Mauve 👁💜 @mauve@mastodon.mauve.moe

As another wave of "suspected Flipper zero disrupting BTLE devices" is trending:
I probably qualify as an expert and I have DATA.
When you do BTLE connection spamming you are not only messing with phones, you're messing with health devices and Point-of-Sale terminals.

As someone who has spent the past ~1.5y of my life researching this exact topic:
If you're going to initiate connections with a radio (BTLE) the first and highest priority task is rate-limiting.

Connection spamming with a Flipper Zero (or other device) is objectively dangerous.

"But you're doing similar BTLE research, how can you say that?"
Because I took the time to understand the risks, mitigate them in a controlled environment for months, and collect data to make informed decisions. I also *broke* MY devices. But they were scoped to MY devices.

All of this to say, If you've written or using code for BTLE connection *spamming*:
You're a dangerous shitstain who is gonna get people hurt.
You're making the lives of people who are actually trying to collect data to enable informed decisions worse.
Log off. Touch grass.

I'm prepping for a 2024 conference talk on BTLE.
Please don't willingly get yourself include in the slide about "unethical conduct" ffs.

@mauve Unrelated, but I watched a video on a PeerTube instance the other day and was pleasantly surprised that it just worked? I downloaded most of it from other peers, uploaded a bunch, no buffering or video playback hiccups and looked great at 1080p. Pretty wild stuff.

Hey we're a small group who put together a FREE programme of presentations around low-tech, permacomputing, collective tech practices, extraction, and ewaste.

Saturday 2 December, Amsterdam

https://whatis.permacomputing.net

Come and join us, listen to talks, ask questions, hang around and plot together about pmc and related practices.

with: Abdelrahman Hassan @cmos4040 @latentspace @l03s @marieverdeil @michal @neajul @praxeology Shailoh Phillips, Sunjoo Lee @unbinare

FOMO alert: nope it's not streamed and probably won't be recorded, *but* surely you know a lot of cool people around you doing connected things, what about you try to organise something local as well? See https://permacomputing.net/getting_started/

#lowtech #permacomputing #ewaste #amsterdam

A bad thing about social media is this pattern where a person with expertise starts rebutting bad ideas, and it’s great, but over time it primes them to see everyone who doesn’t hold exactly their opinions as part of a horde of goons with terrible ideas, because that’s who they end up interacting with.

Eventually their online persona is, like, Truth Gladiator. And that’s so much less interesting and important to me than Thoughtful Person With Useful Perspectives.

i suppose this is how it's going to go:

1. google chrome bans ad blockers

2. users move to other browsers to surf the web

3. google, youtube, and a ton of other sites that depend on ad revenue dongle themselves to google chrome (and/or any browser that blocks ads)

4. community browsers spoof google chrome but block ads

5. websites try to detect fake chrome browsers

6. *tom & jerry chase sequence*

7. google becomes a huge fan of the idea of running only "trusted" apps on computers