[HN Gopher] Objects should shut up
___________________________________________________________________
Objects should shut up
Author : gm678
Score : 255 points
Date : 2025-08-04 14:33 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dustri.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dustri.org)
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Yes. Also, instantiated objects from some random library
| shouldn't write to stdout and stderr, which I thought it would be
| about.
| growthwtf wrote:
| I think it's an interesting correspondence--some general design
| principles about creating good auditory user interface
| somewhere in here. I would be interested if someone smarter
| than me can tell me what that principle is.
| dzr0001 wrote:
| I suspect that there's some marketing component at play here.
| People who do not own but observe devices making seemingly
| unnecessary noises might perceive these devices as premium.
| Think about the various beeps that occur when locking a car
| and arming the alarm, the startup sound that infotainment
| systems in some EVs play, the twinkle twinkle little star of
| a fancy rice cooker.
| jcelerier wrote:
| throwback to https://i.kym-
| cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/054/961/748...
| gregatragenet3 wrote:
| Yes but UI engineer performance is measured by user engagement
| and user engagement is measured by how much crap is clicked on.
|
| Whats measured is whats managed, and so we have a bunch of
| unnecessary crap to click on because that pushes the engagement
| metric up.
| eweise wrote:
| I'm spending about a grand to have a sensor in my golf door
| handle fixed because the car beeps for about 10 seconds every
| time it passes 10mph. Thinking of buying a car at least 15 years
| old so I can experience the lack of electronics again.
| jamesmunns wrote:
| In safety industries, particularly aviation, "alarm fatigue" is a
| really big deal. You recognize that pilots have limited
| situational bandwidth, and you REALLY don't want to be bugging
| them about things you can avoid. I worked in collision avoidance
| systems (TAS/TCASI/TCASII), and spent nearly a whole year just
| working on figuring out when and how we could avoid warning
| pilots in cases where "we're not sure exactly what is going on,
| so tell the pilot just in case" could potentially annoy pilots in
| cases like take off and landing (where they have important OTHER
| things to be doing!)
|
| It's a fun balance between "possibly don't warn the pilot about
| something they should know about", and "don't warn them if they
| are busy doing something important".
|
| More devices should have a "squelch" switch!
| tayloramurphy wrote:
| What does a squelch switch do?
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Silence
| etrautmann wrote:
| Squelch is a dial that changes a threshold below which analog
| radio signals are silenced so you can ignore noise. The dial
| allows you to dig into the noise when you want or be more
| conservative and only pass strong signals through.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Sets a minimum on the incoming signal to be amplified. For
| instance, only amplify stuff above x dB, silence stuff below
| x dB (noise).
| rzzzt wrote:
| Which one contributes more to alarm fatigue, spoken
| announcements like "bank angle" or beeps and buzzes like the
| autopilot disengage theme tune? Why is the latter so prominent?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If it's something that happens often (like on every trip or
| most days), a spoken announcement is more tiresome. If it
| happens rarely, the beep-encoded one is way more tiresome and
| can reduce situation awareness.
| nikanj wrote:
| My microwave beeps when it's done. And then keeps beeping every
| 30 seconds until you open the door. Very important safety
| feature, I guess
| octo888 wrote:
| That's weird! A normal oven would continue cooking the food,
| dishwashers need the steam to escape to start drying, clothes
| get creased in tumble dryers...but a microwave ? Just why?
| praash wrote:
| I constantly forget my food in the microwave for hours at a
| time.
| brettermeier wrote:
| Let it beep 3 times maximum(!), if you keep forgetting, you
| probably weren't very hungry.
| nikanj wrote:
| And yet you are still miraculously alive, despite not being
| alarmed of the terrifying situation
| hypeatei wrote:
| Mine does too, so I disabled the sounds by holding the "2"
| button for a few seconds. Might differ by manufacturer but
| hopefully yours has that option.
| igouy wrote:
| Toshiba -- When the sounds turn off, long pressing on 8 for 3
| seconds, it sounds a long beep and the sound turn off. All the
| buttons has no beep when they are pressed, including the ending
| cooking sounds is turn off too.
| lucumo wrote:
| Fucking agreed. Anything less than a fire alarm should shut the
| fuck up.
|
| That includes apps (games) that spend a minute screeching their
| godawful "mood music" during a loading screen. Or worse, won't
| allow you to shut the "music" off during a forced minutes long
| tutorial.
