For some months I have listened to podcasts and internet radio stations on one of my smartphones. Randomly, while listening, the station will stop playing. Now this could be 30 minutes to an hour between interruptions. When it first started happening this happened so frequently that I would need to restart my phone, and that would work part of the time but mostly, didn't have an effect. Today, this happens about every 20-30 minutes.

My theories were that it was all server related or site related or phone related. Whatever it was, it had to be caused from somewhere inside my phone or through the internet.

Today though, I was editing a video on my laptop with my smartphone sitting next to it, listening to a podcast. Now, when theres an error such as overloading the editor or tasking it too hard it will fail and you will need to save, close the app and reload your task to try once again.

This time I was editing a very short video without much tasking, something that should not cause any error at all, simply watching it play, when both the smartphone podcast quit playing and the editor got caught up in an error, forcing me to go through the save/restart motions. These two things happened simultaneously, precisely to the millisecond.

Since both electronics were interrupted during unrelated low demand tasks simultaneously, my concern is that there is a signal outside of both machines causing the disruption. Since I am not very knowledgeable on these sorts of things, I am searching for someone that has an idea.

My laptop is completely hard disconnected from the internet, wifi card removed, antenna removed, net connection software erased. So, obviously, the internet isnt to blame here, it has to be some outside signal, question is, what sort of signal can disrupt the operating tasks of both a smartphone and an offline laptop?

 

If there is no outside connection possible - I'm guessing it's a power supply surge/glitch. If one of the items was not plugged in at the time, then ther is some major EMI in your house. Check if it happens when the fridge or freezer kick in, air conditioner, elevator movement in an apartment, some neighborhood factory with big motors, or furnaces, tell us more about your environment.

 

Apartment environment, all normal appliances, nothing out of the ordinary. I will monitor the fridge/freezer to see if theres some synchronicity there. The elevator is a good 100 ft or more down the hall. No industrial companies nearby.

 

Note that when this happened at 7:55pm (it is 8:42pm now) my laptop wasn't plugged in, running on battery power. My phone wasnt charging either.

 

Ask your neighbors if they're having trouble.

 

And if they do?

 

And if they do?

Then call the FCC, something is wrong and you're suffering from an EMI issue that they need to solve.

 

Alright, thank you.

 

Welcome to AAC. It’s good to have you join us and post.

A sample of one instance with the surprising assertion that you can perceive events to the millisecond is far from a reason to suspect that anything other than a mere coincidence.

Streaming is subject to sudden stops regularly. Computers running ordinary operating systems can suddenly decide to do other things in critical timing sections and cause programs not tolerant of sudden losses of resources to do stupid things like chrash, lock up, or stop.

I believe, based on the evidence you’ve presented and my experience that you are chasing phantoms. I think you’ve come to an unwarranted conclusion and any time you spend pursuing this will be wasted.

If you think there is really something happening other than normal idiosyncrasies of computers and their programs, much more rigorous testing and much less confirmation bias in evidence collection will be needed to work out what that is. I don’t think there is anything to find, and, particularly in this case, I think assuming (exaggerated) correlation proves causality is foolish.

But, if you want to pursue this then your plan should not be to run around guessing at things but to first characterize the “problem” more rigorously, choose a possible mechanism that fits the more carefully gathered evidence, then test that theory by experiment and measurement.

There are many people here who might be inclined to help you do this, so asking questions should get you help.

 

I would suspect the internet connection you are using on your phone. Tend to agree with ya’akov about the correlation to laptop, most likely coincidence unless they both freeze at the same time regularly.

 

Alright, thank you.

I forgot to tell you, asking neighbors is key, especially in an apartment complex. If they are having a similar problem, you can be pretty confident you have a problem and the FCC will take you serious. Without some outside corroborating support, everyone will tell you it's just a coincidence that two decides locked up at the same time - even if they have no explanation and no suggestions of why all of your decides lock up in a too-frequently for a quality device.