Interesting, but coming from the perspective of an audio engineer it all sounds a little too woo-woo without specifics. The $1200 price also seems absurd for something that appears to emit ultrasonic noise and scan for IoT devices. The fact it's taking pre-orders is also something of a red flag.
Maybe I'm too cynical, but these things strike me as money grabs that prey on peoples' understandable paranoia surrounding privacy. I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, but those were the first impressions of someone with a passable knowledge of how such devices ostensibly function. Unless it's doing something special I'm not aware of, a fairly basic filter on the microphone to limit any sounds outside of audible midrange would likely render these devices moot.
To be less of a cynical idgit, here's some cool future tech that does work--not great, I imagine, but getting better and could certainly be employed to keep the sounds you emit localized to a single point (controlling/defining the point might be tricky, and would require the listener to stay stock-still):
Spends version of a relatively simple arduino hack you can find on GitHub. Also easy to defeat but probably works most of the time. Some people can hear it though.
one wonders why an 'inaudible signal' would affect microphones that are designed for human voice frequencies.
unless of course that inaudible signal is actually a high power laser to destroy the offender.. but i'm not comfortable wearing laser goggles everywhere.
thought : a gadget that says words in my exact tone intonation and style incessantly while I talk to throw the speech-to-text systems off via garbage injuection -- boy that'd be obnoxious to compete with in a conversation.
tl;dr : sounds like a new high priced ultra-sonic mouse deterrent.
Interesting, but coming from the perspective of an audio engineer it all sounds a little too woo-woo without specifics. The $1200 price also seems absurd for something that appears to emit ultrasonic noise and scan for IoT devices. The fact it's taking pre-orders is also something of a red flag.
Maybe I'm too cynical, but these things strike me as money grabs that prey on peoples' understandable paranoia surrounding privacy. I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, but those were the first impressions of someone with a passable knowledge of how such devices ostensibly function. Unless it's doing something special I'm not aware of, a fairly basic filter on the microphone to limit any sounds outside of audible midrange would likely render these devices moot.
Related: This Jammer Wants to Block Always-Listening AI Wearables. It Probably Won’t Work - https://www.wired.com/story/deveillance-spectre-i/
To be less of a cynical idgit, here's some cool future tech that does work--not great, I imagine, but getting better and could certainly be employed to keep the sounds you emit localized to a single point (controlling/defining the point might be tricky, and would require the listener to stay stock-still):
‘Audible enclaves’ could enable private listening without headphones - https://www.psu.edu/news/engineering/story/audible-enclaves-...
Finally I can install my 12" subwoofer underneath my cubicle.
I don't know much about these things, but I can say it comes off as a scam to me as well.
I assume the target audience is the same people who buy 5G blocking stickers.
I'm like 90% sure this is a scam that's never gonna ship or ship and not do anything
Spends version of a relatively simple arduino hack you can find on GitHub. Also easy to defeat but probably works most of the time. Some people can hear it though.
It's not going to work.
2m is too small
one wonders why an 'inaudible signal' would affect microphones that are designed for human voice frequencies.
unless of course that inaudible signal is actually a high power laser to destroy the offender.. but i'm not comfortable wearing laser goggles everywhere.
thought : a gadget that says words in my exact tone intonation and style incessantly while I talk to throw the speech-to-text systems off via garbage injuection -- boy that'd be obnoxious to compete with in a conversation.
tl;dr : sounds like a new high priced ultra-sonic mouse deterrent.
There's this hack discovered in 2019 of using a laser with the correct vibration to fool the assistant's microphone to think it's receiving a human voice's vibration: https://news.umich.edu/a-laser-pointer-could-hack-your-voice...
I don't know about this project, but the technique is sound, with some caveats.
* Can be blocked by many materials
* It is highly directional
* Takes a lot of power
* A lot of people can actually hear it
* 2M isn't really that far when you consider what a modern mic can pick up
* https://github.com/mcore1976/antispy-jammer