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Posted by us321 1/15/2026

Briar keeps Iran connected via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when the internet goes dark(briarproject.org)
604 points | 368 commentspage 4
Poudlardo 1/16/2026|
For iOS users, "Bitchat" from Jack Dorsey is pretty similar. I'm not sure whether it syncs with Wi-Fi though, only Bluetooth
shevy-java 1/16/2026||
Just the default web-layout shown here is ... awful. How can people use that? That design is like 1990 ... but worse.
aaravchen 1/16/2026||
It's a manual for setup (in Farsi, you can click to other languages) that needs to be as accessible as possible to the least technology a literate people in the world as well as the ultra techy. Often people that have extremely limited data connection or no data connection as well. It has to be as simple as possible, and as clear as possible.

Check the main landing page and you can see it's a relatively modern site, they just gave a very restricted target audience the manual needs to be available for.

bawolff 1/16/2026|||
What's wrong with it?

I guess too many links at the beginning, but other than that it looks like your average website, just RTL.

master-lincoln 1/16/2026||
How could people in 1990 use their stuff? They just did.

Design is not so important for getting information across

Moldoteck 1/17/2026||
Ehhhh... To me Briar has great potential that is dwarfed by limitations... It's trying to be sort of like FireChat [1] but with less or subpar features... For real, someone should make a fire chat OSS project with some proprietary E2EE on top of the the OSS one based on Signal protocol. Maybe add some duress mode on top

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat

ts0711 1/16/2026||
still very risky
subscribed 1/15/2026||
Perhaps Americans should start preparing with Meshtastic / Meshcore, just in case....... ..,..the Emperor seems hellbent on bringing martial law into effect.
devsda 1/16/2026||
Do you think the govt will not force Google to revoke developer certs once developer verification is in place to prevent sideloading or not order Google/Apple to forcibly uninstall them ?

These are great tools in American toolkit if it wants to do a regime change in other countries. Their effectiveness within America are questionable.

theshrike79 1/16/2026|||
There are fully hardware based meshtastic devices: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/realizing-meshtastics...

The Government can't revoke the certs on those.

aaravchen 1/16/2026|||
The government isn't going to hand to do that, that's already what Google's planning to do anyway. They'd just have to tell Google to take down certain apps so they're no longer on the Google "approved" list, which would deactivate them on your device during next network connection (like most Google "services" on Android, I'm sure these too would bypass the system VPN as well) as well as making them unavailable from the sole allowed download source. You know, like they did with ICE Block already.
codezero 1/15/2026|||
The military can very easily find and eliminate repeaters very quickly and almost certainly would.
torlok 1/16/2026|||
Then get more? Sounds like a fantastic way to waste military resources. I have no clue why this mythical US military might and efficiency idea persists after so many failed interventions.
subscribed 1/16/2026|||
Here's a funny example of making it harder to find: https://youtu.be/W_F4rEaRduk?t=178
1shooner 1/16/2026|||
>the more people who use it, the more robust and far-reaching and reliable it gets.

I was under the opposite impression, that meshtastic's whole problem is that it doesn't scale well at all.

bigfatkitten 1/16/2026|||
Meshtastic uses naive flooding, which is fine for sparse networks (ie you and your three friends out hiking), but which doesn’t scale well at all.
culi 1/16/2026||||
I'm genuinely interested in learning more about the shortcomings of meshtastic if you have a link to share. Groups like the Anarchist Black Cross seem really supportive of the tech for disaster situations. Even Benn Jordan claimed it played an important role during the floods in NC
1shooner 1/16/2026||
My understanding is that it relates to the flood routing in meshtastic. I haven't heard a real-world failure example, but another comment on this post mentioned defcon being a case (I don't know anything about that).

I did find this assessment:

https://www.disk91.com/2024/technology/lora/critical-analysi...

And here is Meshtastics explanation of the rationale behind 'managed flood routing':

https://meshtastic.org/blog/why-meshtastic-uses-managed-floo...

I think I first heard about the differences from Andy Kirby, one of the MeshCore creators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNWf0Mh2fJw

subscribed 1/17/2026|||
Fair, meshcore is supposedly better for that.

Personally I just using it as a transport layer for Reticulum. Slow and finicky but easier to link distant nodes.

1shooner 1/17/2026||
I'd really like to learn more about Reticulum. Are you using a specific app on top of it? Do you have a meaningful user network you communicate with, or is it still more just proving out the system?
bb88 1/16/2026|||
Triangulation is damn easy. If the US can put on bomb on a suspect satellite phone user back in the 2000's (and they did!), they can certainly send a bomb on that today.

