their online payment efforts.
That suggests there may be shenanigans in the future.
I'm not sure what "online payment efforts" you are referring to here. I know there has been a project to allow people to pay for features they want implemented, is that what you mean?
Mesh access must be paid for - it can never be "free".
If your neighbor is feeding you mesh access
then they will bill you (cheaply) to recover their costs+profit.
Micropayment/mB
+'anon' wrote:
"matrix is back but IMAP is still blocked 🤦♂️
telegram is also blocked, but I guess that wierd telegram proxies would work"
Sorry, I'm not sure what you are saying here. IMAP is part of the underlying internet structure, and it being blocked obviously also blocks protocols on top like Signal?
His main beef was email, but everything took a hit, except XMPP apparently
Hm, I am rather rusty on this stuff. IMAP is a mail protocol, yes, and I really knew that. I mixed stuff up here. Either way, it does seem like it was underlying protocols involved.
But how is this an argument against using Signal?
Not so much 'against' Signal
but more in favor of alternatives.
Same thing isn't it. You may want to move away from TCP/IP and so on, as there are parts of it that are centralized (there must be much work done on this) but you do need a protocol
True.
If your protocol is locked into predictable access patterns,
it is vuulnerable.
Matrix vulnerability is DNS.
But worse is the reliance upon centralized comm providers.
I have not thought much about this really. Are even the basic problems for this type of mesh as a "replacement" of the relevant Internet protocols solved? I.e. DNS is hard to replace?
A mesh just extends internet access.
It does not necessarily die when government shuts off the internet providers.
It is a decentralized replacement for your "Big-Bro" provider.
Not necessarily, no, but if govt decrees the nodes illegal, they will not be hard to find and shut down. This is govt going far, but so is shutting down ISPs.
Having been an "ISP provider" informs this:
shutting down ISPs is a dead easy 'Single Point of Failure'.
Killing community meshes can be much more difficult by orders of magnitude.
I realize this. But the real problem in the west is political. If there is political will to shut down ISP's there is probably political will to seek and stop mesh nodes.
ISPs have a central office and one guy to coerce.
Self-priced meshes such as what Althea envision have no such SPoF.
Shutting them down would require occupation _armies_.
If you got some nationstate tech OK. If not, cheap drone strikes, the drone just follows the signal. Take out enough of it, and the question is, how do you replace the bombed hardware?
It is easy enough to wire a mesh together with buried wires,
I have seen this done often enough.
Someone could sniff and bomb nodes
but that would quickly become very unpopular.
Right now you can order it on the internet, but if someone is willing to take down ISPs, they are willing to stop international trade (except what they want of course).
Pirates I have worked nearby over the years number in the thousands. "Stopping international trade" never stops them from getting what they want.
"Safe Distance" is necessary.
So my problem has been that you seemed to take this lightly. I have brought up some concerns now, and I think going on would be fruitless. I definitely do not have a crystal ball
I built many small community networks over the years.
Those days are behind me now,
someone else may carry on that trade.
All I can say is that yes it can be done.
I do agree that if communities want to be networked and govt do not want to let them, distributed small hubs is the way to go (and hope govt will not put real effort in against them).
At least if digital data transmission is a requirement. Btw, do you know if there are suitable commercial products for this kind of thing?
For wifi+wired,
Ubiquiti was always my "goto solution",
but the best tech is always an evolving target.
I read recently they are still recommended.
My thoughts on this are not very well organized. I had thought that wifi was too short range for this.
ubiquiti airmax can do 50km+ easily.
we had good long legs up to 35km,
but that took effort.
Far better to use short range mesh
than depend on long range bottlenecks.
Wifi is useful for short-leg mesh.
When-If I get some time I may re-examine.
the only interest I have now in such things
is for "Galt's Gulch" scenarios
Well, now I think about it, I might have a crystal ball lying around somewhere, but that's a different matter
Of course, if NSA wants to spy on Signal conversations, they attack the weak endpoint (your phone), and even hardened phones probably cannot withstand. If they can, dirty tricks.
Yes - Android is hopeless that way,
and now we can see that iPhone has also sold its soul.
Mobiles are hopeless until we replace centralized TelComs.
We need decent mesh networks
"We need decent mesh networks"
Imagine what the crypto community could achieve if most people weren't just eyeballing charts and hoped to get fiat rich without effort.
I originally approached these guys:
https://althea.net/ long ago
but when they descended into the realm of ETH solutions
their focus on payment protocol skewed toward greed.
Mesh networks are a hard sell when Joe Sixpack does not understand why, and has an Internet connection that works fine already. And there are other problems like connecting over oceans
When the "Grid" goes dark
and phones die
Joe SixPack will come around.
I paved 6000sq km of jungle
with a wifi mesh a few helpers and a bit of kit.
It is not that hard to do.
and how to incentivize people to be data hubs, and being allowed to use a band of the wireless spectrum. And if it really gets secure, obviously NSA et al will fight it and fight dirty
"being allowed" is irrelevant to "we will not comply"
I am not saying this is impossible, but I believe it will be really, really hard to sell it to Joe Sixpack, and you pretty much have to, because you need critical mass of users.
Onboarding a few small community is enough.
We built local networks that lived on after we left because
the communities kept them going, by themselves, on their own.
Not saying it cant be done. But you do compete with well established firms making mature hardware of all sorts to solve the same problems centralized. There is a bump in the road there
And again, your opposition is people who go to war to stop countries from switching from petro-dollar for example. They do not play nice. Ready for that?
Not even on the same page economically.
They cannot recognize some random guys
building a community mesh.
Such already exist in many places,
ignored by all but their users.
A couple hundred users is not an economic threat, no. But you want to grow it to the whole world do you not? If you can do that it will become one.
If just one big giant aggregate network
then it could be ended just as easily as switching off an ISP.
But millions of small meshes each a few hundred nodes can outlive governments
Maybe. There is of course already lots of war tech on this that you might end up competing with. Low tech communication channels are usually easy to find.
There is no competition - none at all.
There never is any competition
when the entire community is trying to communicate
against the will of the government.
I quite agree that the hardware and stuff to do this would be very useful in certain crisis situations, but enough people need to have it before the crisis, that is the problem.
Such things already operate in places like Hong Kong and other locales I prefer not to name here.
The setup would also be almost completely useless without (indirect) connection to the Internet. A ham radio could do most of the extra stuff I bet.
just a few rotating pirate links would be adequate to keep some activities operational.
