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Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

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Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#81
post #70
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old glass or porcelain might be the most viable candidates for a first look as they would be cooling off from a heated, more malleable state, potentially capturing sound from the immediate vicinity as they cooled off. I have no science to back this up. It's just a hunch.

That may be complicated from old glass never fully hardening. But it sounds plausible enough. Possibly mortar in walls could record the workers taking. All sorts of pottery start out malleable, so they might be candidates. Cave paintings might be an option - wonder whether being finger painted would leave biological fingerprints behind - heart rate, for instance. Pretty wild idea. Here’s hoping it has some legs. Mayb…

Old glass doesn't flow and is solid. Google it to see plenty of debunking.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#82
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post #4

“I’m sure there will be applications that nobody will expect. I think the hallmark of good science is when you do something just because it’s cool and then somebody turns around and uses it for something you never imagined. It’s really nice to have this type of creative stuff.” Thinking atomic bombs :(

>Thinking atomic bombs :( The same ones which have prevented large scale open military conflicts involving superpowers for the last 60+ years? Atom bombs have likely saved more lives than they have taken, if we had conventional wars with modern technology without MAD.

We have no way of knowing, in retrospect, what the real risk of global nuclear war was. We live in the universe where the die roll came up "no", and we don't know if the odds of our survival were 99% or much less than that.

How do you weigh the certain death of millions vs. peace with a small chance of utter annihilation? I don't know, but I don't think it's as easy as you say.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I was coming to say "spy satellites at 40,000 km up - I doubt they can see anything. And if the linked article is correct the Chinese satellites up there have a resolution of 50m - good luck finding a crisp packet. But the new generation "might" have a resolution of 1m. which is insane. Then again, good luck knowing which square meter of the 1/3 of the earths surface you can see, has the crisp packet in. I still t…

Recent Chinese optical satellites are thought to have 10cm resolution. All these are low earth orbit. Depends on cloud cover, atmospheric turbulence and look angle. Still impractical to get sound vibrations from that. But a drone with a laser would work for windows. Think listening in on a conversation in a car.

It was the (seemingly seriously ) proposed 1m resolution from geostationary orbit that had me.

Still all this tech is useless without knowing where to point it when. Which usually comes down to human led intel and intelligence led tasking.

I think ... when AI starts deciding which conversation to follow or record then ... we'll I for one welcome our new robot overlords

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#85
post #15

At some point it is (controversially) hypothesized that we may be able to pull imprinted recordings off of ancient artifacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics#Past_interpre...

I also once thought of that, but maybe there are other ways in which large vibrations have left fingerprints on materials. I don't mean gravitational waves, but really acoustic phenomena. Like a comet impact or a vulcano outburst. What's a delicate material which would be able to record sound but that doesn't get destroyed by time? Clay that dries up is a logical one.

Interestingly, gravitational waves might end up a good idea. We now have a couple of patterns to look for, and many giant concrete slabs might have them accidentally recorded.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#86
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, modern global shutters like those made by CMOSIS/ams are _much_ faster than that. Their fast one is an APS-C sensor with 4k*3k Px, a shutter closing time of 1s/~120000 and a minimum shutter open time of ~1s/50000. The shutter closing time might be even faster, just reconstruction from frame overhead time values I remember, and adjusting for the share the row skew had. Check the datasheet if you like to. If you k…

Could you expand on or link the bit about time of flight trickery in fog or rain? c * 1 s / 50,000 is still kilometers, so I’m not sure I understand how this shutter can do what sounds like using time of flight to selectively illuminate stuff at a specific depth

No, the part that can solve this is the fast time from insensitive to sensitive, which is shorter than the time form sensitive to no longer sensitive. You will need a pulse with a short enough duration, e.g. a Q-switched Nd:YAG with frequency doubling giving you up to about a dozen Joules at up to a few hundred Hz with pulse durations of under 50 ns, and, while limited in some ways by breakdown peak power in components, a lower limit of about .5 ns.

Most of the shutter time is used to copy the data to the shadow pixel, but just releasing the dark pull won't take long.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#87
post #79
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, modern global shutters like those made by CMOSIS/ams are _much_ faster than that. Their fast one is an APS-C sensor with 4k*3k Px, a shutter closing time of 1s/~120000 and a minimum shutter open time of ~1s/50000. The shutter closing time might be even faster, just reconstruction from frame overhead time values I remember, and adjusting for the share the row skew had. Check the datasheet if you like to. If you k…

Yes, global shutters are a thing in expensive professional video cameras. But almost every camera in the world is a phone camera prone to rolling shutter effects both in stills and video shooting. Out of the rest, almost all have mechanical shutters for stills shooting and electronic rolling shutter for video. It’s going to be a while before global shutters become a thing in consumer cameras.

Which is sad, tbh. Because global shutter, white slightly more expensive in terms of area for a given SNR, can do things to both compensate and just generally do "weird" things.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#88
post #15

At some point it is (controversially) hypothesized that we may be able to pull imprinted recordings off of ancient artifacts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoacoustics#Past_interpre...

Anyone remember the TV show Fringe? I seem to remember them using science fiction tech like that. Life imitates art.

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#89
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post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And...someone was saying “blue” the instant they applied the blue paint? That’s certainly not impossible to believe, it just seems like a bit of a stretch.

Maybe it was painted by Bob Ross?

Happy Little Cloud computing

Re: Algorithm recovers speech from a potato-chip bag filmed through glass (2014)

#90
post #60
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Jones] claimed to have extracted the hum of the potter's wheel from the grooves of a pot, So far so good... > and the word "blue" from an analysis of patch of blue color in a painting. What the hell?

I don’t know about the techniques but the theory isn’t prima facie impossible. A paintbrush can act like a microphone just like anything else, and if the paintbrush (more likely a putty knife or more rigid object) picked up a sound while applying paint, that could manifest in the paint layer.

But that imprint would be static. It would be a nightmare to go from a static imprint to a time series of some kind. Even in the article, they were analysing video, whereby the diffs from one moment to the next could be captured. I bet that as the length of video decreases (become a static picture in the limit), so would the useful output from their algorithm.
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