jimiasty

Interesting - same concept as Amazon Mechanical Turk when you could crowdsource tasks

Yes, you are correct!

Knowing the MAC makes the attack reasonable - let's say 5 hours compute for 3080Ti.

Not knowing the MAC makes it exponentially harder. You can still "guess" it, but the search-space is vast and that would take bazillion-years.

So to attack iOS device: - user has to download the app - app has to broadcast fake BLE - some other devices (e.g. Android/RasPi would need to pickup that MAC and pass it to you

You don't need MAC address - you just need the iPhone to broadcast specific BLE advertising packet/payload.

Using Core Bluetooth API it is trivial, but you need to either: a) create an app that does it and user has to download it b) modify SDKs existing in apps (e.g. Ad SDKs)

Also turning app/phone into a "BLE beacon" is only possible when app running in the foreground (on iOS).

Founder of Estimote, Inc. (YC S13) here — we do beacons.

In Project Aria video, they claim to have installed beacons at an airport to enable indoor location, only to dismiss it as something that "doesn't scale."

Instead, they say they "trained" an AI model using vision from glasses, allowing for vision-based localization.

So, here’s an honest question: which approach is actually easier, more cost-effective, and energy-efficient?

1) Deploying 100 or even 1,000 wireless, battery-operated beacons that last 5–7 years—something a non-tech person can set up in a day or two.

2) Training an AI model for each airport, then constantly burning compute power from camera-equipped glasses or phones that barely last a few hours.

Thoughts?

Hi HN, this is Jakub, one of the founders of Estimote Inc. (YC S13).

After almost 10 years of research and development, it is finally here - SpaceTimeOS, a new operating system for the physical world from we have been working on after we graduated YC.

With our new sensors (UWB/BLE/LTE) placed in the corners of any room and it will create a digital twin of any physical business and store it in the cloud where real-time position of all objects/people/vehicles is visible with inch-precise accuracy.

This digital twin can be manipulated with using JavaScript where developers can create automation, visualize and in general mold this digital replica of a physical world/business.

Happy to answer any questions...

Hi HN,

this is Jakub, founder of Estimote, Inc (YC S13). Happy to share we have just launched a new device that has BLE, LTE-M/NB-IoT and GPS integrated.

It can compute its indoor and outdoor position and last years on the battery.

It is fully programmable using JavaScript and simple Web IDE.

Happy to answer any questions here!

Hi HN, This is Jakub, founder of Estimote.

We just launched a new Asset Tracking API. Bluetooth beacons attached to walls can now scan and locate smaller beacons attached to objects and pass that location data to the Cloud via low-power mesh network they create.

Via API it is possible to access quasi-real-time location of these assets on the floorplan.

If you have any questions we are around.

Please note our Location Beacons with UWB have two radios: - Bluetooth (BLE) that is low-power and can give few meters positioning accuracy - Ultra-wide-band (UWB) that's not low-power, but can give inch-precision.

This Robot Operating System (ROS) SDK does use both radios. We use BLE and Bluetooth mesh to power UWB that are nearby to preserve energy of the system.

John,

our beacons are commercially deployed in many verticals. SDK together with Cloud does allow some provisioning and security mechanisms.

Since beacons broadcast public Bluetooth signals we don't want any app/device to know their location in a venue that is not provisioned for the application.

For example you don't want AliBaba mobile app to know you are in Best Buy, next to console games.

That's why we do have optional encryption mechanism and our ToS prohibits reverse engineering our SDK.

Our customer have access via APIs to almost all raw data, so if they want to improve accuracy for their application they can do it.