6 ms·

From [1] The story of PING: ping goodhost | sed -e 's/.*/ping/' | vocoder He wired the vocoder's output into his office stereo and turned up the volume as l

From [1] The story of PING: ping goodhost | sed -e 's/.*/ping/' | vocoder He wired the vocoder's output into his office stereo and turned up the volume as loud as he could stand. The computer sat there shouting "Ping, ping, ping..." once a second, and he wandered through the building wiggling Ethernet connectors until the sound stopped. And that's how he found the intermittent failure. [1] <https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html https://ftp.arl.army.mil/~mike/ping.html>

adrian_b 2y ago
That is like the beep for continuity testing that is provided by most electronic multimeters, which is very useful because both your hands and your vision are occupied with the tested equipment.
- throwanem 2y ago
  Most older DMMs. Modern ones synthesize a steady or intermittent tone in response to steady continuity. Older ones just use an instantaneous voltage threshold, which is much better for diagnosing an intermittent connection than the newer style, where the tone generator inadvertently does so much time averaging as to be useless outside steady state. I keep a 30-year-old Triplett around more or less just for this reason. My Fluke from 2019 is much better at everything else, but...
  - stn8188 2y ago
    Exactly! I recall troubleshooting some diesel engine governor issues back when I was in the Coast Guard. I specifically reached for the old, analog Simpson since it was much easier to see the needle jump than trying to watch for the small digital screen to move with all of its delays.
  - eternityforest 2y ago
    What's really bad is when there's a literal 250ms or so delay... I'm surprised someone hasn't made an open source DMM that lets people configure all the stuff people have been wanting for years.
whalesalad 2y ago
macos has the "say" binary which is fun to play with for stuff like this
- ryanmcbride 2y ago
  a billion years ago I piped say and some various noise files into ffmpeg to make audios that sounded like numbers stations, I don't think it would run anymore but it was a lot of fun :D
- nomel 2y ago
  I did something similar for finding which outlet a breaker went to. I connected my MacBook to the outlet, airplay to the TV so it was loud, then had it yell if the power was disconnected: while ! pmset -g batt | grep 'discharging'; do; echo waiting; sleep 1; done; say disconnected
- centur 2y ago
  Back in windows and powershell days, this was my favorite "security reminder" prank. Everyone who forgot to lock their machine and walked away got this script executed on their machines. TLDR: it schedules a task "Security Reminder" to play "I'm watching you" via voice synth, every 30 mins. ``` $action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute 'Powershell.exe' -Argument '-NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -command "& {[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(""System.Speech"") | Out-Null; (New-Object (""System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer"")).Speak(""I''m watching you"")}"' $period = New-TimeSpan -Minutes 30; $trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -RepetitionInterval (New-TimeSpan -Minutes 30) -RepetitionDuration (New-TimeSpan -Days 1024) -At 9am -Once Register-ScheduledTask -Action $action -Trigger $trigger -TaskName "Security reminder" -Description "Security Reminder" ``` You can imagine people faces, especially many were sitting in headphones in open space offices. Those were the days...
- layer8 2y ago
  That reminds me of the Say tool on the Amiga almost 40 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_music_software#Speech_synthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_music_software#Speech_sy... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr5IFzGiTEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr5IFzGiTEk
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
apples_oranges 2y ago
Mac version, courtesy of chatGPT: stdbuf -oL ping news.ycombinator.com | grep --line-buffered -o "[0-9]* bytes" | xargs -I {} say "Ping {}"
- n42 2y ago
  ping -a
  - apples_oranges 2y ago
    not annoying enough ;)
- salzig 2y ago
  to keep it simple: `ping news.ycombinator.com | xargs -I% say ping`
imperialdrive 2y ago
Love it! I use a similar Powershell script for testing cabling/changes. Laptop left on in middle of office with speakers turned up. So handy.
WalterBright 2y ago
That's the kind of engineer I like to work with!
BtM909 2y ago
Also reminds me of that old website where people could send text messages to (before Twitter existed). There was this story of a person who could ping a machine and he knew it was in his house, but for the love of God couldn't find the machine. It's a very short story, but he ends up looking at the pings not knowing where this machine is runnning.
- Anon_troll 2y ago
  This sounds like https://bash-org-archive.com/?5273 https://bash-org-archive.com/?5273 (original website no longer exists).

