8 ms·
You are listening to San Francisco
- dang 9y agoA thread from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8349655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8349655.
- mikestew 9y agoI revisited that thread, and upvoted a few comments from almost four years ago. Good luck figuring out which comment got the upvote when your points count goes up. :-) Worth noting, though, are the SomaFM links to similar stuff over there. I’m a big fan of Mission Control myself.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bhj 9y ago+1 for SomaFM: Ambient music mixed with the sounds of San Francisco public safety radio traffic: http://somafm.com/sf1033/ http://somafm.com/sf1033/ I also recommend their DEF CON channel, which has (usually humorous) snippets from various talks between tracks: http://somafm.com/defcon/ http://somafm.com/defcon/
- dziungles 9y agoListen to live Wikipedia updates: http://listen.hatnote.com/ http://listen.hatnote.com/ Listen to live Bitcoin transactions: http://btclisten.com/ http://btclisten.com/ Listen to airports: http://listentothe.cloud/ http://listentothe.cloud/ Listen to train ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVWfzsgLoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pVWfzsgLoQ Listen to driving through NY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kV4zowtJC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kV4zowtJC8
- dyml 9y agoOh! Happy to see Listen to the cloud posted here! It’s been a crazy ride since I built it last November. I went viral in Russia and Kazakhstan And were interviewed by a Spanish newspaper called El Mundo together with Eric (who made youarelisteningto). The best outcome of it was receiving an email from a developer who had a lot of problem with ADD and anxiety and he told me about how listentotheclouds helped him focus while at work and expressing the gratitude. It’s very humbling to hear that something you built just for fun actually helps others in ways you had no idea it would.
- gokhan 9y agoMy son loads your site while studying for math olympiad. He used to work along with a Spotify list but now prefers listentothe.cloud, thanks a lot.
- lighttower 9y agoWhat have you heard from ADD sufferers regarding playlists that work for them? Can this be Chromecasted?
- xocyabencl 9y agoThe browser casting method works for me: https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279402?hl=en https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279402?hl=en
- morgante 9y agoThank you for building it. It's honestly one of my favorite things to listen to on a lazy afternoon while doing chores.
- freeflight 9y agoThank you, this is really nice! Tho, one question: Why does the ISS Space Station channel ask me to install Flash, while all the other channels seem to work just fine?
- ausjke 9y agono clue what this is, anyone can explain? thanks
- kyledrake 9y agoA police scanner with ambient background music. It's perfect.
- rsync 9y agosoma.fm has a "mission control" station that has NASA mission chatter over the ambient music - and I prefer it to the police scanner overlay channels: http://somafm.com/missioncontrol/ http://somafm.com/missioncontrol/
- comboy 9y agoI thought that police is using encrypted channels in bigger cities practically everywhere now? Is this live?
- sandworm101 9y agoThey have the gear but few implement encryption. Most police departments are more worried about not beimg heard than of bad guys listening in. Normally only drug squads use encryption.
- iNate2000 9y agoAlso: key management is difficult. Also: information sharing has benefits too
- brokensegue 9y agoblasting out all internal communication is a bad way to share information (with the public)
- ogdoad 9y agoOTOH, censoring what info you let through is, well, censoring.
- brokensegue 9y agoencrypting police radio would not be censoring.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thinkpad20 9y agoConsidering all of the lack of public trust of police departments these days, I'd prefer that they don't use encryption. But, I'm sure there is more than one side to the issue.
- joeblau 9y agoThat background is an awesome pre Sales Force tower night shot.
- matte_black 9y agoHow reliable is the .to TLD?
- mildavw 9y agoI've been serving up a http://pimen.to http://pimen.to sandwich since the late 90's.
- artie_effim 9y agoOMG - second only to http://isabevigodadead.com/ http://isabevigodadead.com/
- nimbius 9y agoAs an amateur radio geek, the first thing that stood out in my home state was the apparent massive disparity between LA and SF police radio traffic. SF appears to still be analog, and still uses "10-4" as a code?? http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=60 http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/?sid=60 looks like motorola type II is still preferred, although AP25 is...available?
- johnchristopher 9y agoAre US police radio still broadcasting unencrypted on public frequencies ? I know for a fact eavesdropping is forbidden in some european countries and the broadcasts are encrypted in some.
- closeparen 9y agoYes, with some exceptions. We lean much more heavily towards open/public records and “sunshine is the best disinfectant” than privacy. The ability of an independent press to observe and audit police activity is considered by many (myself included) to be foundational to liberal democracy.
- cjrp 9y agoUnless they're broadcasting "just planting some drugs on this suspect, over", having the transmissions unencrypted probably isn't a very useful way of auditing police activity.
- closeparen 9y agoThe point is that deployment of police power to a particular location/situation becomes public record immediately and unconditionally, and the press can (and does) follow up on it. Police getting to operate in secret is a dangerous road to go down. Same reason that the names of suspects who get arrested are public. It might suck for their future reputations, but the alternative is a world where the police get to make people disappear.
