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A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

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Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#211

Post by 6stringmerc »

stickfigure wrote: post #157
exmadscientist wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of those people who thinks easter eggs are great, and miss the days when you had a decent chance of coming across one in a program or game. The FAA does not agree with that. The FAA probably thinks that easter eggs in avionics software are a crime. And I agree with that position! Aviation, medical, military, and any other critical software should not contain easter eggs, and it should be an offense to knowing…

> critical software should not contain easter eggs So boring! I look forward to my pacemaker giving me palpitations to the rhythm of "Never Gonna Give You Up".

I read in Slash’s autobiography that when he got his pacemaker installed they set it at a certain heart rate, but when he played his first live show, he felt a handful of thumps in his chest and thought it was bigger pyro than normal.

Turns out his pacemaker was shocking him because it thought his elevated heart rate was a danger! They fixed the setting.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#212

Post by 6stringmerc »

tomcam wrote: post #196
Thorrez wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this article the author claims to have talked to American Airlines about it: >American Airlines inspected the Boeing 737-800 as well as the P.A. system itself after these reports. They tell me that maintenance “determined the sounds were caused by an issue with the PA amplifier. There was no external access to the system.” https://viewfromthewing.com/no-theres-no-ghost-in-the-machin...

> “determined the sounds were caused by an issue with the PA amplifier. There was no external access to the system.” Hard to agree. Those sounds are almost certainly a human voice, presumably digitized. Unless the issue with the PA amp is that someone connected a sample player to it. Former pro audio engineer here.

Yeah that is not an electrical hiccup in the audio - that’s a human. I am guessing Slavic by the inflection cadence. Also, Cozy Bear and all that.

Longtime guitarist, producer, film fanatic here and this is really going to be interesting.

It does remind me of last Halloween where I had my jumpsuit and hockey mask to be Jason Voorhies and I got a small mp3 player and looped an hour of “ki-ki-ma-ma-ma” lifted from YouTube and played thru a little amp on my porch. Play scarecrow and only move to scare the big kids or their parents haha.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#214

Post by gorgoiler »

chx wrote: post #78
shon wrote: post #66

Pretty interesting. If it’s a hoax, it’s a pretty good one. If it’s a hack of any sort someone is taking their life in their hands because being caught tampering with any commercial airline systems could mean significantly jail time. Cleaning crews and other staff have enough time on the plane to do something… I’m thinking like an Adafruit Waveshield with a timer or something. If it’s a ghost, it seems like a horny a…

> because being caught tampering with any commercial airline systems could mean significantly jail time. not sure. A cursory reading of https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/32 doesn't mesh with a silly prank. Which law do you think they are breaking?

I think you could nail the culprit to the wall quite easily on a combination of:

- law that says you aren’t allowed to vandalise other peoples stuff (for the verdict); and

- the thing being vandalised is the thing used to coordinate safe evacuation of passengers on a vessel (for a hefty sentence).

Like scribbling on a painting vs a bus stop — let the justice be done in the sentencing.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#215

Post by 6stringmerc »

Related anecdote:

Back in 2003 or 2004 I was at University and my best friend went there too, a year behind me so different lives.

He’s a brilliant software developer today and we ran amok digitally before the age of 18 and things really got serious. Free Kevin. We had that spirit.

I was playing music and hanging out with Mary Jane and he got a job with campus IT. Through his personal explorations he gained access to the Admin of the campus AV system. I mean the entire thing - if it was connected, he could control it. I doubt that was in his job description or assigned permissions, but I didn’t ask.

His way of proving it is you could tell him “I’m in Calculus II at 11-12:30 on Tuesday in Building X Room XXX” and at 11:55 the overhead projector would turn on magically but because it wasn’t connected to anything locally it was just the light. Off, then on again, then off for good.

A little disruptive but hey it’s higher education and that taught me a valuable lesson about willpower and mischievousness with a Kokopelli spirit.

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#216

Post by 6stringmerc »

bagels wrote: post #209
maxbond wrote: post #122

This reminded me of something that happened to me in college. This is a unlikely sounding story, but I swear it's the truth. I started noticing some odd sounds in the Student Union building. One day I had some time and decided to investigate. I realized it was coming from a fire alarm. I stood under the alarm and listened for a while. The alarm was quietly whistling "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk.

I have a similar kind of fun story. The emergency phone on the elevator at work had a phone number somewhat close to that of an appliance store. People would call the number, the elevator phone would immediately put them on speaker phone. I figured this out one time I heard a faint phone breathing sound, and I started speaking with the caller. This happened again about once a year, and I had a fun time explaining to…

Okay thank you for sharing - I answered a spam call on an elevator emergency phone once and I was puzzled but found it funny. So there’s an actual number…oh boy if only there was a registry…

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#217

Post by totetsu »

canjobear wrote: post #193
kennyloginz wrote: post #145

These sounds are familiar to me from using “ pink trombone”, or praat, both vocal synthesizer. I would guess that a text - to - speech system is bugging out. https://dood.al/pinktrombone/

Modern speech synthesizers don’t use tube models.

But it is a fascinating alternative. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2008/768232/

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#218

Post by 6stringmerc »

bentobean wrote: post #162

Let’s just hope they don’t program this thing to play the brown note.

Or that riot dispersal undulating tone meant to cause discomfort like the one used by Gaspar Noe in the beginning of Irreversible.

We thought people were bad on planes before yikes!

Re: A mysterious voice is haunting American Airlines’ in-flight announcements

#220

Post by pxmpxm »

hoppla wrote: post #219

On an airline, the intercom system was accessible from the guest Wi-Fi network. You would not even need to be on the plane to “patch” the system…

I would bet a large amount of money what you mentioned is entirely false. The PA systems are built into the aircraft, where as wifi is an aftermarket addon.
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