Welcome to the Tech Meme Right Home for Wednesday, February 21st,

24, I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Signal finally rolls out

user names, but Apple goes one better security wise by quantum

encrypting iMessage weirdly Apple also launched a standalone sports

scores app Gemma is an open source flavor of Gemini from Google,

and Reddit wants to reserve some IPO shares

for its users.

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

At long last, Signal has finally rolled out user names in beta letting users

conceal their phone numbers for the first time. Signal still requires inputting

a phone number to register though

quoting Wired. Today Signal launched the rollout in beta of a long-awaited set of

features it's describing simply as phone number privacy. Those features which Wired has tested

are designed to allow users to conceal their phone numbers as they communicate on the app

and instead share a username as a less sensitive method of connecting with one another.

Rather than give your phone number to other signal contacts as the identifier they use to begin a conversation

with you, in other words, you can now choose to be discoverable via a chosen handle or even to prevent anyone who does have your phone number from finding you on signal.

The use of phone numbers has long been perhaps the most persistent criticism of signals design.

These new privacy protections finally offer a fix, says Meredith Whitaker, Signals President,

we want to build a communications app that everyone in the world can easily use to connect with anyone else privately.

That privately is really in bold, underlined in italics, Whitaker tells Wired.

So we're extremely sympathetic to people who might be using signal in high-risk environments who say the phone number is really sensitive information and I don't feel comfortable having that disseminated broadly."

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