11–20 of 116 posts
I expected this The fix was easy: Prune the branches. than >The fix was easy: upgrade our hardware. We replaced our old 802.11g devices with new 802.11n ones, which took advantage of new magic math and physics to make signals more resistant to interference.
I once moved into a new apartment, built a new PC, but noticed that every 30 or so minutes while gaming my monitor would turn off. It was just frequent enough to make gaming intolerable. One day I was plugging something in and moved my DisplayPort cable slightly and my monitor turned off again. Turns out it was too close to the antennas for the WiFi card I had; it was inducing a current in the DisplayPort cable and t…
There’s a video on YouTube about this somewhere and we were able to confirm their findings.
- Car allergic to vanilla ice cream: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wkw/humour/carproblems.txt
- Can't log in when standing up: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p...
- OpenOffice won't print on Tuesdays: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161...
I once moved into a new apartment, built a new PC, but noticed that every 30 or so minutes while gaming my monitor would turn off. It was just frequent enough to make gaming intolerable. One day I was plugging something in and moved my DisplayPort cable slightly and my monitor turned off again. Turns out it was too close to the antennas for the WiFi card I had; it was inducing a current in the DisplayPort cable and t…
Similarly, if you have one of those office chairs with a pneumatic shock, dropping down hard on the chair may induce an electromagnetic or ESD pulse that shocks the monitor. There’s a video on YouTube about this somewhere and we were able to confirm their findings.
I was fully prepared for the wet walls of the building to act as a reflector. I'm surprised WiFi can't pass on reliably through branches. Must have been a nightmare back then.
Update: this comment on the original posting of this article suggests so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896699
My grandmother's house is adjacent my parents' w/ 200 ft. between and line of sight. Back in 2013, when my grandmother moved into the then-new house, I setup a point-to-point wifi bridge between them to share my parents' Internet connection and give me easy remote support access to grandma.
Summer of 2023 visiting relatives complained the Internet service in grandma's house was slow and unreliable. There were repeated suggestions made by helpful relatives for purchasing a new WiFi router for her house, getting independent Internet service, etc.
Grandma was happy with it, and the relatives went home, so I put off looking at it. When I did finally look at it, months later (when I went over for Thanksgiving) everything seemed fine.
When the relatives came to visit in summer 2024 they complained again. I looked at it immediately and found massive packet loss on both ends.
The ornamental trees planted along the driveway between the houses were the culprit. With the leaves off (say, at Thanksgiving time) it was fine. When the relatives came to visit in the summer the trees were in full leaf and acting as very good attenuators.
The trees were newly planted when grandma moved in. I didn't even think about them getting bigger and fuller when I set up the link. They filled out in the 10 years intervening, though. (Chalk it up to me still being relatively young and not thinking about installations on 10+ year timescales when I put it up.)
Fortunately there's a room in her house with line of sight to my parents' house unobscured by trees. It meant putting the radio outside a bedroom window instead of the attic (where I'd originally stashed it), but it solved the problem and ended complaints from relatives.
(2024) Discussion then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896371 Related: We can’t send mail farther than 500 miles (2002) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46805665
> I wonder how much polarization affects things; I was once told that terrestrial FM Radio is transmitted with vertical polarization to reduce interference from tall objects between you and the transmitter.
> Terrestrial TV (some of which used bands that overlap FM radio) uses horizontal polarization.
This is only true in the US (and probably areas influenced by US standards). In Europe, FM radio transmissions (and digital television nowadays) tend to be mixed-polarization (circular polarization), except if there are known interference (usually border areas) that would preclude mixed-polarization.
Analog television meanwhile significantly differs depending on your area, which required you to either test which tower and polarity is the best (note that all broadcasts are transmitted at a single tower, unlike in the US), or just... request a map with that data.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly, if you have one of those office chairs with a pneumatic shock, dropping down hard on the chair may induce an electromagnetic or ESD pulse that shocks the monitor. There’s a video on YouTube about this somewhere and we were able to confirm their findings.
Oh my god, so THAT'S WHY sometimes when I get up from the chair in my office, the screen flashes black for a brief moment?!
I've collected a list of fun stories of this form and post them when this comes up: - Car allergic to vanilla ice cream: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~wkw/humour/carproblems.txt - Can't log in when standing up: https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/3v52p... - OpenOffice won't print on Tuesdays: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161...
This reminds me of a recent issue I had. I had just gotten a new laptop from IT. While picking it up from them, I had generated myself a password, put it in my password manager on my phone, and then entered it twice to set it on the laptop. Everything worked great. But when I got back to my desk, the password didn't work! I tried a bunch of times, watched myself hit each key to eliminate typos, etc.
I went back to IT and they asked me to demonstrate. But this time it worked! I walked back to my desk, thoroughly embarrassed. But a couple hours later I had to log in again and once again could not.
After thinking about it for awhile, I realized that I was typing at IT while standing over a sitting-height desk. Sure enough, typing in that position fixed my issue. I carefully watched what I was doing this time - something about the exact layout of the keyboard and the weird angle I was typing at ensured that I was making a particular typo I typed in that position - just a single letter switched to another, every time. Sure enough, making that one substitution to my intended password got me in.
Oh, wow. This sort of happened in my life! My grandmother's house is adjacent my parents' w/ 200 ft. between and line of sight. Back in 2013, when my grandmother moved into the then-new house, I setup a point-to-point wifi bridge between them to share my parents' Internet connection and give me easy remote support access to grandma. Summer of 2023 visiting relatives complained the Internet service in grandma's house…