[HN Gopher] RuBee
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RuBee
Author : Sniffnoy
Score : 328 points
Date : 2025-11-24 03:08 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (computer.rip)
(TXT) w3m dump (computer.rip)
| jjmarr wrote:
| > I have at least a few readers for which the sound of a man's
| voice saying "government cell phone detected" will elicit a
| palpable reaction.
|
| Can this be recreated as an audio clip for jumpscaring former
| govt employees?
| quamserena wrote:
| Why not just rip the audio file off? Would make for a funny DC
| request
|
| Edit: On second thought this could be an OPSEC problem. Sorry
| but I don't know if anyone can help you :(
| jjmarr wrote:
| I bet the tts voice is public and something made by AT&T in
| the 80s or 90s.
| progbits wrote:
| Why TTS if it's just a static phrase? More likely that a
| random developer recorded that sentence and the wav is
| hardcoded in all the units.
| teddyh wrote:
| It might be that the law around voice recordings are not
| as simple as we might imagine.
| themafia wrote:
| If I were the president I would install this on random doors
| in the White House as a prank. It would be fun to watch the
| NSC fumble for their phone when walking into the oval.
| Antibabelic wrote:
| Why can't the manufacturers market "smart guns" outside the US?
| Surely, the NRA's grip isn't world-spanning.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I would imagine that any manufacturer being seen doing so,
| would face US consumer boycotts.
| aloha2436 wrote:
| The US is the largest market for firearms, so the NRA can use
| the threat of boycotting a manufacturer within the states to
| prevent the technology gaining traction elsewhere.
| Antibabelic wrote:
| Aren't there manufacturers that only really target local
| markets that could profit from this technology, e.g. in
| China, ex-USSR or South America?
| xixixao wrote:
| I could not locate credible evidence of a major firearm
| manufacturer that completely refrains from selling into the
| U.S. civilian market. (ChatGPT)
|
| Glock, Koch, Taurus, even Czech Zbrojovka all sell to US.
|
| Kalashnikov can't atm, but also probably doesn't share the
| safety concern.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| To profit, they would first have to sell the goods. Who is
| actually in the market for a smart gun? Consumers aren't,
| surely. There is virtually no upside to your gun tracking
| you, at your own expense of buying a more complex piece of
| tech to boot. So that leaves something like (apparently)
| New Jersey where the government would compel purchases of
| smart guns because they were interested in the tracking.
| But eg. China simply don't allow citizens to purchase guns
| period. There may be some application to applying it to
| state-owned firearms to track military and police usage,
| but deploying that at Chinese scale would be an extremely
| expensive endeavour for what appears to be a solution in
| search of a problem. Not to mention the biometric lock
| concept, if implemented, is introducing an entire new axis
| of unreliability to a life-or-death tool.
| pabs3 wrote:
| Gun owners in the US probably wouldn't want their gun to
| be used against them in a home invasion, or by their
| child at a school. Seems like that could be a large-ish
| market. Especially if you can lobby regulators in favor
| of making it a requirement for all or some people.
| avidiax wrote:
| You are right that gun owners wouldn't want those things,
| but they are unlikely to want a smart gun as a solution
| to those things.
|
| They want the gun to be available to them, and not be
| under duress to use a fingerprint reader or pin pad or
| RFID ring to do it.
|
| Responsible gun owners keep guns out of children's hands
| by locking them up or supervising them, and irresponsible
| ones aren't going to want to pay extra for smart
| features.
|
| I think there's a very narrow range of smart features,
| something like a gun that is unlocked when removed from a
| holster, but locks up if it is dropped or grabbed, that
| might be interesting. That makes having the gun taken
| from an officer less of a threat, which might have an
| institutional appeal. Give it a 10-hour maintenance mode
| so that it can be used as a "nightstand gun" while
| automatically being locked if left idle for longer, and
| it would basically meet the needs of police both on and
| off-duty.
| derbOac wrote:
| In my personal experience gun owners want mechanical
| foolproofness too. They want something that's not going
| to lock up or fail or discharge at the wrong time. Smart
| features just add a layer of complexity with fail
| possibilities to address a problem that many of them
| would prefer to be addressed differently anyway.
