I wanted to like FireChat, as it was previously possible to use it entirely offline, in a purely P2P fashion.
While this is still possible, you are now forced to first create an account online, and subscribe to a bunch of internet-based channels, before the app will let you use the P2P portion.
This is frustrating. The market is wide open for someone to make a pure P2P communications app that doesn't require internet access at all, even initially.
this is interesting what is ad hoc networking and how does it work offline? Firechat uses bluetooth but doesn't work with iphone to android communication?
They somehow managed to do that: allow communication between two platforms. No one is quite sure how though. It's their secret source that they aren't open sourcing.
FireChat also doesn't encrypt communications, which makes it rather dangerous in such situations. There have already been reports of government agents infiltrating in the protest movement to install malware in their phones.
> you are now forced to first create an account online, and subscribe to a bunch of internet-based channels, before the app will let you use the P2P portion.
Hm, I don't know. I've unsubscribed from all internet-based channels, and the P2P still seems available.
Used firechat in the area yesterday, I think there are two issues:
1. information overload, hard to catch up the messages from all the people
2. some people are spreading rumors and fake information.
It would be great if we still can use the underlying network but have a way to filter out information (e.g. mgs from friends or friends or friends only)
More like good people unwittingly spreading information which they do not know are fake. Memes in the proper sense of the word - idea viruses.
Every circular warning email you got in your email 10 years ago with the words "This happened to a friend of my fathers and is true" and "Share this around! Everyone must know about this!"
I find it interesting that here in Berlin (and other cities in Europe, mostly in Germany), we have this for many years - not just for protesters, but for anyone. However, it's not a smartphone app (the network predates smartphones), but a mesh network of WLAN access points. The name of this project is Freifunk: http://freifunk.net/en/
IIRC a number of the contributors to the downstream projects of Serval were some of the early contributors to freifunk.net.
My understanding is that freifunk was a pretty major testbed for peer-to-peer mesh network protocols in Linux, and it's that heritage that's made it into things like Serval and the Mesh Potato.
Whilst Serval has moved on to its own OSLR variant, its roots are firmly embedded in the B.A.T.M.A.N. protocol.
I don't how it's incorrect. It's a matter of context and point of view. I's one big avenue blocked over 3-4 blocks.
Last 11 of September, at very least 600000 Catalans over 11km protested in favor of a referendum for their independence. That was a huge manifestation.
The Hong-Kong manifestation isn't that big in size. But it's important and in a more repressive context.
That is good to hear but isn't state media now peddling that while the protests exist, they are being manufactured by "outside foreign forces" and not genuine? They are even calling for Chinese paramilitary to be sent it. That is scary.
Basically saying that the American consulate told secondary school students that they don't need to worry about illegal behaviour because they can study and settle in the US.
The outside foreign forces line is very common though - the above is one example from a quick search.
Also I don't see the assumption in the parent that majority of Chinese want a democratic government.
Indeed, and posting to web forums, especially with connections to mainland China, can be risky due to the traceback of IP addresses, collected or "procured" by Chinese authorities. This happened even through the cooperation of Yahoo in Hunan Province.
I highly recommend using the Tor network for political discussions.
There's quite a few articles where China has directly blamed the British government of interference. We have done nothing wrong from what I can see. The USA has, today, made a larger interference than anything we've done by holding a White House press conference on the subject of Hong Kong.
The UK signed a treaty that it, and China, would uphold the two systems approach (amongst other assurances) for HK. Since the UK is a signatory to this treaty we are at least allowed to make comments on the subject. China is acting as though this treaty does not exist by suggesting we are interfering.
That said, I read this morning that our deputy PM Nick Clegg has been tweeting on the HK protests. He needs to shut up. Twitter is not the way for a UK government to make its feelings known.
> You are assuming the majority of chinese want a democratic government. I'm not sure that's true.
This position always raises interesting questions for me: What do they want? How do they express their desires? Finally, how will they express their desires when they change?
you shut up and live it up. or make protests that will be largely ignored, after some police violence, and after posting bail you vote for the 3rd candidate.
It would be pretty hard to completely hide something that big considering many Hong Kongers have relatives living on the mainland and vice-versa. Unless they completely close off the internal border and sever all communication lines, word is going to get out. But if that happened, people would definitely know that something is off.
