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How to date a recording using background electrical noise

robertheaton.com

11–20 of 35 posts

Re: How to date a recording using background electrical noise

#11
post #9

Curious if this can be used to discern AI-generated voice recordings vs authentic. A determined faker could always add their own noise, but this be a good first-pass detector.

A recent approach along these lines is to do acoustic modeling of the vocal tract that would have produced the speech. Unsurprisingly, AI voices do not correspond to realistic human vocal tracts, for now.

https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity22/presentat...

Re: How to date a recording using background electrical noise

#13
Right below the author's comment, "Regardless of a grid’s size, the current flowing through it oscillates in perfect synchrony, at exactly the same frequency, throughout the whole grid," he presents a map of Western Europe's regional groups. I notice that Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland comprise the Nordic Regional Group.

Iceland? There is a lot of water between Iceland and the other three nations in its group. Is Iceland's power indeed synchronized with the other three? If so, why does it need to be?

Below the map, the author includes a link crediting the Wikipedia article on power grids[0], which includes maps of other regions in the world.

Perusing the map for North America, I notice another noncontiguous regional group, namely the Alaska group. Most of Alaska is off the grid (or, more accurately, on a collection of local grids too small to be named). The named group includes a slice of the interior extending northward from Anchorage towards Fairbanks and a separate noncontiguous area containing Juneau. I have the same question, are the two sub-regions synchronized?

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid

Re: How to date a recording using background electrical noise

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the guy too but not a big fan of the whole dumb-it-down/ELI5 culture. Some subjects absolutely require a lot more (written text, experimentation/tweaking with code) than few fancy videos to grasp.

A dumbed down version is great to introduce people to the subject Chances are that good written explanations already exist, just a Google search away, for those who want to learn more. Tom’s video and this blog post are perfect combo that complement each other.

Dumbed down without being inaccurate is also often sufficient for anyone with some base knowledge in an area. You can figure a lot out simply by being told the core concept, no need to go into extreme detail.

Extreme detail is great for those that want or need it, but it's far from the only reasonable option for learning things.

---

Re the general flood of these kinds of videos: oh yeah, I think it's excessive. I suspect YouTube is pushing that category lately (which is FAR from the worst to push, so I'm largely okay with that). It feels like all the popular, algorithmically pushed ones are making sure to cross the magic 10 minute mark, and try to look like TV/movie editing, regardless of what those do to the content. Bonus points for obtuse video titles that tell you nothing about what topic is covered.

Which is part of why I like his. They almost never hit 10 minutes, or even close. There's little fluff, little drama, little algorithmic gaming - videos today look very similar to several years ago.

Re: How to date a recording using background electrical noise

#15
post #3

A video on the same subject: https://youtu.be/e0elNU0iOMY I really enjoy Tom Scott. Everything he puts out is wonderfully concise.

I like the guy too but not a big fan of the whole dumb-it-down/ELI5 culture. Some subjects absolutely require a lot more (written text, experimentation/tweaking with code) than few fancy videos to grasp.

Have you tried any 3Blue1Brown videos? Highly recommend

Re: How to date a recording using background electrical noise

#16

Right below the author's comment, "Regardless of a grid’s size, the current flowing through it oscillates in perfect synchrony, at exactly the same frequency, throughout the whole grid," he presents a map of Western Europe's regional groups. I notice that Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland comprise the Nordic Regional Group. Iceland? There is a lot of water between Iceland and the other three nations in its group.…

[deleted]

Re: How to date a recording using background electrical noise

#18
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the guy too but not a big fan of the whole dumb-it-down/ELI5 culture. Some subjects absolutely require a lot more (written text, experimentation/tweaking with code) than few fancy videos to grasp.

Have you tried any 3Blue1Brown videos? Highly recommend

Yes and I believe their videos are one the best things on the Internet right now as far as math education is concerned. Same goes for {Computer,Number}phile.

The reason they're high quality learning material is because the explanations of the various concepts respect weaker math backgrounds, without being desperate to be as reductive as possible or have clickbaity titles , and sometimes with downright wrong claims, to generate more audience.

An example of a channel that consistently follows this latter pattern is Veritasium i.e. see the electricity video controversy.

Re: How to date a recording using background electrical noise

#19
> Regardless of a grid’s size, the current flowing through it oscillates in perfect synchrony, at exactly the same frequency, throughout the whole grid

I have a feeling that this is not exactly true. The grid is composed of transmission lines (in the “wires on pylons sense”), that are on one hand short enough that they do not really behave like transmission lines (in the circuit analysis sense), but on the other hand long enough that their propagation delay and other “RF-like” properties are somewhat interesting for design of efficient grid.

On the other hand, the phase shifts and related distortion effects are outside of the bandwidth of the audio recording as long as the grid is at least somewhat properly designed.

Re: How to date a recording using background electrical noise

#20
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dumbed down version is great to introduce people to the subject Chances are that good written explanations already exist, just a Google search away, for those who want to learn more. Tom’s video and this blog post are perfect combo that complement each other.

Dumbed down without being inaccurate is also often sufficient for anyone with some base knowledge in an area. You can figure a lot out simply by being told the core concept, no need to go into extreme detail. Extreme detail is great for those that want or need it, but it's far from the only reasonable option for learning things. --- Re the general flood of these kinds of videos: oh yeah, I think it's excessive. I sus…

IIRC the reason they aim for the 10 minute mark is because they can put in mid roll ads, not because the algorithm wants it.
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