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The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

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Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#81

Post by VorpalWay »

taneq wrote: post #40
protocolture wrote: post #39

Man having dealt with so many wireless issues I already had a shortlist when I read fixed wireless was involved. Either the radios were misaligned and the rain was reflecting it back towards a stable link just enough to improve throughput. Or The rain took a bad link all the way down, failing over to a different link. Or The rain/wind was moving an obstruction. I have about a million of these stories sadly. "The inte…

“The car won’t start after I buy ice cream” The old classic, I think it turned out that in hot weather the fuel line vapour locked a few minutes after turning off, and the ice cream was at the back of the store, and took just long enough to walk there and back to trigger the issue.

I have a personal one with my car: if from a cold start during spring/autumn temperatures (or early mornings in summer), I drive about a km and shut it off, then come back to the car after a few minutes it will not manage to stay idling once I turn it on. What happens instead is that the RPM goes too low, and the engine shuts off, then the start/stop feature kicks in and restarts the engine. This happens every few seconds repeatedly. If I press the accelerator it can keep running. And if I just drive a meter or two it will work fine again when I go back to idling.

I tried both with neutral or in gear but with the clutch pressed (yes, it is a manual, fairly common in Sweden still) and that doesn't make a difference.

I haven't managed to figure out the cause, but since it is a modern car I would assume it is something with the ECU that goes wrong. (It is a Dacia Duster in case anyone else recognise this issue. The mechanic I asked hadn't heard about anyone else having this issue though.)

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#82

Post by madcaptenor »

People have mentioned "can't print on Tuesdays", which reminds me of an error that occurred with a Linux PDF viewer at the math department at Berkeley:

"Oct 2: Warning: Due to a known bug, the default Linux document viewer evince prints N*N copies of a PDF file when N copies requested. As a workaround, use Adobe Reader acroread for printing multiple copies of PDF documents, or use the fact that every natural number is a sum of at most four squares."

I've seen other references to this bug, but the workaround is the sort of thing mathematicians would come up with.

sources: https://mathoverflow.net/a/3601/143, https://math.berkeley.edu/computing/wiki/index.php?title=Sup...

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#83

Post by macshome »

Back when I had cable internet we had a bizarre problem where the service would often stop working if it was very cold and raining. It had to be that specific combo as well.

- Just rain == good internet

- Just cold == good internet

- Cold + rain == bad internet

After a lot of head scratching the provider finally sent someone with a ladder to climb the poll. What they found was that the protective boot on the coax connection was bad. When it rained for a while water would seep into the coax connector. By itself this wasn’t too bad, but if it was also cold outside it would freeze. This would then force a gap between the threads of the socket and the cable, breaking the ground connection.

Previously, the connector had been replaced, but nobody had noticed the torn boot. This tech replaced both the connector and the boot and the problem was solved! It honestly was the best interaction with the cable company I have ever had. Only returning their hardware when switching to fiber felt almost as good.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#84

Post by macshome »

This also reminds me of the situation with my TV antenna. I made an antenna years ago and put it in my attic. Using the old antennaweb service I aligned it with the stations we cared about and then never touched it again.

I installed the antenna in the winter. Everything worked great. In the summer, we lost a few channels. Rain in the summer and hardly anything would come in. The answer I realized, like in the article, is trees. Leaves are already full of water so they are good at attenuating signals. Leaves that are also soaked in rain doubly so.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#85

Post by macshome »

VorpalWay wrote: post #76
eptcyka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is why passwords are alphanumerical, keep your #€{*\$<€$<¥]+]!,’ to yourself.

On other layouts that isn't enough. For example French keyboards are AZERTY, not QWERTY. and here in Sweden we have å, ä and ö next to the (tall) enter key, instead of the symbols US and UK have. (Side note: those are not a and o with diacretics, they are entirely separate letters in the alphabets of the Nordic countries, with entirely different sounds.)

The product I make deals with passwords. We’ve had several bugs over the years that came down to Unicode usernames and passwords containing unexpected characters. Solving them was simple, we just had to be sure to get the encoding and character sets right, but as an American it was eye opening to find so many people with the Euro symbol in password strings.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#86

Post by eptcyka »

VorpalWay wrote: post #76
eptcyka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is why passwords are alphanumerical, keep your #€{*\$<€$<¥]+]!,’ to yourself.

On other layouts that isn't enough. For example French keyboards are AZERTY, not QWERTY. and here in Sweden we have å, ä and ö next to the (tall) enter key, instead of the symbols US and UK have. (Side note: those are not a and o with diacretics, they are entirely separate letters in the alphabets of the Nordic countries, with entirely different sounds.)

Well aware, just don’t use them in passwords.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#87

Post by beAbU »

eptcyka wrote: post #62
joncrocks wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that sometimes (incorrect) keyboard maps can get in the way. If it's a key that you may not often type and one that is often transposed between regions, the fact that the entered char is not shown can lead to frustration. e.g. " and @ are in different positions in UK vs. US keyboards. So user thinks they are typing @, but " goes into the box.

No, that is why passwords are alphanumerical, keep your #€{*\$<€$<¥]+]!,’ to yourself.

Not all password policies allow you to ignore special characters.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#88

Post by mnahkies »

joncrocks wrote: post #60
thedufer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't log in when standing up 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 elimina…

It's worth noting that sometimes (incorrect) keyboard maps can get in the way. If it's a key that you may not often type and one that is often transposed between regions, the fact that the entered char is not shown can lead to frustration. e.g. " and @ are in different positions in UK vs. US keyboards. So user thinks they are typing @, but " goes into the box.

One of the more annoying things I've found moving country is the unavailability of keyboards / laptops with the layout I grew up with. I find it especially annoying as the country I'm from uses a US layout which I naively assumed would be easily available everywhere (and it is available but not without a long delivery and a premium price)

Side note: helping my French housemate with his uni assignments was an experience, none of the symbols were where I expected them to be

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#89

Post by wink »

Not as elaborate a story, but in a former office we had special office chair that, when you sat down with a bit of force it would switch off one or two specific monitors.

That also took a few minutes to debug why this one coworker came back from lunch, plummeted down into his chair, and someone else's screen went out.

Re: The WiFi only works when it's raining (2024)

#90

Post by p0w3n3d »

This has been already posted in 2024, and I commented it that time with the story about my non-paid cable signal, but since it's a repost I will just copy my comment again, if you will...

  One winter had been so cold I had Cartoon Network and other cable stations available on my terrestrial antenna. When the freezing temperatures ended, I had to buy the cable because I got used to it so much.
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