GanondalfTheWhite

GanondalfTheWhite t1_j2elevv wrote

Reply to comment by The_quest_for_wisdom in Eli5 How exactly does Noise cancellation work? That too in such small airbuds by Professional-Ad3441

> thinking with sound is exactly how we ended up here

While everything you said is true, the speed of sound, which, yes, is much slower than light, is still pretty damn fast when we're talking about how much time there is to process something in the time between a soundwave passing from one side of your earbud to the other. Right? Cuz that's what we're talking about. Not how long the sound of something vs. the light of something takes to hit your brain.

Ultimately what we're talking about is that the earbud needs to be able to detect the soundwave, compute its opposite waveform, and emit the counter wave all in the same time that it takes for the soundwave to pass the earbud so that the original wave and the counterwave hit the eardrum at the same time. Right?

So if we assume the earbud is maybe half an inch thick, means it has to do all of that in about 1/27,000th of a second. 0.04 milliseconds.

Even knowing how fast sound travels, that ability to process seems unintuitively quick. That's all I'm saying, it's unintuitive and pretty darn cool.

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GanondalfTheWhite t1_j2dk7dy wrote

Reply to comment by Pretend_Selection334 in NJ MVC Rude and condescending by Pretend_Selection334

If they have 200 interactions a day and 175 of them are negative they're gonna stop giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I usually try to see if I can make them laugh. The vast majority of them unclench and turn back into normal people once you can crack the resting bitch face.

But seriously, working there has to feel like one of the circles of hell. Day after day, year after year, the same 10 questions from the same 10 types of assholes, having to give the same responses telling people they need to fill out their forms, the same angry people yelling at them for stuff that isn't their fault because they just work there and have no control over policy... Yeah, no. They always get my benefit of the doubt.

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