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A comment on I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil. Parent comment

Re:I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil by hunter2_ on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @09:51PM (#16012504)
Think of a parabolic dish on a microphone at a sporting event. The dish blocks noise and interference from the directions you don't want to listen to, and less noise and interference is as useful as if the sender had more power. Same result of better s/n either way.

Or a TV satellite dish. If you were correct, you could rip off the dish and point the antenna forwards instead of backwards, and still watch TV. Not gonna happen.

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Re:I amplified my home's Wi-Fi with aluminum foil by throwaway613834 on Tuesday December 26, 2017 @09:59PM (#16012525)
> The dish blocks noise and interference from the directions you don't want to listen to

You shouldn't need to talk about noise or interference for the argument to make sense. Just imagine there isn't any. The argument yields absurd results either way: the power certainly does depend on how far the sender is from the focus.

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