[HN Gopher] Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen
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Check if your IKEA chair is compatible with your screen
Author : ruph123
Score : 469 points
Date : 2023-04-28 15:30 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mastodon.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (mastodon.social)
| kimixa wrote:
| I had an issue where one of my computer screens flickered then
| went black for 10 seconds or so before returning a couple of
| times a day seemingly randomly.
|
| I then got a headphone amp on my desk, and noticed the same thing
| happened every time I switched it on - it had a pretty chunky
| switch with a satisfying click, but I guess it also kicked out
| enough ESD to trigger the monitor? Armed with this theory, I
| replaced the bargin basement displayport cable I was using and
| now no longer have any screen flickering issues. I don't really
| know if it's better shielded or something, or I just happen to
| have moved things around to avoid the majority of the problem.
|
| I wonder how many things we blame on bad hardware/software are
| actually part of the environment - I know hyperscalers have
| talked about how ECC failure events are more common than
| "conventional wisdom", which likely means on non-ECC consumer
| platforms they are getting relatively regular silent memory
| corruption events.
| mastax wrote:
| I've been looking for a large comfortable neoproene mousepad/desk
| pad which is conductive and can be grounded. I think this would
| help prevent damaging your computer or peripherals from ESD.
|
| I haven't been able to find anything. The electronics industry
| ESD mats are rubber for temperature resistance and cleaning, but
| not comfortable or good for mousing. I found some small cheap
| mousepads on AliExpress that claim health benefits from grounding
| but nothing large or high quality.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Almost all components and peripherals have ESD protection built
| into them, designed specifically to prevent human contact
| causing issues. There should be no reason to be worried about
| damaging your peripherals (or, especially, your PC). Are you
| having issues with components dying randomly or something?
| mastax wrote:
| Before I started taking mitigation steps [0] yes. Sometimes
| my monitors or keyboards would shut off or get frozen and
| wouldn't work until I power cycled them. I broke my Ethernet
| port once when I blindly stuck a USB cable into the Ethernet
| port and gave it a big zap. I had a lot of other gremlins
| which I can't conclusively blame on ESD but I eliminated
| other possible causes. ESD protection isn't perfect and
| degrades every time it's used. I was giving multiple painful
| shocks per day.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35744965
| thendrill wrote:
| I actually have the same issue
| sudobash1 wrote:
| I have a nice little window fan that I've had for years, but last
| time I pulled it out it started blanking my monitor when I flip
| it on. I've assumed that this is some sort of ESD issue, but I
| don't have any great ideas on how to troubleshoot or resolve it.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Lately, I've become a fan of analog chairs. No Wi-Fi, no camera,
| no GPU. Besides the retro appeal, I actually find myself to be
| more creative!
| gumby wrote:
| I prefer the "walled garden" approach where nobody can plug
| just any old USB unapproved device into my chair.
|
| The manufacturer does not publish a kit of approved USB devices
| on its website.
| halgir wrote:
| That's just bad discipline on your part. Just because the
| options are there doesn't mean you have to constantly look at
| your chair every five minutes.
|
| My company is building a chair that doesn't compromise on
| features for when you need them, but elegantly hides them away
| when not in use so you won't be tempted every second of the
| day. We have room in our A round if you're interested.
| abakker wrote:
| but, does it have an API for chairGPT? If you don't have
| generative sitting by Q3 this year, you'll be missing the
| market.
| halgir wrote:
| I'm building my own Large Chair Model with stricter
| restraints on emergent behavior. I want no part in fueling
| the rise of sentient chairs.
| m463 wrote:
| Adding those to a chair are just an excuse to download more
| data about your sitting and fidgeting habits to sell you more
| stuff.
| khazhoux wrote:
| True. If your butt is not paying, then your butt is the
| product.
| masswerk wrote:
| Also, black & white chairs only (halftones, i.e. shades of
| grey, are ok, though)...
| tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
| In the nonobvious interactions with tech department, when I was a
| kid, I discovered that jingling keys would change the channel on
| my grandparents' TV that used an ultrasonic remote.
| tzs wrote:
| I thought that the use of differential pairs in these various
| systems was supposed to protect against outside interference?
|
| Looking at the pinouts for HDMI and DisplayPort I see that they
| both use differential pairs for all the high speed lanes that
| carry audio and video.
|
| For the lower speed channel for other things such as control
| functions DisplayPort uses a differential pair. HDMI does not.
| Does that make HDMI more sensitive to interference?
| sircastor wrote:
| Oh my goodness. I think this might be happening to me. I've had a
| semi-frequent issue where my monitor will suddenly power off and
| the only way I can get it to wake up is by unplugging replugging
| the Thunderbolt cable.
|
| Time to run some experiments
| lazerl0rd wrote:
| THAT WAS MY PROBLEM?
| alin23 wrote:
| A lot of people told me about this "chair EMI turns off screen"
| after I published my "weird monitor bugs" article:
| https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/Weird%20monitor%20bugs
|
| Curiously, I never had someone contact me through
| https://lunar.fyi/ about this problem so I could not include it
| in the article. But it is mind boggling how many people have this
| problem and just now start to realize what is causing it.
