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This reminds me of how it's possible to decode prairie dog communication into literal 'words' that specify location of possible threats (lookup 'Slobodchikoff prarie dogs'). It's remarkable. Only made possible by the curious–albeit eccentric–human sitting in nature and listening in true analog.

And, on the topic of tapping, I imagine even the cadence of our keystrokes can be used to construct meaningful browser fingerprints. We are always emitting so many artefacts that can be used to construct rich identities. It's a bit terrifying from a surveillence perspective but also very satisfying to create order from noise.

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I'll have to dig it up (maybe if I get time tomorrow I'll try), but I've seen a couple research papers where they wrote software that got was pretty effective at decoding peoples passwords by listening to them type. Between different keys sounding slightly different, the timing between keystrokes, and an individual's personal typing patterns, it's not even all that difficult. So yes, that sort of thing has definitely been done.

People identifying machine status by sound is one I like.

I’m in radiology and knowing what the MR scanner is doing from a few rooms away is something many of us can do.

‘The TR is wrong’

Presumably common in other fields with noisy machines.