6 ms·

Everytime Employee 2 walks by a cubicle, one of the screens blacks out

69 points by chrisan 8y ago

vectorEQ 8y ago
replace the defective employee
misja 8y ago
The writer mentions that it occasionally happens to other employees as well and that it happens not every time but "more than 50% of the time" for employee 2. This makes me suspect that it could just be variance that makes it seem as if the phenomenon happens "everytime" for employee 2. It takes quite a lot of trials to reach 2 SD significance, you'd have to let employee 2 walk past the cubicle at least a hundred times to be sure that there is really anything going on.
- _nalply 8y ago
  Perhaps static. Employee 2 maybe has clothes which cause more static than for other employees. In the Reddit thread a "wool cover" has been mentioned.
creaghpatr 8y ago
I am prone to static shocks and one day I discovered I could temporarily bypass the card key lock at our office by shocking the handle. No one believed me until one day we gathered everyone at the office around and I did it while being filmed. Our head of security was furious, everyone else thought it was hilarious.
- MichaelApproved 8y ago
  > Our head of security was furious Furious with you or the vendor? How long did it take to fix, if ever?
  - pasta 8y ago
    Loss of control can result in anger.
    - duaoebg 8y ago
      Even if your not mad it sometimes helps to put on a show. Lets others know that you’re serious about security.
      - drdeadringer 8y ago
        I remember these emails while in the Defense Industry. Sprinkled through the email would be choice words in all caps, and bolded, and in Italics, likely in red, maybe highlighted in some other color as well. Such attempts at "letting others know you're serious about security" seemed more for CYA oversight purposes for the company's security department, but at least 100s of people got reeducated-by-email about proper door security during or after a fire drill.
  - creaghpatr 8y ago
    I'm not sure if it ever did, it would have been the jurisdiction of the building management rather than our company. We had all our critical hardware locked in a separate room with analog locks so it wasn't an emergency at the time. This was also years ago, so imagine it's been addressed and may have been at the time. I didn't keep testing it because it involves static shocking yourself, which is something I like to avoid.
    - kweks 8y ago
      Seems like glitching locks is still a thing: https://nfckill.com https://nfckill.com
- pasta 8y ago
  Static shocks can do damage. Some weeks ago I was sitting at an office where everything was static (I think they did not ground the power outlets in the desks properly). Every time I sat down I got a big hit. But one time my laptop crashed and shut down. So back to the story: it might as well has to do with the shoes employee 2 is wearing and the way he/she walks. Edit: from the poster on Reddit: "She wears a wool cover to stay warm."
  - Moru 8y ago
    30 years ago I was working at a place that just had started with computers. One of the older employees always had computer problems and had been told to spray the floor with softener by th IT staff tired of repairing the fried motherboard. A few years later another company kept a stack of keyboards next to a lady that kept killing hers. They start working again after a while thanks to keyboards having a nice fuse. Just rotate them until the keyboard port fried one day. She was also wearing a wool sweater, big old stone building in northern Sweden...
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      >...old stone building Yeah, I think we often forget that ground from the outlet is not necessarily local ground in the building materials (concrete and whatever)
  - e40 8y ago
    I have a power cord that has everything but the ground wire cut and the single ground part of the plug plugged into the wall. Near my keyboard, I have the other end of the ground wire exposed. Before I touch my keyboard, I touch it. In the winter, 9/10 times I discharge a little shock. I've ruined keyboards and computers with my shocks, and since I installed this setup, zero problems. I set up a coworker with this, after he killed his laptop by shocking it.
    - rleigh 8y ago
      In my old office, one of the girls got a humidifier to combat the dry air during wintertime. It also seemed to help with the amount of static buildup maybe by making it easier to dissipate. Not a fix by any measure, but it did seem to help a bit. Anyone else tried this?
