Signals

It was an internet sensation, that's for sure. And a real head-scratcher, too. People listened to the same audio clip, and heard two completely different words. Much like the black/blue-white/gold dress craze that visually swept the internet three years ago, yanny/laurel did the same thing, but aurally.

If you happened to be at cruising altitude last Monday, your pilot probably got on the comms and made an unexpected announcement. Effective immediately, the mask mandate had been vacated. What??? Oh no!!! Fortunately, you were wearing your Dyson headphone.

Do you know what Tizen is? Tizen might be in your home right now. You might even be looking at it this very moment. Do you know why Samsung dearly wants to put Tizen in your home theater, and even, if possible, in your pocket? Hmm, my fellow citizens of Troy, maybe we should take a look at that big wooden horse sitting outside our city gates.

Was it the carbonara? I wolfed down that big bowl of “coal miner’s spaghetti” but did the pork seem just slightly off? In any case, something sure made me drowsy, and now it feels like I slept forever. Did I pull a Rip Van Winkle and awaken years later? Or am I still asleep and this is all just a dream? Either way, here I am with the reincarnated Sound & Vision magazine in my hands. It’s the October/November issue. October/November 2124, that is.

For most of us, when we think of Sony, we think of audio/video stuff. Hey, we're home-theater nerds, and our view of reality is warped by that. In reality, Sony is much bigger than TVs and headphones. For example, the company is also traveling to outer space.

It's not easy being a corporation. Take Volkswagen, for example. Right about now, they are probably wishing that Ferdinand Porsche had never stuffed an air-cooled engine in the back of a Beetle-shaped car. Along similar lines, Toshiba probably wishes it had hired more ethical accountants. In particular, it recently announced that it had overstated its profits by $1.3 billion over seven years. Oops. Not exactly a rounding error.