Unboxing a 5G Protection Device

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2020/05/unboxing-a-5g-protection-device.html

by jackpea • 6 years ago

59 56 6 years ago

quackometer.net

kozak• 6 years ago

How is it not illegal to sell these?

faeyanpiraat• 6 years ago

They probably are, but it’s unfeasible for law enforcement to prevent all crimes.

azinman2• 6 years ago

My guess is the illegal bit is in the claims, not the device itself.

SahAssar4• 6 years ago

It does not directly claim any health benefits. If this is illegal then it would be illegal to sell "healing" crystals and goop would not exist.

Really it's not much different than selling a wooden cross that will "protect you against satan".

AstralStorm10• 6 years ago

It does claim, however, removing 5G waves. Which if true, would fall under radar jamming in FCC and be highly illegal. $50k fine.

(Unless it is passive - aluminum foil or a mesh cage, which is perfectly legal.)

Therefore it's false advertising.

andreareina• 6 years ago

"These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA^H^H^H MHRA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

AstralStorm10• 6 years ago

Radio waves are under the purview of FCC not FDA. (Unlike laser light.) MHRA has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Regulatory body in UK for radio waves is also separate from MHRA. I might be wrong there but I think it's CAA, while spectrum allocations are UK parliament.

raxxorrax• 6 years ago

Oh, I thought it would about some kind of mechanism against vandalism. How naive of me in the early hours...

Surrounding yourself with a strong electromagnetic field should help you shield against electromagne... forget it.

LeonM• 6 years ago

Surrounding yourself with a strong electromagnetic field...

Clearly you haven't read the advert, it's a 'nano-layer of quantum holographic catalyzer technology'

woadwarrior01• 6 years ago

What a lazy job! The least they could’ve done was to throw in a low frequency oscillator, to give it some credibility. Fighting high-frequencies with low. :)

OTOH, the reasoning for poor construction of these devices is probably similar to the reasoning for poor English in 419 scam emails.

AstralStorm10• 6 years ago

Having an oscillator on radio frequencies would require FCC stamp of approval.

consp• 6 years ago

Considering the same people who sell this crap online also sell stuff to force you to inhale ozone and carry radioactive materials on your chest as health items I do not think they care much about FCC approval

lvturner• 6 years ago

The FCC doesn't have jurisdiction in the United Kingdom.

Eyght2• 6 years ago

On the subject of placebo technology. How well do HN think placebo software would work?

An example would be a productivity app that only has a flip switch for High or Low productivity. Whenever you need to be extra productive, just open the app and set it to High.

SiempreViernes• 6 years ago

Would it add a slight matrix-style effect of symbols streaming down the screen? Or at least set the cpu fan to high?

heavenlyblue• 6 years ago

Make the display brightness higher. Or rather sharpness, maybe?

stinos3• 6 years ago

This has actually been researched and the science is pretty clear on this one: the placebo effect is very real and does work. As a matter of fact IIRC (sorry, can't find the paper) some experiments with the principle as you describe have been done and came to that same conclusion.

dmix• 6 years ago

How well do HN think placebo software would work?

Would work at what? Make people 'happy'?

Eyght2• 6 years ago

The software would have to make a claim. For example, improve your posture.

comboy• 6 years ago

It wouldn't be just placebo though. Clearly separating time when you want to be productive vs playing around is an old and effective trick.

Placebo apps that make your Internet faster are as old as the Internet itself though. I am guilty. In my defense, that was 20 years ago.

mekkkkkk3• 6 years ago

Guilty as in you developed one of those apps? I'd be really curious to hear about the product timeline in that case. Did it get any traction? Was it monetized somehow? I've always been curious.

mercer2• 6 years ago

I'm not 100% certain of how the medical/psychological community would define 'placebo', but I'd argue it's not as simple as this not being a placebo because it's an effective trick.

The fact that placebos are effective is precisely /because/ they're effectively tricking whatever badly-understood connection there is between our thinking and our body. I imagine that there are degrees to this: 'tricking' ourselves to be productive by deciding to clean our house instead would generally not be called a placebo, whereas taking a sugar pill that lifts us out of depression probably would.

But fundamentally they're just the same thing on a spectrum: an improvement as a result of something that we /know/ should not be effective by understood, biological pathways.

LeoPanthera• 6 years ago

Magic / More Magic

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/magic-story.html

Extigy• 6 years ago

It’s less common now, but I do remember helping multiple people in the past who had installed malware masquerading as “PC Optimiser” software. Usually these would contain big green buttons labelled something like “Optimise system RAM” and show lists of many problems it was helpfully fixing for you.

