Microphones are perhaps the most common electronic sensor in the world, with an estimated 320 million listening for our commands in the world’s smart speakers. The trouble is that they’re capable of hearing everything else, too.
But now, a team of University of Michigan researchers has developed a system that can inform a smart home or listen for the signal that would turn on a smart speaker without eavesdropping on audible sound.
The key to the device, called PrivacyMic, is ultrasonic sound at frequencies above the range of human hearing. Running dishwashers, computer monitors, even finger snaps, all generate ultrasonic sounds, which have a frequency of 20 kilohertz or higher. We can’t hear them but dogs, cats and PrivacyMic can.
During times of crisis, false information is inevitable, but rather than brush it off as a consequence of falling intelligence levels in society, it should be understood as normal crowd psychology.
When a tumultuous event occurs, two things happen: People desperately try to cope with the unfolding situation, and they rush to identify a scapegoat. As information passes from one person to another, the opportunity to find a release for their emotions and adopt a political stance overrides considerations of whether the information is accurate, leading to the inadvertent transmission of false information.
If a friend or family member posts false information
People are writing more than ever with their keyboards and phones, but handwritten notes have become rare. Even signatures are going out of style. Most credit card purchases no longer require them, and if they do, you can usually just scratch one out with your fingernail. The age-old art of handwriting is in decline.
This marks a profound shift in how we communicate, but for one group of experts it also raises an existential question. Forensic handwriting examiners authenticate handwritten notes and signatures or reveal them to be fakes by analyzing distinctive features in our writing. As people write less by hand, will handwriting examination become irrelevant?
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Critics of the jury system, or simply those who are nervous about taking part, will sometimes characterize a jury’s result as a kind of crap shoot. The feeling is that they’re inconsistent, and subject to the idiosyncrasies of group influence. “A jury can do anything,” I’ve sometimes heard counsel tell their clients. That is an attitude that can make attorneys and clients less trusting in the deliberation process, and more conservative than they ought to be about going to trial. That fear can sometimes put its thumb on the scale in favor of an unwise settlement.