Live data from Hacker News

Wearable Microphone Jamming

sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu

81–90 of 129 posts

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#81
post #11
post #8

Cool research. Given that you are also jamming hearing aids and other microphones, don't think it's practical to be used in real life. Off topic: check out Pedro's other work http://plopes.org/ Definitely thought provoking research :)

Depends of what real life scenario is. A cafe, maybe not. A meeting room, likely yes. There at least you can declare that a hearing aid is used. The very point of the device is to jam other microphones. Not going to last very long, though; ultrasound filters will soon appear on all relevant gear, including mobile phones.

I think the parent refers to if a hearing impaired person with hearing aid is present in the meeting room ...

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#82

How about camera jamming with UV (for example, on your car's license plate)? I imagine this has been discussed on HN before (if so, just send me the link),

that could be defeated with a simple UV filter over the camera lens, likely already in place

ir camera jamming is doable and well-known enough to appear in media like crime dramas

none of it is very practical because you're still extremely identifiable as "that one with all the lights" and presumably still visible in the visible spectrum

when police jam cameras at protests they just use bright visible strobes

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#85
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Police officers in Beverly Hills have been playing music while being filmed, seemingly in an effort to trigger Instagram’s copyright filters." https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvxb94/is-this-beverly-hills...

What I find ironic, is the police are doing a copyright infringement (unauthorized public performance of these songs) in order to infringe on citizens' rights. Why are record companies not more pissed about this?

Because it doesn’t have any impact on sales, and the executives of those companies don’t want to pick a fight with the local police (who could practically, if not legally, retaliate though various means)

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#86
post #49
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious about ANC as well. I used to wear headphones with ANC 8h+ a day and started to hear noise in my ear.

I don't see why that would happen. ANC plays an inverted signal to counter noises. It's not just perception that it makes sound quieter. When the original sound wave and counter sound wave collide they physically cancel out.

If im understanding GP correctly, I think what's happening for them is that the extended quiet daily makes their hearing a bit more sensitive (as their brain and ears work in tandem to amplify the sound and be more receptive to it, respectively). Now when they take off the headphones, since their hearing is more sensitive, they pick up more of the actual background noise that exists around them.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#87
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying that does literally nothing but add noise. It does not block or change the original signal in any significant way for human ears - only for consumer-level voice recognition software. Which is extremely crappy even without noise for anything more complex than "hey google play some ads in the middle of this song." Once you take the noise out, the voice recognition software has problems recognizing the wo…

There is a short sample of audio in the YouTube link. Your video is not even remotely similar in sound. If you could take the audio from the original and extract easy (for humans) to understand speaking, your confidence that this won’t work would be obviously justified. But so far you don’t appear to have even understood how the device works.

The device literally generates white noise. It's clearly stated in the article. It adds a white noise track on top of the existing sound. It does not change the original vocal track - it just lays noise on top of that.

Are you telling me that the white noise in their link is dissimilar to the sound of the train blowing air into the microphone? You have to be kidding me - did you even watch the rtx video? Click some others too. It filters lawnmowers and all kinds of stuff.

> Your video is not even remotely similar in sound. uh-uh. sure. sorry buddy, not going to bother having this conversation with a deaf person.

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#88
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may find a small bit of capstan tape over the mic will, whilst reduce the mic's sensitivity a little - equally achieve the same results against this.

*Kapton tape, presumably. A capstan is an interesting thing though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capstan_(nautical)

Slightly more recent reference to capstan use is in the context of cassette players/recorders. Same idea, a driven ridged head pulling the tape [1].

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_transport#Capstan

Re: Wearable Microphone Jamming

#89
post #82

How about camera jamming with UV (for example, on your car's license plate)? I imagine this has been discussed on HN before (if so, just send me the link),

that could be defeated with a simple UV filter over the camera lens, likely already in place ir camera jamming is doable and well-known enough to appear in media like crime dramas none of it is very practical because you're still extremely identifiable as "that one with all the lights" and presumably still visible in the visible spectrum when police jam cameras at protests they just use bright visible strobes

Glass and plastic typically used in camera lenses already blocks UV. Enough UV to upset a camera would be enough to give you cataracts.

Infrared is a different story but most cameras have IR filters. Security cameras sometimes have one that only drops in during the day to enable daytime color and nighttime IR.

Post reply on HN