Currently, the official Chinese media isn't trying to hide what is happening, but they are trying to put their own spin on it.
No one abandoned Ukraine -- there's still a proxy war brewing there, between NATO and Russia. One might argue that it would be better for Ukraine if it was actually "abandoned".
Between Russian "volunteers" and neo-nazis with EU/NATO support, I predict the ones loosing are "most everyone else".
Right Sector and Svoboda both have representation in the new Ukrainian government. Both are right wing, fascist parties, and Right Sector even has paramilitary forces which engaged in attacks on political opponents, for instance the attack in Odessa in which they killed and burned alive dozens of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Odessa trade union building...
Prior to the 'revolution', Svoboda was denounced by many European nations and the EU. Now they form a fairly significant part of the Ukrainian government, and they were a large part of the 'revolution'...
>Prior to the 'revolution', Svoboda was denounced by many European nations and the EU.
yep. EU and US are at very interesting place. In order to fight Russia the EU and US are forced to support new Ukrainian government which performs "anti-terrorist operation" in the East (de-facto amounting to ethnic cleansing of Russians there) by mostly using the volunteer forces built of Right Sector and similar nationalist people. It it a big political skill to talk about freedoms, human rights, democracy (it is ok for Scotland to vote for separation, yet not ok for Crimea or Donetsk) and to not notice the stench coming from Kiev.
And this new "lustration" law champined by Svoboda and making its successful way through the Ukranian parliament - setting up committees on "un-Ukranian activities" with people identified by the committees (read Russians and all opposition) banished from all the _elected_ , government, education, military, etc.. positions.
Since when did defending your territory became 'ethnic cleansing'?
Remind me, who went over the border?
In a Ukrainian conflict, why do we keep hearing about Russian soldiers? Oh, and by the way, where did the bodies of 4000 dead Russian soldiers go? Wait, how did they get to Ukraine in the first place?
Defending your territory? From what, the people who already live there?
The operations in the east were essentially punitive, simply because they didn't support the new government. Yanukovych never sent the army after the protesters, yet the new Kyiv government did... I don't know if you remember the sequence of events, but Donetsk never separated and formed an army until after the massive escalation of violence by the pro-western Ukrainians...
> Oh, and by the way, where did the bodies of 4000 dead Russian soldiers go? Wait, how did they get to Ukraine in the first place?
If you honestly believe the completely incompetent and inept Ukrainian armed forces could kill 4000 Russian soldiers you're insane... The fact they were routed by a separatist force composed mostly of retired soldiers and volunteers with a few Russian advisers, despite having superior numbers and actually having air forces speaks to their competence, or lack thereof. By the way, the ceasefire was called because the Ukrainian military had basically given up, and many, if not most of the soldiers were on the verge of disbanding...
Odds are they didn't even kill that many separatists...
If you still think there aren't any Russian soldiers, in Ukraine, there is a label for that: a troll. Russian soldiers have been killed, interviewed, captured, and shipped back to Russia (not in that particular order, of course)
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/19/russian-soldiers-reveal-t...
And yes, defending your country from a Russian invasion is not 'ethnic cleansing': it's just defending your territory. It's not a conspiracy.
> The facts are there: Russia is invading Ukraine.
Russia had invaded Ukraine and Ukraine could do nothing - Crimea.
The war in Donbass isn't "defending your country from a Russian invasion", it is volunteer battalions of nationalists, heavily armed and supported by Kiev government airforce, trying to pacify the region. Russia is supporting the rebels of course (for historic precedents read about "Zaporozskaya Sech" - it is amazing how history repeats itself). If Russia actually invaded, there wouldn't be any war already, like in Crimea. Several paratrooper battalions and tank assault groups occasionally performing some combat incursions isn't an invasion, just a favor to the rebels when it was absolutely critical for the survival of the rebellion (in August, months after Kiev started the "pacifying" operation).
> The facts are there: Russia is invading Ukraine.
That's bullshit. Quoting Euromaidan sourced "news" is worse than quoting RT.
If Russians were invading Ukraine, we would not talk about months long conflict. We would be talking about one week, tops. And they would not stay in Donbass, they would stop in Chop.
