Sonic Culture

The headphone manufacturer Sennheiser announced that its Headsetup and Headsetup Pro software had a nasty bug that, in the words of Dan Goodin of arstechnica.com, "makes it easy for hackers to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks that cryptographically impersonate any big-name website on the Internet."

Bose is introducing earbud-free sunglasses called Frames that play sound at the start of the year, and later in 2019 will introduce AR features.

The pace of technological improvements is having adverse effects on the teaching of sign language. "Though it might seem counterintuitive," writes Carly Stern at ozy.com, "progressive nations with free health care and advanced technologies tend to have lower rates of education in sign language."

Machines that read your emotions through how you speak, rather than just what you say.

The makers of the Ring doorbell have introduced Neighbors, an app that networks proximate doorbells — "and lets people share, view and comment on crime and security information in their communities. Most of the posts are video clips shot by Ring video doorbells and security cameras," writes Ben Fox Rubin at cnet.com.

An image isn't necessarily merely two-dimensional, and when it is three-dimensional the image is not necessarily merely visual. Chris Velazco at engadget.com explains how ultrasound in a new Qualcomm project checks your fingerprint.

The voice security company Pindrop ("voice security" is such a thing that "voice security company" is a thing) has secured funding to extend its technology from call centers to connected devices.