- holstvoogd 8y ago
  I have had my monitor turn off when I touch my laptop whilst being statically charged. Might well be the issue here too, especially since they mention she wears wool quite often. However, that was by direct touch, how that would happen when walking by is still a mystery to me :)
  - Moru 8y ago
    Wearing an old cellphone and the computer was old and no shielding? ;) When we were still young and played a lot, we also overclocked a lot. At one hacker convent we had three computers with the hood of, all running w95. Any time there was a phone call (Nokia 3210 era) all three would get a bluescreen. The computers ran much better with hoods on except for the heat.
UncleJo7 8y ago
I think it's just a prank and the employer 2 had bugged the victim's system somehow and triggers it remotely
dougmwne 8y ago
My theory: Employee wears a large wool cover and sits on a synthetic materiel office chair(PVC?). As employee stands up, they pick up a fairly heavy static charge. As employee walks by, the motion of the static charge creates a moving magnetic field which then induces an electric charge in the monitor's electronics, causing the blackout. Possible solution: replace wool wrap on employee 2 with aluminum foil. Source on possible material combinations: https://www.school-for-champions.com/science/static_materials.htm#.XEh0_lxKiCg https://www.school-for-champions.com/science/static_material...
robjan 8y ago
It could coincide with one of Employee 2's habits or routines before they leave their desk. For example, I used to have a cheap fan on my desk and whenever I changed the speed or turned it off, it caused all of the Dell monitors nearby to go blank for a few seconds before turning back on and readjusting to the resolution of my laptop. I usually turned my fan off whenever I expected to be away from my desk for more than a few minutes.
- Jyaif 8y ago
  It could be software too: Employee 2 launches a build before going on a break, or a GPU-intensive screensaver that starts up. That would explain the ~50% occurrence.
ndespres 8y ago
I expected to read a solution, not just the symptoms- but other than the theory that the monitor is connected to a power cable that runs under the floor, and the employee who triggers the screen to shut off is heavier than the others and stepping on the cable, there isn't anything relevant posted there. I'm currently searching for a solution to a clients' random monitor shutoff issue so I was hoping for some insight! It did, however, give me a greater appreciation for the quality of comments on HN compared to Reddit.
- dougmwne 8y ago
  No kidding. I read through until I hit a reddit comment discussing a possible paranormal connection. Yeesh.
- glenneroo 8y ago
  There are a ton of people suggesting it's related to ESD (electrostatic discharge), which is IMO the most likely culprit. The effects of ESD are pretty wild and generally invisible to the naked eye. We have yearly ESD safety meetings at my job and are required to wear ESD-safe shoes/jackets and use anti-static wrist straps when working with any hardware (which I rarely do, but I still love the "perk" of getting free ESD Birkenstocks every couple years).
aboutruby 8y ago
One interesting bit is that it could be linked to a medical condition of Employee 2 (peacemaker for instance). And an employer can't ask about an employee medical records.
dazzawazza 8y ago
I posted this to reddit but I'm more likely to get a reasonable discussion on here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-V_Z3bD_PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-V_Z3bD_PA Dave covers "static" turning off a monitor in this video. Could it be this?
- rasz 8y ago
  yep, and it all goes back to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUG_sjS67K4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUG_sjS67K4
philk10 8y ago
We had a chair that would crash the system - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87jnCABBaeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87jnCABBaeY
EADGBE 8y ago
Floating floors and Employee 2 is heavier than others. Cord is pinching under a panel and unplugging/resetting itself. That's my guess anyway.
okwme 8y ago
Street Light Interference (SLIders) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_light_interference_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_light_interference_phen...

