Hacker News Reader

Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

> The only good news found in this research was that after searching TV streams from seven different countries, researchers failed to discover any ultrasonic beacons

Would that even work? I'm pretty sure modern digital TV audio compression totally removes sound that is vaguely close to 'ultrasound'. I guess maybe smart TV apps could add the signal though, but why would they when they already know what you are watching?

It reminds me of a website for one of those annoying 'Mosquito' anti-loitering devices. The sound was provided as an MP3, which was of course totally filtered out by the compression resulting in a totally empty file.

View on HN

They'd do it to connect profiles between the TV (which knows what you're watching) and any mobile devices within ultrasound reach (i.e. line of sight) of the TV. Do this a few times and it quickly becomes clear which phone is usually within range of the TV, and with that the profiles can be merged, giving a broader view of the user behind these devices.

The solution is simple: don't get a 'smart' television. Better still is to forego on television altogether but if you insist on having canned 'entertainment' (panem et circensis) beamed into your domicile make sure to use as dumb a device as possible. Any smarts you require can be added separately, the thing does have external inputs after all. As an added benefit you won't be stuck with a 'smart' TV running yesteryears OS on under-powered hardware while the display and sound system are still good for many years.

I'm with you on not getting a 'smart' TV, but this comment reeks of elitism: "Better still is to forego on television altogether but if you insist on having canned 'entertainment' (panem et circensis) beamed into your domicile"

What if I want to play games, watch movies, or just sit down and otherwise enjoy myself? Is everything that comes on a screen an unnecessary diversion or is it just a screen of a certain size?

In what way is it 'elitist' to dislike the pablum ditched out by television channels? Strange, the way things go. It used to be that those who did not have a television set were seen as backwards but now it seems to be the opposite.

I never liked television programming, not as a child, not as an adult. There is nothing elitist about it, I just like doing things myself.

BTW, the mere fact that you're replying to a message I submitted to this forum should tell you it I do not consider everything that comes on a screen an unnecessary diversion, given the fact that the probability of me using a screen to read and enter text here is rather high. Television is quite well-defined as being a medium designed for mostly passive consumption of entertainment and information. It is the combination of hardware and a whole industry to provide programming to animate those screens. It is the latter, the industry and its products, which I dislike. The hardware can be quite useful.

Your games and movies can be ultrasound beacons too..a board game cannot.

Hell, I'd be happy if I could buy a dumb stove.

After a recent experience: that's simply not possible. Every damned kitchen stove on the market has electronics in it (failure-on-delivery of which in multiple instances spurred on the search), and increasingly: Bluetooth or Wifi capabilities.

Ironically, one thing the new stove improves on over its predecessor is that there's far less electronics hum coming from it. Though several appliances still emite some high-pitched, and ultrasonic (I'm sensitive to that) noise.

My stove is a dumb as it gets. It burns wood and produces heat. More wood and/or more air -> more heat. Living in the countryside has its advantages, I guess it will be hard to cook on a wood-burning stove when you live in a city or suburban environment - not to mention the problem of getting wood to feed the thing, even though it is really quite effective - the equivalent of about 1 m of 2x4 of wood is enough for a 2-course meal for 4 people (not that I feed it 2x4's of course). As an added benefit it heats up the kitchen sufficiently to be used as the only source of heat in spring and early fall here in the Swedish countryside.

The point remains that it is not possible to find, within a typical appliance store, a gas or electric oven/range which has no electronic componentry. I suspect your stove is not currently in production?

It's been suggested that if I were serious about a fully analogue stove I might consider a restaurant model. I'll keep that in mind, though these tend not to be sized to typical home dimensions.

And I suspect many of these are also increasingly being electronified.

While my specific cook stove is not produced anymore, others are, eg [1], [2], [3]. The stove used for heating the house is available at any Jøtul dealer, as are plenty others.

Natural-gas burning cook stoves can be had at the likes of IKEA [4], not a bit or byte in sight on these things. Maybe things are different on this (European) side of the ocean? I do find a few in the US-version of IKEA as well [5] so there seems to be some choice left.

[1] http://www.amishcookstoves.com/

[2] https://www.agamarvel.com/heartland/products/woodburning-coo...

[3] https://www.google.com/search?q=new+wood+cook+stove

[4] http://www.ikea.com/nl/nl/search/?query=+Gaskookplaat

[5] http://www.ikea.com/us/en/search/?query=+4+burner+gas+cookto...

Good info, thank you.

Apologies for the late follow-up.

While my specific cook stove is not produced anymore, others are, eg [1]

> don't get a 'smart' television

Will that prevent ultrasonic beacons? I assumed the speakers were the same on smart and 'dumb' TVs.

The smart televisions are far more likely to have code (or be updated with code) that can be used to emit unique tracking signals of some sort.

Sorry if I'm missing something, but television programming usually doesn't require code in the TV in order to emit audio. Is audio in ultrasonic frequencies a special case?

Although I can't confirm this myself, a few people here have mentioned that its likely that a digital TV signal's audio track would be compressed to remove inaudible ranges. This would require that any ultrasonic data be added by the TV.

From what I can tell, HDTV audio is typically sampled at 48kHz and compressed with AAC using spectral band replication (SBR) techniques. I'd definitely say it's plausible that signal could contain stuff outside a normal adult's hearing range.

AFAICT Yatenfou is saying that the ultrasonic tracking beacon is done by software on the smart TV and not actually part of the television signal.

The risk with smart TVs is (as an example) CBS approaches Samsung and asks them to push code that makes the TV do a particular hard-to-notice sound when it detects the logo of a specific show being sent to the screen.

The plural is "circenses".

It's never going to be easier than it is today to buy a non-"smart" TV. It is going to get harder. In a decade, they'll probably be as niche and expensive, new-old-stock or refurb, as CRTs are relative to LCD panels now.

Its most likely not ultrasound, but just on the high end of what's supported by these codecs. mp3 and other codecs are biased towards human hearing ranges but support up to 30000hz I believe. Most people can't hear above 15000hz. Load up any 'dog whistle' app if you want to see this in action.

I imagine these apps use somewhere about 15k where some of us can hear it but really won't notice it too much during the 'empty' spaces between music, commercials, etc.

The middle aged and over execs and managers who approve of these schemes certainly can't hear it.

Sky in the UK have trialed ultrasonic beacons in adverts, so it is definitely possible

Reply on news.ycombinator.com