151–160 of 316 posts
I have this weird "turn on your laptop and your phone cannot see the wi-fi anymore" bug, or whatever this is. I've tested this with different phones, same issue. So, I'm turning on my phone wi-fi and it all works well. As soon as I start my laptop, the wi-fi goes off, it is not seen by my phone. The laptop is cable-connected. Sometimes all is fine so this is kinda random. Maybe on cloudy days it works (as remyp says…
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> Is it just me who'd love something like this to happen to me? I love reading about interesting problems and creative ways to solve them. I used to wish for the same. But then I was given a super annoying one. In my apartment I heard this beep about once every 90 seconds or so. I tried ignoring it for a while hoping it'd go away. And just so at the right frequency and infrequent enough Impossible to determine direct…
Off topic to the discussion, but you hit on something that struck a nerve with me so I'm going to go with it . . . Oh good God, this happens to me every time one of my smoke alarm batteries starts to go. I have 6 smoke detectors and an older home where they're not all wired/battery back-up but rather all battery powered. The "chirp at 90 second interval" thing is the worst design in the universe and it bites me every…
You can get a smoke alarm with 10 year battery life to reduce the likelihood of this happening. When all are purchased in one batch, you can then pretty much replace them all at once -- if first battery goes, next ones are soon to follow.
I got some unconventional looking ones from Jalo Helsinki [1] for my house. They work well and look good. However, I know some people working at Jalo, so my opinion is biased. There are several other long battery-life smoke alarms on the market from different manufacturers to choose from.
[1] https://www.jalohelsinki.com/product-category/smoke-alarms-1...
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It seems like a bit of a stretch, but in theory - depending on the details of the radio, and the power being emitted by the neighbor's station - you might be able to get some audio from a "powered off" radio. Maybe it's doing something like what happens when a crystal radio[1] absorbs enough power inductively to generate its audio. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio
I've heard stories of unplugged loudspeakers turning into AM radios with enough power pumped into the air, so there's that too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHSuInSkHtA
Listening to the tranmission using the arc the tower generates to ground!
When I worked at an NOC for a fairly large ISP they told me a story of an intermittent outage that occurred randomly on weekends. Something was injecting insane amounts of RF interference on the lines. They tracked it down to the node, then the neighborhood. And then finally they found the culprit. What was knocking the network out of whack? It was some guys edge trimmer. The motor in it was injecting crazy signals s…
On a related note it’s interesting how electric shavers (which could easily suffer from the same issue) are allowed on aircraft, but mobile devices need to be in flight mode. Are the frequencies of RF noise from an electric motor in a different range, so they don’t cause issues with aircraft?
When I worked at an NOC for a fairly large ISP they told me a story of an intermittent outage that occurred randomly on weekends. Something was injecting insane amounts of RF interference on the lines. They tracked it down to the node, then the neighborhood. And then finally they found the culprit. What was knocking the network out of whack? It was some guys edge trimmer. The motor in it was injecting crazy signals s…
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Time for my story. I was a noobie computer programmer in my first job. After being there for a few months my mouse started to have issues. It stuttered and refused to move correctly. So I'd take the little grey ball out and clean it and it'd be OK again. But the next day it'd do it again. So I ended up with the cleanest fucking mouse on planet earth. Yet every so often it'd stop working... on parts of the screen. Oth…
Wait, you had a buzzin when the video card is active as well? Was yours dependent on the refresh rate on the video card? (I haven't found any other mention of a similar problem elsewhere, and mine has been doing that for a few years now.)
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I can often tell that I'm about to receive a text message because my poorly shielded computer speakers will start buzzing. I assume it's caused by a transmission from my phone's radio inducing a current in the amplification circuit. I would guess this is what's happening with your GFI. Even though you're receiving the call, your phone is probably transmitting too (sending back the equivalent of an ACK or something).…
I’m guessing car manufacturers have caught onto this. I drove a year 2000 car whose speakers would know I was about to receive a text/call several seconds before receiving it. I don’t think I’ve been in a model later than 2008 that’s had this problem. The noise, like the AOL dialup modem beeps, are one of those things that become cemented in your brain and immediately recall themselves as soon as you think about them…