"Speaking of cheating though, I heard they have directional speakers that have a spread of only like a foot. With something like that it seems like it’d be easy to cheat."

Yeah, but they still spread enough to be audible, and the reflections are audible as well. In a testing environment it would be hard to completely hide.

I'm surprised so many people speak of these as something they haven't experienced. I recall at least two grocery stores I've been in using these to beam ads at people while they were in line, and that was years ago, and I'm not in SV either, it's not like people around here use cutting edge tech for the heck of it very often. Mercifully, they didn't last long. While I didn't enjoy the ads, I did enjoy the opportunity to hear exactly how they work and get a sense of their strengths and weaknesses.

(It is absolutely true that they are garbage at bass frequencies, and the lower midrange as well. The ads were all voiced by women, because I'm not sure men would even have been comprehensible. I mean that literally. Their lowest frequency response is that high. As clever as they are it's not a surprise we don't hear them more often. They are super specialist gear not suitable for most tasks.)

I read a blog post once by someone who used Anki and was failing medical school, and didn't think Anki was a good tool for them.

11 years, per the article.