IANAL and things may have changed, but it was my understanding that having a copy protection mechanism, even a simple one, gives them better claim to DMCA protection of their content should someone do something they'd like to discourage. "Your honor they read our source code and stole our private key to break the encryption of our protected data" sounds better than "they downloaded the data we gave them"
I agree calling it a cell phone sets the wrong expectations, but it's still neat and I think a good application could be an elder care pendant (help, fallen, can't get up, yadda yadda) where close promity and custom base station aren't an issue, but never needing to worry about the status of battery would be a big plus.
Those applications are called medical alert systems, and there are various kinds. Some of the systems contain GPS, while other work with a radio base station to inform if the person has fallen and can't get up.
So this uses vibrations caused by our voice to change the effectiveness of the antenna to absorb power from the base station right? Base station then interprets the varying current draw as amplitude modulated audio and Bob's your uncle? If I'm correct (no sure that I am) wouldn't this require being pretty close to the base station?
Even if it was transmitting instead of using a side-channel like current draw... With only 3.5 microwatts, the phone would still have to be very close to the base station. As a comparison, "normal" cellphones transmit something around 100 to 1000 milliwatts, so at least 10^5 more powerful.
EDIT: This Wired article has a lot better information:
"... Some key components of Talla's phone are housed remotely to save power. A nearby basestation has circuitry for converting and connecting to the digital cellular network, currently via Skype. The prototype basestation uses an unlicensed frequency, limited to low-power transmissions. Because the phone relies on those signals for its energy harvesting, it has a range of just 15 meters from the basestation."
And it looks like they use backscatter, which would be "transmitting" signal and not using a side-channel.
Hehe that would work, and is in store. I had something a little more subtle in mind. I remember Seiko selling "Kinetic" watches with internal counter weights. Maybe it's possible to scale up a similar mechanism in a phone case (granted you accept the doubled width) and enjoy the free energy. Of course this came to mind when running yesterday.
Youtube has some videos about a thing called ampy, a tiny case you attach on you. I'm not sure it made it to market though.
That's an interesting point, otherwise I'd say it's basically the Windows equivalent of LD_PRELOAD. Running executables from the "downloads" directory is certainly a thing though, never realized the security implication there (beyond trusting the download natch)
I was briefly concerned before dismissing this all as absurd. Surely we aren't more likely to hold tech companies responsible for the actions of their users than we are to hold gun manufacturers responsible for theirs.
It is actually pretty absurd. If you think guns shouldn't be in the hands of most people and guns lead to bad things happening its still ridiculous to go after people for manufacturing legal products just because most of the US wont let you ban them. The desired end astoundingly unlikely and doesn't justify the nonsensical means.
Worse the lawyers involved in such things no that all it serves to do is to suck up money from suckers to enrich the lawyers.
Interesting analogy but there is a difference though. Government can somewhat regulate gun sales (proof of identity, no hospitalization due to mental illness, etc). If you apply that to tech companies then we are about to see some regulation in who can and who can't use those services.
Why do you say that? The NRA is one of the single most powerful special interest groups in the USA. The tech industry doesn't even come close to the NRA's lobbying results.
He wrote "results", so I think he targeted the fact that weapons are still essentially freely available in the USA (at least it looks that way from over here in Europe). This can be seen as really effective lobbying given how many times it has been argued that weapons shouldn't be so easily available anymore without any changes to existing laws.
> weapons are still essentially freely available in the USA (at least it looks that way from over here in Europe)
They're really not. Automatic weapons made after 1986 are banned; automatic weapons made before that date are extremely expensive and require permission of local law enforcement and revocation of one's Fourth Amendment rights. Firearms may no longer be sold by mail, as they were for most of our nation's history. Firearms may not be sold by private parties across state lines. All commercial sales require a background check. In many states it's illegal to sell a firearm privately; in some states you can't even legally give a weapon to a family member as a gift. Many states and some localities impose unreasonable restrictions on magazine size and cosmetic features. Some states impose registration requirements, which means that law enforcement has the ability to confiscate all legal weapons at will.
> This can be seen as really effective lobbying given how many times it has been argued that weapons shouldn't be so easily available anymore without any changes to existing laws.
I think the conditions above indicate how ineffective the pro-gun lobby has been, given that almost none of it is constitutional.
(although it's worth noting that for most of its history the NRA was a pro-gun-control organisation)
Thanks, came here to say the same thing. This was as surprsing to me as the first time a spammy website started vibrating my phone (dom.vibrator.enabled)