|
| Why Android doesn't have a permission system for sound, I don't
| know. I'd love to be able to just forbid every app from making
| any kind of noise.
| alex-moon wrote:
| 100% agree. I leave negative reviews on any app with sound that
| doesn't give me the ability to mute it.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| Amen. I will research the next car I get and I will not consider
| any car that makes annoying noises. And if I can't find one I
| will buy an older model.
| projektfu wrote:
| I had a Toyota RAV4 and it had a seatbelt alarm that was
| increasingly and incessantly obnoxious if you didn't buckle up.
| Meaning that you had to buckle up to move from one parking to
| another in a larger lot.
|
| I liked the car in other respects but I'm sure glad to be rid
| of that. It can only be disabled by someone with the correct
| obd interface.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Maybe this is generational, but I really don't care about the
| amount of minor jingles and tones I encounter on a daily basis,
| and I certainly don't see why it's necessary to publish this kind
| of a hostile rant about it. I guess the writer was trying to be
| over the top and funny, but really just comes off as unhinged and
| a bit obsessive, like the type of person you have to walk on
| eggshells around at work.
|
| I mean, my rice cooker is from Japan and plays "Twinkle, Twinkle,
| Little Star" when it starts. Was that a requirement of mine when
| I bought it? No. Does it bother me? Also no. It's kind of cute,
| actually.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Sound sensitivity varies by person. It's not generational.
| andrewrn wrote:
| Do you have kids? I'm younger and don't, and could still
| empathize with the author having his children disturbed by
| annoying device sounds. I bet its awful.
| startupsfail wrote:
| You are saying that you don't care. There are people who care.
| He does and brings in good reasons why the defaults shouldn't
| be spurious alarms and noise.
| bravoetch wrote:
| I had a 2011 Toyota and there are so many beeps. It's annoying
| because they are just noise pollution at that point. I don't
| mind actual alarms, like my fridge door beeps when I leave it
| ajar.
| Wistar wrote:
| My complaint about BMW, at least the one that I drove a few
| years ago, is that the warning sound for a passenger who
| hasn't put on their seatbelt is the same warning sound as
| when the engine is about to catch fire and explode.
| cess11 wrote:
| It's an absurd feature. Cars have had gauges for things like
| fuel for decades and decades, as a driver you know how much you
| have left, the car does not have to signal this in any other
| way.
|
| Same with other newfangled annoyances where the car is trying
| to have an opinion, like "lane assist" and speeding complaints.
|
| If the car is having an opinion on things like this, then the
| manufacturer should carry some of the burden when there is a
| crash because they are actively trying to take responsibility
| and influence the driver.
|
| Noises on home appliances is something else, and while they can
| be annoying they can also help blind people access their
| functions.
| pif wrote:
| You sound like the programmers who just shrug off with "It's
| just a warning!" a plethora of production bugs to come.
| crimsontech wrote:
| My rice cooker does the same, but my microwave beeps a harsh
| tone until I open the door, which is very annoying.
|
| The rice cooker gives me a notification and requires nothing
| from me.
|
| The microwave sounds an alarm that requires me to attend to it
| like an emergency.
| alex-moon wrote:
| "I don't have X problem. People who say they have X problem are
| the type of people you have to walk on eggshells around."
|
| Imagine how your comments would sound if X were something like
| racism or unwanted sexual advances instead of noise.
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| Free startup idea: An appliance brand that makes every home
| appliance with the following features:
|
| * Absolutely never any beep or sound
|
| * Direct controls, no "programs" (i.e. microwave has two knobs:
| power and time, etc.)
|
| * No network connectivity of any kind (obviously)
|
| With a strong brand identity and good marketing these would sell
| like sliced bread.
| capt_obvious_77 wrote:
| I don't understand why this doesn't exist.
|
| It seems to me the market for "no bullshit" appliances is HUGE,
| and waiting for a company to grab it and make billions.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I have a pessimistic view on this because I think most people
| are sadly very prone to going for whiz-bang style over
| substance. This is why people still buy Samsung appliances
| when Speed Queen are no frills but top tier in reliability.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| I don't think people actually trust Samsung as a brand that
| much. Marketing pipelines are just tailored to foist theirs
| and other garbage products because it generates revenue.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Yep, that's sort of what I'm getting at: people
| (generally) don't care enough to look past the marketing.
