[HN Gopher] Testing Bitchat at the music festival
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Testing Bitchat at the music festival
Author : alexcos
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-08-06 17:40 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (primal.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (primal.net)
| mikeodds wrote:
| I like the idea, I've been wandering around soma and mission for
| a week but not found anyone online
| egypturnash wrote:
| so is it
|
| Bit Chat
|
| or
|
| Bitch At?
|
| And is it somehow connected to bitcoin? This post mentions buying
| beer in exchange for "sats" so perhaps it is.
|
| The entirely-in-lowercase page of the actual project does not
| clarify any of these questions. Not that they're more than idle
| curiosity given that the conclusion of this review is "it didn't
| work".
| flufluflufluffy wrote:
| it's fairly obviously bit chat, named most likely in homage to
| bitcoin, due to its decentralized nature, though there is no
| connection beyond that
| n12345679 wrote:
| lol it's just a LARP project marketed by jack and his conman
| buddy calle. It has nothing to do with Bitcoin. Briarproject
| dot org already exists and is better. These LARPers will likely
| use it to steal someone's bitcoins using it.
| toenail wrote:
| For context, briar is android-only and bitchat was released
| for ios initially. Afaik calle did the android release on his
| own, vibe coded iirc.
| ragmodel226 wrote:
| Calle is a genius and is pushing this space forward, and
| Jack has the capital to get it there. Ignore the haters, we
| can have all the things we want now, it's just going to
| take a few iterations and lessons learned.
| toenail wrote:
| Calle is a decent coder, outside of that he has plenty of
| flaws.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Neither Calle nor Dorsey can solve the adoption issue,
| that's something they both struggle with vis-a-vis
| decentralized projects. Knowing Jack this is more likely
| to end up as an NFT marketplace app than anything that
| someone might want to use.
| synesso wrote:
| Jack is very strongly bitcoin only & anti "crypto". He
| sees Bitcoin alone as the Internet's missing money
| protocol. There is zero chance of what you suggest might
| happen.
| bigyabai wrote:
| This. Jack Dorsey had his "out" from the tech industry with
| Twitter, but he mismanaged it and started shilling crypto
| before he could turn it around. He's a wannabe white-hat
| incapable of monetizing good solutions and equally bad at
| improving upon free ones. If it weren't for his clout as "oh
| yeah the Twitter guy" then he'd be washed away in the sea of
| 0.1x engineers making the same AI-generated tinker-toys.
|
| You'd hope that a guy like him could see the writing on the
| wall, and complete the transition to a full-time celebrity
| asskisser like Sam Altman did. Nope, he wants to roleplay as
| Keanu Reeves in _Johnny Mnemonic_ to fill the hole of ennui
| that 's consumed his identity since selling Twitter. At least
| he looks like he's having fun.
| xorbax wrote:
| Is a 'Bit' prefix now solely read as a bitcoin reference?
|
| I thought it existed before bitcoin as, like, some computer
| thing or the platonic ideal of information. Did I get that
| wrong? Does 'bit' just mean bitcoin?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| It was popular for BitTorrent but torrenting isn't as popular
| these days
| jrflowers wrote:
| It's a nod to the song Where My B At by Esham
| synesso wrote:
| It's tangentially related through the theme of decentralization
|
| - It's trying to be a very decentralized chat application
|
| - The linked post is on nostr, which decentralized broadcast
| messaging protocol
|
| - Bitcoin is a decentralized money protocol
|
| - Nostr has the capability to send bitcoin between users via
| the lightning network via https://github.com/nostr-
| protocol/nips/blob/master/57.md
|
| It takes more effort to use nostr than it does anything
| relatively more centralized like bluesky or mastodon. So people
| there are the kind who are dedicated to decentralized
| technologies & support bitcoin.
| specproc wrote:
| Obligatory relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2055/
| teucris wrote:
| This has been tried so many times[0][1]... heck even I made an
| app like this once using WiFi direct.
|
| The idea is so solid and yet there are just enough pitfalls
| between Bluetooth reliability, platform differences, getting
| critical mass for effective relaying...it's such a bummer that we
| can't figure this one out. Decentralized message relays have the
| potential to work anywhere, be fully private, extremely difficult
| to block/censor, and (in theory) can scale indefinitely.