How such operation works, see Czechoslovakia in 1968. Basically, your top brass wakes up in the morning and is looking into a barrel being held by some polite people.
And USSR is not the same thing as Russia. (Ukraine was unfortunately a part this godforsaken union, and was forced to fight on the side of the empire.) Needless to say, Russia did not invade Czechoslovakia by itself. USSR invaded Czechoslovakia. (If you want to put Russia in the subject, perhaps: Russia invaded Czechoslovakia with the help of its USSR union members.)
Again, Russia ≠ USSR.
Putin realizes this difference, which is why he employs these dirty tactics by lying that "soldiers on vacation" are volunteering to fight along side the terrorists in Ukraine. How these Russian soldiers on T-72 tanks entered Ukraine's territory 20km in is beyond me. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/19/russian-soldiers-reveal-t... Kremlin claims they were lost. If they were indeed lost, this proves Russian army's incompetence, otherwise it is another case against Putin and his imperialistic ambitions. Over time the pile of lies and lies gets bigger, and it starts to crumble. This pile of lies has grown and overgrown Putin (~> 1.7m), and it is starting to lean towards him, and he has to pile some more and more lies to keep it from crumbling. But it is falling apart.
As Obama pointed out, Russia is only a "regional power."
That region ends where Russian border begins, and this is what we are seeing in Eastern Ukraine: a failing Russian invasion along with a pile of "bullshit" to compensate for incompetence.
> That's bullshit. Quoting Euromaidan sourced "news" is worse than quoting RT.
As per Euromaidan, if you are not happy, perhaps I can entertain you with Ukraine's own RT alternative: Ukraine Today (UT). You can watch it directly on youtube. (a little spoiler: it's not funded by Kremlin nor by the CIA)
It is quite impressive how quickly they sprung up as a functioning international TV channel. I didn't know you could have a fully functional news station within a couple of months. But then again, we live in a new era, year 2014; not 1968.
if not for Russian volunteers and hardware (and soldiers in the August) the Donbass would be blood bathed. It is a duty of the international community to stop crimes against humanity perpetrated by a government against its own people.
Notice the difference between Crimea and Donbass - nobody shells the cities in Crimea - why? Because of full military presence of Russia. Putin of course didn't care about people and so he didn't send full force to Donbass unfortunately. Otherwise there wouldn't be that war on Donbass.
>Since when did defending your territory became 'ethnic cleansing'?
short answer - when you start defend your territory from the people leaving on that territory. Long - it is well recognized international law and practice (voiced very loudly by the Western countries in case of Kosovo for example) that a government/country perpetrating systemic discrimination and other crimes against a given ethnicity on a given territory loses the right to that territory. Clear case of Crimea and Donbass (and other Ukranian regions with significant Russian population)
Yes. It is quite clear. Please explain me why Crimean Tatars have been kidnapped, murdered, interrogated, and repressed since Russia took over? (rhetorical)
if you know the centuries old history of that region and in particular of relations between Crimean Tatars and the rest of the population there, Russians included - you wouldn't be that surprised. Of course, Russia has a bunch of territories/ethnicities that wish (and have a lot of valid reasons to) they could go free like Estonia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, ... did. Chechnya would be among the first coming to mind, and if somebody asked me i'd say let them go. Like Eltsin did in 91' - "take as much sovereignty as you can carry away". Well, as you said - Empire. And it is trying to come back. And it isn't a good Empire if there are any. And trying to oppress Russian minority on the border with that Empire - not a smart move by any accounts. Hoping that Western countries would help - not a smart hope as Western countries tend to not like (at least not publicly) oppressions of minorities these days.
I agree with your point of view. Except, I disagree with your statement on oppression.
Russians are not oppressed in any case given. Oppressed are the non-Russians.
Most of the Ukrainian soldiers are Russian speaking.
Almost anywhere in the country you can find a Russian-taught school (yes, perhaps you need to drive some extra miles). But how many schools are there in Russia that teach Ukrainian? How many schools are there in Russia that teach Georgian? Close to zero; I won't be surprised if it actually is zero.
Russian drama TV shows get aired on Ukrainian television.
Even most of the ministers' native tongue is Russian.
So Russians are definitely not oppressed in Ukraine. It's a myth and an ongoing propaganda churned out by Putin's machine.
