I've heard about it a few times over the last 24 hours, and I'm relatively off social media, so that to me indicates a considerable buzz. But the only thing that gets headlines is "Jack did a thing!" And the readme is primarily jargon.
I can't speak for GP, but it's not clear to me _why_ it's a Really Big Deal.
Aside from protests, I'd also say they could be useful during festivals and other events where mobile networks can get quite congested.
Eventually fragments of groups will pass within range, forwarding messages to the rest, useful for coordinating rendezvous.
If built into an app for the event, it would be even more effective.
If the goal is transmitting a message how do coordinates from a "read-only" device facilitate a p2p transfer?
Imagine one just as large as the airtag + iphone ecosystem but with messaging capabilities!
Would be cool to see one built into android + iphones but that will never happen. But a 3rd party could get so popular that it achieves somewhat close to that.
I'd imagine remote villages and towns could all install this and communicate with each community member very effectively.
Weird take. If it doesn't make sense to you, maybe it's just not for you (yet). That's not an indictment of either you, the project, or other people being excited about it. Not everything has to be targeting the lowest common denominator on launch.
Who even is "The Average Person"?
Edit: feel free to answer if you're so inclined, but after seeing your edits, I have no desire to engage with you further; You win!
In my experience a lot of people dont really understand the distinction between WiFi and Cellular for example. Or maybe more relevant, SMS vs MMS vs RCS.
That's not to say it can't or won't work, but rather the tech is interesting but I imagine a lot of potential friction for early adopters, which seems (to my limited understanding) self defeating as it only works if there's a critical mass of users.
But I must admit it is cool that it's open source. I'll keep a eye out for an android app
Store and forward, E2EE, message compression, battery optimization, groups, permissions, etc.
It's pretty feature packed tbh. I think that's where the news is.
Additionally, tools that allow communication and coordination without relying on internet or cloud-based services seem to be of increasing pertinence to the direction the world is currently going.
Re hype: that's just human reaction to any well known person's new thing. Just don't get caught up in it, discuss "thing" for "things" sake and move on.
- protests
- festivals / events
- remote communities
details are in other comments in this thread.
AgentK20•5h ago