Many of you may have used Siri, a voice assistant of US tech company Apple. You only have to say “hey Siri” and it will answer to your command. However, we may be sacrificing our privacy to enjoy this convenience.
According to a recent report by the Guardian, Siri can be accidentally triggered(触发) and start recording private conversations, such as discussions between doctors and patients. Some of these recordings are then given to workers outside the company to review. Apple claimed the data was used to help Siri improve, but users were not informed of this measure in the first place.
Apple’s Siri is not the only voice assistant to come under fire. In 2018, Alexa, a voice assistant developed by US tech company Amazon, recorded a private conversation between a couple and sent it to a stranger without their permission.
These issues deepened concerns that tech companies are threatening users’ rights of privacy. Many people have long feared that tech companies are listening and collecting data from private conversations, reported Forbes. Using this data, third party companies could then paint an accurate picture of users’ habits and preferences in order to serve them more targeted advertisements, or even worse, sell this private data.
Despite this risk, the popularity of voice assistant seems to be unstoppable. According to a report by Ovum, a London-based research firm, there will be almost as many voice assistants on the planet as people by 2021. “In the near future, everything from your lighting to your air-conditioning to your refrigerator, your coffee maker, and even your toilet could be wired to a system controlled by voice,” commented The Atlantic. Colin Horgan wrote on the blog site Medium that he believed people’s daily lives will soon become a source of data. “The sounds of our homes, the symphony of life—laughing, crying, talking, shouting, sitting in silence—will no longer be considered memories, but data,” he wrote.
To deal with the issue, Blake Morgan, reporter for The Atlantic, believed that the answer is transparency. “All companies need to have messaging ready to explain to customers what they do with private data,” she wrote on The Atlantic.
Daniel Blair, CEO of a virtual reality startup in Canada, told CBC News that people can change settings and limit how often the device is active in your home, and do some research before buying a device.
1. Why are users worried about the use of the voice assistants?| A．The tech company didn’t tell the users how they work. |
| B．Their houses will be controlled by voice assistants. |
| C．The assistants will turn their daily lives into data. |
| D．Their private data may be collected and abused. |
| A．be on fire | B．be criticized | C．be praised | D．be out of date |
| A．Inform the users of how they deal with the data. |
| B．Remove the assistants from the users’ devices. |
| C．Change the settings and limit the use of the assistants. |
| D．Do some research on whether the users like the assistants. |
| A．Voice assistant: a future fashion |
| B．Voice assistant: a private data defender |
| C．Voice assistant: a potential privacy threat |
| D．Voice assistant: an efficient house-keeper |
相似题推荐
【推荐1】Busy streets, loud noises, and grey buildings can make city life exhausting and boring. Finding a solution to these issues might be possible by turning to nature, which can help us feel calm and refreshed.
Adding vegetation or colorful designs may make cities more enjoyable to live in. However, growing plants or covering buildings in paint to test these approaches is costly and inconvenient. Moreover, studying these phenomena outdoors can be tricky, as many factors can affect the final results. “Measuring pleasure and motivation in natural settings is extremely hard,” explained Prof. Yvonne Delevoye. “Human reactions are sensitive to environmental changes, such as weather or traffic. Consequently, we used virtual reality to measure reactions to these factors in a virtual urban space.”
The group used virtual reality to make a city setting that felt real. They made two versions: one with no vegetation, and another with some green vegetation. They also introduced colorful patterns onto a path. Then they invited students to participate in the study. Wearing a VR headset and walking on the spot, the students spent time exploring the virtual environment. To find out where the volunteers were looking and for how long, each headset included an eye tracker.
The researchers found that the students walked more slowly when there was green vegetation present in the experiment, and their heart rate increased. They would spend less time looking at the ground and more time observing their surroundings. These results indicate a pleasurable experience. Bright color patterns alone did not have quite the same uplifting effect as the green vegetation, but they inspired interest and passion of the students and attracted their stare while increasing their heart rate.
Virtual reality might be a useful resource for urban planners, allowing them to experiment with different elements in a virtual environment. In the future, the researchers aim to improve the VR experience to get even better and more precise outcomes.