Meanwhile in Russia, you have public events such as "White Wagon", that perhaps resemble a KKK-style lynching, where Russian fascists pick a non-Russian passenger and lynch him in front of the police, with no consequences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag1K7fEjwNE Perhaps a single incident, but epitomizes the social divide in Russia, which is continuously fueled by Putin's propaganda machine. (No need to bring up Furguson. Two minuses don't make a plus.)
If you ask me, the war against Russian aggression is not only a fight against Russia, but it is also a fight against racism and discrimination. If you ask any Russian who choses to voice himself, Ukraine remains a safe haven for Russian speakers.
Russians are not being oppressed in Ukraine. Ukrainians and other ethnicities that are non-Russian are oppressed in Russia.
man, you don't need to tell me how bad Russia is - there is a reason i live in US now :). What i'm saying is that oppression of Russians has forced them to choose Putin's Russia - the situation when Putin's Russia is the better alternative speaks for itself. While oppression and discrimination before Euromaidan was below pain threshold, the Euromaidan brought to power the forces which were clearly intended and now, with the power of the state behind them, capable to perform another tutsi-hutu situation. Of course nobody is going to wait for 1M to be killed before acting this time. Language law and "trains/buses of friendship" was enough for even the stupid ones to understand that it is time to go, that ethnic Russian can hope for any protection from Ukrainian government because the government became the main assailant. The anti-terrorist operation (indiscriminate shelling of civilian cities) only confirmed that the choice was right. New "lustration" law toward ethnic Russians is basically the same as Germans laws 80 years ago prohibiting Jews from all government, education, etc... positions.
When Estonia, Latvia, Litva did similar things to Russians 20+ years ago (with very significant exception - there wasn't violence there) it was at least understandable as a payback for the "occupation". When Ukraine started to do this and let right wing nationalists to escalate violence - what was at least half valid foundation for that? This is why many Russians are pissed off, because Ukraine instead of solving its problems allowed the new oligarchy regime to basically scapegoat ethnic Russians for all the problems. Ukraine people allowed the initial social unrest to be channeled into ethnic dimension.
Lustration basically amounts to cleansing any political opponents and dissidents. Sad this doesn't get more press. What the west has done to Ukraine is a tragedy...
The parent commenter may not have been talking about the Ukranian government, but of the numerous paramilitary nationalist groups that were instrumental in the protests that destabilized the previous regime. This is not a disputed fact. What's unknown is the degree to which those groups were supported by the EU or NATO, but the CIA has backed worse.
There are nuclear treaties that prevent stationing and mobility of NATO troops and armaments in the Baltic, Ukraine isn't even a member of NATO, and they are getting far more than mere sanctions - intelligence, equipment, financial aid, strategic advice, political and global media support to name a few.
NATO can't just abandon nuclear treaties. And trust that, as it controls 90% of the pipeline of oil between Russia and Europe and that because the conflict arose during highly contented offers for Ukraine to join the EU, that NATO is doing everything it can.
When Kiev is sending in troops to indiscriminately kill eastern Ukrainians that don't want anything to do with the new regime, while Russia is doing everything it can to stabilize the situation, and the western media is spouting nonsense about Russian aggression, yes, sanctions against Russia don't count.
There is a geo-political game going on in Ukraine right now. If you think you are getting an accurate assessment of the situation on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, you'd be about as right as you where on Libya, Iraq, and the other dozen or so major conflicts that ended up being nothing but full of lies.
It's in US's best interest to see Ukraine fall into a state of constant chaos. It's in Russia best interest to see Ukraine stabilize. From those two points you pretty much can infer who the aggressor is going to be.
The next step would be exchanging messages via NFC.
E.g. say for a p2p-twitter app, users A and B go into the exchange with their own versions of the global p2p-twitter feed, and exit the exchange with a merged version.
You could do federated, store-and-forward direct messaging, too. We already have a protocol for a very similar use-case: SMTP. :) Of course, with a sometimes-offline P2P mesh you usually don't know if any given hop decreases the distance to the destination.
You'd probably end up just merging all existing messages, so that everyone has everyone elses "email", and filter out the messages belonging to you via asymmetric encryption. So it's just an application of the above p2p-twitter thing. Public messages could be unencrypted.