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| Previously:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21978004 [13 comments]
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22036652 [2 comments]
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21976814 [1 comment]
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32515662 [0 comments]
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22014012 [0 comments]
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35737780 [0 comments]
| spyder wrote:
| And a superuser.com thread:
|
| https://superuser.com/questions/1406140/monitor-screen-that-...
| Marsymars wrote:
| Whoa, I stand at my desk, so no chair, but I think I have the an
| issue with a similar cause.
|
| I have a cordless phone charger where plugging it in sometimes
| causes my screen to blink black. Since I only unplug/plug it when
| rearranging cabling, I've never bothered to investigate further.
| amelius wrote:
| Are these chairs allowed in hospitals? Any heart-lung machines
| with IKEA chairs next to them?
| chipper02 wrote:
| Easily solved with some ESD spray: Not affiliated with Jensen,
| just did some googling and found a place that sells it in single
| cans. https://www.jensentools.com/product/160-188-1726-QT
| lucb1e wrote:
| > Fast drying, anti-static coating eliminates static charge and
| reduces triboelectric generation from flexible surfaces.
|
| The page unfortunately doesn't explain what this is or how it
| works. Is it a conductive coating so that it can dissipate the
| electricity into something else, or does it form a shielding
| layer instead so that it won't zap stuff?
| emiliobumachar wrote:
| Beware of toxicity of unknown conductive sprays, especially
| in enclosed spaces.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It should be slightly conductive, and you need to ground the
| surface somewhere, but I can't find any very specific
| information on this product.
| cool-RR wrote:
| Oh hell no! I've been annoyed at my screens for about a decade!
| Now I understand! It's my Markus chair!
| Senorsen wrote:
| Sh*, me too! Moving my chair or standing up / sitting down
| ("SIHOO", a chinese brand) makes my PHILIPS 278E monitor black
| for two seconds too!! Even not touching the table.
|
| And only when I'm using HDMI port with a HDMI 3x1 switch. If
| using the DP port, it seems no such issues.
| crypt1d wrote:
| Wow. I had the same issue in my previous apartment (where I was
| using the Marcus chair), but I could never figure it out. I just
| always assumed its a faulty monitor.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I have this issue with my keyboard.
|
| My connection:
|
| WASM CODE V3 keyboard -> UGreen USB 3.0 switch -> desktop
| computer
|
| I don't know which device(s) are at fault but when I get off my
| (non-Ikea) chair[0], my keyboard sometimes stops working. It's
| easy to resolve by double-tapping the 'switch input' button on
| the USB switch, although sometimes the keyboard doesn't work
| until I click my mouse (or maybe vice versa). Anyway, I've gotten
| used to it and don't have any motivation to diagnose the issue
| further.
|
| [0] https://www.haworth.com/na/en/products/stools/very-0.html
| syngrog66 wrote:
| PEBKAC
| junon wrote:
| Wow. Maybe this is what's been happening with my screen. When I
| stand up, it resets. I figured it was ESD but had no idea from
| what or how. I have a secretlab chair though.
| myself248 wrote:
| I also have a Secretlab but I have an ESD mat on my work
| surface which is grounded with a clip at the corner, and I tend
| to put a hand on it to stabilize myself as I stand up, which
| has the side effect of dissipating any charges as they're
| generated.
|
| I also do electronic assembly work at this desk so it's sort of
| a no-brainer to have the mat, I just had no idea it was also
| saving me from other weirdness!
| green-salt wrote:
| Its annoyingly dry in my apartment usually and have had this
| happen with a different chair. My solution was to connect some
| alligator clips from a ground pin on my UPS to a metal bar under
| the top of my desk and hold that as I rolled my chair in to
| immediately bypass to ground. Didn't like zapping it through my
| monitor or other desk things first.
| ciroduran wrote:
| This has very strong vibes of the PDP-10's Magic Switch
| https://github.com/PDP-10/its/issues/1232
| rft wrote:
| Thank you for the link! I only knew the referenced folklore
| page, but never saw a picture and the following exchange. Was
| just about to post this story as well :)
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Wow, so I wasn't crazy - exactly the same thing used to happen to
| me when I got up from my Markus and the screen would turn off for
| a second. My hypothesis was a loose cable which I bumped
| slightly, but not touching the table when getting up didn't work.
| Not sure why, but it eventually went away.
| MikeBVaughn wrote:
| I have this exact chair and I've spent the past three months
| thinking the cheapo wired mouse I bought I was leaking voltage,
| or that I had a FUBAR HDMI cable.
|
| I cannot tell you how much of a balm this is for my sanity.
| kudokatz wrote:
| same here - didn't realize it was the chair! Too lazy to have
| tried debugging it.
| FailMore wrote:
| I have the same chair too! And black out screen issues!
| seanalltogether wrote:
| I wonder if this is with a mac laptop connected to a secondary
| display? Mine seems to lose the connection constantly and either
| restores itself shortly after or I have to disconnect the
| thunderbolt cable and replug back in.
| vidarh wrote:
| When I was a kid we had to return my Commodore 64 for repair
| several times, only to be told that once they got to it, after it
| had been waiting at the store for a few days, there were no
| problems with it.
|
| Turned to be a result of storing the C64 on a bench under the
| "large" 26" CRT... When it was kept away from it for a while and
| had a chance to discharge, everything was ok. But after a while
| near the TV, it started "typing" gibberish of its own accord.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| Either that or a ghost. Back in the eighties they're more
| common. Who you're gonna call?
| vidarh wrote:
| Ghostbusters was _amazing_ on the C64. Mostly because of the
| few seconds of digitized speech and "karaoke style" song
| lyrics scroll on the title screen.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| A cosmic ray can flip one bit in the RAM of one of bank's
| computers and add 1 in front of your account's balance.
| vyrotek wrote:
| That seems to explain my issue too! I have an Ikea MARKUS and my
| portable monitor will blink for a second sometimes when I sit
| down quickly.
| simplotek wrote:
| A while ago I had one of those Ikea Flintan chairs, and after
| reading this post I recalled that from time to time I had a
| monitor+laptop flinch hard for no reason at all. I was concerned
| one of them was experiencing problems but other than these events
| they both worked flawlessly. I wonder if the chair was not the
| root cause.
| blincoln wrote:
| As mentioned later in the thread, this has been documented for at
| least 30 years, although I'd never heard of it before:
|
| https://emcesd.com/pdf/eos93.pdf
| SenHeng wrote:
| I recently bought Dell's latest 32" monitor to connect to my 2018
| Mac mini and I've noticed that the screen blacks out for a few
| seconds randomly. I did a bit of a search and there were a few
| mentions of static possibly being a culprit. Didn't actually try
| to confirm it though and now I'll never get the chance to because
| I've switched 1) desk placement, 2) desk, 3) Mac Studio.