- gozur88 9y agoOn the contrary, there have been several high profile incidents where police radio traffic was used to demonstrate ill intent. It's difficult to use a tool day in, day out like that without getting complacent. Open radio also makes it more likely the news media is there when the action is still happening instead of giving cops time to paper over their mistakes.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
- danielvf 9y ago"Why (special agent) Johnny (still) Can’t Encrypt" https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Events/ISPAB-OCTOBER-2012-MEETING/documents/ispab_oct2012_mblaze_p25-security-analysis.pdf https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Events/ISPAB-OCTOBER-2012-M... (Warning, slightly terrifying paper) P25 is very vulnerable to jamming, decrypting encrypted traffic, traffic analysis, and geo tracking of individual radios. - Because of the design of P25, commonly used in America, if you enable encryption, a tiny bit of noise in the signal makes it unusable. One problem is that there are separate error correction codes for different parts of the packet, and very few error correction bits were allocated for the important encryption bits. To get around this, sometimes just the dispatchers will have encryption on, since those packets are traveling over fiber to the transmission towers, where they are broadcast at high power levels. The other direction, personal radio to repeater tower, is almost never encrypted because of the much lower power of the personal radios. P25 has some nice features - our local area has perhaps a hundred different public safety organizations, all of which can talk to each other at any time, and often coordinate for any major incident. But security is not one of them.
- rsync 9y ago"P25 has some nice features ... but security is not one of them." And that is just fine. Police and firefighters/medics[1] are civilians and are in their role to serve civilians at the pleasure of civilians. There is no need for secret comms and, in fact, it is often quite valuable for the public at large to have visibility into their operations in real time. There is no need to encrypt public safety radio comms and you should be quite suspicious of anyone who claims that there is. Those radios belong to you. The frequencies belong to you. The people who use them are your own servants. [1] I am a firefighter/medic in the SFBA.
- tbabb 9y agoAgree, it is probably good for police / fire / EMT etc. to be open. However, the linked talk above notes that the researchers accidentally discovered that some "sensitive tactical law enforcement operations" were unwittingly operating in cleartext, and divulged to the open air "names and/or identifying features of targets and confidential informants, their locations, descriptions of undercover agents, [...] plans for forthcoming takedowns and operations," and a few other things you probably don't want to widely announce. It also notes that radio locations could be easily discovered, even if they're not communicating. Bad guys could therefore build a map of possibly-federal-agents in the city, and learn things they're not supposed to know even if they can't hear what's being discussed. Again, PD/Fire/EMT are great to have open and mutually communicating. But there are (life and death) reasons why you might really need a secure channel in other cases.
- filoeleven 9y agoDid anyone else immediately think that should read “you are listening to Los Angeles” because of the Soul Coughing song? Nice to see that it’s an option on the site.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoAnd the man laughs...
- juicy-fruit 9y agoCan someone explain to me why police scanners are so popular? I recently came across some guy (https://www.reddit.com/user/regoapps https://www.reddit.com/user/regoapps) who made millions off of making a police scanner app. Is the demand really that high? What's the appeal? Edit: Why am I being downvoted? It's a genuine question... I see listening to police scanners is a popular thing and I just want to understand why
- blantonl 9y agoBecause it is entertainment for a lot of folks. See how many are listening on Broadcastify as we speak: http://www.broadcastify.com http://www.broadcastify.com
- sndean 9y agoMy parents listen to a small county's sheriff dispatch on Broadcastify when my brother is working his shift. I sometimes listen, too. It's mostly mundane stuff, and lots of domestic disputes, making it seem odd that hundreds are listening to a small town's dispatch. But sporadically you'll hear something interesting (e.g., needing backup to help apprehend a 300lbs guy who's huffing propane), which I guess explains it. Or, there are simply that many family members listening.
- grzm 9y agoI think the downvotes might be because it seems you haven't explored possible motivations on your own and it comes off as dismissive. While it may not be appealing to you, it pays to spend a bit of time thinking about what might be appealing to others. That's not to say you haven't done this; sharing what you had thought about may have staved off downvotes.
- juicy-fruit 9y agoOkay I understand. I see from this thread and a thread from a couple of years ago that some people are using this as a background noise. I tried doing this but it's too sporadic and the talking is distracting for me to focus on programming. It also makes me feel a little anxious for some reason. I didn't mean to offend anyone's interest, I just wanted someone to maybe show me a side I'm not seeing. I should word my questions with more thought and empathy in the future.
- nealmueller 9y agoRelated, does anyone know how to listen to maritime channel 16 vessel traffic in any city, especially San Francisco?
- app4soft 9y agoThe Linux way - use "cat /dev/urandom"[0] Also here is cool simple shell script - "noise.sh"[1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11238247 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11238247 [1] https://gist.github.com/rsvp/1209835 https://gist.github.com/rsvp/1209835
- jimmywanger 9y agoIs there anyway to turn of the music or switch channels? Ambient music is not my cup of tea, I'd rather just have the scanner play without Yanni in the background.
- jrcii 9y agoThat's a good alias for HN