RuBee

https://computer.rip/2025-11-22-RuBee.html

by Sniffnoy • 8 months ago

347 61 8 months ago

jjmarr2• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

Why 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 :(

jjmarr2• 8 months ago

I bet the tts voice is public and something made by AT&T in the 80s or 90s.

themafia2• 8 months ago

If I were the president I would install this on random doors in the White House as a prank. It would be fun to watch the NSC fumble for their phone when walking into the oval.

Antibabelic2• 8 months ago

Why can't the manufacturers market "smart guns" outside the US? Surely, the NRA's grip isn't world-spanning.

rhinoceraptor• 8 months ago

I would imagine that any manufacturer being seen doing so, would face US consumer boycotts.

aloha2436• 8 months ago

The 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.

Antibabelic2• 8 months ago

Aren't there manufacturers that only really target local markets that could profit from this technology, e.g. in China, ex-USSR or South America?

xixixao2• 8 months ago

I see at least two problems with smart guns though:

1. Temper resistance is not temper impossibility 2. If a tag allows tracking, bad actors might track good actors?

skinkestek• 8 months ago

Because it’s just a bad idea.

Most of the world doesn’t need that whole setup because:

- Our cultural baseline around firearms is completely different. Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic have plenty of guns at home - and historically, a lot of them were actual assault rifles, not “looks-spicy” semiautos.

- We treat guns like weapons. They live in safes, not nightstands, and kids get taught safety early, the same way you’d teach them not to put a fork in a power supply.

atemerev2• 8 months ago

The Swiss do have a lot of guns at home. However, you cannot carry (or even transport guns that are not discharged). Just take them at a shooting range - a popular pastime for Swiss people.

throw-qqqqq• 8 months ago

Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic have plenty of guns at home

None of those countries are anywhere near US levels of gun ownership. See the table here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

USA has 120 guns pr 100 citizens. Of the countries on your list, Finland is next with 32. Denmark has 10.

and historically, a lot of them were actual assault rifles

Fully automatic weapons are not legal for civilians in Denmark at least.

Many semiautos are also banned. Semiauto shotguns must be restricted to hold only two shells and you need a special license even for that.

I don’t disagree with your general point, but you’re not making a good comparison IMO.

tonyhart72• 8 months ago

smart guns is future dystopian

actionfromafar2• 8 months ago

regular guns is current dystopian

atemerev2• 8 months ago

There are barely any civilian gun markets outside the US. US is really really unique in their relationship to guns.

setopt• 8 months ago

This. There’s many countries that allow civilians firearms (e.g. Canada and much of Europe), but generally for hunting purposes and thus more likely to be rifles and shotguns than concealable handguns.

numpad04• 8 months ago

The tech just isn't there; hand-held guns don't benefit from a computerized firing system at all. So any smart feature on human sized guns and less will be totally removable addons, and that completely defeats its purpose.

Many tanks and planes do have smart guns. Electronic firing control with additional software features that impede firing are beneficial and totally fine at that scale.

actionfromafar2• 8 months ago

Seems it's coming though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMASH_Handheld

refurb• 8 months ago

The correct answer is - all the designs so far aren’t great.

The military would love a smart gun to cut down on accidental discharges. Cops would love it to stop weapons being used against cops.

The issue is that it has to have a very high reliability (you don’t want it to fail to fire while a suspect is shooting at you). And not much point if it only works “sometimes” with unauthorized users.

DeathArrow2• 8 months ago

Can 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• 8 months ago

I 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_...

DeathArrow2• 8 months ago

Thanks, this will be an interesting read.

johncolanduoni• 8 months ago

A 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• 8 months ago

Any idea where the name came from?

pnut• 8 months ago

Google 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• 8 months ago

RuBep? 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 (PDF)

I'd assume "ZigBee" was also an inspiration.

petesergeant• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

I like the Univers-like font on this page.

jtvjan• 8 months ago

i'm a little bit sad the kernel diagram background is gone

Lio3• 8 months 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• 8 months 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)

I believe that's what the author was referring to when describing it as failed, but yes, this could've been worded better.

Lio3• 8 months ago

Aha! OK that's sad news but makes perfect sense. Thanks.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 8 months ago

That'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.

SuperNinKenDo• 8 months ago

The ANT+ article was really interesting and it seems like a real shame that it's going the way of the dodo. Now I know what those little status symbols are on some of the gym equipment. Seems like a great protocol for the use case, but nit massively surprising it couldn't survive on that niche alone. Shame.

derbOac2• 8 months ago

My impression was part of the issue was ANT is a proprietary Garmin protocol and so never really gained traction or imprint beyond those devices. Without meaning to sound too critical or supportive of BLE, I think something more open would be better for that area anyway.

arcanemachiner• 8 months ago

I 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.

themafia2• 8 months 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-r...

https://www.ipack.com/coldmark-temperature-indicator-10c-50f...

IgorPartola• 8 months ago

That 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• 8 months ago

.kk

krogenx• 8 months ago

Are there any places where a hobbyist could purchase a tag or reader?

jethro_tell• 8 months ago

Seems doubtful as this guy has spent a lot of time wigg the this and can’t get one.

RuBee

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