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Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
31–40 of 67 posts
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#32I remember these. The pronunciation of 'five' ("fuennef") alway stood out to me. Listening to the wav file of the voice it's there exactly as I remember it.
There were a lot of weird radio stations back in the day, plenty of them for espionage and command-and-control purposes. Sleeper agents were - and probably still are - a thing. Makes you wonder if there are still people lying in wait living normal lives waiting for the right signal to kill some head of state.
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#33I remember these. The pronunciation of 'five' ("fuennef") alway stood out to me. Listening to the wav file of the voice it's there exactly as I remember it. There were a lot of weird radio stations back in the day, plenty of them for espionage and command-and-control purposes. Sleeper agents were - and probably still are - a thing. Makes you wonder if there are still people lying in wait living normal lives waiting f…
Maybe instead of an AM broadcast from a big clunky transmitter, they're waiting for a precisely worded seemingly innocuous HN comment…
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#34I remember these. The pronunciation of 'five' ("fuennef") alway stood out to me. Listening to the wav file of the voice it's there exactly as I remember it. There were a lot of weird radio stations back in the day, plenty of them for espionage and command-and-control purposes. Sleeper agents were - and probably still are - a thing. Makes you wonder if there are still people lying in wait living normal lives waiting f…
Maybe instead of an AM broadcast from a big clunky transmitter, they're waiting for a precisely worded seemingly innocuous HN comment…
Like this one.
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've looked at some old soviet computing papers, and was surprised at how much english they used. I think, just like we all import "programming" keyboards, EN-US rapidly took over from EN-GB after the initial baby steps in computing. http://ershov.iis.nsk.su/files/archive/fold0256/256_125.gif "optimists learn english — pessimists, chinese"
this went on "realists study re-assembling a Kalashnikov". There was lots of English, obviously, but also a lot of adaptation and modifications. Almost nothing (in wide use) was copied identically so I don't think this is a 'simple explanation' why this machine is the way it is. If I were to guess - this is a fairly late, specialized, small-run device made by a DDR space research institution. Maybe they were more gea…
So far @textfiles has traced that quote back to '65, give him another hour or so and I fully expect him to come up with a fragment from the dead sea scrolls or some fragment in Linear-A hewn into a rock.
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they were used for sending automated radio from lighthouses etc? Radio beacons.
I don't think so. Radio beacons are sending the same information constantly. And are well documented. The numbers stations were sending seemingly random strings of numbers non-stop. They were a typical cold-war phenomenon shrouded in much mystery.
Oh. Ye well obviously each number sequence has to correspond to pre-written orders? And mostly they sent numbers that had no corresponding value to cover actual activity? Or maybe it was a joke to waste foreign intelligence resources?
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
this went on "realists study re-assembling a Kalashnikov". There was lots of English, obviously, but also a lot of adaptation and modifications. Almost nothing (in wide use) was copied identically so I don't think this is a 'simple explanation' why this machine is the way it is. If I were to guess - this is a fairly late, specialized, small-run device made by a DDR space research institution. Maybe they were more gea…
So far @textfiles has traced that quote back to '65, give him another hour or so and I fully expect him to come up with a fragment from the dead sea scrolls or some fragment in Linear-A hewn into a rock.
Heh, the last bit - that the Chinese part is a later modification I think I could have told you myself. I wouldn't be too surprised if there's a pre-WW2 variant of some sort. But I doubt it's actually a 'quote' with an origin you can pinpoint any better than many such aphorisms like 'we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us'.
Googling the last bit took me to a reddit post in a socialism subreddit that questioned whether people actually said that so there's that sidemusement as well.
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
So far @textfiles has traced that quote back to '65, give him another hour or so and I fully expect him to come up with a fragment from the dead sea scrolls or some fragment in Linear-A hewn into a rock.
Heh, the last bit - that the Chinese part is a later modification I think I could have told you myself. I wouldn't be too surprised if there's a pre-WW2 variant of some sort. But I doubt it's actually a 'quote' with an origin you can pinpoint any better than many such aphorisms like 'we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us'. Googling the last bit took me to a reddit post in a socialism subreddit that questioned…
1961 now, still including the 'Chinese bit'. The Kalashnikov is the later modification I think.
https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1300882097150795779
You won't find any references to the Kalashnikov prior to 1948 ;)
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh, the last bit - that the Chinese part is a later modification I think I could have told you myself. I wouldn't be too surprised if there's a pre-WW2 variant of some sort. But I doubt it's actually a 'quote' with an origin you can pinpoint any better than many such aphorisms like 'we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us'. Googling the last bit took me to a reddit post in a socialism subreddit that questioned…
1961 now, still including the 'Chinese bit'. The Kalashnikov is the later modification I think. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1300882097150795779 You won't find any references to the Kalashnikov prior to 1948 ;)
There was a Czech one that didn't have Chinese of similar vintage and this kind of sentiment and the saying to go with it must have been pretty common around WW2+, when 'Chinese' would have made as little sense as Kalashnikov. But like I said, fundamentally it's not really a 'quote'.
Re: Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess you could use that device to report telemetry from say an automated weather station. Spoken words can be probably propagated better over a noisy channel. Task an intern to listen to this every day & compile a report with the weather data inside and bam, daily weather report from an automated station. :)
Until not-that-long-ago, the weather service did have radio weather reports broadcast using an automated, synthesized voice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Weather_Radio#Voices
Cool, haven't haven't about that before - thanks for the link! :)