With my new Thinkpad (6th gen), I can hear CPU load as noise in the headphones. (Like, if I do something like "find /", the noise directly corresponds to the work being done.)

I found this over on the Arch forums https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1824636#p1824636

sudo hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x1d SET_PIN_WIDGET_CONTROL 0x0

and, indeed, that fixes the issue until next boot.

I'd like to file a bug but I'm not actually sure where to file it (kernel? something in alsa?). And I'm also not sure if the above is really a fix or just a kludge. Suggestions?