|
| [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat
|
| [1]: https://briarproject.org/
| willseth wrote:
| The FindMy network is already doing this at scale with location
| data. Offline messaging might be too niche of a use case for
| Apple but surely they've considered it.
| wslh wrote:
| But does WiFi Direct work on iOS so we can be on a music
| festival and mesh between your friends (Apple) mobiles? This
| would be much better than Bluetooth. I read about the
| MultipeerConnectivity framework but I am confused because in
| a recent discussion someone says that WiFi Direct has
| (development?) limitations? ELI5 please.
| brookst wrote:
| Apple uses AWDL, a proprietary protocol that predates WiFi
| direct. WiFi direct is kind of a mess, and then there's
| WiFi aware. Last I heard when I was working in this space a
| couple of years ago there was supposed to be a WiFi direct
| 2 that would (as usual) unify standards and solve all the
| issues.
| willseth wrote:
| AWDL isn't FindMy. It's mostly for Airdrop and also uses
| Bluetooth for the initial connection then switches to
| WiFi for high bandwidth data.
| sofixa wrote:
| The EU has mandated that Apple should support WiFi Direct
| for interoperability with things outside its ecosystem,
| so it's coming.
| willseth wrote:
| I'm not sure it would since the whole Bluetooth stack is
| already designed for P2P. Apple's network is a true mesh
| though and not point to point. If you share locations with
| your friends on FindMy using iPhones or AirTags you will
| get updates via the encrypted mesh network (that includes
| other peoples' iPhones) without being connected to a WiFi
| or cell network.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/security/find-my-security-
| se...
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I worked with BLE recently and found it very reliable. Also I
| was surprised at range it was able to communicate. Like 10
| meters with walls - it works. Similar to WiFi.
|
| I think, it's all matter of inventing a proper protocol on top
| of it, and enough work-hours put into the implementation to
| make software reliable.
| cedws wrote:
| I was initially optimistic about Bitchat but after investigating
| it does just seem to be an early hobby project. We need more than
| individual apps meshing via Bluetooth. I'm doubtful Bitchat will
| ever be used outside of a group of nerds at a festival.
|
| We need a standardised protocol commonly implemented by
| manufacturers. The closest we have now that I'm aware of is
| Apple's Find My network in which it is possible to smuggle
| arbitrary data very slowly. [0]
|
| [0]: https://github.com/positive-security/send-my
| diimdeep wrote:
| Just a thought but would't it be a better world if we didn't had
| wifi and bluetooth chips in the first place and cellular modem
| would worked in user land and had API to build upon while not
| being separate black box hardware and os living it's own life,
| with capability to reach freaking satellite in space.
|
| bluetooth chips is child's play compared to cellular chips, just
| saying.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Yeah but the big networks never want you to connect on your own
| terms.
|
| POTS? Gotta pay to play. Cell network? Gotta pay and use a
| creepy spyware baseband.
| Catbert59 wrote:
| I worked with BLE Meshing in industry products. With a lot of
| hops and a bit of traffic it becomes very unreliable quickly.
|
| Introducing something like TCP o top most likely will kill it
| because of the network load over a very thin and unreliable
| connections just causes more mess.
|
| Addendum: this "experience" is a few years old. Maybe newer BLE
| revisions improved this.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Yeah, this mirrors my experience trying to get FireChat to work
| at Las Vegas EDC years prior. Unfortunate to see progress is
| about the same.
|
| Going to Burning Man for the first time this year. Some of my
| campmates are keen on giving mesh networking another shot through
| https://www.burningmesh.org/. Will be interesting to see if using
| dedicated hardware, rather than just software on phones, makes
| connectivity & communication more reliable.
| bravoetch wrote:
| I am interested to hear if you also try bitchat at the burn.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| or https://berty.tech/features
| mistyvales wrote:
| RussFest is back baby!
| monster_truck wrote:
| That's odd, I used "Bitch at" and it told me where Jack's mom
| was.
| yobid20 wrote:
| You'd have better luck using smoke signals than trying to do
| anything using bluetooth.
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(page generated 2025-08-09 23:00 UTC)