1. What was the primary reason for using virtual reality in the study?| A．To create an entertaining game for students. |
| B．To demonstrate the inconvenience of urban life. |
| C．To prove the superiority of technology over nature. |
| D．To measure reactions without environmental influence. |
| A．By walking around a real city. |
| B．By making use of an eye tracker. |
| C．By wearing a headset and walking on site. |
| D．By observing through a screen without moving. |
| A．Powerful. | B．Cheerful. | C．Encouraging. | D．Healing. |
| A．Reducing the costs of urban development significantly. |
| B．Providing a platform for testing various urban elements. |
| C．Predicting future urban challenges with precise results. |
| D．Helping cities avoid using real vegetation in urban space. |
【推荐2】Mr. Guo is a teacher from Xi’an. He asked his students to hand in their homework through a QR code (二维码). “We spent an hour or two in class learning how to generate (使产生) the codes, and in the end everything gets easier,” said Guo. “When students finish the homework, they keep it on WeChat (微信). Then, each student makes his own QR code and gives it to me. So, I can check their work everywhere using my computer or telephone” .
Guo’s students like the new way and think it is interesting. “We are living in the information age. Many students like to work with computers, which makes learning more fun.” said Tingting, a student of Guo’s.
However, some parents are worried. They are afraid that their children will spend too much time on computers and less time communicating with teachers. But in fact, it’s unnecessary. Students still need to look up information in books and write it down when they do their homework. They only use the code when they hand in their work, which doesn’t take them too much time. Also, for teachers, it allows them to check the students’ work at any time. And it’s also an easy way to share homework with other students.
1. What do Mr. Guo’s students think of the new way of handing in their homework?| A．They think it’s boring. | B．They think it’s interesting. |
| C．They think it’s difficult. | D．They think it’s unnecessary. |
| A．talk with their teacher face to face |
| B．find the QR codes too difficult to use |
| C．hate the new way of handing in homework |
| D．spend too much time on computers or phones |
| A．Some parents are worried about their children. |
| B．Teachers don’t need to check homework any more. |
| C．Using QR codes makes checking homework easier. |
| D．Students don’t need to hand in homework any more. |
【推荐3】Medha Gupta sometimes felt worried about making the 20-minute walk from the corner where the school bus dropped her off to her home in Herndon,Va.—especially during the colder months in winter.
Her mother, Divya Gupta had a suggestion: write an app. She was half-kidding, but Medha didn’t take the challenge lightly.So she set out to work.
The result was Safe Travel, an app designed by Medha to help walkers feel more secure when they are travelling alone. Using the iPhone, a person can program it to send a warning to someone he or she trusts if he or she fails to arrive at a destination within a certain time.
It was the first iOS app that Medha had created. While she didn’t think much would come from the project, her effort caught the eye of judges for the annual Congressional App Challenge,who selected her as the winner for Virginia’s 10th District.
The App Challenge is designed to encourage students to consider careers in science, technology, engineering, and math by experimenting with coding and computer science.Winning students are invited to attend a reception on Capitol Hill in April and also received $250 in Amazon Web Service credits.
Medha said it took her about 40 hours to design, program and test the app.As for her next app? Medha’s not certain. She temporarily has her app-development ambitions on hold because she’s busy teaching herself artificial intelligence to help deal with improper words on social media platforms.Yes,she knows that there are teams of engineers probably doing the same thing.But she figures it can’t hurt her own part,too.
“If we see something wrong with the world,we should do something about it,” she said.“After all,the only one stopping us from doing something is ourselves.”
1. Why did Medha Gupta feel worried?| A．It took a long time to walk home. |
| B．It was difficult to write an app. |
| C．It was colder than ever in winter. |
| D．It was unsafe to walk home alone. |
| A．Serious. | B．Casual. |
| C．Uncertain. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．Developed. | B．Delayed. |
| C．Achieved. | D．Satisfied. |
【推荐1】Hotels often undergo makeovers. However, few can compete with the Ice hotel in Jukkasjãrvi, Sweden. Carved entirely from “Snice”—a mix of snow and ice—the hotel is rebuilt annually, with each version more impressive than the previous one. The 32nd Ice hotel was open to guests on April 17, 2022.
