A slightly horrifying / cool thing I learned from doing #hamradio and in particular the FT8 mode:

Every 15 seconds, thousands of computers let out a wavering, wailing tone into the void. Then there's 2 seconds of silence. And then they do it again. Since they're doing this by sort-of "pretending" to be sending audio signals, you can listen to it: soundcloud.com/vartchcodpiece/…

It sounds kinda like a mashup of whalesong and digital ghostly wailing. Wailsong, I guess.

What are they saying to each other, you ask? They're basically having the same conversation over and over again. I'll tell you how it goes:

"Hi, anybody there? I'm Alice and I live in Appalachia."
"Hi Alice, I'm Bob and I live in Bermuda."
"Hi Bob, I'm Alice and I hear you really clearly."
"Hi Alice, I'm Bob and I hear you not-so-clearly."
"Hi Bob, I'm Alice and goodbye!"
"Hi Alice, I'm Bob and goodbye!"

FT8 - 3.573 Khz - 80m

FT8 or Franke & Taylor 8 is a form of digital communication used primarily by amateur radio operators to communicate on amateur radio bands with a majority of traffic occurring on the HF amateur bands

^SoundCloud