| skissane wrote:
| I think a country like Australia could be a good starting
| point for smart guns. Yes, not a very big market-around
| 8% of US population, with significantly lower rates of
| gun ownership-but culturally more open to gun control,
| with a much weaker gun rights lobby, and a marked
| political tendency towards surveillance and "nanny state"
| regulation
| numpad0 wrote:
| IIRC Australia doesn't have legal frameworks for gun
| ownership for the purpose of self defense, and there's no
| great implementation of smart guns in the first place.
|
| A smart gun is like an AWS authenticated motor twisting
| ballpoint pen. Just no one ever seriously pays for such a
| thing, and it has not even been seriously made if it ever
| was actually conceived. Making it a requirement is
| basically out of question.
| skissane wrote:
| > Making it a requirement is basically out of question
|
| Why? If there's the political will, it is doable. There
| are Australian gun manufacturers (e.g. Lithgow Arms,
| owned by Thales)-and if none of them are willing to
| cooperate, the government can always start their own gun
| manufacturer. Indeed, Lithgow Arms was founded in 1912 as
| a government-owned arms manufacturer, and remained in
| public hands until the Australian federal government sold
| it to Thales in 2006.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Same reasons as why things like Clipper Chips isn't
| happening. It completely lacks technical basis, and even
| political consensus gets sketchy quick.
|
| Post-war Commonwealth nations are generally bad at gun
| designs as well - UK tried once and produced an infantry
| rifle that will(not could) seriously injure its user if
| held and fired in left hand. So even if forced, the
| approved gun will be more of a theoretical product, and
| the smart gun mandate will just be a less politically
| viable alternative to total firearms ban.
| xixixao wrote:
| I see at least two problems with smart guns though:
|
| 1. Temper resistance is not temper impossibility 2. If a tag
| allows tracking, bad actors might track good actors?
| skinkestek wrote:
| Because it's just a bad idea.
|
| Most of the world doesn't need that whole setup because:
|
| - Our cultural baseline around firearms is completely
| different. Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland,
| Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic have plenty of
| guns at home - and historically, a lot of them were actual
| assault rifles, not "looks-spicy" semiautos.
|
| - We treat guns like weapons. They live in safes, not
| nightstands, and kids get taught safety early, the same way
| you'd teach them not to put a fork in a power supply.
| atemerev wrote:
| The Swiss do have a lot of guns at home. However, you cannot
| carry (or even transport guns that are not discharged). Just
| take them at a shooting range - a popular pastime for Swiss
| people.
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| > Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland,
| Austria, and the Czech Republic have plenty of guns at home
|
| None of those countries are anywhere near US levels of gun
| ownership. See the table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
|
| USA has 120 guns pr 100 citizens. Of the countries on your
| list, Finland is next with 32. Denmark has 10.
|
| > and historically, a lot of them were actual assault rifles
|
| Fully automatic weapons are not legal for civilians in
| Denmark at least.
|
| Many semiautos are also banned. Semiauto shotguns must be
| restricted to hold only two shells and you need a special
| license even for that.
|
| I don't disagree with your general point, but you're not
| making a good comparison IMO.
| iviv wrote:
| > Fully automatic weapons are not legal for civilians in
| Denmark at least.
|
| Same in Finland.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| smart guns is future dystopian
| actionfromafar wrote:
| regular guns is current dystopian
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| so knife is past dystopian????
| sawjet wrote:
| Rock was the original topia
| baiac wrote:
| Regular guns in the hands of the people is the opposite of
| dystopian.
| atemerev wrote:
| There are barely any civilian gun markets outside the US. US is
| really really unique in their relationship to guns.
| setopt wrote:
| This. There's many countries that allow civilians firearms
| (e.g. Canada and much of Europe), but generally for hunting
| purposes and thus more likely to be rifles and shotguns than
| concealable handguns.
| numpad0 wrote:
| The tech just isn't there; hand-held guns don't benefit from a
| computerized firing system at all. So any smart feature on
| human sized guns and less will be totally removable addons, and
| that completely defeats its purpose.