|
| The problem has gone away.
|
| I don't have a IKEA chair, currently using a Herman Miller Embody
| but I do (did) have an IKEA desk. A bamboo worktop, a chest on
| one side and those weird, A shaped legs on the other.
| m463 wrote:
| that happens to my monitor too. Sometimes it happens _exactly_
| when I click on something and I wonder how that happens.
| etiam wrote:
| Remotely related, my screen makes a noise, somewhere between
| static and a whine, while displaying certain text files.
| Minimizing or closing the editor stops the noise, getting the
| text back on display restores the noise.
|
| I suppose it's some sort of resonance phenomenon.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| Perhaps a silly question, but does turning it off and back on
| again also resolve the problem?
|
| I can occasionally hear such noises from monitors, and have
| always thought it was some kind of interaction with the phase
| of the AC power and some kind of internal physics of the
| monitor. Generally, turning it off and back on again fixes it
| for me.
| gumby wrote:
| In the old CRT days that could be plausible, but in these
| days of lcds and switching power supplies it seems less
| likely.
|
| But as this article describes, you never know!
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| Indeed, do you never know.
|
| I don't honestly think turning it off and back on would do
| anything, either. I also don't have one of those chairs,
| nor do I want to buy one and use it to test the theory.
| But, turning it off and back on again is a simple and easy
| thing to do that should be reasonably safe for the
| equipment. There is, after all, a reason why power cycling
| equipment is often a first step to diagnosing and/or fixing
| weird problems. :)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _But as this article describes, you never know!_
|
| When we were teenagers, my friend used to call it "waving a
| dead chicken". He coined this term to describe the way he
| would resurrect dead inkjet printers that even I gave up on
| - by disassembling and reassembling them until they started
| to work again, while being perfectly open that he has no
| idea how it could fix the problem, just that in practice it
| often did.
|
| While this was just a funny term and pretty absurd approach
| for fixing things (even though it worked!), I took away
| from it an important realization: the scope of possible
| causes of a weird, randomly-occuring problem is much larger
| than I'd normally assume. Over the years, I learned to
| identify some "outside context" things for computers - ESD,
| thermals, UV exposure, RF interference, voltage spikes in
| power lines, devices being almost but not quite connected.
| Because of that, when in a bind, "waving a dead chicken"
| may just be called for - in forms of e.g. percussive
| maintenance (hitting the thing with a wrench), moving
| things around, switching cables, disassembling, etc.
| Arrath wrote:
| I too have one screen that makes a noise, akin to coil whine,
| only when a certain spreadsheet is open and the window expanded
| past a threshold of the screen's real estate.
|
| Naturally, its the speadsheet that I use most often in my
| duties.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Spreadsheets are what do it for me. Haven't noticed it on
| anything else. Only whole-screen spreadsheets. Opening the
| start menu (covers maybe 1/5th of the screen width and half the
| height, so 10% overall I'd guess) is already enough to break
| the pattern. At 110% or 90% zoom it does not happen at all, it
| needs to be the default zoom level. It's also noticeably less
| if there are colored cells.
|
| You can dial the screen's volume by making the libreoffice
| window partially transparent (I have that bound to scrolling on
| the title bar). This is on an Acer 1920x1080 (~23"?) screen
| from around 2009.
| matsemann wrote:
| That's a fun bug report to receive and having to debug:
| Customer complains about display screaming when viewing last
| quarter report.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Indeed. It's the frequency of pixel changes causing ripples in
| voltage rails, subsequently causing inductors in switching
| voltage regulators to physically resonate at audible
| frequencies.
|
| There's specific test images you can find online, designed to
| maximally stress voltage rails in LCDs. Lower end monitors can
| actually get enough voltage ripple that the image quality
| visibly degrades.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| sometimes when manipulating 3D CAD models, I can get a similar
| noise from my graphics card / monitor at certain orientations
| of the model sweeping back and forth as I rotate it
|
| I have a feeling that grey #A5A5A5 is row-hammering something
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Same here; my PC GPU would make a high-pitched whine in
| certain conditions, most often encountered in a CAD program
| when I was rotating things around. I assumed it's the dark-
| grey coordinate system / grid on lighter-grey background
| making some kind of digital equivalent of Moire patterns on
| the traces in the GPU card, that happen to generate an
| audible frequency.
| halgir wrote:
| Similar story, my computer makes a small whine when I move the
| mouse cursor. Not the screen or speakers, the actual PC. With
| both wired and wireless mice.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| Is this a Samsung G-series (G7/G9)? I returned a G7 that would
| make a high pitched noise and also dim the entire screen when
| certain patterns displayed. It also did this very strange
| 'interlacing' behavior which was apparently a known problem
| with Samsung monitors. Maybe something similar for you.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is some kind of electrostriction-like
| effect because these noises come from the panel itself.
| copperx wrote:
| This was common in the CRT days. Monitors had a high pitched
| when you were on a GUI, but got quieter when you switched to
| the TTY.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I've probably mentioned this story here, but my first job out of
| school was working for a nationally known cash register
| manufacturer, writing front-end software for the cashiers to use.
| This didn't happen to me but was told to me by an old-timer my
| first week there (mid-90s).
|
| A group had done an install at a grocery store. They did in-house
| testing of the new system, then rolled it out to 1 or 2 lanes to
| try it out for a few days before upgrading all the lanes with the
| new system. It was a fairly normal roll-out with a few minor
| issues, but nothing major.
|
| The day they rolled it out, about 2 or 3 transactions each day
| started including an extra charge for 10 cents worth of deli
| meat. This was weird because it would be pretty hard to buy only
| 10 cents worth of meat, and certainly any deli counter worker who
| had rung it up would have remembered doing so because it would
| have been a really bizarre order. None of them had seen such an
| order come through.
