Mr Beast went through four controversies in a short amount of time:

In response to both of these, Mr. Beast cut Ava out of Mr. Beast.

(3) There is a “Beast Games” show being produced by Mr. Beast for Amazon Prime. It turns out that putting 2,000 people to compete for 5 million dollars in Las Vegas was a recipe for organizational disaster. People had issues getting their medicines and underwear. People were fed low-calorie meals like a small amount of cold oatmeal and an egg spread at irregular intervals. Some people had seizures and the local hospital reported several injured visitors from the games. It was reported that the team invited people of all ages and then made them compete in physical games for which young men had a very significant advantage over the old players that were also cast. You can see an article about this here, and in the comments you can see many players sharing their bad experiences: https://www.casino.org/vitalvegas/mrbeast-shoots-beast-games-in-las-vegas/

(4) A person who has an employee for a short amount of time released a video in which he claimed a lot of Mr. Beast videos are faked/rigged. He also mentions multiple examples in which Mr. Beast broke lottery laws.

Yeah, it is written funny. But what it means is that the Linux kernel already comes pre-packaged with the drivers necessary to communicate using the protocol used by this device (UART or USB). These Linux drivers (and by extension Raspbian) are natively capable of interfacing via the GPIO pins or via the USB connectors. It is not true that the device is “driver free” as you always need a driver for this, what they meant is that it is not necessary to install any additional drivers for Linux. So “free from installation” I suppose.

Windows does not come pre-packaged with these drivers, so you need to install them if you want to interface with the device via USB. The chip that the board uses for the UART -> USB conversion is the CP2102. This chip is a common chip used in some ESP32 boards, and I think it would work fine with the standard CP210x driver. But on their site they do provide a specific driver for free (SIMCOM_Windows_USB_Drivers_V1.0.2.exe)

The board finally arrived and it is indeed the SIM7600G-H, which is the global version.

I tried it on my raspberry pi 5 and struggled a bit because there was a change to the UART interface between the PI 4 and PI 5 and the documentation on this board describes the PI 4. But, after some fiddling around I figured out the correct setting and got it to work. The main difference is that the “UART0” needs to be explicitly turned on because the default debugging UART now uses the UART10 interface that is somewhere else on the board.

Thanks for checking!

SMS for 2fa is deprecated here because of insecurity and TOTP is generally preferable. Can you use that instead?

My first choice is a YubiKey, second choice is the Aegis Authenticator app, and the phone I only use for services that force me to. A few still do, unfortunately!

I understand about DIY and am interested to hear how this goes for you. I might like to try it myself.

If I manage to set up something that I think is interesting and functional enough, I will post about it 😄

If you can use those sims in mobile phones then I’d call them mobile plans. Can I ask what country you are in? Here in the US, mobile service costs a lot more. I have been getting SIP service from vitelity.net but twilio.com and voip.ms are better known here. I don’t know about jmp.chat.

The Netherlands. I just checked and it is €10 for 5GB/month or €8 for 5GB month if one pays for a year: https://www.lycamobile.nl/en/bundle/monthly-plan-xs/?m=12

But in the shops they have signs with deals and you can get often get codes for cheaper. They print out the codes for you and you can top-up by issuing a USSD code when needed. I buy a stack of codes, type them into my notes app, and use them when I need them. Since I commonly have WiFi available I sometimes go months without activating them.

In the home base I wouldn’t need data, as it is interfacing through the raspberry pi. Most of my phone activity is getting codes for 2FA for some important services that force me to. Since I rarely make calls, I can top up €5 of credit when needed. I need to make sure to top up every 6 months so that the SIM does not get deactivated. That’s why estimate ~€10 for every 6 months.

This works for me because I do not use the standard phone features (SMS and calling) often. If it were up to me, I would not have the phone functionality at all and simply keep the data. But sometimes I need a phone number. The purpose of this project is to keep the convenience of having a phone in the rare cases I need it without constantly having on me a device broadcasting unique identifiers. As for why go self-host route… I think the same can be said for many other self-hosting projects, it is nice to have more control. It is not really about the money. Saving money is part of the fun, and that is an easy way to “justify” what I’m doing… but the reality is that any savings argument probably gets thrown into the BS pile when we account for the time invested, failed attempts, and the extra stuff I buy for trial and error. Ultimately for me it’s really not about money, it’s about being mindful, learning, and having fun.

