261–270 of 301 posts
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/
The sounds probably aren't a prank or a recording of a human at all. I am guessing it is just a resonant frequency of a standard part being picked up as a feedback loop due to some component which was recently exposed after a change in maintenance protocols. (or something similarly mundane) I have heard all sorts of ghoulish sounds picked up while tinkering with RF and old microchips. Our brains tend to anthropomorph…
I listened to the recording in the article, and it sounds like a human. Further, it sounds like the same human. And I found myself reading the emotional message behind the sounds. So...yeah, it's an interesting theory, but I think it's more likely a prank or someone making a point.
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Anecdotal, but... I was on a flight from Chicago to Raleigh a few years ago, and we were just starting to taxi out to the runway when the plane stopped and the pilot got on the PA and said something like "Sorry folks, we have a maintenance indicator (kind of like a 'check engine' light) that has come on. We have to go back to the terminal and get maintenance to check things out." So we go back to the terminal, wait a…
My mother was a flight attendant on a flight where they thought the front landing gear didn’t come down. There were three independent systems on an L-1011 to detect this and all three agreed that the landing gear failed to extend. They did a tower flyby, and the tower said the wheels were down, so they operated under the assumption it wasn’t locked into place. The plane circled for a long time while emergency crews f…
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You only think this because the airlines normally suppress them.
If I ever write a script it will have this real life dialogue in it. “Do you believe in ghosts?” “No, do you?” “Yeah, a bit. Think about all the times people saw and heard ghosts. Every single one of those times was wrong? Seems unlikely.” “Do you believe in angels?” “No.” “Then what about all the times people saw an angel?” “Those were just ghosts.”
"Then how do you explain all the dead unicorns?"
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I listened to the recording in the article, and it sounds like a human. Further, it sounds like the same human. And I found myself reading the emotional message behind the sounds. So...yeah, it's an interesting theory, but I think it's more likely a prank or someone making a point.
Another way to think about it: there are a lot of planes and different ways the PA system could go wrong. You’re much less likely to read an article about a plane being ‘haunted’ by a strange clicking or buzzing or humming or white noise sound.
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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…
Reminds me of when a security researcher discovered that, in addition to some serious security flaws, certain Siemens PLCs had monkeys hidden in their firmware: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2011/08/serio... According to the researcher who found it, "they didn’t think it was very funny.” I love easter eggs myself—classic Apple software in particular had a lot of these, and I really miss finding them—…
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I doubt courts would interpret "hacked into an airplane's communication system" as a silly prank, but I ANAL.
Plugging in a Bluetooth transmitter into a user-accessible port and using the system as intended is "hacking" now? Sure, passengers weren't intended to use that port, but from a system perspective the system is being used as intended with no interference or exploitation. I'm not sure this system can even be "hacked" short of disassembling parts of the plane and tapping into the communications wiring.
So yes this is legally a hack in the way it’s used by the media, it’s also a hack of in the normal since of the word regardless.
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I don’t deny that it’s an important safety system. I’m curious, though, if they’re treated like safety critical systems in design or if emergency training covers how to act if the PA is down. I’ve got to believe it’s safety critical.
I'd assume it's important to safety, but they have slightly less effective backups like yelling. I think the backup systems on aircraft are often things you'd rather not need to use.
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…