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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 26 2015, @07:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the bridging-the-air-gap dept.

As digital devices have multiplied, so has the complexity of coordinating them and moving stuff between them. Tone grew out of the idea that while digital communication methods like email and chat have made it infinitely easier, cheaper, and faster to share things with people across the globe, they've actually made it more complicated to share things with the people standing right next to you. Tone aims to make sharing digital things with nearby people as easy as talking to them.

[…] Tone provides an easy-to-understand broadcast mechanism that behaves like the human voice — it doesn't pass through walls like radio or require pairing or addressing. … Because it's audio based, Tone behaves like speech in interesting ways. The orientation of laptops relative to each other, the acoustic characteristics of the space, the particular speaker volume and mic sensitivity, and even where you're standing will all affect Tone's reliability. Not every nearby machine will always receive every broadcast, just like not everyone will always hear every word someone says. But resending is painless and debugging generally just requires raising the volume.

[…] To get started, first install the Tone extension for Chrome. Then simply open a tab with the URL you want to share, make sure your volume is on, and press the Tone button. Your machine will then emit a short sequence of beeps. Nearby machines receive a clickable notification that will open the same tab. Getting everyone on the same page has never been so easy!"


[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @08:25PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @08:25PM (#188251)

    On the few computers I use that must have flash installed, I make sure to disable the microphone in it and mute it everywhere else -- especially on a laptop. I've taken the effort of disabling the microphone in the bios of some laptops.

    I know of no desktop or laptop that will flash a light to say that the microphone is recording me, and know of no service Google uses that doesn't somehow incorporate their taking of personal data.

    Saying "OK, Google" is creepy enough, knowing that it is listening but only actually providing user recognizable feedback when those words are spoken. What is to stop the microphone from receiving input so that these broadcasts are not abused unexpectedly (as opposed to the expected abuse from advertising)?

    "open a tab with the URL you want to share, make sure your volume is on, and 0wn the others by redirecting them to malware against the will of the owners when you use a sound above human hearing to machines automatically configured via a Chrome update to be vulnerable to this" is what I am reading.

    I hope it is not any more useful to marketing or hackers as infrared file transfer was between palm pilots and other PDAs.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @10:39PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2015, @10:39PM (#188333)

    There's no against their will in the design.

    First they have to install and activate the Tone extension.

    Second, they have to accept a tone link suggestion after it is received.

    Really, this was all covered in the summary.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:37PM (#188854)

      I will concede that point, but I think the primary question I would ask then is Why?

      It is already difficult enough to get people to not open infected email attachments. Even if they were not expecting a delivery, or an invoice, or what have you--they click it anyway.

      And many people simply do what their computer tells them to. If the http proxy hijack on the guest wifi at the coffee shop says to agree to this installation, people will do it. Then whatever the hipster is playing on his laptop with his fake or stolen google account can play whatever and essentially do the QR code menace all over again.

      A college near me had a rash of viruses and whatnot due to people leaving flyers on peoples car windshields, with a QR code for a link to a website where there was a rave or dance party or something. People took a picture, went to the link, got infected, and the website said it was down.

      It used to be that people were trained to not go to weird or shady looking URLs; now, many people do not even know what a URL is and the http/https is often hidden because protocols and domains are hard.

      Eternal autumn indeed. I hope the tone it plays is pleasant, for I fear if this catches on, it will be frequently broadcast. TVs will play it and people will be prompted to enable the app to receive the special offer! Or something will come out to leave it on permanently, and watching TV can end up with a smart TV hearing itself transmit the Tone plugin instructions, and then download the payload for next command for attacking the network it is on or DDoSing something else or whatever.

      At least it is limited to people that are logged into Google. I imagine many smart TVs are for youtube and such, so we'll see how well the internet of things helps secure things that can be owned simply by changing channels on TV.