Some users were utterly convinced that their machine was running faster than ever before, when in reality the malware did nothing other than begging for cash payments. Often the opposite by slowing down the machine with continuous pop-up advertisements and other nasties.

caterama• 6 years ago

Very well. The Pomodoro technique is essentially this.

mekkkkkk3• 6 years ago

Pomodoro is a way to gamify and time box your working hours into effective chunks. I wouldn't call that "placebo".

pjc502• 6 years ago

There used to be an entire industry of "performance boosting" products, only some of which actually did anything. Placebos are certainly an effective way to get people to give you money.

metrokoi2• 6 years ago

I wonder if there would be a market for actual electromagnetic shielding products, such as some sort of conductive paint for walls and ceilings? Of course, you could not use your phone or other devices, but it could be useful for the bedroom. A good way to have a guaranteed "do-not-disturb" zone as well!

AstralStorm10• 6 years ago

Also a guaranteed way to be unable to call emergency. You better have a stationary wired phone line in there.

metrokoi2• 6 years ago

Of course. Although if one couldn't walk/crawl a few feet out of a bedroom for an emergency, they are probably unconscious or have a very large bedroom. I'm assuming the marketed consumer would have minimal usage of a cell phone anyway if they are concerned about electromagnetic radiation.

AstralStorm10• 6 years ago

The market is there, schools would love this technology. The problem is that simple thin coat of aluminized paint is super expensive, as is a big mesh. And phones are very effective at getting the low signals through any available hole in filter coverage.

JPLeRouzic• 6 years ago

I wonder if it would be possible to install a 4G network extender [0] then implement IP route rules on the ADSL router, to forbid access to Facebook and co?

[0] https://www.verizon.com/support/4g-lte-network-extender-faqs...

cskinner• 6 years ago

And will ramp their transmit power up to do so.

pjc502• 6 years ago

Then you discover how hard it is to get a really good shield. Walls and ceilings? Maybe you lose one "bar" of reception. You need the doors and windows as well.

mekkkkkk3• 6 years ago

AFAIK this already exists. It's used for segmenting frequency ranges in places with a lot of wireless pollution. For example; if you have a large building with a ton of access points and networks you might want to limit the interference by stopping certain frequencies going through select floors or walls.

carlob• 6 years ago

I had this idea of starting a business selling homeopathic antidotes to vaccines. If anyone wants to partner up...

Namari• 6 years ago

What would you want to treat?

AstralStorm10• 6 years ago

Excess of money combined with lack of sense. (Or non-existent side effects of vaccines.)

contravariant• 6 years ago

Being proper homeopathic antidotes I assume you'd be using trace amounts of the active, supposedly harmful, substance in vaccines?

classified• 6 years ago

That would be on the order of one molecule of vaccino-poison to each liter of distilled holy water. Don't be disappointed if you never find that molecule, it's all about the vibrations ;-)

stinos3• 6 years ago

Sort of related: had a customer with a problem where data on a serial line got corrupted which is usually resolved by applying proper shielding all around the cable, i.e. standard Faraday cage principle. So English not being my native language I wanted to explain this in correct terms and entered the term 'emf shielding' in a search engine just to doublecheck. I think 90% of the results on the result page were all like this, 'protect your family from dangerous EMF'-style. Image search: the same, images of entire iron curtains meant to be put around your bed etc. Since this was using Duckduckgo, which as far as I know does not suffer from the typical 'search bubble' like on Google, I'm afraid this is an accurate representation of.. what actually? The internet being flooded by companies wanting to make easy money? There being serious amounts of people with a misunderstanding of EMF, it's sources and effects?

jcun41282• 6 years ago

Unrelated: was thinking how it would be possible to truly prove uniqueness eg. by DNA but it seems everything can be spoofed. One way to avoid it is computation eg. captcha but yeah sucks. This thought related to online voting.

I do find it interesting the desire to harm/screw other people over and feel no remorse. Like those scams getting busted in certain places eg. fake virus support. People show up to their actual office and do the scam like their 9-5 haha... Idk crazy. I sometimes wish I had that malintent vs. just being a passive people pleaser. Like I'm sorry of my existence. Meanwhile guy jaywalks across traffic to me and asks me for some money so he can go to McDonalds... Idk. Conversely I see a legitimely homeless person and I offer them money, they refuse.

stinos3• 6 years ago

I do find it interesting the desire to harm/screw other people over and feel no remorse

I'm not sure this is the driving force here, especially when your description sort of fits the worst psychopaths, and I can think of other principles these people live by which aren't necessarily driven by such 'evil' forces. E.g. desire to survive (==food/shelter) which in modern society usually translates to desire to earn money, see an easy way to do that, feel remorse but ignore it.

Alos, after having talked to so-called tinfoil hatters, it seems that a large part of them genuinely believe all these theories (well, or were extremely good in tricking me into believing they believe) and as such also believe they can actually help people so from their point of view it's not a desire to harm or screw over but rather to help. As crippled as that might seem to others. I.e. do not underestimate the power of the human mind to play tricks on itself, or mental problems in other words.

danparsonson• 6 years ago

"...the slideshow will take you through my discoveries..." - I'm being dim, but where is the slide-show?

Unboxing a 5G Protection Device

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