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RuBee
- jjmarr 11mo ago> I have at least a few readers for which the sound of a man's voice saying "government cell phone detected" will elicit a palpable reaction. Can this be recreated as an audio clip for jumpscaring former govt employees?
- quamserena 11mo agoWhy not just rip the audio file off? Would make for a funny DC request Edit: On second thought this could be an OPSEC problem. Sorry but I don’t know if anyone can help you :(
- Antibabelic 11mo agoWhy can't the manufacturers market "smart guns" outside the US? Surely, the NRA's grip isn't world-spanning.
- rhinoceraptor 11mo agoI would imagine that any manufacturer being seen doing so, would face US consumer boycotts.
- aloha2436 11mo agoThe US is the largest market for firearms, so the NRA can use the threat of boycotting a manufacturer within the states to prevent the technology gaining traction elsewhere.
- Antibabelic 11mo agoAren't there manufacturers that only really target local markets that could profit from this technology, e.g. in China, ex-USSR or South America?
- xixixao 11mo agoI could not locate credible evidence of a major firearm manufacturer that completely refrains from selling into the U.S. civilian market. (ChatGPT) Glock, Koch, Taurus, even Czech Zbrojovka all sell to US. Kalashnikov can’t atm, but also probably doesn’t share the safety concern.
- anonymous908213 11mo agoTo profit, they would first have to sell the goods. Who is actually in the market for a smart gun? Consumers aren't, surely. There is virtually no upside to your gun tracking you, at your own expense of buying a more complex piece of tech to boot. So that leaves something like (apparently) New Jersey where the government would compel purchases of smart guns because they were interested in the tracking. But eg. China simply don't allow citizens to purchase guns period. There may be some application to applying it to state-owned firearms to track military and police usage, but deploying that at Chinese scale would be an extremely expensive endeavour for what appears to be a solution in search of a problem. Not to mention the biometric lock concept, if implemented, is introducing an entire new axis of unreliability to a life-or-death tool.
- DeathArrow 11mo agoCan someone explain how communication can take place using only magnetic fields? I thought that communication requires electro magnetic waves which require an oscillating electro magnetic field.
- 1116574 11mo agoI went into a slight hunt for more knowledge after reading this, and long story short you need to search NFMI (near field magnetic induction)[1]. As far as I can see from my limited reading the main use case of the tech is nfc (near field comm) and true wireless earbuds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-field_magnetic_induction_communication?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-field_magnetic_induction_...
- DeathArrow 11mo agoThanks, this will be an interesting read.
- johncolanduoni 11mo agoA changing magnetic field will always induce an electrical field and vice-versa. Even just moving a magnet with your hand will generate an electrical field. Near-field effects of an antenna still involve this interaction. The key to the resistance of very long wavelengths of EM radiation (or equivalently, very slowly varying electric/magnetic fields) to attenuation when traveling through a metal is the nature of the way metals expel electric fields (they don’t generally block magnetic fields). When you apply a static electric field to a thin conductor, electrons will be pulled away from one side and toward the other such that the field inside is zero. However this migration of charges will actually result in the electric field on the far side of the metal being nearly the same as the field on the side closer to the source! If the wavelength of some EM radiation is much longer than a metal obstacle is thick, the fact that the electric field is excluded from the interior of the metal won’t matter much. Even if the metal wasn’t there, the electric field strength wouldn’t vary much over that distance, and on the other side of the metal the induced charges will restore the roughly “correct” field. Since the magnetic component won’t vary much over that distance either, the fact that there’s no varying electric field inside the conductor to reinforce the magnetic field won’t significantly attenuate it. If you’re familiar with Faraday cages, this will sound all wrong. Isn’t it long wavelengths they can block, and short wavelengths they can’t? This true when dealing with EM radiation in the “normal” radio bands and higher, but it turns out their ability to attenuate radiation falls off in the other direction too (once wavelengths get extremely long). When dealing with EM properties of materials, there are a huge number of different effects that apply in different circumstances, and it’s easy to forget one and confuse yourself.
- macleginn 11mo agoAny idea where the name came from?
