We're going in the wrong direction, guys.

Walkie talkies are toys of limited power. What you want is a pair of programmable radios from China, complete with zero day exploits in the software that infect your PC.

Baofengs? They're illegal to operate unless you have a HAM licence for 2 meters.
- Baofengs?
  Exactly lol.
  They’re illegal to operate unless you have a HAM licence for 2 meters.
  Indeed, but a license is fairly cheap.

Man, remember that brief period of time where some people had those cell phones that had a walkie-talkie-like function. You'd be having a conversation with these people and their phone would do this weird blip noise and they'd say "Hold on," and pull out their phone and "yeah, what's up?" And then there would be some unintelligible gibberish and they would say "hang on, I'm inside" and then just go walk out the front door.

Nextel. My uncle worked in construction and had one. Chirp chirp.
- Yeah, that's the one. Back when we had the iPhone 1, blackberries, razrs, and the undefeatable Nokias that kids were trying to break so they could get an iPhone.
PTT, push to talk. There are applications like that now and I guess teens are using WhatsApp and other chat applications in similar way without knowing it by sending audio messages.
- I think iWatch has "walkie talkie" mode but no idea how it actually works.

Radios got their own weird gatekeepers and turf wars too, you got no idea. Try Ham vs GMRS as an appetizer

Are you saying that they might look down on my incredible hulk walkie talkie?
- Depends on which crowd you catch haha. The GMRS guys are usually pretty cool. The hams have some really sour apples mixed in.
Ham operators-- ready the pitchforks!!
- Do all your weird callsigns and then try to kick off the usual loud redneck troll with an insane setup in bumfuck Wisconsin first, then spend 5 hours trying to coordinate with irregular replies with long periods of silence

I'd just like to say

So, nothing, then?

first chad forgot to say 'over'

Forgot to say what? 'over'
- over, over
- He forgot to say 'over', 'over'

You’re breaking up? What’s that? Can you move closer to me or get up on a hill? Over.

Curious: Is there some decentralized version of mobile phones? Like a mesh network for communication over walkie talkies. Your walkie talkie would help extend the range of nearby walkie talkies and route communication between them.

You can make one yourself, see Meshtastic.
- It wouldn’t work over long range though unless it had a lot of users.
- That's exactly what I was envisioning, thank you! I wonder if radios in smartphones (cellular module or wifi direct) could be leveraged to do the same in densely populated areas. Could there be a meshtastic app for phones? Free, decentralized mobile phone calls.
This project is similar to that (and sibling projects such as nomad network and sideband)
Edit: forgot the link! https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum
- Which project?
I know people in Cuba used to have a decentralized Internet mesh network, but I don’t know about mobile phones. There have probably been some large crime groups who have made their own networks.

RIP Firefox phone

Smoke signals and pigeons.

Fuck phones.

Sent from my Idroid

3D printed carrier pigeons
- A handwritten poem on luxurious high-grain French paper, adhered to a catapult boulder, flung at thine enemy’s wall.
- Pigeons aren't real

Ham radio never completely died, just got a bit quieter, but it's still a thing

for some things its more like:
degoogled (graphene, calyx, etc) >>> iphone > googled android

And unless you're using some encrypted digital modes, I can also listen to your conversation, and imagine being a part of it.

Technically, I could do it with phone calls over GSM if the weak A5/1 encryption is used, and I had 1TB of storage for rainbow tables, but that's fairly illegal.

With correct timing "Can I get a 10-9 on that, over." can be the funniest shit you've ever said on the radio.

I just looked up the ten-codes to find out what that meant and was dismayed to discover that "10-15" isn't code for a hostage situation. "Cops and Robbersons" lied to me.

Talkie-walkie in French. Guess who copied the homework.

i have you five by five, over

PTT coming back is still a wishlist item for most tech people over 35.

I want to get into ham radio, but the test practice material was way way over my head.

Real telephone users use wired connection

Telegraphy is obviously superior

Tin cans on string GOAT

Blipp hey I’m going 10-1. Blip co-pyyy

Essentially every political debate.

This is why I love nextel phones

Nextel.
Done.

Okay why does literally everyone seem to understand this? It makes zero sense