|
| More generally, it's sort of like how on auto enthusiast
| forums people are like "why don't car companies make cars
| for us anymore, manual, V8, rear wheel drive" and the
| answer is that, while there are enthusiasts, their
| numbers aren't enough to make the economics work compared
| to churning out a boring crossover that will sell
| significantly better.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| This is something that has been bouncing around my head for a
| very long time. A company that manufactured even halfway decent
| products that don't have endless amounts of dark
| patterns/planned obsolescence would quickly drive me bankrupt.
|
| I don't think we will ever see it though, at least not en
| masse. No startup would be able to afford the sheer number of
| lawsuits filed by the companies we have slowly allowed to
| become fat by selling products rife with consumer-hostile
| "features". Not to mention traditional advertising platforms
| would refuse to promote their products. Too much money already
| flowing in from the usual bad actors.
| RankingMember wrote:
| This basically exists in "Speed Queen". They've expanded
| offerings to try to capture the market that wants aesthetics
| and screens, but you can still get their old reliable:
| https://speedqueen.com/products/top-load-washers/tr3003wn/
| mfro wrote:
| Also worth noting, as someone who worked with appliances in
| the past, I have heard nothing but praise for speed queen
| products. Sentiment is that they are extremely reliable, if
| expensive.
| dguest wrote:
| I'm renting an apartment that came with a "nest" smoke
| detector. The thing ate through around 8 AA batteries every few
| months. We finally got sick of it and bought our own dumb 10EUR
| smoke / CO detector.
| adornKey wrote:
| More likely the following products will pop up:
| * Noise cancelling earplugs * Smart glasses with
| blink/strobe/seizure-filters
|
| And it will be an arms race, and the users will love their
| shiny iBlocks and iPlugs...
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I didn't go look at the actual devices but I was pleasantly
| surprised when "America's Test Kitchen" (a youtube channel) had
| a review of Microwaves and said they rated device higher if (1)
| you could turn the sounds off (2) didn't have network features
| (3) had more direct controls
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ1FBp-zDYI
|
| Note: I did not follow up as I'm not in the market for a
| Microwave at the moment. I'm only frustrated the one built into
| my apartment makes too much noise. Also, the channel's design
| seems to be to make high quality videos but leave some of the
| info on their website which requires sign up so -\\_(tsu)_/- I
| have not signed up.
| -warren wrote:
| While we're at it, can we do something about the gigalumen blue
| light every device seems to have to indicate on/charging/charged?
| My house looks like a dystopia spaceship after dusk.
| magneticnorth wrote:
| Yes, seconding this one too. I've opted for ugly black
| electrical tape squares over the worst offenders in sleeping
| spaces, but why is that the only option?
| RankingMember wrote:
| Ha, I've done the same. I never thought I'd become like my
| old grandpa, who didn't like when TV stations started adding
| crawls to the bottom of the screen for certain
| news/information so put electric tape across the bottom of
| the screen.
|
| If they're going to do LEDs, at least do red ones, which
| don't obliterate night vision. Making them togglable is the
| ideal unless they're literally a life-or-death piece of
| equipment.
| trinix912 wrote:
| It used to be dim red LEDs but then in the early 2010s
| everyone switched to blue to look more fancy and modern.
| Sometimes really bright ones too, I used to have an ASUS
| router that had bright enough (blinking!) blue LEDs to
| light the entire room up. Without any option to disable
| them, of course.
|
| With all public debate around the effects of blue light on
| sleep, it's weird more people haven't found that
| concerning.
| kaonwarb wrote:
| This is something Eero routers do well: you can turn off the
| light (which is a more subtle white to begin with) in
| settings.
| Wistar wrote:
| Same is true of my Ubiquiti UniFi. You can set the
| brightness 1-10 and even set times of day when lights and
| display should be on or off.
| alterom wrote:
| I've had to put a layer of electric tape, sometimes two of
| them, on some of those just to get the bedroom to a level where
| it's dark enough to sleep in comfortably.
|
| They're so bright, you can see the damn blue circles on the
| ceiling. Blue moon rising, invited by no one.
| octo888 wrote:
| My record was 6 layers of duct tape! Didn't have any
| electrical tape around
| cmg wrote:
| I once bought one of those alarms that brighten along with
| the pattern of natural sunlight in the morning (and dim in
| the evening), as I don't get much natural light in my
| bedroom. The time display on it was so unbelievably bright at
| its lowest setting that my sleep was worse until I piled
| stuff up in front of it. I don't even bother with it anymore.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| yes plz && ty, I listen to audiobooks at bedtime and I can't
| put my earbuds back in the case without them turning on a super
| bright blue light that has actually woken up my partner in the
| past. Why? I can see a little pinhole status light to show me
| that the connection is made correctly but why outline the whole
| case in blue and then start flashing the percentage charge
| remaining in the case while also animating charging bars to
| show that the buds themselves are also charging? Why turn my
| bedroom into the landing scene from the movie ET?