The must-visit Swedish tourist destination came about accidentally. In 1989, Ice hotel’s founder Yngve Berquist organized an art show to attract tourists to Jukkasjärvi during the chilly winter months. The exhibition, held inside a 5.5-square-metre igloo (冰屋), was a runaway (迅速的) success. Many visitors decided to spend the night, selling out all of Jukkasjärvi’s warm houses. Hence, when a group approached Berquist about a place to spend the night, he offered them the igloo. “To my surprise, the guests were very impressed by the experience the morning after. Ice hotel was born,” Berquist recalls.
The Ice hotel has come a long way since its humble (简陋的)start. Constructed from 1, 000 tons of ice, and 30,000 tons of “Snice”, it now covers an area of over 5, 500 square metres, Preparations for the annual hotel begin in March with the harvesting of 5,000 tons of ice from the nearby Torne River. The ice is kept in cold storage until November when about 100 workers and artists get to work carving out a new structure. Ice hotel is typically open for business by mid-December.
This year’s hotel comprises 36 rooms, including 12 crafted art suites (套间). Decorated with massive ice stones and carved water shapes, it aims to provide visitors with a good nature experience. The “Dickensian Street” suite promises to take visitors on a tour of 19th-century England, complete with cobbled (铺鹅卵石的) streets, shops, and buildings from the era. Guests are advised to stay inside thermal (保暖的) sleeping bags and wear gloves and winter hats all night. Not surprisingly, most move to the conventional, warmer cabins nearby after a single night.
1. When was Sweden’s Ice hotel open for the 22nd time?| A．In 2012. | B．In 1992. | C．In 1990. | D．In 2022. |
| A．Warm houses’ being sold out. | B．The special warmth of it. |
| C．The cheap ticket of it. | D．The unique structures of ice. |
| A．Differences of Ice hotel rebuilt from ever before. |
| B．The preparations for the annual hotel rebuilt. |
| C．How the ice is kept in cold storage in Ice hotel. |
| D．The development and construction of Ice hotel. |
| A．Wear summer clothes even if in winter. |
| B．Spend nights in modern rooms in warm sleeping bags. |
| C．Experience 19th-century England in the “Dickensian Street” suite. |
| D．Taste different kinds of local special food in the Dickensian Street. |
【推荐2】No one knows when the first kite was made. The first record of a kite was more than 2, 000 years ago in China. Han Xin, the leader of an army, wanted to bring down a king. He decided to dig a tunnel (隧道) into the king’s palace. He flew a kite over the wall of the palace to make sure the length of its string (线). In this way, he could determine how long the tunnel should be. His men in the tunnel took the kite string with them. When they reached the end of the string, they knew to dig up.
Kites have been flown in Japan for hundreds of years. In the 1700s, kites were flown in autumn to give thanks for a good harvest. They were also flown to send good wishes to couples who had their first son. Today in Japan, kites are often flown as part of a celebration, such as the beginning of a new year. And kite festivals are held each year in many parts of the country.
Kites have been used for scientific purposes in the western world. In 1752, Benjamin Franklin tied a key to a kite and flew it in a storm to find out that lightening was a form of electricity. In the 1890s, Lawrence Hargrave invented the box kite to test ideas about flight. From 1898 until 1933, the United States Weather Bureau (气象局) used box kites to collect weather data. The Wright brothers also experimented (试验) with kites. What they learnt helped them make the first airplane flight in 1903.
1. What was the purpose of Han Xin wanting dig a tunnel?| A．To pull down the palace. |
| B．To fight against the king. |
| C．To search for the king’s treasure. |
| D．To find out the length of the kite string |
| A．确定 | B．选择 | C．了解 | D．考察 |
| A．In1752. | B．In1898. | C．In1903. | D．In1933. |
| A．The history of kites. | B．The experiments of kites. |
| C．The invention of a kite. | D．The first record of a kite. |
【推荐3】When I was young, a friend and I came up with a “big” plan to make reading easy. The idea was to boil down great books to a sentence each. “Moby-Dick” by American writer Herman Melville, for instance, was reduced to: “A whale of a tale about the one that got away.” As it turned out, the joke was on us. How could a single sentence convey the essence (精髓) of a masterpiece with over five hundred pages?
