Apples Patented i. Phone Panic Button Might Not Make You Much Safer. Could future i. Phones come with a built in panic button to discreetly summon the cops Its certainly a possibility, judging by Apples recent patent filings. According to a patent granted to Apple on Tuesday for Biometric Initiated Communication, the panic button could operate from a number of inputs including a particular finger or finger sequence, a particular timing or cadence, or whether input was entered with a particular force. One possible application of the button is to call emergency services without that fact being known to an assailant or other aggressive person that prompted the emergency call, and potentially send GPS data andor streaming audio or video to the authorities. It could also be used to execute a wipe of any crucial data on the phone, like social security numbers. Its certainly a feature that at face value sounds suitably pro safety. But whether or not a cell phone panic button ends up being much more than security theatersomething designed to provide the reassuring illusion of safety instead of actual safetymay end up relying on a lot of factors that cant be engineered into a phone. A panic button by definition can only be as effective as the response it summons while it may offer a new way to summon the cops, your mileage may vary depending on who those cops are. A 2. 00. 8 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey concluded that just 2. Just one third of property crimes were responded to within 1. But individual police departments can do much worse, like in Baltimore, where in certain neighborhoods a domestic violence call could take an average of 1. According to the Economist, police in New Orleans took an average of 2. Detroit police were taking close to an hour to respond to priority calls. Its tough to imagine surreptitious panic button callsespecially in situations where the user might not be able to talk directly with a dispatcherwould do much better. A good comparison might be home security systems. The New York Times estimated some 3. U. S. in 2. 01. 0, which is much less than the number of estimated i. Phones. Those stationary security systems are already a low police response priority, due in part to a high rate of false alarms. In 2. 01. 1, the Detroit Police Department decided only to respond to burglar alarms after they were verified by the security company. The problem of false alarms and where and how to direct police resources wont be made easier by putting panic buttons in millions of phones, especially when considering recent research has found cell phone butt dials might already constitute a huge percentage of 9. Theres also the continued problem of police shootings in the U. S., in which vague or incomplete information about suspects can play a contributing role. But Apple is far from the first to come up with the idea of equipping phones with some kind of panic button. Earlier this month, the Mexican city of Juarez released the No estoy sola I am not alone app, which dispatches text messages to emergency contacts with a link to the location of the user. Another app developed by Kenyan university student Edwin Inganji had similar functionality, but also relayed information to authorities. In India, which last year rolled out a plan to equip all new phones with panic buttons and GPS by 2. Orange Range Panic Fancy Downloadable Love' title='Orange Range Panic Fancy Downloadable Love' />New York Times noted some advocates fighting the countrys epidemic of sexual assault were optimistic while others cautioned it wouldnt solve deep rooted problems with the responsiveness and professionalism of police forces in India. CNBC. The Uncanny Sound Illusion That Creates Suspense in Christopher Nolans Movies. Ever notice how Christopher Nolans movies Interstellar, Inception, The Prestige feel like an anxiety attack Well, maybe thats overstating things a bit. But the director does have a knack for creating an unnerving degree of tension. Turns out hes using a little bit of musical magic to do it. The magic is actually a science based audio illusion called a Shepard tone. Named after psychologist Roger Shepard, a pioneer in our understanding of spatial relation, the effect sounds like an infinitely ascending or descending scale. The tones are constantly moving upwards or downwards, but they never seem to reach a pinnacle or nadir. Facebook engineers panic, pull plug on AI after bots develop their own language, one site wrote. Facebook shuts down down AI after it invents its own creepy. If you get panicked by crowds, you might not even know it. You might just tense up or get angry. I got snippy at the farmers market for years before I noticed the. BgJ2-63jNOU/V74oOl4zE9I/AAAAAAAAxME/GEtq7Oo5RowHpwlDBESI0domhORLxEAiACKgB/s640/IMG_20160824_111808195.jpg' alt='Orange Range Panic Fancy Downloadable Love' title='Orange Range Panic Fancy Downloadable Love' />This is accomplished by stacking scales on top of each othertypically one treble scale, one midrange, and one basswith an octave in between, then playing them in a continuous loop. A Shepard tone is sometimes referred to as the barber pole of sound. You can even see the similarity, when you hear it and look at the spectrum view of a Shepard tone. Dont listen to this too long, or you might lose your mind Anyways, Christopher Nolan just loves this. With longtime collaborator Hans Zimmer, the acclaimed director has used a Shepard tone in almost every one of his films in the last decade. He even writes his scripts to match the effect. In a recent interview, Nolan explained how he used Shepard tones in his newest film, Dunkirk The screenplay had been written according to musical principals. Theres an audio illusion, if you will, in music called a Shepard tone and with my composer David Julyan on The Prestige we explored that and based a lot of the score around that. And its an illusion where theres a continuing ascension of tone. Its a corkscrew effect. Its always going up and up and up but it never goes outside of its range. And I wrote the script according to that principle. I interwove the three timelines in such a way that theres a continual feeling of intensity. Increasing intensity. Valgrind For Windows. So I wanted to build the music on similar mathematical principals. Knowing this, you gain a deeper understanding of films like Interstellar, Inception, and The Prestige. It also explains why these films seem somehow inconclusive. A Shepards tone creates a conflict that cant be resolved, just like Nolans plots. Digg, Business Insider.