adrian_b 2y ago

That is like the beep for continuity testing that is provided by most electronic multimeters, which is very useful because both your hands and your vision are occupied with the tested equipment.

throwanem 2y ago
Most older DMMs. Modern ones synthesize a steady or intermittent tone in response to steady continuity. Older ones just use an instantaneous voltage threshold, which is much better for diagnosing an intermittent connection than the newer style, where the tone generator inadvertently does so much time averaging as to be useless outside steady state. I keep a 30-year-old Triplett around more or less just for this reason. My Fluke from 2019 is much better at everything else, but...
- stn8188 2y ago
  Exactly! I recall troubleshooting some diesel engine governor issues back when I was in the Coast Guard. I specifically reached for the old, analog Simpson since it was much easier to see the needle jump than trying to watch for the small digital screen to move with all of its delays.
- eternityforest 2y ago
  What's really bad is when there's a literal 250ms or so delay... I'm surprised someone hasn't made an open source DMM that lets people configure all the stuff people have been wanting for years.

whalesalad 2y ago

macos has the "say" binary which is fun to play with for stuff like this

ryanmcbride 2y ago
a billion years ago I piped say and some various noise files into ffmpeg to make audios that sounded like numbers stations, I don't think it would run anymore but it was a lot of fun :D
nomel 2y ago
I did something similar for finding which outlet a breaker went to. I connected my MacBook to the outlet, airplay to the TV so it was loud, then had it yell if the power was disconnected: while ! pmset -g batt | grep 'discharging'; do; echo waiting; sleep 1; done; say disconnected
centur 2y ago
Back in windows and powershell days, this was my favorite "security reminder" prank. Everyone who forgot to lock their machine and walked away got this script executed on their machines. TLDR: it schedules a task "Security Reminder" to play "I'm watching you" via voice synth, every 30 mins. ``` $action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute 'Powershell.exe' -Argument '-NoProfile -WindowStyle Hidden -command "& {[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(""System.Speech"") | Out-Null; (New-Object (""System.Speech.Synthesis.SpeechSynthesizer"")).Speak(""I''m watching you"")}"' $period = New-TimeSpan -Minutes 30; $trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -RepetitionInterval (New-TimeSpan -Minutes 30) -RepetitionDuration (New-TimeSpan -Days 1024) -At 9am -Once Register-ScheduledTask -Action $action -Trigger $trigger -TaskName "Security reminder" -Description "Security Reminder" ``` You can imagine people faces, especially many were sitting in headphones in open space offices. Those were the days...
layer8 2y ago
That reminds me of the Say tool on the Amiga almost 40 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_music_software#Speech_synthesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_music_software#Speech_sy... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr5IFzGiTEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr5IFzGiTEk

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

apples_oranges 2y ago

Mac version, courtesy of chatGPT: stdbuf -oL ping news.ycombinator.com | grep --line-buffered -o "[0-9]* bytes" | xargs -I {} say "Ping {}"

n42 2y ago
ping -a
- apples_oranges 2y ago
  not annoying enough ;)
salzig 2y ago
to keep it simple: `ping news.ycombinator.com | xargs -I% say ping`

imperialdrive 2y ago

Love it! I use a similar Powershell script for testing cabling/changes. Laptop left on in middle of office with speakers turned up. So handy.

WalterBright 2y ago

That's the kind of engineer I like to work with!

BtM909 2y ago

Also reminds me of that old website where people could send text messages to (before Twitter existed). There was this story of a person who could ping a machine and he knew it was in his house, but for the love of God couldn't find the machine. It's a very short story, but he ends up looking at the pings not knowing where this machine is runnning.

Anon_troll 2y ago
This sounds like https://bash-org-archive.com/?5273 https://bash-org-archive.com/?5273 (original website no longer exists).