I think some blockchain-based messaging systems work in a similar way, since there everybody has everybody elses messages per definition. Maybe a blockchain-based protocol is a good fit anyway, probably not though since I'm not sure how it would do the merge(A,B) function.
There were also systems designed for the BBS days that expected to have zero connectivity most of the time. They would dial other computers periodically and exchange data. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet
Authorities could also produce rogue clients that spam malicious messages--depends how resilient FireChat's protocol is and how well it filters noise (I might be talking FUD though as I haven't tried it).
Moreover, there's no way to police bad actors in a local mesh, and no global blockchain you can trust.
I've been wondering about exactly this - the agreed upon blockchain problem. Why not localized meshnets based on Hyperboria (http://hyperboria.net/). It can solve the problems of trusted blockchain - but you still have the social problem of interloper.
yes it's not very hard to jam, there are many jammers available online, a top result in a quick search was ironically from a site called jammerfromchina.com...[1]
Also, with an alfa wireless card and python (scapy module) it can be done pretty easily [2].
Can light be used to send messages when wi-fi is jammed? I mean modulating the torchlight and using cams. I realize this would be very low bandwidth though...
Well, radio waves consist of light, albeit outside of the visible spectrum. It is certainly possible to transmit signals using visible light (see Li-Fi), although visible light transmissions could be jammed using the same techniques.
Might not be ideal for covert communication though, since you could see someone broadcasting without any special equipment.
Weeelll... that depends on a lot of things. Any jammer with the power to work over a meaningful radius in this context is probably going to throw out lots of spurious emissions in neighboring bands.
However, there is a FRS band which is the same as the US.
Moreover, the bands used by "push-to-talk" radios are ones that transmit reasonably far for lowish power and penetrate walls. No reason to think they'll be different worldwide.
The police can blame the protesters for all the troubles - block traffic, stopping commerce, blocking cell/wifi/BT service. From what I read, not much different than the police strategy used the 99% protest in Wall Street.
I don't recall the US banning twitter or censoring any social network. No prohibition of coverage.
Not to mention there was a tremendous amount of sympathetic coverage. Time 2011 person of the year was the protester. It was a huge conversation that entered the common narrative.
Apples and Oranges. Yeah, there are best practices for dealing with crowds and there needs to be security at huge protests. The cloak and the shield is a very fine line.
I know for a fact in Canada there was no wifi/cell/BT blocking. And I cannot find a reputable article the provides any evidence that this occurred.
He is saying that they blamed the protestors for inconveniences caused by police actions not that the police in the US blocked cell service.
The strategy for dealing with the protests in the US was just to wait them out and then when the media got bored they sent in the police to clear out the camps while people weren't paying attention.
Was anyone else wondering what actual protocol FireChat uses (answer: bluetooth), and found it strange that the article only mentioned it once, and not at the beginning?
Correct. They didn't mention alternative points of views either, like "Is it secure", "Is it encrypted", "Is it centralized", "Are there competitors". It's a bit one-sided towards FireChat.
Reading up on FireChat, it appears to have no encryption or security whatsoever. The owners are like "we don't want you to do illegal things with it anyway" (or so I read). Doesn't sound like the greatest app...
It’s good that the weather is really gentle now in Hong Kong.
Here in Ukraine this past winter the “designed in California” didn’t last too long during -13C..-18C nights, even with an external battery, so walkie-talkies were helpful at times. However, the cellular networks did work in the downtown, perhaps with just minor outages, even during the most violent crackdowns.
And to address some of the either Russian trolls or just misinformed minds elsewhere in the comments. I won’t go into much details, just address some points.
- The whole situation in Ukraine was, and is, largely provoked and inflamed by Russia. Empires being what empires are, even fading ones, try to concur and/or influence as much neighbours as possible, especially if a neighbour is posing an indirect threat to the empire’s regime rulers. No need to take my word on it, just study recent conflicts around Russian borders since the 90s.
- All sorts of people, from all kinds of backgrounds, education, income, etc, took part in the protests. From poor farmers and peasants, through students and professors, to entrepreneurs, CEOs of big companies/multinational branches, and other well-off people.