69 points by chrisan 8y ago

replace the defective employee

The writer mentions that it occasionally happens to other employees as well and that it happens not every time but "more than 50% of the time" for employee 2. This makes me suspect that it could just be variance that makes it seem as if the phenomenon happens "everytime" for employee 2. It takes quite a lot of trials to reach 2 SD significance, you'd have to let employee 2 walk past the cubicle at least a hundred times to be sure that there is really anything going on.

_nalply 8y ago
Perhaps static. Employee 2 maybe has clothes which cause more static than for other employees. In the Reddit thread a "wool cover" has been mentioned.

creaghpatr 8y ago

I am prone to static shocks and one day I discovered I could temporarily bypass the card key lock at our office by shocking the handle. No one believed me until one day we gathered everyone at the office around and I did it while being filmed. Our head of security was furious, everyone else thought it was hilarious.

MichaelApproved 8y ago
> Our head of security was furious Furious with you or the vendor? How long did it take to fix, if ever?
- pasta 8y ago
  Loss of control can result in anger.
  - duaoebg 8y ago
    Even if your not mad it sometimes helps to put on a show. Lets others know that you’re serious about security.
    - drdeadringer 8y ago
      I remember these emails while in the Defense Industry. Sprinkled through the email would be choice words in all caps, and bolded, and in Italics, likely in red, maybe highlighted in some other color as well. Such attempts at "letting others know you're serious about security" seemed more for CYA oversight purposes for the company's security department, but at least 100s of people got reeducated-by-email about proper door security during or after a fire drill.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  I'm not sure if it ever did, it would have been the jurisdiction of the building management rather than our company. We had all our critical hardware locked in a separate room with analog locks so it wasn't an emergency at the time. This was also years ago, so imagine it's been addressed and may have been at the time. I didn't keep testing it because it involves static shocking yourself, which is something I like to avoid.
  - kweks 8y ago
    Seems like glitching locks is still a thing: https://nfckill.com https://nfckill.com
pasta 8y ago
Static shocks can do damage. Some weeks ago I was sitting at an office where everything was static (I think they did not ground the power outlets in the desks properly). Every time I sat down I got a big hit. But one time my laptop crashed and shut down. So back to the story: it might as well has to do with the shoes employee 2 is wearing and the way he/she walks. Edit: from the poster on Reddit: "She wears a wool cover to stay warm."
- Moru 8y ago
  30 years ago I was working at a place that just had started with computers. One of the older employees always had computer problems and had been told to spray the floor with softener by th IT staff tired of repairing the fried motherboard. A few years later another company kept a stack of keyboards next to a lady that kept killing hers. They start working again after a while thanks to keyboards having a nice fuse. Just rotate them until the keyboard port fried one day. She was also wearing a wool sweater, big old stone building in northern Sweden...
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    >...old stone building Yeah, I think we often forget that ground from the outlet is not necessarily local ground in the building materials (concrete and whatever)
- e40 8y ago
  I have a power cord that has everything but the ground wire cut and the single ground part of the plug plugged into the wall. Near my keyboard, I have the other end of the ground wire exposed. Before I touch my keyboard, I touch it. In the winter, 9/10 times I discharge a little shock. I've ruined keyboards and computers with my shocks, and since I installed this setup, zero problems. I set up a coworker with this, after he killed his laptop by shocking it.
  - rleigh 8y ago
    In my old office, one of the girls got a humidifier to combat the dry air during wintertime. It also seemed to help with the amount of static buildup maybe by making it easier to dissipate. Not a fix by any measure, but it did seem to help a bit. Anyone else tried this?
holstvoogd 8y ago
I have had my monitor turn off when I touch my laptop whilst being statically charged. Might well be the issue here too, especially since they mention she wears wool quite often. However, that was by direct touch, how that would happen when walking by is still a mystery to me :)
- Moru 8y ago
  Wearing an old cellphone and the computer was old and no shielding? ;) When we were still young and played a lot, we also overclocked a lot. At one hacker convent we had three computers with the hood of, all running w95. Any time there was a phone call (Nokia 3210 era) all three would get a bluescreen. The computers ran much better with hoods on except for the heat.

UncleJo7 8y ago

I think it's just a prank and the employer 2 had bugged the victim's system somehow and triggers it remotely

dougmwne 8y ago

My theory: Employee wears a large wool cover and sits on a synthetic materiel office chair(PVC?). As employee stands up, they pick up a fairly heavy static charge. As employee walks by, the motion of the static charge creates a moving magnetic field which then induces an electric charge in the monitor's electronics, causing the blackout. Possible solution: replace wool wrap on employee 2 with aluminum foil. Source on possible material combinations: https://www.school-for-champions.com/science/static_materials.htm#.XEh0_lxKiCg https://www.school-for-champions.com/science/static_material...

robjan 8y ago

It could coincide with one of Employee 2's habits or routines before they leave their desk. For example, I used to have a cheap fan on my desk and whenever I changed the speed or turned it off, it caused all of the Dell monitors nearby to go blank for a few seconds before turning back on and readjusting to the resolution of my laptop. I usually turned my fan off whenever I expected to be away from my desk for more than a few minutes.

Jyaif 8y ago
It could be software too: Employee 2 launches a build before going on a break, or a GPU-intensive screensaver that starts up. That would explain the ~50% occurrence.

ndespres 8y ago

I expected to read a solution, not just the symptoms- but other than the theory that the monitor is connected to a power cable that runs under the floor, and the employee who triggers the screen to shut off is heavier than the others and stepping on the cable, there isn't anything relevant posted there. I'm currently searching for a solution to a clients' random monitor shutoff issue so I was hoping for some insight! It did, however, give me a greater appreciation for the quality of comments on HN compared to Reddit.

dougmwne 8y ago
No kidding. I read through until I hit a reddit comment discussing a possible paranormal connection. Yeesh.
glenneroo 8y ago
There are a ton of people suggesting it's related to ESD (electrostatic discharge), which is IMO the most likely culprit. The effects of ESD are pretty wild and generally invisible to the naked eye. We have yearly ESD safety meetings at my job and are required to wear ESD-safe shoes/jackets and use anti-static wrist straps when working with any hardware (which I rarely do, but I still love the "perk" of getting free ESD Birkenstocks every couple years).

aboutruby 8y ago

One interesting bit is that it could be linked to a medical condition of Employee 2 (peacemaker for instance). And an employer can't ask about an employee medical records.

dazzawazza 8y ago

I posted this to reddit but I'm more likely to get a reasonable discussion on here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-V_Z3bD_PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-V_Z3bD_PA Dave covers "static" turning off a monitor in this video. Could it be this?

rasz 8y ago
yep, and it all goes back to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUG_sjS67K4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUG_sjS67K4

philk10 8y ago

We had a chair that would crash the system - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87jnCABBaeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87jnCABBaeY

EADGBE 8y ago

Floating floors and Employee 2 is heavier than others. Cord is pinching under a panel and unplugging/resetting itself. That's my guess anyway.

okwme 8y ago

Street Light Interference (SLIders) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_light_interference_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_light_interference_phen...