|
| Many tanks and planes do have smart guns. Electronic firing
| control with additional software features that impede firing
| are beneficial and totally fine at that scale.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Seems it's coming though.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMASH_Handheld
| numpad0 wrote:
| That's just a scope. Comes right off and the gun reverts to
| a regular M4.
|
| Most(though not all) other smart gun attempts work in a
| similar fashion; the host gun works exactly as it were,
| except an extraneous metal bit inhibits firing. If the bit
| was removed or held down, it reverts to the original host
| gun and fires normally. As such, the extra bit is literally
| extraneous, irrelevant to the gun's working.
| refurb wrote:
| The correct answer is - all the designs so far aren't great.
|
| The military would love a smart gun to cut down on accidental
| discharges. Cops would love it to stop weapons being used
| against cops.
|
| The issue is that it has to have a very high reliability (you
| don't want it to fail to fire while a suspect is shooting at
| you). And not much point if it only works "sometimes" with
| unauthorized users.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Can someone explain how communication can take place using only
| magnetic fields? I thought that communication requires electro
| magnetic waves which require an oscillating electro magnetic
| field.
| 1116574 wrote:
| I went into a slight hunt for more knowledge after reading
| this, and long story short you need to search NFMI (near field
| magnetic induction)[1]. As far as I can see from my limited
| reading the main use case of the tech is nfc (near field comm)
| and true wireless earbuds.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-field_magnetic_induction_...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Thanks, this will be an interesting read.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| A changing magnetic field will always induce an electrical
| field and vice-versa. Even just moving a magnet with your hand
| will generate an electrical field. Near-field effects of an
| antenna still involve this interaction.
|
| The key to the resistance of very long wavelengths of EM
| radiation (or equivalently, very slowly varying
| electric/magnetic fields) to attenuation when traveling through
| a metal is the nature of the way metals expel electric fields
| (they don't generally block magnetic fields). When you apply a
| static electric field to a thin conductor, electrons will be
| pulled away from one side and toward the other such that the
| field inside is zero. However this migration of charges will
| actually result in the electric field on the far side of the
| metal being nearly the same as the field on the side closer to
| the source!
|
| If the wavelength of some EM radiation is much longer than a
| metal obstacle is thick, the fact that the electric field is
| excluded from the interior of the metal won't matter much. Even
| if the metal wasn't there, the electric field strength wouldn't
| vary much over that distance, and on the other side of the
| metal the induced charges will restore the roughly "correct"
| field. Since the magnetic component won't vary much over that
| distance either, the fact that there's no varying electric
| field inside the conductor to reinforce the magnetic field
| won't significantly attenuate it.
|
| If you're familiar with Faraday cages, this will sound all
| wrong. Isn't it long wavelengths they can block, and short
| wavelengths they can't? This true when dealing with EM
| radiation in the "normal" radio bands and higher, but it turns
| out their ability to attenuate radiation falls off in the other
| direction too (once wavelengths get extremely long). When
| dealing with EM properties of materials, there are a huge
| number of different effects that apply in different
| circumstances, and it's easy to forget one and confuse
| yourself.
| macleginn wrote:
| Any idea where the name came from?
| pnut wrote:
| Google says
|
| > RuBee is an acronym for "Radio U.S. Bureau of Engraving and
| Printing",
|
| Weirdly not related at all to Zigbee's naming origins, in spite
| of their technological similarity.
| jadamson wrote:
| RuBep? As ever, the fastest way to get a correct answer on
| the internet is to post an incorrect one:
|
| > The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers Inc.,
| the international governing group for such technology, has
| designated P1901.1 as the technical designation given to the
| RuBee technology, which was named RuBee by Visible Assets.
| "There is no real reason we named it RuBee," said Mr.
| Stevens. "It actually was named after the song 'Ruby
| Tuesday.' It just sounded good."
|
| https://theproducenews.com/print/pdf/node/1355 (PDF)
|
| I'd assume "ZigBee" was also an inspiration.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > the firearms lobby is very influential on police departments,
| as are police unions which generally oppose technical
| accountability measures
|
| A lot of what's wrong in surprisingly few words
| drewlesueur wrote:
| I like the Univers-like font on this page.