Sat phones during the second gulf war (maybe even the first) became a liability. The transmission lit them up like a god damn beacon saying, "Bomb goes here!".

fragmede 1/16/2026|||
Triangulation, the math isn't the hard part. Where exactly on the continental United States are you proposing dropping ordinance? MOVE in 1985 was controversial even back then.
esseph 1/16/2026|||
Good luck if your mesh network is on 2.4/5/6ghz.

It'll blend in with background radiation from home routers.

ssl-3 1/16/2026||
It can have challenges, but triangulation can be done with signals that have recognizable patterns or features -- even in a sea of other co-channel noise sources.

If you can observe the signal strength of your neighbor's home router while standing next to your own even if the signals differ in strength by some orders of magnitude (which is easy on Android; no idea bout iOS), then anyone else can also do the same.

kevin_thibedeau 1/16/2026||||
The intervention part is an administrative problem the military isn't designed for. For the core mission of collecting intelligence, eliminating targets, and occupying land, the US has an unrivaled track record over the last 85 years.
bb88 1/16/2026||||
No, just blast the hell out of the ISM bands on which they operate. This seem certainly feasible for a military apparatus the size of the US.
torlok 1/16/2026|||
I'm sure everybody's going to stay on ISM bands to remain compliant with government regulations while being attacked by the government.
ozfive 1/16/2026||
This deserves a /s
esseph 1/16/2026|||
The economic impact of that would be massive re: business operational impact.

Directional radios would still win out on p2p links.

ungreased0675 1/16/2026||||
You must have missed the S-tier op that went down January 3rd.
torlok 1/16/2026||
That was a single mission planned over months. We're talking about a continuous subjudagtion.
kingkawn 1/16/2026|||
The interventions fail only after enormous slaughter, which people are understandably keen to not be subject to
anigbrowl 1/16/2026||
As if compliance had such a great success rate.
computerthings 1/16/2026||
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subscribed 1/16/2026||||
I don't think it's going to be military killing a Americans. As of now it more looks like federal government.

Nevertheless, sure, in the rural areas, but less so in the cities, reflections and bending of the waves make it much harder, and a single repeater with solar panel and battery could plausibly be made under $50.

bb88 1/16/2026|||
A military won't be killing all Americans, just the ones it can label as "terrorists" to the people who elected them.
ozfive 1/16/2026|||
They are being made. I have a four node network already in my suburb. There is a software project that is written in Python that essentially turns lorawan nodes into BBSs similar to briar.
subscribed 1/17/2026||
That's a great news!
trhway 1/16/2026||||
Repeater coupled with [autonomous] drone to change [hard-to-get-to rooftop, treetop and the likes] location every 10 minutes like in a combat zone.
hrimfaxi 1/16/2026|||
Repeaters built into collars and put on feral cats.
monkaiju 1/16/2026|||
Is this a real thing???
trhway 1/16/2026||
In Ukraine - pretty close.
aaravchen 1/16/2026||||
Why would they bother? Super low bandwidth unencrypted communication they can triangulate if they really need to sounds like a perfect thing to let keep running and just monitor. Then you can triangulate just the "seditious" people who incriminate themselves.
aaravchen 1/16/2026||
I guess if you were relying on the meshtastic network as a backbone network replacement, which I'm not sure much of anyone is even currently setup for and I've heard isnt really feasible with the naive meshtastic toy implementation, you could be sending encrypted traffic. But then you have to have pre-shared encryption keys for participants and it will significantly lose it's usefulness for adding new adopters.
culi 1/16/2026||||
They're incredibly easy to build and even disguise as lawn ornaments as Benn Jordan showed in a recent video. When it costs us less money and time to build them than it costs the gov't to find/destroy them it's a worthy investment
ozfive 1/16/2026||||
Maybe ham repeaters but when we are talking lorawan they will have a hell of a time taking the networks down that are already established. Just in my suburb we have more than 6000 nodes because of the helium network.
NoiseBert69 1/16/2026||||
You can build a Meshcore/-tastic station for less than 15€ if you are into PCB design. It's like fighting against off-the-shelf drones.
bigfatkitten 1/16/2026||||
At no time from 2001-2021 did the Taliban find themselves short on VHF repeaters. If one gets taken down, put up another one.
esseph 1/16/2026||||
It would be futile. It's a big country full of 340,000,000 people.

Great way to waste resources though.

vfclists 1/16/2026|||
Isn't stopping abuses of the power of the military the reason for the 2nd Amendment?

Why don't the people in Minnesota go open carry and let ICE agents think twice before drawing their weapons on people?

soulofmischief 1/16/2026|||
Renee Good was killed after dropping off her six-year-old child at school. I agree with you, but people like her have children and are not trying to die in the street just for looking at somebody the wrong way. And it's one thing to open carry, it's another thing to become a trained and confident marksmen.

