Top all-time · #498
absorptions
Personal blog · windytan.comprogrammingscienceculture
absorptions is a personal blog at windytan.com about programming, science and culture. Since 2013, 115 different Hacker News readers have linked it 168 times, most often “The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-04-16, and you can follow it by feed.
Often recommended · 20 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Oona Räisänen's windytan.com for its signal-processing and radio posts, especially 'The sound of the dialup, pictured', and call it worth following.
- Recommended for · 20 comments
- Every post called 'amazing' and 'worth reading'; 'always interesting'; 'super fun'; a 'lovely image'; 'classic' posts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A blog about signals, programming, music, and other stuff.
Most-linked posts?
- The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)15 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2013-11-21
- /11 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2014-08-15
- Mystery signal from a helicopter11 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2014-02-01
- The Sound of the Dialup, Pictured (2012)9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2020-06-04
- Decoding radio-controlled bus stop displays6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2013-11-24
- Speech to Birdsong Conversion5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2022-03-14
- The sound of dialup – pictured5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-08-18
- Mystery Signal from a Helicopter (2014)5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-11-20
- Hacking The Burger Pager4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-09-18
- Pea whistle steganography4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-10-07
What Hacker News says?
Indeed it is! https://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-picture...
Comment linking /2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html?m=1
on “Google Duplex: An AI System for Accomplishing Real World Tasks Over the Phone”Submitted Mystery signal from a helicopter as a story · 1101 points
HN discussionI always found RSS/Atom most useful for following sources (usually personal blogs and podcasts) that post infrequently, but where every post is worth reading. Like Oona Räisänen's blog: http://www.windytan.com/ For sources that post a lot, it's less useful, since I can just visit every couple of days and have stuff to read. And this means one can easily keep up with the feeds.
Comment linking /
on “It's time to head back to RSS?”Submitted The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012) as a story · 675 points
HN discussionShe already did that :) http://www.windytan.com/2013/01/the-gsm-buzz.html
Comment linking /2013/01/the-gsm-buzz.html
on “Mystery signal from a helicopter”Submitted Ultrasonic investigations in shopping centres as a story · 351 points
HN discussionI love this: Several people in the restaurant were waiting for orders with their similar devices, which suggested to me this could be a pager system of some sort. Turning the receiver over, we see stickers with interesting information, including a UHF carrier frequency. For this kind of situations I often carry my RTL2832U-based television receiver dongle with me (the so-called rtl-sdr). I knew I was forgetting some…
Comment linking /2013/09/the-burger-pager.html
on “Mystery signal from a helicopter”Submitted Trackers and bank accounts as a story · 301 points
HN discussionReading it now for the first time, super fun. e.g., about those restaurant light-up/buzz pagers: http://www.windytan.com/2013/09/the-burger-pager.html
Comment linking /2013/09/the-burger-pager.html
on “Mystery signal from a helicopter”Submitted Passing planes and other whoosh sounds as a story · 207 points
HN discussionYou will enjoy this classic. It's a lovely image showing the dialup handshake . My first modem was a Hayes 1200 baud. Every modem after seemed to double. The protocols got better too. Bidirectional transfers, wow. http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured...
Comment linking /2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html?m=1
on “Booting from a vinyl record”Submitted Smoother sailing: Studying audio imperfections in Steamboat Willie as a story · 176 points
HN discussionYou may like this classic HN post " The sound of the dialup, pictured " http://www.windytan.com/2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured... (HN discussions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15635144 (675 points | Nov 6, 2017 | 108 comments) and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9171514 (174 points | on Mar 9, 2015 | 35 comments))
Comment linking /2012/11/the-sound-of-dialup-pictured.html
on “Booting from a vinyl record”Submitted The sound of the dialup, pictured and explained (2012) as a story · 174 points
HN discussionA few of mine: - https://www.windytan.com/ (windytan: signal processing) - https://www.righto.com/ (Ken Sheriff: IC reverse engineering, vintage computing, misc) - https://jvns.ca/ (Julie Evans: software development, particularly networking) And even though it's not a written blog, a special mention goes to Ben Eater's website, which links to his fantastic YouTube series on building an 8-bit CPU from logic chips, an…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Favorite Blogs by Individuals?”Submitted The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012) as a story · 169 points
HN discussionThere are systems that solve Bus shelter problem by piggybacking on FM station RDS http://www.windytan.com/2013/11/decoding-radio-controlled-bu...
Comment linking /2013/11/decoding-radio-controlled-bus-stop.html
on “Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend”Submitted Plotting patterns in music with a fantasy record player as a story · 152 points
HN discussionBTW, every post from this blog is amazing. See the two recent ones: http://www.windytan.com/2017/09/descrambling-split-band-voic... "Voice inversion is a primitive method of rendering speech unintelligible to prevent eavesdropping of radio or telephone calls." http://www.windytan.com/2017/07/virtual-music-box.html "A little music project I was writing required a melody be played on a music box. However, the paper-pr…
Comment linking /2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopter.html
on “The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)”Submitted Speech to Birdsong Conversion as a story · 144 points
HN discussionClassic article! I would also like to recommend http://www.windytan.com/2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopt... - Oona is clearly a talented engineer :-)
Comment linking /2014/02/mystery-signal-from-helicopter.html
on “The sound of the dialup, pictured (2012)”Submitted Headerless Train Announcements as a story · 127 points
HN discussionIts not a real sound, Oona tried recording it with negative results http://www.windytan.com/2015/07/case-study-tinnitus-with-dis...
Comment linking /2015/07/case-study-tinnitus-with-distortion.html
on “We ‘may’ have discovered a potential remedy for tinnitus”Submitted Capturing PAL video with an SDR, and a few dead ends as a story · 113 points
HN discussionRelated older pieces from a brilliant Finnish hacker. Her posts are always interesting: https://www.windytan.com/2014/06/headerless-train-announceme... https://www.windytan.com/2013/11/decoding-radio-controlled-b...
Comment linking /2013/11/decoding-radio-controlled-bus-stop.html
on “A Raspberry Pi-powered live train station sign”Submitted Eavesdropping on a wireless keyboard (2013) as a story · 96 points
HN discussionThe tech to do it is almost there. https://www.windytan.com/2017/07/gramophone-audio-from-photo...
Comment linking /2017/07/gramophone-audio-from-photograph.html?m=1
on “All the giant companies used ffmpeg (2020)”Submitted In pursuit of Otama's tone (2017) as a story · 67 points
HN discussionWindytan (Oona Räisänen): http://www.windytan.com/ https://twitter.com/windyoona Not quite 100% programming, but she is always doing something super interesting. Mostly with electronics and DSP. She is an awesome hacker and very inspiring to me.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?”Submitted Visualizing hex bytes with Unicode emoji as a story · 67 points
HN discussion
