FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

> The company’s aim is to build out a constellation of 300 satellites that can provide real-time updates for any sensor or device outfitted with a Bluetooth low energy (BLE) chip. On its website, Hubble proposes use cases that span industries — from child safety

yeah, life360 spysat network is... bad

@munin @pikhq @beka_valentine

actually i took a closer look at their website, particularly their jobs page (figured there'd be more technical details there)

> We differentiate ourselves as the first modem-less and gateway-less, direct-to-satellite network from off-the-shelf BLE chips.

(so, BTLE, not BR/EDR, which is even easier sync-wise AIUI though I know less about that PHY)

and

> Just upload our firmware to your existing chipstack and you're globally connected.

critically, the note there that there's /firmware for the existing BTLE modem/. the rest of their marketing material similarly talks about /off-the-shelf BT chips/ - but if there's custom firmware involved, they could be doing all sorts of wild stuff that a normal BTLE controller won't. so i wonder if they may just have a fully custom protocol (very feasible for e.g. nrf52)

and indeed, let's hop over to the FCC database and search for Hubble:

https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=343217&x=.

aha! that explains everything! critically, this bit:

> Licensee is authorized to conduct testing for one Hubble terrestrial Endpoint located
at a center point of geographical coordinates 33°27'11" N, 96°46'17" W and a radius
of 24.14 km in Gunter, TX, to transmit to Spire’s Hubble-1, Hubble-2, and Hubble-3
non-geostationary
orbit (“NGSO”) satellites in the 2482.710675-2483.424 MHz frequency band
(Earth-to-space).

that frequency band is *outside the BTLE and BR/EDR range*, and notably it's a tiny frequency range - not even enough for one full 1MHz channel! That's not Bluetooth! (This is probably intention

Furthermore, we can see they're using FSK modulation (probably GFSK) and an emissions designator of 25K0F1D - basically "no more than 25KHz bandwidth, digital modulation". 25KHz bandwidth? That's *definitely* not Bluetooth.

So, what they've done is made a reasonable, slow, low-bandwidth network protocol (maybe LoRA-based), wrote a stack for it that /runs on existing Bluetooth chips/ (probably the NRF52 series, which are highly programmable and highly popular in IOT), and deployed /that/. They're not doing Space Bluetooth, they're being misleading fuckers with their marketing.

yc-backed company "hubble network" claims to do commodity bluetooth to space, using existing bluetooth devices such as your current phone lol

this sounds like fraud

its a sign of the kind of due diligence that garry tan's yc does: absolutely none, its all smoke up the ass

I KNOW PROGRAMMERS WHO USE DPI SCALING AND THEY'RE ALL COWARDS

We are so deep into the “AI” bubble now that I had almost forgotten what it felt like when everyone was talking about “blockchain preparedness” and some of our most desperate and opportunistic community members were trying to convince everyone that category theory on the blockchain was the real applied category theory… What a time!

Junior dev: "I messed up badly. I'm so fired."

Senior dev: "Been there, done that...twice. *proceeds to drink coffee like it's no big deal*"

Me: "They named a production outage after me, and it was in the newspapers. *proceeds to drink coffee while staring wistfully out the window*"

days since "security" has made my life worse: [ 0 ]

(i broke the screen of my phone and scrcpy refuses to show me anything related to banking. upsetting)

yayyyy, kitsune tails went over 700 steam reviews! 🥳

Principles like "innocent until proven guilty" and "freedom of speech" are important not just because they're somehow inherently "good," but because they are specifically useful tools to prevent abuses of power.

This is why we apply them to governments and their arms specifically, because in the way our society is structured they are nominally at the top of the power hierarchy. The government can imprison or even kill you. It can take away your livelihood or your right to vote. These are unique powers governments have.

So, when looking at whether and how to apply these principles to a situation, it's important to look at the power dynamics involved!

When a government, a major corporation, or a rich and influential person accuses someone else of something, they hold immense power to make that person's life miserable. They may even be able to leverage state power against them, even if they don't directly hold such power! And so it's important to hold them to a very high standard.

But the other way around? When a powerless person accuses a powerful entity of something? It doesn't work the same way, and it's important to recognize that.

Irregular reminder that https://european-alternatives.eu/alternatives-to exists, a great list of service providers from Europe (including the exact nation as well as tags to know what's FOSS *AND* Self-hostable) that will enable you to move away from services hosted within and governed by the upcoming US Regime laws.
#privacy #security #Europe #USA #Safety

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Text boxes were made for typing silly things into them

‪those of you trying to make a joke reply, i can do you one better: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qSlF12xswPY‬

i don't like cars because cars shelter you from the rain

I think it's telling that stories portraying near-future tech dystopia have been getting set earlier as time goes on, not later.

As a kid all this stuff was set in 2070 or 2099. Now it's 2030, 2050.

The EU has fined itself $452 for violating the GDPR because one of its websites was hosted on Amazon’s AWS and used “Sign in with Facebook” which means an EU citizen’s IP address & browser information was sent to those companies in the United States.

That the GDPR implies the US is The Bad Place to host your servers is a little known quirk of the law.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/08/eu-court-fines-european-commission-for-breaching-its-own-data-privacy-laws/