BitChat will fail for the same reason FireChat, Helium Network, Reticulum, Meshtastic, and Bridgefy failed.

There have been many attempts to make chat apps that don't need an internet connection but rather use Bluetooth, Direct WiFi or even an external radio transceiver.

Just to name a few in no particular order (and there are so many more):

• Air Chat (ios only)
• Berty
• Briar
• Bridgefy (comes with adds)
• FireChat
• And now all over the news: BitChat (Android / iOS)

It is true that some of these apps have served a temporary service to people who needed to communicate without government interference. 

But all these apps suffer from the same chicken-and-egg problems:

1. You need to download and install them before they become illegal, and before they are necessary. Most people are too lazy time efficient to be thinking so far ahead, and don't even have a go-bag in their home. 

2. They only work if the person you want to talk to is also using it. And why would he? Other chat apps like Signal and Whatsapp work just fine, don't they?

It is no wonder then that all of these apps have been used by a select few, and afterwards have been abandoned because their mother wasn't on it and never was going to use it and who needs it anyways, are you suffering from persecution complex or something?

Sometimes there is a brief wake-up call for some. After the power outages in Spain and Portugal in the summer of 2025 me and a bunch of friends decided we didn't want to lose contact with each other in case that ever happens here.  We bought a bunch of Meshtastic devices and set them up. But for some, the price is one hurdle too many. Investing in a device (even if it's just $50) is just too much to ask.

How do we combat this inertia?  A few steps can be undertaken:

1. Make all these different chat apps interoperable. Instead of bickering over the best possible protocol or packet format or radio frequency, they should support as many as possible simultaneously. 

2. Make them use the internet as default and only fall-back on Bluetooth, Wifi or external radio when necessary. 

3. Be incorporated into an existing chat app with a large-ish user base. Signal is the only logical worldwide contender in my mind. 

Off course, none of these steps will happen, so we are basically doomed to repeat the cycle of discovering a new chat app, installing it and abandoning it after a short while.

Footnote: BitChat seems to be on track to follow at least advice #2 and use the internet (as fall back, not as default) by cleverly utilizing the Nostr network. 

Maybe AI Isn't Going to Replace You at Work After All

https://charleshughsmith.substack.com/p/maybe-ai-isnt-going-to-replace-you

My experience has definitely been mixed. On the one hand, sort of high level requests like 'identify the major issues raised in the documents and sort by importance' produced interesting and suggestive results. But attempts to find and pull together details on a person or topic almost always had noticeable errors or hallucinations.

Zit er op JW.org verschil in de audio kwaliteit van de drama video's tussen hoge en lage resolutie bestanden?

Korte antwoord: Ja.

Lang antwoord: Om dit te ontdekken heb ik de congresvideo gedownload in alle verschillende beschikbare formaten.

Vervolgens met dit script gecontroleerd wat de bitrate en sample rate van de audio is:

echo -e "Bestand\tGrootte (bytes)\tBitrate\tSample rate"

for file in *.m4a; do

  size=$(stat -c%s "$file")

  bitrate=$(ffprobe -v error -select_streams a:0 -show_entries stream=bit_rate -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "$file")

  sample_rate=$(ffprobe -v error -select_streams a:0 -show_entries stream=sample_rate -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 "$file")

  echo -e "$file\t$size\t$bitrate\t$sample_rate"

done | column -t

Dit zijn de resultaten:

• gnj_E_02_r1080P.mp4  125375  48000
• gnj_E_02_r720P.mp4    125375  48000
• gnj_E_02_r480P.mp4    125375  48000
• gnj_E_02_r360P.mp4    93375    48000
• gnj_E_02_r240P.mp4    61375    48000
• gnj_E_02_r144P.3gp     48374    44100

Conclusie: Alles vanaf 480P is de hoogste audio kwaliteit. 