|
| The only thing the transactions had in common was they were paid
| for with a debit card. Worried about compliance issues and the
| possibility that there might be a bug in the new card readers,
| they turned off the debit card functionality. Unfortunately (or
| fortunately if you work in compliance), it happened again to
| someone paying with cash. While that was a relief because it
| meant the card readers were fine, it also meant they had no leads
| on the problem.
|
| The on-call engineer got called in to work on the problem just
| before the store closed one night. He checked all the obvious
| things - problems with the cabling; an incorrect value in the
| database; some data getting mangled between the cash register and
| the database; a problem with the scanner; etc. There were no
| problems he could detect.
|
| In order to keep the last few customers from entering his lane,
| he moved a shopping cart in front of the lane. In fact he did it
| to the one next to his as well because he'd be walking around the
| entire lane working on cabling and such. He crawled under the
| register to check something things just as the scanner beeped to
| indicate it detected an item. Sure enough it was for 10 cents
| worth of meat. He looked around and noticed a mother scolding her
| child, "Leave to empty carts alone! That lane is closed!" That's
| when he noticed that the cart had an ad on front of it for some
| random product. He jiggled the cart, and the scanner beeped
| again. Another 10 cents of meat.
|
| It turned out the artist who put together the ad thought that the
| packaging without a barcode on it looked weird, so he grabbed
| something he had laying around and made a fake barcode that
| looked similar. By some miracle, the barcode was actually valid
| and was ringing up 10 cents of deli meat at this store. Mystery
| solved!
| blueflow wrote:
| I once had the problem that running make with too many parallel
| jobs (-j) would change my keyboard layout.
|
| The machine was some laptop mainboard glued to the backside of my
| monitor, and the USB socket came out at the top of the mainboard.
| On its way down, the USB cable for the keyboard passed across the
| whole mainboard. On high load, the mainboard created enough
| interference to cause the connection to reset, re-hotplugging my
| keyboard, so the previous setxkbmap call was not effective
| anymore and i was back to the standard US qwerty layout.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I once had to rip VHS tapes from family to digital. I had a VHS
| deck and a spare laptop with a little RCA plug to USB dongle to
| ingest content. My first few test rips were awful quality, full
| of analog noise and weird banding and just unexplainable signal
| degradation. I couldn't understand, because when I was just
| playing with the dongle the signal was great.
|
| Eventually it dawned on me: I sat the laptop, right on top of
| the VHS deck while running the rips. The VHS head ended up
| directly under the CPU and HDD, such that, _CPU and hard drive
| activity were interfering with the tape reading_! I moved the
| laptop off the VHS deck and everything worked just fine.
| danShumway wrote:
| I've heard a number of weird "remember that computers are
| physical devices" debugging stories now, but this might be the
| best one :)
|
| It's such a Rube Goldberg kind of error, I love it.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I currently have an RPi4 mounted to the back of my TV for easy
| Kodi streaming, but I never considered using the business end
| of a laptop. I'm sure I have a decade old laptop with a broken
| screen sitting at the bottom of a shelf somewhere...
| l72 wrote:
| I invested in a frame.work laptop. If I ever purchase a new
| mainboard, I'll get this cooler for my old mainboard and use
| it as a server or mount it to a TV:
|
| https://www.coolermaster.com/catalog/cases/mainboard-
| case/fr...
| blueflow wrote:
| Its the stuff what happens when you think 'what can i do with
| the hardware that i have' instead of 'which hardware to buy'.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I used to think this way, but then HN scared me into
| thinking that all this 5+ year hardware is _much_ less
| power-efficient, so now I just... avoid the issue entirely,
| and don 't do anything requiring hardware, old or new.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I want my CPU-load locale switcher back.
| andrepd wrote:
| These kind of weird software/hardware bugs remind me of this:
| https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/my-hardest-bug-eve...
| tambourine_man wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1172/
| mat_epice wrote:
| I was about to dig this one out myself!
| glitchc wrote:
| Love that comic! Totally relevant.
| kstrauser wrote:
| This is the greatest thing I've read today.
|
| I love when software and the real world have entirely
| unexpected interactions. And by love, I usually mean hate,
| especially when I'm the one that has to debug them.
| sophacles wrote:
| These sorts of things make for good war stories. I find a
| trick to improve my attitude while dealing with them is to
| remind myself "this will be a good story at least, and I'll
| be glad it happened once I'm regaling others with it".
| kstrauser wrote:
| Oh, you know it! That's going to be a great tale to bust
| out for years to come.
| andrewfromx wrote:
| my favorite story on this is a town in north east usa changed
| it's traffic lights from energy wasting old fashion lights to
| new fancy low energy lights. The unexpected result: in winter
| time these lights did not melt the snow away and the lights
| were opaque with white snow.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Technology Connections did an episode on this kind of
| stuff. GE just installs heaters in their streetlights now.
| samschooler wrote:
| Less technical, but: My wifi goes out when it rains.
|
| My wifi is on the same breaker as the outdoor outlets so any
| issues with water intrusion affects the wifi.
| blueflow wrote:
| Outdoor outlets should be at least IP44 to prevent this from
| happening...
| bluGill wrote:
| Should, and modern code probably are. However there are a
| lot of old construction that doesn't meet modern standards.
| oakwhiz wrote:
| Had a similar thing happen with "fake" (passive) PoE working
| fine but some types of network activity would cause the CPUs in
| the network devices to work harder, leading to voltage sag
| which would sometimes cause the remote side of the link to
| reboot or hang. The problem went away with a separate power
| supply for the local and remote side.
| lucb1e wrote:
| An electric lighter does this to my mouse when I zap specific
| objects with it, such as a screwdriver. I tried distances up to
| about 1.5 meters away from the mouse. The only reason I initially
| noticed is because I saw the red light turn off that was coming
| faintly through the holes I drilled in the top to let a heating
| element that I had built in heat my hand better. (Spoiler: the
| holes didn't do anything, but I did notice that 5W below an
| exposed extremity go a long way when given 30+ minutes!)