- To call all these people “fascists”, “junta”, is something a Gebbels would do. Especially when coming from a state that has extreme press and internet censorship, where all the power lies in the hands of the state security service, and where sexual/national minorities live under real threat and danger of persecution. Especially ridiculously it sounds given the number of Jews, and well-off ones, taking parts in the protests, alongside the so-called “radicals”.
- Somebody mentioned “Svoboda” and “Pravyj Sektor” as boogeymen. “Svoboda” has like 1% support now; it lost the support greatly during the protests themselves, when people found out that their “radicalism” is only in words, but not in action. The leadership is very money-oriented, and it shows. Regular members are more or less OK, as members political parties go; most are just regular patriots, like you have in the US and elsewhere. “Pravyj Sektor” is really just a bunch of kids; we’ve bought them socks and some underwear during the winter. Aren’t any more radical than most kids their age anywhere in the world.
- Russian propaganda was working very hard all these years against the Ukrainian state, but as we can see, it took root only in some parts of the 2, out of 25, regions. The reasons are simple - these are very “depressed”, poor regions; people live there in constant poverty, without decent jobs, repressed by local feudal lords, without proper education and perspective on life. This is not an excuse for what they’ve started, but at least it explains the causes. In other, considered “pro-Russian” but wealthy, regions the propaganda didn’t take as much root, and after the events of this year, there’s little left of the “pro-Russian” part in them, even as they continue to speak Russian in everyday life.
- As for the West, we’ve seen who’s who now, and what they are worth. That was a hard yet an important lesson. We are learning to rely only on ourselves, and we’ll manage. Also, given that Ukraine has given up the world’s 3rd largest nuclear arsenal in 1994, in exchange for security guarantees, it will be a good lesson for other countries for the future. One which will probably not help improve the global demilitarisation, however.
Thank you for reading, and please excuse the long post.
P.S. Didn’t find my old “Startup News” account credentials, not really much of a poster, but decided not skip this one thread.
You know, it is very hard here to form an opinion on these things (Netherlands), we never ever see anything Putin says, we just have conflicting messages in and outside of the news (like http://www.elsevier.nl/Cultuur--Televisie/achtergrond/2014/9...), the article is about how our news organizations manipulated Putins words. We also hear 30 min after a plane is shot down that the Russians did it. And we hear Assad fired chemical weapons (he didn't but that is given much less attention to.)
The first two paragraphs are useful contribution to discussion. The rest is... well, useless.
"...when people found out that their “radicalism” is only in words, but not in action."
So, you ditched them because they were not radical? If you're gonna rant, at least do it right. We get it, you're being fucked from all sides. Welcome to reality. Other than that, you forgot to mention over 30 volunteer battalions like Aidar that, according to Amnesty International, "have been involved in widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions."
Teekert gave a link to back up what they said, unlike you with your almost anonymous account and smarmy attitude. Ukraine just substituted one oligarchy for another but the current one has Western support ( IMF debt ). I agree with the perception of heavy Western news bias which is not credible. No credibility for the cursing Nuland handing out cookies, violent Kiev street thugs, and Kiev junta bombing their own people. It is not just 2 regions, remember Crimea voted for autonomy and no one is rioting to return to the Ukraine junta. And I'm not Russian, just US resident who is partly Latino who knows how the gringos operate. KGB jokes are pretty old you should update your humor, especially as KGB predate the Internet.
In the internet age as in any other time in history, whoever controls the communication channels win.
For now IMO the winners are: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple(on the top but sliding down?), Amazon, US Gov, NSA, CIA, FBI, KGB, Russian Gov, Chinese Gov (win by block out others), Badu, Alibaba, WeChat, Line, SnapChat,
For now, the losers or losing players are : Yahoo, Nokia, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Liberian Gov, Ukraine, Egypt(almost?), Most of Japanese Electronic firms.
you forgot that behind all those are financial firms like Goldman Sachs.
without their fake money schemes Facebook for example would only have it's revenue money, which is pretty lower than all the investment money they have.
What's to keep the government from broadcasting 2.4ghz noise and disrupting all communication on that frequency (or 5ghz in the case of some versions of wifi)? Are cell towers capable of such a thing?
You can read about a tear down of the fake app at https://code4hk.hackpad.com/Fake-Code4HK-Mobile-App-HQXXrylI...