Blinkist, a website and an app, now summarizes nonfiction titles in the form of quick takes labeled “blinks”. The end result is more than one sentence, but not by much. Sarah Bakewell’s “At the Existentialist Café” is broken into 11 screens of information; Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” fills 13.
Blinkist has been around since 2012. It calls its summaries “15-minute discoveries” to indicate how long it takes to read a Blinkist summary. “Almost none of us,” the editors assure us, “have the time to read everything we’d like to read.”
But I think a book is something we ought to live with, rather than speed through and categorize. It offers an experience as real as any other. The point of reading a book is not accumulating information, or at least not that alone. The most essential aspect is the communication between writer and reader. The idea behind Blinkist, however, is the opposite: Reading can be, should be, measured by the efficient uptake (吸收) of key ideas.
No, no, no. What’s best about reading books is its inefficiency. When reading a book, we need to dive in, let it take over us, demand something of us, teach us what it can. Blinkist is instead a service that changes books for people who don’t, in fact, want to read. A 15-minute summary misses the point of reading; speed-reading with the app isn’t reading at all.
1. What does the underlined part “the joke was on us” in Paragraph 1 mean?| A．We were actually joking. | B．We were laughed at by others. |
| C．We were underestimating’ ourselves. | D．We were just embarrassing ourselves. |
| A．What Blinkist is. | B．Why Blinkist is popular. |
| C．How to use Blinkist. | D．Where you can use Blinkist. |
| A．Obtaining key ideas efficiently. | B．Further confirming our beliefs. |
| C．Accumulating information quickly. | D．Deeply involving ourselves in books. |
| A．Positive. | B．Negative | C．Uncaring. | D．Tolerant. |
The thieves then go shopping with your card number—or sell the information over the Internet. Computer hackers(黑客)have broken down security(安全) system, raising questions about the safety of card holder information.
Several months ago, 25,000 customers of a CD universe, an online music retailer(批发商), were not lucky. Their names, addresses and credit-card numbers were posted on a Website after the retailer refused to pay US $ 157,828 to get back the information.
Credit-card firms are now fighting against online fraud. Master-card is working on plans for Web only credit-card, with a lower credit limit. The card could be used only for shopping online. However , there are a few simple steps you can take to keep from being cheated.
Ask about your credit-card firm’s online rules: under British law, cardholders are responsible for the first US $ 78 of any fraudulent spending. And shop only at secure sites: send your credit-card information only if the Website offers advanced secure system.
If the security is in place, a letter will appear in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. The Website address may also start http://--the extra “s” stands for secure. If in doubt, give your credit-card information over the telephone.
Keep your password safe: most online sites require a user name and password before placing an order. Treat your password with care.
1. The underlined word “fraud” in the first paragraph probably means ______.
| A．cheating | B．sale | C．payment | D．use |
| A．a great number of stolen credit-cards are sold on the Internet every day |
| B．fraud on the Internet happens very often |
| C．many Websites break down every day |
| D．there are too many illegal Websites on the Internet |
| A．because many customers lost their cards |
| B．by paying money for people working in the information companies |
| C．because of the carelessness of the customers |
| D．by stealing the information from Websites |
| A．the bank and the shop will suffer great losses |
| B．you will not be able to get back your information |
| C．you might suffer great losses |
| D．the bank will answer for your loss |
| A．How to Beat Online Credit-card Thieves |
| B．How to Shop on the Internet |
| C．Never Use Credit-card Without an Advanced Computer |
| D．Why Thieves Steal Credit-card Information |
【推荐2】This year researchers expect the world to take 1. 35 trillion photographs, or about 3. 7 billion per day. All those pixels (像素) take up a lot of room if they are stored on personal computers or phones, which is one reason why many people store their images in the cloud. But unlike a hard drive which can be encrypted (加密) to protect its data, cloud storage users have to trust that a tech platform will keep their private pictures safe. Now a team of Columbia University computer scientists have developed a tool to encrypt images stored on many popular cloud services while allowing authorized users to view and show their photographs as usual.