|
| I also enjoyed the two random occasions where I shot lightning
| from my hands through the plastic cover of a keyboard and got the
| electronics into some error state, requiring it to be replugged
| before it would work again. It was a... power...ful feeling.
|
| This and screaming routers are some of my favorite oddities. An
| old cisco router that was sitting next to my desk would
| occasionally "scream" at me. I couldn't describe it any other
| way, though it was rather faint and you wouldn't hear it with
| music on. It took some time for ~15-year-old me to figure out
| that it happened with high rates of small network packets. Could
| be reproduced with some ping command (I would say with sudo and
| either a low -i or even -f, but I was a Windows user back then
| and forgot the relevant flags, or maybe I used hping3.)
| bentcorner wrote:
| > _It took some time for ~15-year-old me to figure out that it
| happened with high rates of small network packets_
|
| I honestly think that there's a hidden potential with
| instrumenting programs with different noises, and being able to
| listen to them could give you a broad understanding of program
| behavior without needing to profile or watch logs.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I used to write code for a certain machine that ran long,
| complex sets of instructions. We could tell what sequence it
| was running by listening to the "tune" the motors played as
| it ran. Was also easy to tell when there was a bug or some
| other problem: the sound would be "off" and sure enough, a
| few seconds later there'd be an error message on the display.
| lucb1e wrote:
| I always took out my earphones or turned down/off speakers
| while doing computer modifications. I want to hear things
| like that fans are spinning, how busy the hard drive is if
| the screen is not yet working... in a computer repair shop I
| noticed others didn't do the same and that's when I realized
| that I was subconsciously doing this in the first place.
| Nowadays I do less of that messing around, but also there's
| SSDs and quiet laptops. Either way, yeah I totally get you.
|
| Relevant / you might enjoy: ping -a
| tambourine_man wrote:
| You have to scream back at them:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
| lucb1e wrote:
| _mentally calls hard drive in datacenter video_ - _clicks_ -
| did not disappoint :)
|
| I tried this but could not reproduce it by the way.
| realo wrote:
| I have exactly the same issue with an Embody chair from Herman
| Miller.
|
| Not sure if it is the fabric or the piston, but definitely
| suspected static since I got the chair.
|
| The screen does not seem to age prematurely because of this.
| oogali wrote:
| I have an Embody chair but no such issues with my 27" monitors.
| fsckboy wrote:
| you should NOT ground your chair directly, only ground it through
| a large resistor, 100K or so. (you might want to check that
| value, it's from memory, I think you want any potential electric
| "shock" to be down below the 1 milliAmp range)
|
| I'd use a ground strap designed for wearing while you handle
| MOSFET ICs.
|
| if you ground your chair directly, it is likely to make YOU be
| the best circuit to ground when you handle your computer or
| monitor's AC "mains" (us "uk") power cords.
|
| The resistor will allow static discharge (very few coulombs at
| very high voltage) but limit the flow of electricity
| mgdlbp wrote:
| Also prevents unexpected shocks to the buttocks upon sitting.
|
| Directly grounding shouldn't be particularly risky though. It's
| not uncommon to have a metal desk touching a grounded but not
| double-insulated chassis or dangling USB cable. And I get the
| impression that electrical systems are engineered so that users
| aren't touching live contacts when plugging things in - maybe
| less so in the case of US plugs.
|
| That said, an RCD/GFCI would help in either case, and might
| have in the cases of electrocution by faulty phone charger,
| where current presumably travelled through multiple wires in
| the USB cable alone.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Very true, but the resistance should be even more - for safety
| it should be at least 1 megaohm.
| akarlsten wrote:
| Had the same issue a while back, had a hell of a time figuring
| out why one of my screens would flicker or shut off momentarily
| whenever my girlfriend sat down at her desk (which is next to
| mine). Even initially figuring out that it was the act of her
| sitting down that caused it took some time, with a lot of jokes
| about her telepathically messing with my setup in the meantime.
|
| Turns out that the gas piston in her chair (not an IKEA chair in
| this case) has a bit of "give" to cushion oneself when sitting
| down, and that compression caused some kind of electromagnetic
| pulse (I assume?) strong enough to mess with the monitor.
|
| I do wonder if it's perhaps bad for the monitor's lifespan, but
| it only affected my cheapest one, and with the cause found I can
| live with it.
| treeman79 wrote:
| There is a noise filter that you can clip onto the power line
| or other cables to help prevent radio transmissions from going
| into the line or other sources of noise.
|
| Maybe one of the cables is acting as an antenna.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/VSKEY-Anti-interference-Telephones-Eq...
| r2_pilot wrote:
| A similar device does not suppress the chair/monitor effect
| for me. Although that monitor is particularly bad (an Asus
| Rog, no less!).
| JerryB77 wrote:
| A friend of mine bought IEMs with a microphone (Moondrop
| Chuu) and it would pick up radio frequencies that you could
| hear through a voice call. These didn't end up fixing it, I
| suspected it was bad grounding but we never ended up solving
| what the root cause was.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| With 300+ cables in my setup for audio, that's not what I
| want to read.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's much less of an issue with balanced leads, so just use
| those?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Everything is already balanced, that's a given.
| rubatuga wrote:
| How about shielding and grounding
| plastic3169 wrote:
| Wow, this is great. I have similar chair and monitor problems.
| Never have been able to connect the two.
| sergioisidoro wrote:
| Holly crap! My screen has been randomly flickering every now and
| then. Tried everything to fix it, including disabling color
| calibrations, unplugging things, and disabling screen dimming. I
| have an Ikea chair, and sometimes get significant electrostatic
| discharges when I get up or touch metal elements.
