6 ms·
White noise. Analogue communications gear used to expose the general population to the sight and sound of white noise. It doesn't happen any more, as digital
by femto 4y ago
White noise.
Analogue communications gear used to expose the general population to the sight and sound of white noise. It doesn't happen any more, as digital gear mutes the audio or presents a blue screen. Most people no longer hear white (or coloured) noise in their life.
There's a certain fascination with seeing/hearing white noise, akin to watching a fire. It's seeing/hearing fundamental thermal or quantum processes in action. The sound of the universe.
- Borrible 4y ago“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
- eru 4y agoFamously re-used by Neal Stephenson to refer to a blue sky.
- tinco 4y agoI think you mean Neil Gaiman? and I'm not sure if it's really famous.. at least not as famous as its use in Neuromancer?
- duskwuff 4y agoCorrect, that was Neil Gaiman in Neverwhere: > The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel. He's written about the change in meaning of that line: https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1546178115038334977 https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/1546178115038334977
- eru 4y agoI probably mixed people up. Well, not as famous as in Neuromancer, definitely.
- kolanos 4y agoI thought he was describing a gray sky? Are there televisions that display blue static?
- thfuran 4y agoNot static, just solid blue.
- eru 4y agoThe TV detects the static and replaces it with solid blue.
- michaelt 4y agoThe first use was in Neuromancer by William Gibson, in 1984, referring to a classic analog TV showing gray-white static. Modern digital, smart, auto-tuning TVs will show an error message rather than static when there's no signal available [1], so later authors have used modified homages like: "The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel." in Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/notinteresting/comments/3mgxca/what_my_tv_does_when_theres_no_signal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/notinteresting/comments/3mgxca/what...
- Borrible 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8813407 And not to forget: "The sky was the color of a dead laptop display, silver-gray and full of rain." - Charles Stross, The Family Trade. 2004 "The sky above the island was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel—which is to say it was a bright cheery blue.!" - Robert J. Sawyer, Wake. 2009 There are probably more.
- svieira 4y agoMy favorite is from _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ by G. K. Chesterton: ---- "Poet, whose cunning carved this amorous shell, \ Where twain may dwell." "The peculiarity of these fine though feminine lines," continued "Thunderbolt," "is, as we have said, that they praise the hansom cab by comparing it to the shell, to a natural thing. Now, hear the author of 'Hymns on the Hill,' and how he deals with the same subject. In his fine nocturne, entitled 'The Last Omnibus' he relieves the rich and poignant melancholy of the theme by a sudden sense of rushing at the end— 'The wind round the old street corner \ Swung sudden and quick as a cab.' "Here the distinction is obvious. 'Daisy Daydream' thinks it a great compliment to a hansom cab to be compared to one of the spiral chambers of the sea. And the author of 'Hymns on the Hill' thinks it a great compliment to the immortal whirlwind to be compared to a hackney coach. He surely is the real admirer of London. We have no space to speak of all his perfect applications of the idea; of the poem in which, for instance, a lady's eyes are compared, not to stars, but to two perfect street-lamps guiding the wanderer. We have no space to speak of the fine lyric, recalling the Elizabethan spirit, in which the poet, instead of saying that the rose and the lily contend in her complexion, says, with a purer modernism, that the red omnibus of Hammersmith and the white omnibus of Fulham fight there for the mastery. How perfect the image of two contending omnibuses!"”
- eru 4y agoI think, I might have mixed up Charles Stross and Neal Stephenson here!
- solumunus 4y agoI would argue most people will still come across white noise (mainly depicted in media) at some point in their life.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoI've seen it used by YouTubers as a divider - a scene change / particularly jarring jumpcut would have a ~half a second of white noise (+ accompanying "TV snow" visual) as transition effect.
- femto 4y agoTechnically it's a rendition of white noise (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe,”). White noise is random, whilst a recording is predictable. There is also a reasonable chance the rendition is a simulation based on a pseudorandom generator.
- lozf 4y agoLess predictable than a recording, - of course you can add a better source of entropy too ;) ffmpeg -f rawvideo -video_size 1280x720 -pixel_format yuv420p -framerate 25 \ -i /dev/urandom -ar 48000 -ac 2 -f s16le -i /dev/urandom -codec:a copy \ -vf hue=s=0 -f matroska - | ffplay -
- jazzyjackson 4y agoGrowing up I assumed it was some kind of electronic malfunction, produced either by the TV or by our own radio comms. It wasn't until I saw this Drunk History with Jenny Slate that I learned the noise is the cosmic background radiation, the ongoing "ohm" of the big bang. https://youtu.be/kvlCFyufaJ8 https://youtu.be/kvlCFyufaJ8
- eru 4y agoCosmic Background Radiation is only a small proportion of the static you receive.
- b112 4y agoCosmic Background Radiation is only a small proportion of the static you receive. I have been told, from time to time, that I am a large component of that static.
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y agoWhats the mechanism behind that?
- wnkrshm 4y agoCosmic particles driving mutation in evolution and the birth of DNA, I'd guess.
- eru 4y agoWell, I was talking about your equipment. But you are poetically right, too.
- antonvs 4y agoCMB radiation accounts for about 1% of the static on an old TV: https://www.wondriumdaily.com/fermilab-scientist-explains-still-present-remnants-of-big-bang/ https://www.wondriumdaily.com/fermilab-scientist-explains-st...
- Akronymus 4y agoA lot of trucks are using white noise instead of 1khz for backing up nowadays. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-up_beeper https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-up_beeper
- lm28469 4y agoIt's funny that you talk about a nostalgia of analog sounds, I'm one step behind and miss the noises of nature, especially forest noises. Taking a stroll in the wood was the OG white noise in term of relaxation/well being. If you live in the city you're usually hours away from that, I bet we can already find teenagers who never experienced these noises in their entire life
- b112 4y agobet we can already find teenagers who never experienced these noises in their entire life I knew a guy, 30 years ago, who grew up in Toronto, moved to Ottawa, and got there by taking the bus. He had literally never been outside, unless in the downtown core of a large city. Never. And this is in Canada! Wtf!
- denton-scratch 4y agoHow do you move from Toronto to Ottawa? I thought Toronto was IN Ottawa.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lm28469 4y agoToronto and Ottawa are two separate cities afaik, any chance you're thinking about Ontario ? Which is a province
- nosianu 4y agoOttawa is the capital city of Canada. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa Toronto is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto
- denton-scratch 4y agoDoh! Thanks. I confused Ottawa and Ontario.