The Skeptics Guide #742 - Sep 28 2019 (Ad Free)
Added 2019-09-28 18:58:11 +0000 UTC5-10 Year: Dinochicken
News Items: Fat Shaming, Warp Drive, TVs and Phones Communicating, Second Interstellar Object
Who's That Noisy
Your Questions and E-mails: Survivorship Bias
Science or Fiction
Comments
Sorry but I can't comment on the "Lens" thing, what was the point of that? It played for about 10 secs.
Lorne Schneider
2019-10-04 15:34:04 +0000 UTCFurthermore, the discussion that only "malicious" apps would do this, and that apple would weed them out, is not at all accurate. There are hundreds of ways to get non-malicious access to microphones and then use audio however you want. Whether it's a messaging app, a video editing app, or even a video game app, there are reasonable ways to get microphone access and from there—for alternative revenue streams— the company can do whatever they want with that audio access.
Josh Raab
2019-10-04 14:56:29 +0000 UTCIn reference to the advertising and our telephones listening, was a bit baffled by the conversation. A few comments: (1) Yes, Shazam is used for this, many commercials even feature a Shazam logo and if you pull your phone out, the app already is displaying the product (2) you don't need special speakers to play un-noticable sounds, they don't need to be outside the range of human hearing, they just need to be recognizable to trigger the phone. . . even if they were outside the range, any speaker can do this. (3) It can be one way, the trigger does not need to be mutually agreed upon. For instance, say I’m paying a show to display my ad and they say that 20million people will see the ad. If I want to verify this, I can pay shazam to recognize the intro music to the show and then report back to me how many people were actually watching the commercial break. (4) This exists and still does. I worked on a book with netflix, since they wouldn’t tell me viewership for the show, I had to find it myself. I found an analytics company which listened for theme music from shows on netflix and then could report how many people were sitting and watching the shows. . . here is a link to the company’s twitter https://twitter.com/SymphonyAM: “unique behavioral insights through single-source passive measurement of TV, Mobile, PC and Social behavior.”
Josh Raab
2019-10-04 14:54:04 +0000 UTCAnother question... It was stated that we have interstellar visitors that come so close to the sun only once in millions of years. However according to Nasa (https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/faq/interstellar) several come inside earth's orbit every year.
lothian53
2019-09-29 03:43:16 +0000 UTCWas thinking about the app that detects advertisements... Instead of supersonic sounds, how about just using Shazam like tech to identify the commercial?
lothian53
2019-09-29 02:22:17 +0000 UTC
