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Comment by united893 | Hacker News Reader

If you break into someone's home with the intention of causing irreparable damage, why not just poison them? What's the point of using a fancy high tech device?

Anyhow, it sounds like a device you can't hear can damage your hearing. It also looks like a device you can't see may damage your vision.

(Edit: Got downvoted, oh come-on, you guys can't take a dad-joke)

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A $10 PCB is so much simpler than poison. Easier to acquire, safer (for the attacker) to store and deliver, harder to recognize as a weapon (think wifi router case). And perhaps most importantly, you can include a remote kill switch in case you need to abort the op or temporarily evade an inspection.

Wow, this actually is quite horrifying. Makes me want to go full cyborg.

> "you can include a remote kill switch"

Just don't label it "kill switch" or people will get very confused.

Many years of cartoon villains has taught me that including self-destruct buttons on any of your devices will typically cause them to be used prematurely.

And not one of those villains ever thought to trap the button. Pull to disarm, push to receive flashbang.

Hearing is different in that mechanical transduction pathway and even low frequency cilia can be damaged by air pressure that is not detected as sound. However, the damage itself would be painful and even high frequency pressure of this kind could be felt as weird sensation on skin.

Sure, it wouldn't make sense that this would be intentional - it's more likely that the ultrasound (if it's the cause) would be used for something else, e.g. exfiltrating information out of a secure room or as part of some kind of eavesdropping system.

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