Waarom zou je dit willen weten? Op een van de komende congressen worden aflevering 2 en 3 van "Het goede nieuws volgens Jezus" weergegeven. Helaas in Nederland nagesynchroniseerd naar Nederlands. Als je toch het origineel Engels wil horen kun je deze zelf downloaden en gelijktijdig met het congres (via oortjes natuurlijk) afspelen. Om niet te veel te hoeven downloaden weet je nu wat je moet hebben: de 480P variant 👍 

Starlink may be lying about speed.

Today I did a quick speed test. 

• The first was with the official Starlink App. 
• The second one was via my favorite speed test website from Cloudflare. 

Download speed: 224 vs. 45 mbps. Starlink reports 5X as high a speed. 

Upload speed: 15 VS. 12. Seems pretty honest reporting. 

Latency: 40 vs. 50,5 ms. Latency is very hard to compare moment to moment, so let's say they both report honestly in that moment. 

So how is it possible that Starlink reports soo much higher download speeds? 

My guess would be that the satellite(s) detect the download speed test and simply generate or send from on-device memory some data. This would explain why the speed is higher: it doesn't mimic real internet traffic. 

Cloudflare on the other hand needs to get data from a data center, into a nearby ground station and then have it bounce around the globe between Starlink satellites till it finds one that's above(ish) our location. 

Again, that is simply my guess for the big discrepancy. My advise: don't be bamboozled by Starlink's own speed claims but use your own tests. 

Update van mijn Meshtastic experiment

Ik heb mijn Meshtastic Seeed T-1000e nu een week of 6 en ik heb tot nu toe 246 andere actieve nodes ontdekt tussen Amsterdam en Luik.  

Dat klinkt misschien als veel, maar als je bedenkt dat in bebouwde gebieden (lees: Noord-west Europa) de 868mhz band met laag wattage maar 2-3km bereik bied, dan snap je wel dat we er veel meer nodig hebben. 

Het valt me verder op dat veel mensen deze alleen even aanzetten om te experimenteren en dan weer uit zetten. Dit betekend dat je dus voordat er een ramp gebeurd niet goed kunt oefenen om te zien of je over grotere afstanden berichten kunt uitwisselen. Jammer dit.

Een aantal oplossingen zouden zijn om deze T-1000e of vergelijkbare goedkope LoRa apparaten in een houder met zonnepaneel te steken en deze op hoge gebouwen te plaatsen. Wat vrienden die op de bovenste verdieping van een flat wonen overtuigen er een aan te zetten en aan te laten zou ook al veel doen voor stedelijke dekking. 

Heb je zin om mee te denken en mee te praten over Meshtastic gebruik in Zeeland, Brabant en Limburg? Meld je dan aan voor de zojuist door mij in het leven geroepen Signal praatgroep via deze link. 

Open for work, starting now.

I'm about to get married this autumn 🍂 😃 🥳 

So naturally most of my time was spend helping my girlfriend fiancé move her stuff to my house.  And basically make it our house. So, most of my furniture is gone. The walls have different colors. My books move an entire floor and the floors have all changed from carpet to PVC. 😅

Anyways. It's been about one year ago that decided to take a sabbatical. 

I'm open to work again. So if you know an opening in 

• general administration
•  (technical) writing
• writing (technical) quotes
• or oracle PL-SQL development 
• Or something that's I have never done yet but would love to learn like Microsoft Dynamics

… then, let me know 😊. 

I'm looking for roughly 2/3 days per week work. Remote or on-site close to Breda, NL. 

Your help is greatly appreciated 💕 

Adobe Project Indigo

This new app from Adobe is another take on the older photography apps that help your iPhone make better high dynamic range (HDR) photos. 

The point of this app is to make the photo look like it was made on a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera. 

The thing that I feel is still missing on iPhone photos is the deep saturation and very wide color gamut that you get by using such a (much more expensive) SLR camera. If that gap can be partially filled by using this app on my trusted iPhone 15 Pro, good. 

I'll give it a swirl and report back to you my dear readers. 👍