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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: February 25th, 2024

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  • The article is very misleading. It says

    The research paper…notes that the human body is particularly efficient at generating 40 MHz RF energy. Tapping into that through a ‘worn receiver’ provides power without using any invasive means.

    But I read much of the pdf linked at the bottom of that link, and there’s nothing about the human body generating energy at 40MHz. The trick is that skin is pretty effective (sort of) at conducting energy at that frequency, so the authors hooked up a power transmitter worn on the forearm, 5 or 15cm away from a receiver on the hand.

    This isn’t about powering anything by body energy, it’s about strapping a battery-powered transmitter somewhere on your body and then having another device pick it up when strapped somewhere else on your body. No thanks.

    Oh and it’s actually pretty inefficient and won’t provide much usable energy.




  • They don’t store anything about your association with other numbers; that stays on your devices. Your phone number is used as your identifier for account creation and originally for finding other people to talk with, but the only data Signal keeps associated with your number are registration timestamp and last connection timestamp. You can see that by reading the redacted subpoenas and responses that they publish.

    They have recently introduced usernames so that you can avoid having to share your number to communicate with someone else.

    I don’t have a good citation for this, but I believe the phone number registration requirement will remain indefinitely, likely to cut down on spam and bots. But there’s a difference between privacy and anonymity - I’m looking for privacy in my communications, not anonymity from my friends. State actors can know that you use it but not what you’re saying or to whom (unless, say, the NSA is specifically targeting you, but that compromise will be of your device as a whole rather than breaking Signal or getting data from them).