And as someone who has had half a dozen police officers simultaneously pointing guns at my head, mistaking me for someone else in public, once you're in that situation, escalation is only going to lead to death. Out here, police shoot you if your hand goes anywhere near your waist.

bb88 1/16/2026||||
>Isn't stopping abuses of the power of the military the reason for the 2nd Amendment?

It was for establishing well ordered militias. They could be used to help defend the country in a time of war.

> Why don't the people in Minnesota go open carry and let ICE agents think twice before drawing their weapons on people?

Most of the demonstrators believe that "the pen is mightier than the sword", and non-violence is the way to achieve political means. (Ghandi, MLK jr.)

When the peace-niks start amassing guns, that's when you have a tipping point in this country.

hrimfaxi 1/16/2026||
What's the definition of a well-ordered militia? A bunch of farmers that go shooting together?
futuraperdita 1/16/2026|||
Alexander Hamilton explains his definition of what "well-regulated" is - and the purpose of a citizen militia - in contrast to the standing army in the Federalist Papers, No. 29. Most of the idea has become much more federalized than intended with the National Guard, but it has long since been misused for its intended purpose.
bb88 1/16/2026|||
A bunch of farmers that go shooting drunk. /s

Seriously though, everyone back in the 1700s realized that all Americans were American. I'm not sure that's true any more.

hrimfaxi 1/16/2026|||
> Seriously though, everyone back in the 1700s realized that all Americans were American. I'm not sure that's true any more.

What was an American in the 1700s? A person born in America?

akho 1/16/2026|||
I think the most you can say is that they recognized that many male propertied white protestant Americans are American. Maybe some more qualifiers are necessary.
theshrike79 1/16/2026|||
Because the pro 2nd amendment people with "Don't tread on me" tattoos are going to "Tread on me harder, daddy!".
aaravchen 1/16/2026|||
It seems very unlikely the US would take the approach of shutting down the internet to prevent communication. All the internet infrastructure is hardwired for US surveillance data collection, so it's already a perfect honeypot. Why shutdown your honey pot?

More likely to be useful in the US is communication that is actually private, secure, and not centralized, but the underlying communication channel if unlikely to be relevant. Signal for example would almost certainly have thier IP blocked in the area, or their servers taken down because their completely centralized and therefore easy to block. Realistically something that can leverage an adversarial network to implement mesh communication that can be obfuscated (so it's not easily detected and blocked) is more useful in the US.

idiotsecant 1/16/2026|||
Meshtastic is both extremely range limited and trivial to DDOS. It's a fun toy protocol but it's not resistant to nation state disruption at all.
lukeinator42 1/16/2026|||
It's only line-of-sight, but isn't the range 10s-100s of kilometres in open areas? Some repeaters on hills/mountains etc. could connect large areas potentially.
fragmede 1/16/2026|||
It's trivially jammable, as evidenced by the network not working at popular events such as Defcon with default firmware settings.
nunobrito 1/16/2026|||
Nope. Uses only one frequency that quickly gets crowded and if you are in urban areas you'd be lucky to get more than 200 meters.

It is a toy. A cheap Quangsheng/Baofeng for 20 euros can reach a few kilometers in urban area, use multiple frequencies and go for 100 kilometers easily on LoS. They even reach Australia from Europe when using a wire antenna large enough.

NoiseBert69 1/16/2026|||
I've tested >60km links with Meshtastic without problems and had plenty of SNR left.
monkaiju 1/16/2026|||
I looked a bit into meshtastic and was told that if a node was physically compromised then messages could be intercepted. That cant be right, right?
idiotsecant 1/16/2026|||
There was a well known crypto weakness, CVE-2025-52464, that allowed man in the middle decryption of meshtastic traffic. It was fixed by a firmware patch that improved crypto discipline.
Aachen 1/16/2026||
Bad randomness in generating keys, for anyone else wondering
subscribed 1/16/2026||||
From what I understand no, the relay node has no access to the messages.

If you compromise sending or receiving node then sure, of course.

bb88 1/16/2026|||
Why bother? Just jam the fucking hell out of it. Most critical infrastructure is not on the ISM bands.
esseph 1/16/2026||
A lot of things are.

You could theoretically even shut down airplane printers in the cockpit if the jamming was strong enough.

You'd be surprised the things that are tied to ism wifi and bluetooth

TacticalCoder 1/16/2026||
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NedF 1/16/2026||
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hindustanuday 1/16/2026||
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dominojab 1/16/2026||
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TacticalCoder 1/16/2026||
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DefundPortland 1/16/2026|
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