Motus is a distrbuted network of ground stations for tracking birds and other species (like bats!) for research - they also use CTT tags for tracking (along with tags from another company called Lotek - https://www.lotek.com)

In the US, you can get shockingly very far without having to chat with ATC.

> Share secrets from your terminal. One-time only. No accounts. No backend. No BS.

A server sure sounds like a backend to me.

but yeah that was upsetting - I was hoping they’d push them to a registry and make them… more available.

2. With the "UniFI OS" branding, the door is open to the possibility of being able to run Talk, Protect, Access, etc... on your own hardware in the future.

The process right now is pulling out an SD card from your Garmin/Avidyne/BendixKing whatever every 28-days or so (that's how often the FAA updates the navigation database backing these avionics), popping it into your PC, using software/webistes that could be... much better designed (to put it lightly) and then going back again. It's not exactly the hardest thing in the world, but it's not exactly a walk in the park either (especially for less-technically inclined pilots, who just let it lapse, and click out of the big expiration warnings every time they start up their planes).

Total information entropy - no. The amount of information conveyed remains the same.

With that said, the application for a medical certificate is a federal form, and willingly lying/omitting information on it is a felony - the FAA has also been known to pull medical records where they can - typically for veterans receiving VA benefits (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/27/faa-pilot...) - pilots don’t want to get caught in a lie, so many just outright don’t seek treatment for some conditions - particularly mental health ones.

I see this panel ruling as a positive thing because it’s one less thing pilots have to worry about when applying for a medical certificate - knowing they can see a therapist without fearing potential ramifications (because it won’t have to be reported to the FAA in the first place) is a huge step in de-stigmatizing mental health conditions in aviation.

In order to do this, that would mean not using pilots with an FAA certificate, nor an American-registered aircraft.

Even if they did this over the middle of the ocean, in international waters, if even one of the two things above were used, the FAA still has jurisdiction.

So unless djb was secretly working with the NSA and willing to risk his reputation to backdoor a highly scrutinized elliptic curve, the risk is low.