| jtvjan wrote:
| i'm a little bit sad the kernel diagram background is gone
| Lio wrote:
| > _Long ago I wrote about ANT+, for example, a failed personal
| area network standard designed mostly around fitness
| applications._
|
| I didn't know ANT+ was "failed", I use it all the time with my
| Garmin products. It's cheap and it works better than Bluetooth.
|
| I have ANT+ cadence and heart rate sensors. Lights, camera, Varia
| radar and power meter.
|
| Some of that can be done with Bluetooth but realistically not all
| at the same time.
|
| Anyone that's run a smart trainer in a group with others will
| know that ANT+ is generally more reliable than Bluetooth too.
|
| Apple refuse to support ANT+ so I need a dongle for my Mac and
| it's the reason I don't have an Apple Watch. No biggie.
| g0ran wrote:
| "In 2025, Garmin announced that they would end their
| certification for ANT+ devices, blaming changes in wireless
| communication regulations. This is likely to lead to future
| devices dropping ANT+ support in favour of BLE."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_(network)
|
| I believe that's what the author was referring to when
| describing it as failed, but yes, this could've been worded
| better.
| Lio wrote:
| Aha! OK that's sad news but makes perfect sense. Thanks.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That's interesting. As the article says, ANT's main use case
| is in commercial gym equipment. What the article doesn't say
| is the reason: it excels at gathering data for "group
| fitness". ANT is a connectionless protocol so in a situation
| where you have two dozen transmitters and you need to get
| data from all of them, your receiver simply has to listen and
| record whatever devices it sees and let the user software
| (possibly managing a gym leaderboard for a spin class) decide
| which ones to track.
|
| Contrast with BLE where you would have to make a connection
| to each device. The overhead of connecting and disconnecting,
| in addition to being power-prohibitive, takes too long. Some
| manufacturers have workarounds to enable use of their BLE
| products in a group fitness environment, but they are pretty
| much lacking.
|
| It'll be interesting to see how the problem is solved if
| indeed ANT+ does go away.
| IshKebab wrote:
| BLE could do that too via advertising packets. I don't know
| if any devices actually do though.
|
| Also the connection process isn't power-prohibitive for
| BLE, and it doesn't _have_ to take a long time. It 's just
| that most Bluetooth software stacks suck balls. Basically
| only Apple's is good.
|
| As I recall BLE only supports hosts connecting to 7
| peripherals simultaneously which is a bit rubbish, but if
| you're a gym with some custom ANT+ receiver you can
| definitely get a custom BLE receiver that can connect to
| more devices (assuming someone makes such a thing).
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| The ANT+ article was really interesting and it seems like a
| real shame that it's going the way of the dodo. Now I know what
| those little status symbols are on some of the gym equipment.
| Seems like a great protocol for the use case, but nit massively
| surprising it couldn't survive on that niche alone. Shame.
| derbOac wrote:
| My impression was part of the issue was ANT is a proprietary
| Garmin protocol and so never really gained traction or
| imprint beyond those devices. Without meaning to sound too
| critical or supportive of BLE, I think something more open
| would be better for that area anyway.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| I love this blog author's writing style. It's very engaging, and
| draws me into subjects I would otherwise have minimal interest
| in.
|
| Definitely gonna check out some more of their posts later.
| themafia wrote:
| > refrigeration. Samples being shipped to the lab and reagents
| shipped out to clinics were both temperature sensitive. Providers
| had to verify that these materials had stayed adequately cold
| throughout shipping and handling, [...] Moreover, Stevens
| imagined that these sensors would be in continuous communication.
| There's a lot of overlap between this application and personal
| area networks (PANs), protocols like Bluetooth
|
| I like the low-fi solution personally:
|
| https://www.ipack.com/warmmark-temperature-indicator-short-r...
|
| https://www.ipack.com/coldmark-temperature-indicator-10c-50f...
| IgorPartola wrote:
| That will tell you if the item is spoiled, not alert you that
| it is on its way to being spoiled. Very different use cases and
| outcomes.
| b7kich wrote:
| .kk
| krogenx wrote:
| Are there any places where a hobbyist could purchase a tag or
| reader?
| jethro_tell wrote:
| Seems doubtful as this guy has spent a lot of time wigg the
| this and can't get one.
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(page generated 2025-11-24 23:01 UTC)