Getting cloud-based photographs with bad intentions (意图) can leak (泄露) personal information. In November 2019, for example, a bug in the popular photograph storage app Google Photos mistakenly shared some users’ private videos with strangers. Safety experts also worry about employees at cloud storage companies getting users’ images without being allowed.
So the Columbia researchers came up with a system called Easy Secure Photos (ESP), which they presented at a recent meeting. “We wanted to see if we could make it possible to encrypt data while using existing services, ” says a computer scientist Jason Nieh, one of the developers of ESP. “Everyone wants to stay with the storage app and does not have to register on a new encrypted-image cloud storage service.”
To overcome this problem, they created a tool that protects blocks of pixels but moves them around to hide the photography successfully. First, ESP’s algorithm (算法) divides a photograph into three separate parts, each one including the image s red, green or blue color data. Then the system hides the pixel blocks around among these three parts (allowing a block from the red color, for example to hide in the green or blue ones). But the program does nothing within the pixel blocks. As a result, the photograph remains unchanged but ends up looking like unclear black-and-white ones to anyone who gets them without the decryption (解密) key.
1. What’s probably the main purpose for people to store images in the cloud?| A．To save storage room. |
| B．To make photos beautiful. |
| C．To try a new storage way. |
| D．To keep their privacy safe. |
| A．They sell users’ passwords. |
| B．They have invented new tools. |
| C．They often let out personal information. |
| D．They may look at users’ images in secret. |
| A．It can provide clear images. |
| B．It can decrease the upload time. |
| C．It can divide images into different types. |
| D．It can encrypt data on the present platform. |
| A．The method of encryption. |
| B．The image-processing technique. |
| C．The separation of files of images. |
| D．Data analysis of colors. |
【推荐3】Internet security researchers say they have looked at and identified software weakness that puts millions of smart devices we use at risk of attacks and the Internet security weakness can be used to attack business or home computer networks. The report says many devices are designed for personal use and include the ability to control home cameras and temperature from a distance. Companies use similar devices in security systems, heating and cooling equipment, printers and servers.
There is no evidence that any attacks have already been carried out on the defenceless devices. However, the findings have led the officials to give a warning to the users and suggest to them that defensive measures should be taken to lessen the risks of attacks. Specifically, the officials say industrial control systems shouldn’t be accessible from the Internet and should be separated from company networks.
Awais Rashid is a computer scientist who has examined the findings. He says that the discovery shows the dangers experts often find in Internet-linked devices designed without much attention to security. He adds inattentive programming by developers appears to be the main issue in this case. Dealing with the problem is especially complex because the weaknesses are found in so-called open-source software, which is free to use and can be changed by anyone. According to Elisa, vice president of research, the fact that open-source software is not owned by anyone makes the problem difficult to solve but the problem should be tackled with an effort. This means it is up to device manufacturers to fix the weaknesses themselves and some may not have the time or money to do so.
Experts say the risks are even higher with so many people working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. This could permit attackers to hack into home networks and use this as a pathway into company networks.
1. What is the researchers’ attitude towards the Internet security weakness?| A．Tolerant. | B．Doubtful. | C．Concerned. | D．Uncaring. |
| A．By giving some advice to the Internet users. |
| B．By helping online users upgrade software. |
| C．By linking industrial control systems to company networks. |
| D．By warning Internet operators to lessen the risks of attacks. |
| A．Complex and impossible. |
| B．Challenging but necessary. |
| C．Effortless and worthwhile. |
| D．Potential but unimportant. |
| A．To advocate using defensive devices. |
| B．To urge us to stay away from the Internet. |
| C．To separate home networks from company networks. |
| D．To introduce the potential risk of smart devices. |
