Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2018 July 2

= July 2 =

Improving unintelligible speech
How can I extract the words of a hardy intelligible audio file? I tried reducing the speed, and cleaning it with the noise removal feature of Audacity. Anything else that can be done? --Doroletho (talk) 02:17, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * There's been a lot of work recently in using AI to extract a voice from a noisy recording. It may be you can find one on the web which will try your recording and give you the result. I await the first instance of one that is fooled into saying something completely different the way AI recognition of pictures has been ;-) Dmcq (talk) 13:03, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Extracting voice from all the rest would be a real improvement. I wonder what makes voice different from everything else. But indeed, no matter in what language it is, humans seem to have no problem differentiating between what's speech and what's noise.--Doroletho (talk) 15:04, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Humans sometimes have difficulty differentiating between speech and noise; according to DL Murman (Predicting When Dementia Starts, 2015) “speech comprehension in the setting of background noise and ambiguous speech content declines with age….” The OPs aim is speech comprehension and not necessarily speaker recognition so some non-linear processes such as clipping and/or companding that distort the sound may prove beneficial. Here are research papers, and a discussion at StackExchange of human speech noise filtering. DroneB (talk) 14:39, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

I find that closing my eyes while listening improves intelligibility a heck of a lot, without having to do anything to the recording. 173.228.123.166 (talk) 05:04, 5 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I didn't thought about that, but it makes sense. Maybe reducing the visual processing makes our brains concentrate more on audio input.
 * I also tried reducing the sound volume with mixed results. This might work because you also reduce the noise, and you force yourself to pay attention to what you are listening to. Doroletho (talk) 10:20, 5 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Reciprocally, I sometimes find that noise makes reading more difficult. —Tamfang (talk) 02:35, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Remote desktop
I work for a large state agency. We have hundreds, perhaps thousands computers. They are all managed by another state agency. The way my work is structured I do have some gaps which sometimes last an hour or more. I have some software projects home and on the weekends I now debug a large C# application. I won't mind to set up a remote desktop home to be able to do some work from here, at work, on my home project.

I am not sure I can change the OS to do remote desktop at work, but I may try. A small window is available for this at work, and surely at home.

I wonder if doing this will be detectable by the technical staff who monitor our computers? Thanks, AboutFace 22 (talk) 16:02, 2 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, of course technical staff can simply monitor all connections using their network. Jahoe (talk) 09:21, 3 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Your employer's IT is able to monitor all inbound and outbound data packets from your computer to the internet (assuming a non-headbangingly-stupid configuration of the internal network). Cryptography may obfuscate the contents of such communications, but basic metadata will always be visible: for instance in HTTP(S) the network needs to know to which IP address and port to deliver the packets. Hence it will always be "detectable" in the sense that IT can see stuff going up and down the wires.
 * What IT can deduce from the information they see depends on a lot of complex factors, including what exact data they can observe in the clear, what amount of data goes through in which pattern, what are other typical uses, etc. A desktop application will probably look extremely fishy on traffic charts compared to normal internet usage (steady traffic instead of spikes of page loads). Tigraan Click here to contact me 14:01, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

@Tigraan and other fellow, thank you. I won't contact you, @Tigraan. I've got what I needed. In a small way I am already there. I don't have a remote desktop, but I often connect to the stuff on the web having nothing to do with my job description. It is MSDN forums, C# and C++, SQL Server, a lot of math of various kind. I do numerical integration. So far nothing happened. I guess I won't do the remote desktop, I will survive without it. Our Internet access is blocked to some places I occasionally run into by accident, but I don't need them. Nobody restricts the stuff I am interested in, so it must be OK. Thank you again, AboutFace 22 (talk) 15:08, 3 July 2018 (UTC)


 * You should bear in mind that your employer almost certainly has an Internet Usage Policy or similar. My employer's policy says that "occassional" use of the internet at work for private purposes is acceptable provided it does not adversely impact your work or the network performance. There are a long list of "unauthorised" activities such as downloading software, playing online games etc. Probably a good idea to check your employer's equivalent policy, rather than assuming that anything that is not blocked is fine. Gandalf61 (talk) 13:54, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

@Gandalf61, thank you. I vaguely remember reading something like this. The problem is that my employer absolutely cannot structurally occupy me full time. I wish they could. My nature is to do something and what I do here is interesting, but I do everything fast and efficient. Then I wait for emergencies. I cannot install any software because even when I get a message that Adobe needs an update and I click YES, the update is rejected. They do it all centrally. I expected there might be a problem in implementing remote desktop but I got authoritative information that it would be better for me to stay out of it. Thank you all. AboutFace 22 (talk) 16:36, 5 July 2018 (UTC)