I haven’t had trouble using a hosted number for banking and it feels better to me than using a mobile number. The cheap mobile providers (MVNO’s) I use here are sketchy, mobile numbers change all the time, etc. I use a VoIP number as my permanent stable number and forward it to my mobile. So if I switch mobiles, I just change the forwarding. In theory you can port phone numbers between carriers but I’ve had significant hassle doing that. That’s just here though. It may be different where you are.

I have found VoIP numbers from Canada and the US, I am not sure if it is easy to get one from the Netherlands. I have experience being banned from sites immediately after registering with the VoIP number because of “suspicious activity”.

Thanks, I will look into those.

Is there a reason you don’t want to just use a SIP service by the way? It would certainly be cheaper than that board plus a mobile plan.

At the moment I am using a SIP service - at least I think I am. Is JMP.chat a SIP service? It works to a degree for me but there are many drawbacks. I can’t get a number from my country, many services recognize and block the phone number as a VoIP phone (for example, telegram), and I have to trust an additional intermediary to get my unencrypted SMS and 2FA codes. I do trust the service providers to a reasonably high degree, but I don’t think it is wise to associate their numbers with sensitive accounts such as my bank account.

The VoIP idea is not the reason why I began playing with these boards in the first place, though. It is an idea that I thought of while playing with these modules. And I don’t use mobile plans. I use sim cards that I can top up when needed, so the cost is about $5 every 6 months or so for the home base, and about ~$5 a month for the data I use for my mobile router. The reason why I want to control the device through the raspberry pi is that then I also have more fine-grained control over the top-up process and I “own” my phone number without an additional intermediary.

I agree, it looks like a nice board!

But… after ordering it I noticed that while the pictures in the website show the “SIM7600G-H” chip - which supports global GSM and LTE bands - the text description specifies that the chip included in the kit is the “SIM7600CE-T”, which supports the Chinese bands. I am not sure I will get the correct version now 😅 But there are other “SIM7600G-H” modules and USB dongles available out there, and from what I have found this chip is a nice option for GSM/LTE projects.

Thanks a lot for digging! This is a very useful

Ooh, thank you! This looks exactly what I am looking for.

Eventually I was able to confirm this. Using software-defined radio I was able to see that the USSD codes send out a signal in the ~895 MHz range, which is allocated to the 2G GSM by my provider.

I purchased a batch of SIM800L chips off ali express and those work without problem for issuing the USSD codes. I can also see that they emit the same signal at 895 MHz.

I kept looking into it and I have found that the SIM7600 chips have 2G, 3G, and 4G. So I have ordered a dev kit that uses the SIM7600 chip and I am going to use it to build a little raspberry-VoIP station, and I can also use this station to issue the USSD codes when needed.

It would still be nice if I could issue the USSD codes directly from my MiFi, but I have not been able to find a comparable MiFi that runs 2G and LTE… So I still need to take the sim card out of the MiFi to top it up, but it is progressing.

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I see… I understand. Thank you!

It is a bit unfortunate because my mobile carrier only allows me to top-up via USSD or via a phone call, not via SMS. So I won’t be able to top up without removing the sim card and placing it into a phone. It is a minor inconvenience, but an inconvenience nonetheless 😁

Ahh, thank you! That makes sense. I did not know that the USSD code transmission relied on specific frequency bands. I looked at frequencycheck.com, and what I see is that in my country mobile networks and carriers use 2 GSM bands, 2 UMTS bands, and 4 LTE bands.

So… A USSD code would have to be transmitted one of the GSM bands? And the mobile router does not support these bands natively. Very little I can do if this is the case, I suppose.

I see - thank you for adding that context, I think that this title change is in itself quite interesting… Because then they did intend to use a sensationalist title, and only changed it later.

I have double-checked out of curiosity and I do see that your post’s title is the title indexed by google:

I am sorry for jumping into the assumption that you had changed the title yourself.

Good point - reported

Exactly! I was worried you wouldn’t be able to read in between my lines 😌

But in all seriousness this is such a huge failure of our media to resort to scaremongering instead of staring the facts.

I agree.

But in this case that is not what is happening… The linked article does not make the claim that is present in the title of this post at all!

The actual title of the linked article is: Leaked German military documents laid out a doomsday scenario where Russia wins in Ukraine then invades Europe

The article explicitly states:

The documents are not a prediction but part of worst-case-scenario planning, a common exercise within militaries. A German official called the scenario “extremely unlikely.”

So I don’t think that the title of this post is fair. Russia could go to war with NATO in 2024, and you don’t need a leaked document to tell you that. But there is nothing in this article that makes this possibility seem any more or less likely.