
Household radar can sense a person’s breathing and heart rate, even emotions - sohkamyung
https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/household-radar-can-see-through-walls-and-knows-how-youre-feeling
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bronco21016
As a new parent who did all kinds of research on SIDs and wearables this is
awesome. I’d love to have a product like this to put in baby’s room to detect
breathing. It could also make an amazing device for analyzing sleep quality
for adults as well.

Sadly, this is likely just going to be applied to advertising.

~~~
VvR-Ox
Yes very sad - this would be a great idea if we wouldn't have to live in a f
__*ed up world like this.

Surveillance and Advertising are the #1 sectors to use this for.

~~~
antisemiotic
Realtime monitoring of breathing and heart rate during A/B tests sounds like
an adtech engineer's wet dream.

~~~
acct1771
[https://atap.google.com/soli/](https://atap.google.com/soli/)

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carapace
I think we're going to have to learn to live with some kind of either:

A. Radical transparency, where everyone has access to everything about
everyone else and privacy exists as "rice paper" privacy[1]; or

B. Techno-totalitarianism with people divided into "Morlocks" and "Eloi",
technocrats and techno-serfs.

As technology progresses the amount of available data grows geometrically, and
I don't think there's any realistic way to put that genie back in the bottle
(without postulating some sort of massive civil/ecological collapse), so I
don't think the argument about "privacy" makes sense. The FANG companies et.
al. are already in a god-like position in re: the _hoi polloi_.

I think we should assume "total information awareness" and then try to build a
worthwhile civilization on that basis.

(FWIW, I hope for A but it seems like B is pretty much inevitable at this
point. YMMV)

[1] In Japan walls were made of literal rice paper stretched on frames, and as
an obvious corollary people generally knew their neighbors' business. "Rice
paper privacy" refers to social conventions to, er, "pretend" that there was
actual privacy.

~~~
resoluteteeth
> [1] In Japan walls were made of literal rice paper stretched on frames, and
> as an obvious corollary people generally knew their neighbors' business.
> "Rice paper privacy" refers to social conventions to, er, "pretend" that
> there was actual privacy.

Where can I read more about this?

~~~
carapace
Dunno, sorry, I heard about it from a Japanese person.

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MobileVet
I did a lot of research into the state of Ultra Wideband (UWB) during the
early 00s. It utilized time of flight and a wide band of frequencies to do
similar things. There were 2-3 major, well funded companies pursuing the tech
at the time.

Interestingly those companies never made it commercially, I suppose because
the cost of computation was prohibitive and they required special antenna.

It is very exciting that the technology can now be done in a cost effective
manner.

Most interesting though is how easily and effective ML was in adding
functionality to this implementation. Very cool.

~~~
andlier
No sure how these guys ([https://www.xethru.com/](https://www.xethru.com/))
are doing financially, but they sell development kits for respiration sensors
etc.

~~~
lathiat
Been following these guys for a while. Fascinating product.

To me though the most obvious but sadly simple use for this is sensor lights
in damn toilets. Sit on the toilet for more than a few minutes in some places
and the damn lights go out!

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hellscape
Figure there's malicious wi-fi capable of doing the same, since it's possible
to read lips and detect keystrokes via passive snooping of wi-fi reflections.

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badrabbit
Thie is nice,but laws that clearly define proper use of such tech are missing.

