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Bitchat is now on Radicle

161 pointsby h1watttoday at 1:18 PM97 commentsview on HN

Comments

inigyoutoday at 6:44 PM

Walked around Fusion Festival with Bitchat running. Saw about 20 other devices and a few messages. Nobody replied to my messages. So usage isn't zero, but 20 devices out of 80000 people isn't a lot. Most hops I saw was 2, meaning there wasn't enough density to make it any meaningful distance across the festival grounds.

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alwinaugustintoday at 8:38 PM

This is after Indian government asked Github to remove Bitchat within three hours after notice .

plebiantoday at 5:37 PM

If they care so much about availability maybe they should reconsider including libs.gms.location and be available on F-Droid (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/24907#...)

taylodltoday at 8:38 PM

I first parsed this as Bitch At

Cider9986today at 5:22 PM

People interested in BitChat should download it just so you have it in case it gets popular or you find someone to use it with. I tested it and it's surreal to text without WiFi or cellular.

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dmixtoday at 4:28 PM

That Radicle site design is an interesting take for a git repo platform. Good use of full width spacing, well thought out navigation, nice code rendering. I dig it.

RobRiveratoday at 6:45 PM

That name

Tobias Bluth vibes

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baron3dltoday at 5:15 PM

Bitchat is an AOS (https://andotherstuff.org/#foundry-projects) project. Surprised, they didn't rehost it on ngit (https://gitworkshop.dev/), which is also an AOS project.

TranquilMarmottoday at 6:25 PM

> Messages route through nearby devices (max 7 hops)

How far, realistically, could this reach using just iOS and Android devices? If each device can reach ~100m, that means you could theoretically reach somebody 700m (2.3k feet) away? Or would it be further if two devices are at the edge of their radio range?

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momentmakertoday at 6:08 PM

For some context, it seems like the Indian government wants Bitchat to be taken down.

https://xcancel.com/jack/status/2080565084586135773

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xyzsparetimexyztoday at 5:00 PM

Yo where's my

qwertyastronauttoday at 5:42 PM

I can’t wait until Goblin is acquired by Nematode. Then finally they might make Gorbachev open source.

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thisisnotausertoday at 5:30 PM

I love these posts, every week it's "Gloop is now on Ploof!"

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pioneerjefftoday at 3:06 PM

Are there any special features comparing with other decentrilized message product? Such as Nostr or XMTP?

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Qisiontoday at 6:30 PM

Is it Jack Dorsey who moved the repo or someone else?

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Mistletoetoday at 7:36 PM

This is the cyberpunk future I was hoping we would get…and we got something completely different, some kind of centralized corpo dystopia. I’ve installed it!

imtringuedtoday at 4:23 PM

I hope they will enjoy fighting with https://radicle.dev/ over the project name.

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xysttoday at 5:55 PM

In theory, this could work.

Setup machine with bluetooth receiver.

Funnel packets from Bluetooth receiver over a virtual private network (ie, wireguard, tailscale, netbird).

Then in another state/country/continent with server connected to vpn then rebroadcasts those packets over BLE.

A mesh network overlayed on top of another mesh network.

ck2today at 4:13 PM

btw what's the current state of mesh wifi?

seems like after November or January 2029 might need it since administration now has a kill-switch so why wouldn't they use it

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guess_who_is_ittoday at 4:46 PM

jack promoted censorship when he was in twitter, now he is playing the saint card.

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VCFundedGenYertoday at 4:23 PM

Such a terrible name. Can't believe marketing didn't catch it.

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zenethiantoday at 3:22 PM

Is this bit-chat or bitch-at?

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orliesaurustoday at 3:46 PM

Is this irc compatible?

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