|
| I have a mechanical keyboard with a small piezoelectric buzzer,
| and sometimes I've heard it click, although it's unplugged.
|
| Everything makes sense now D:
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| You folks are all lucky. I have the same chair, but the ESD
| problem didn't manifest as screen flicker - it manifested as my
| work laptop bluescreening about a minute after me getting up from
| the chair. I wouldn't have guessed the cause of not for some
| random HN comment some half a year ago. The solution for now is
| that I don't use external screens with my laptop. One of these
| days I'll find a better-isolated display cable.
| samstave wrote:
| I have several of these AOC USB external monitors and they are
| great:
|
| and their USB cable that comes with them has a ferrite node.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/AOC-E1659FWU-16IN-Powered-Monitor/dp/...
| grumbel wrote:
| There is an old EEVblog[1] video on the topic. Mine doesn't do it
| from chairs, but it regularly blacks out if I turn on the nearby
| LED strip.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-V_Z3bD_PA
| edwintorok wrote:
| Had similar problem with my Steelcase chair: every time I'd stand
| up and my heels touched or came close to metalic part of the
| chair there was an electrostatic discharge that causes the screen
| to flicker on/off for a moment. My previous chair never had the
| problem.
|
| Solved by an anti-static floor mat from Floortex. Interestingly
| only one of the screens reacted this way, the one connected
| through displayport, HDMI seems more forgiving of electrostatic
| interferences like this.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Had a similar problem in a WeWork office setup once. ESD is
| annoying.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| This is nothing new, I solved this and a bunch of other things by
| wearing a tinfoil hat.
| coolspot wrote:
| They are still watching you.
| e4e5 wrote:
| I have the same problem, but don't care enough to buy a new
| chair. It isn't that annoying
| Kiro wrote:
| Anyone have a non-Mastodon link?
| lucb1e wrote:
| What kind of link would you like?
| zajio1am wrote:
| Some that does not require Javascript?
| jwilk wrote:
| You may want to give my Mastodon CLI a try:
|
| https://github.com/jwilk/zygolophodon
| alexwasserman wrote:
| Back in CRT days I was given a tiny desktop fishtank with plastic
| fish that swam in it.
|
| I turned it on and my screen image started gently moving around.
|
| The fish swam with magnets and having the little tank next to the
| screen was causing the screen image to move around.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| This is one of the funniest threads in HN ever. Wasn't expecting
| to laugh this much when I clicked.
| rf15 wrote:
| We had the same problem in our office, but it would only happen
| if the display was connected to a Dell docking station - the
| cables were fine, but certain DSes are not shielded well (or
| accidently play antenna with the cable, as was our initial
| theory)
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| Wow, I can't believe this. I have a Markus Ikea chair and a dual
| screen setup with a USB c hub connecting them all. The screen
| likes to turn off all of the time and it drives me nuts. A good
| smack quickly fixes it. I never considered the chair. Mind blown
| with static discharge.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| > Mind blown with static discharge.
|
| You might want to look into some extra shielding for your mind.
| I hear having it blown by static discharge too many times can
| cause brain damage. ;)
|
| In all seriousness, yeah, this is crazy! IMO, IKEA should
| either recall and fix, modify the design of, or stop selling
| these chairs. ESD can seriously damage equipment, and I could
| easily see there being cumulative effects from something like
| this.
| currency wrote:
| I don't think it's classical high-voltage ESD reaching the
| monitor; it's RFI generating enough voltage to mess with the
| HDMI signal. Voltages generated by RFI will be relatively low
| compared to direct ESD.
| drbawb wrote:
| I have this same issue. Not an IKEA chair, but it is a similarly
| cheap office chair from some big box store. It only affects my
| external monitors connected to my TB3 adapter. I figured out the
| cause pretty quick, mostly because I assumed my monitors weren't
| averse to the curse words that spew from my mouth after such an
| "ESD event."
| makkesk8 wrote:
| ESD safety is an important topic, particularly in industries
| where sensitive electronic components are involved. However,
| there are many misconceptions surrounding ESD safety, especially
| when it comes to the use of cardboard and cotton clothing.
|
| Cardboard, for example, is often thought of as a safe material
| for packaging and handling electronic components (motherboard
| boxes included). However, it can actually generate a significant
| amount of static electricity, which can damage sensitive
| components. Similarly, cotton clothing is often thought of as a
| safe material to wear in ESD-sensitive environments, but it can
| actually generate static electricity as well, polyester is
| generally considered preferred over cotton.
|
| It is a common misconception that electrostatic discharge only
| causes damage if you can feel it. In reality, ESD can cause
| damage to sensitive electronic components even if you don't feel
| anything.
|
| In fact, the damage caused by ESD can be more insidious when it
| is not noticeable. This is because when ESD is felt, individuals
| are more likely to take precautions to prevent it from happening
| again. However, when ESD is not felt, individuals may not even be
| aware that damage has occurred, leading to potential failures or
| malfunctions down the line.
|
| I would advise anyone working electronics in any capacity, it's
| important to keep ESD in mind, as many sporadic issues are more
| than likely related to electrostatic discharge in some capacity.
| ilyt wrote:
| In dry days in the office and right boots I could zap monitor to
| reboot it.
|
| But my keyboard was weirdest of all, just levitating electrically
| charged hand over it caused it to restart
| yborg wrote:
| One of my first jobs 30+ years ago was ESD testing automotive and
| consumer electronics. I would spend a week with a discharge gun
| methodically running different discharge energies and waveforms
| both directly onto the devices as well as onto radiators at
| various distances from the device under test, as well as any
| cabling/harnessing that attached to the device.
|
| Then the design team would figure out the reason for any resets
| or operational anomalies (or damaged components) and put whatever
| additional suppression was needed. Sometimes this required
| rerouting of traces to reduce coupling or redesign of the ground
| plane. It's a tricky business and expensive if you want to do it
| right. I suspect that your average $120 display does not see this
| kind of testing.