- pnut 11mo agoGoogle says > RuBee is an acronym for "Radio U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing", Weirdly not related at all to Zigbee's naming origins, in spite of their technological similarity.
- jadamson 11mo agoRuBep? As ever, the fastest way to get a correct answer on the internet is to post an incorrect one: > The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers Inc., the international governing group for such technology, has designated P1901.1 as the technical designation given to the RuBee technology, which was named RuBee by Visible Assets. "There is no real reason we named it RuBee," said Mr. Stevens. "It actually was named after the song 'Ruby Tuesday.' It just sounded good." https://theproducenews.com/print/pdf/node/1355 https://theproducenews.com/print/pdf/node/1355 (PDF) I'd assume "ZigBee" was also an inspiration.
- petesergeant 11mo ago> the firearms lobby is very influential on police departments, as are police unions which generally oppose technical accountability measures A lot of what’s wrong in surprisingly few words
- drewlesueur 11mo agoI like the Univers-like font on this page.
- jtvjan 11mo agoi'm a little bit sad the kernel diagram background is gone
- Lio 11mo ago> Long ago I wrote about ANT+, for example, a failed personal area network standard designed mostly around fitness applications. I didn’t know ANT+ was “failed”, I use it all the time with my Garmin products. It’s cheap and it works better than Bluetooth. I have ANT+ cadence and heart rate sensors. Lights, camera, Varia radar and power meter. Some of that can be done with Bluetooth but realistically not all at the same time. Anyone that’s run a smart trainer in a group with others will know that ANT+ is generally more reliable than Bluetooth too. Apple refuse to support ANT+ so I need a dongle for my Mac and it’s the reason I don’t have an Apple Watch. No biggie.
- g0ran 11mo ago"In 2025, Garmin announced that they would end their certification for ANT+ devices, blaming changes in wireless communication regulations. This is likely to lead to future devices dropping ANT+ support in favour of BLE." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_(network) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANT_(network) I believe that's what the author was referring to when describing it as failed, but yes, this could've been worded better.
- Lio 11mo agoAha! OK that's sad news but makes perfect sense. Thanks.
- HeyLaughingBoy 11mo agoThat's interesting. As the article says, ANT's main use case is in commercial gym equipment. What the article doesn't say is the reason: it excels at gathering data for "group fitness". ANT is a connectionless protocol so in a situation where you have two dozen transmitters and you need to get data from all of them, your receiver simply has to listen and record whatever devices it sees and let the user software (possibly managing a gym leaderboard for a spin class) decide which ones to track. Contrast with BLE where you would have to make a connection to each device. The overhead of connecting and disconnecting, in addition to being power-prohibitive, takes too long. Some manufacturers have workarounds to enable use of their BLE products in a group fitness environment, but they are pretty much lacking. It'll be interesting to see how the problem is solved if indeed ANT+ does go away.
- arcanemachiner 11mo agoI love this blog author's writing style. It's very engaging, and draws me into subjects I would otherwise have minimal interest in. Definitely gonna check out some more of their posts later.
- themafia 11mo ago> refrigeration. Samples being shipped to the lab and reagents shipped out to clinics were both temperature sensitive. Providers had to verify that these materials had stayed adequately cold throughout shipping and handling, [...] Moreover, Stevens imagined that these sensors would be in continuous communication. There's a lot of overlap between this application and personal area networks (PANs), protocols like Bluetooth I like the low-fi solution personally: https://www.ipack.com/warmmark-temperature-indicator-short-run-0c-32f-p-340505 https://www.ipack.com/warmmark-temperature-indicator-short-r... https://www.ipack.com/coldmark-temperature-indicator-10c-50f-p-340503 https://www.ipack.com/coldmark-temperature-indicator-10c-50f...
- IgorPartola 11mo agoThat will tell you if the item is spoiled, not alert you that it is on its way to being spoiled. Very different use cases and outcomes.
- b7kich 11mo ago.kk
- krogenx 11mo agoAre there any places where a hobbyist could purchase a tag or reader?
- jethro_tell 11mo agoSeems doubtful as this guy has spent a lot of time wigg the this and can’t get one.