| shard wrote:
| This reminds me of the 1st electronics company I worked at. We
| didn't have any ESD equipment, so I built a circuit which took
| power from a wall socket and pumped the voltage up to 2kV using
| diodes and caps, and sent that through a simple human body mode
| resistor/cap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-body_model)
| to do ESD testing. It worked well enough for the simple testing
| that we did, and was successful at finding weaknesses of our
| PCB layout for static protection.
| m463 wrote:
| Reminds me of woz's apple video on ESD:
| https://youtu.be/hLOQ7zOWGAA
|
| Personally I remember having a pickup truck with a velour seat.
| During winter I would slide off the seat at a gas station and
| the first thing I would tough would be the gas pump handle -
| ZAAAP. Not what you want at a gas station!
| eastbound wrote:
| That's why in Europe the gas nozzle doesn't have the little
| lock - It requires that you keep pressing it. So that you
| avoid going back to the car, charging static, coming back to
| the nozzle and having a spark.
| Gare wrote:
| I've never seen nozzle without a lock in Europe (Croatia
| and countries close to it).
| rft wrote:
| This is not the case for all of Europe. At least here in
| Germany our gas nozzles have a lock, no need to hold it.
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| Parts of US have this, (where it snows and is dry enough in
| the winter to be an issue.)
| mlyle wrote:
| Cars are a terrible ESD and EMC environment and safety critical
| at the same time.
|
| Computer equipment usually does pretty well, especially after
| installation (when there's good ground path everywhere and it's
| in a chassis). Between ferrite beads and TVS, there's a pretty
| good amount of protection, and I've seen pretty few ESD
| anomalies-- a reset or two when touching connectors long ago is
| about the extent of it.
|
| RFI and EMC is another matter. When I was operating a 100W
| 30MHz transmitter indoors briefly, the computers around did all
| _kinds_ of wacky stuff. Flashing screens, random mouse clicks
| (from wired mice), transmitting packetstorms on their own, etc.
| Eduard wrote:
| TVS == Transient-voltage-suppression diode?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient-voltage-
| suppressio...
| mlyle wrote:
| Yup, explicit TVS or just diodes doing clamping or
| whatever. There's a fair bit of protection circuitry
| around. Often there's series resistors which help a lot,
| too.
|
| Not to mention that all modern CMOS chips have protection
| structures on the input (though not really as good as you'd
| like for something that is randomly handled by charged up
| humans).
| tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
| My dad's car had velour interior. Anytime the humidity was
| below 50%, expect the car to zap you and to be zapped
| touching door handles. I assume there are/were numerous gas
| station fuel fires from cars with velour upholstery.
| eitland wrote:
| One stupid little thing I realized after having sometimes
| been consistently zapped by mybcar door and other times not
| getting zapped in the same weather and humidity:
|
| If I open the door and grasp for the (metal) edge of it
| before I start sliding out of my seat I will be grounded
| and consequently not build up charge as I leave the seat.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| We had some carpet at my old workplace that would always
| charge you up and get you zapped. Whenever you touched
| anything metal. So the old and wise folks there
| immediately told you to grab your key when you get up and
| then use it to touch something metal, so the spark is
| between your key and the metal object and you don't feel
| anything.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I am a static electricity "magnet". I keep getting
| shocked a lot, painfully, in environments where no one
| else is, which is kind of bad for my mental health if I
| focus too much on it. I've learned all kinds of methods
| to cope.
|
| For example, we have a few bar stools at home; sitting on
| one always primes me for getting shocked after getting
| off it. I figured a few rules, such as never wearing
| anything isolating on my feet, so I can dissipate charges
| by keeping one foot on the metal part of the chair; or,
| failing that, I make sure there's always a metal object
| in grasping range, which I can use to later discharge in
| a less painful way.
|
| (Pro tip: don't do the metal discharge thing with the
| hand you wear rings on, and hold the metal item so it
| doesn't touch the underside of your fingers - getting a
| shock through a nerve isn't pleasant at all.)
|
| Another thing: I always keep a metal coat hanger around
| the bedroom, so that whenever I have to deal with
| blankets, I can keep "swiping" them to collect charge and
| then transfer them away by touching something grounded
| with the coat hanger.
|
| Also: I _always_ have my keys on me when away, in an
| easily-accessible place, specifically so I always have a
| metal object I can use to offload static charge in a
| pain-free way.
|
| Also: over the years I kind of habituated all kinds of
| subtle behaviors designed to keep me safe from getting
| shocked by my wife or kids. Basically, if I feel one of
| them just got charged (e.g. via the blankets or the bar
| stool mentioned before), or I haven't kept track of their
| recent movements in a static-rich environment, if there's
| a need or chance of _any_ kind of physical contact, I
| instinctively first touch using my elbow or some other
| pain-minimizing way, just to equalize charges with them.
| My wife sometimes notices when I do it to her, but
| fortunately, she is quite understanding.
| moron4hire wrote:
| One of the worst shocks I've received in my life was not
| accidentally touching one of the prongs of a half-
| inserted 120v mains plug, but pulling one of my fleece
| blankets off of the other on my bed, and then getting my
| shoed foot within 6 inches of my metal bed frame. I
| almost fell over, grabbed the upper part of the frame
| with my hand, and received yet another painful shock.
| Eduard wrote:
| > When I was operating a 100W 30MHz transmitter indoors ...
|
| Ehm, can it still be considered "indoors" if it's 100W at
| 30MHz?
| ansible wrote:
| > _Cars are a terrible ESD and EMC environment and safety
| critical at the same time._
|
| Had a bad incident a few years ago where EMI created by the
| windshield wiper motors on a large vehicle was causing
| voltage dips and spikes for our product. We had protection
| circuitry so that if the incoming voltage was too low, it
| would shut down our system cleanly.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Saitek (now logitech) sells flight simulator peripherals in
| the form of a throttle box and separate flight stick. They
| use two different USB cables and plugs instead of connecting
| one to the other, and they are technically two different
| devices. If you connect them to the same USB hub or to a USB
| system with not enough power, they will seem to work just
| fine, but will send a completely random button press or stick
| movement every so often. Changing ports will fix this.
|
| Another logitech one: I have a g27 steering wheel/pedal
| set/shifter combo. The pedals plug into the wheel, which also
| connects to a power supply and USB cable to connect to the
| computer. If you plug the steering wheel into the power and
| DON'T plug in the USB cable, metal parts of the pedals "leak"
| current, and you can feel a painful sensation if you touch
| the metal with exposed skin.
| addled wrote:
| As a kid, someone gave me a toy keyboard. Checking Google, it
| looks nearly identical to a Casio PT-1, but was probably a
| clone or slightly different model.
|
| 9 year-old me was delighted to discover that it would start
| playing on its own when it was near the plasma globe I had
| bought at a science museum gift shop. I couldn't explain it,
| but eventually came to a vague understanding.
|
| It was semi-random, mashing together short, distorted
| sequences from the song bank stored in memory. Being almost
| recognizable made it more haunting.
|
| I remember bringing this out one night during a sleepover and
| we all got kind of spooked. Fun times!
| abakker wrote:
| I am pretty sure I had the same keyboard and plasma
| globe!!!! IIRC, you could also get the keyboard to play
| when you set it on top of the SCSI external CDROM drive
| that came with my mac 2400c.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| That was my experience with the first spark gap switched
| Tesla coil I built. Running it in the basement would make
| stuff freak out on the upper floor.
| varjag wrote:
| A 100W transmitter is a crapload of energy, way beyond most
| consumer and industrial EM immunity requirements.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yup, though I was also nowhere close. It may have been
| conducted EMI.
| mastax wrote:
| With my new carpet and habit of wearing slippers I've had a lot
| of trouble with ESD. Big painful zaps that would reboot my
| keyboard and sometimes cause other mischief. I was worried about
| causing permanent damage. I got in the habit of touching the
| grounding screw on the wall outlet while sitting down which
| basically fixed it.
|
| Strangely, if the computer is asleep it will wake up when I zap
| the ground screw. I'm still wondering how that happens. I guess
| it gets picked up by the wires which run to the power button? My
| PC case is pretty awful at EMI shielding like most modern custom
| PC cases.
| thefz wrote:
| Had the same issue with my Secretlab. The softweave fabric makes
| static like crazy an when getting up the main body comes in
| contact with the roller base which is shaped like a star thus
| working as an antenna. Big ESD pulse, all Display port screens
| flicker. Solved by using a towel where I seat.
| geff82 wrote:
| That might explain the thing I sometimes experience with my
| screen. I also have an Ikea Markus. Sometimes, when I get up, the
| screen goes off. I thought there is some kind of weird sensor in
| the screen.
| dexzod wrote:
| I would consider this as a privacy feature. Ikea should mention
| this in their marketing material
| laurensr wrote:
| The exact same thing has been bothering me for months. My screen
| blinking when a colleague stands up.
|
| And we ruled out loose cables or anything like that
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I have another version of this problem. Almost every time I get
| out of my chair, my Schiit Modi DAC disappears for a moment and
| my music stops, then starts again a few seconds later as the DAC
| comes back online.
|
| I spent a fair amount of effort trying to figure that one out.
| Thought it was loose cables, something, but no. I don't have a
| Markus chair, but my Steelcase Gesture is still capable of making
| a pretty good amount of static electricity. Once in a while when
| I stand up if my boom microphone is too close I'll shock myself
| on it, and most of the time I have to reboot things after that.
| Haven't permanently killed anything yet, thankfully.
| samstave wrote:
| I have an HP OMEN laptop, W11 and RTX and a 165hz refresh rate.
|
| When I plug the machine in, the audio will get all static-y
| from the built in speakers. It seems to especially happen when
| I am moving my mouse over a video thats playing - and the
| playback of videos stutters when pulling the cord in or out of
| the machine.
|
| Battery life on this machine sucks though... but other than
| that, its fantastic...
| goda90 wrote:
| I had a pair of in-ear headphones with metal casing, that when
| combined with my work chair and having my shoes on, would
| regularly cause one of my monitors to turn off and back on if I
| moved wrong or stood up. Shocked myself on the headphones a few
| times too.
| qwertox wrote:
| I have the same issue with another brand (Topstar Open Point SY
| Deluxe), but it usually only happens when I wear some sandals
| with a specific sole.
|
| I have a power outlet glued to the desk and since it's a German
| version the grounding contacts are well exposed, so that, when I
| wear those sandals, I get up from the chair while holding the
| grounding contacts.
|
| It doesn't work all the time, specially when I'm also wearing a
| fleece jacket, because the jacket doesn't discharge over the
| body. But it helps a bit.
| omneity wrote:
| This reminds me of a story about sticky tapes emitting x-rays
| when pulled.
|
| I submitted the link here, it's interesting in its own right:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35744187
| jcarrano wrote:
| The monitor at my office computer turn off whenever I connect a
| USB device, connect something to something connected through USB
| or merely connect a anything to an electrical outlet that is
| close to the PC.
| caaig wrote:
| It truly is ESD day
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/28/on_call/
| lucb1e wrote:
| > Shocks from a hairy jumper crashed a PC, but the boss
| wouldn't believe it
|
| To give people some idea of what they're clicking
| thedanbob wrote:
| I had a job in university testing breakdown voltages in various
| flavors of Kapton. IIRC the idea was to see how suitable they
| would be for spacecraft construction where they would be exposed
| to high voltages from solar wind. We could always tell when a
| test run was complete because the EM interference from >10 kV
| suddenly shorting to ground caused our computers to freeze.
| (Thankfully they still recorded the data we needed.)
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