| mjlee wrote:
| I now have a small amount of electrical tape in my travel bag,
| and I use it at practically every place I stay. I just
| rewrapped some around a bit of plastic - no need for it to be
| very sticky anyway as I take it off when I leave.
| p1mrx wrote:
| I have a monitor with a bright blue / dull orange LED. I found
| that stacking layers of kapton tape turns the blue into a dull
| green, while leaving the orange mostly unaffected.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Fun fact, this is why nail polish was invented.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| It's pretty much never changing.
|
| It's the kind of flaw we don't notice until _after_ we 've
| bought the products and lived with them for a while. Therefore,
| it doesn't hurt sales and therefore, there is no pressure for
| manufacturers to change.
|
| It sucks.
|
| As a workaround, these work great. Note that these particular
| ones are partial blackout stickers. They are 50-80% opaque. You
| can still see the light, but it won't be bright enough to
| annoy. If you want to darken even further you can just layer
| two of the stickers.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/FLANCCI-Blocking-Stickers-Dimming-Bla...
|
| If you need _total_ blackout, there are similar ones available
| that are 100% opaque, although at that point I 'm not sure why
| a person would buy a specialty product instead of just using
| regular tape...
| layer8 wrote:
| https://www.lightdims.com/
| inetknght wrote:
| You don't want the interior of your home to look like it
| belongs in a scene from a star wars visual novel? I think
| that'd be pretty cool actually.
| rzzzt wrote:
| I can recommend a soundtrack for this one:
| https://youtu.be/DydIK14AvXI
| socalgal2 wrote:
| My MacBook Pro's dual magsafe charging lights do this for me.
| It becomes an issue when I travel so that the MacBook is in the
| same room I sleep in. Sometimes turing it perpendicular to the
| bed is enough, at least it's not directly into my eyes even if
| it is lighting up the room. Other times I have to pile stuff on
| top
| Zak wrote:
| The worst one of these I encountered was in a USB-PD power
| supply meant to replace a 12V outlet in a car. It was extremely
| distracting driving at night. The illuminated area covered most
| of the face of the device, so I covered it with RTV silicone.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Every time I start my car I get a window pop up with a paragraph
| of text to make sure I follow the rules of the road and drive
| safe. Then I get a warning to connect to wifi and update my car.
| I miss the days when a simple light on the dashboard was all we
| had for warning and I wasnt getting bothered by nonsense.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I really, really, really want to get to the bottom of this one.
| There's speculation that it was done due to some auto industry
| regulation, or some idiotic court (redundant?) ruled that they
| were liable for something because they didn't warn the driver
| to "follow the laws". Possibly the worst possibility is that
| it's just a placeholder to hide the fact that the infotainment
| unit is loading 1GB of uncompressed bitmap data from eMMC or
| something.
|
| If anyone inside the auto industry wants to spill the beans
| anonymously, please do!
| bradreaves2 wrote:
| All the external noises are a big problem.
|
| But the things that irritate me even more are the infernal modals
| and alerts on my computing devices. It is hard enough maintaining
| focus without having to spend an entire work session playing
| whack-a-mole at random intervals for a hundred different things
| that aren't relevant. I never want to know that my scanner
| software has an update available.
|
| I realized that at its core, this problem is caused by developers
| and product managers mistakenly believing that I care as much
| about their product as they do.
|
| It would be nice if the gatekeepers had mechanisms that punished
| this behavior. Search engines should lower the rankings of every
| site with random modals. App stores could display a normalized
| metric of alert click through -- "this app has an above average
| number of alerts that are ignored".
| trinix912 wrote:
| I've disabled the entire notification stack on macOS and
| Windows 10 with some tweaks and couldn't be happier. It's not
| like I'm going to miss out on anything of value as Slack,
| Discord, Mail will just indicate new messages with a
| dock/taskbar icon change.
|
| But it's sure as hell annoying to have unsolicited popups
| randomly appearing ("Java update available! Apple Music now 50%
| off! GeForce Experience driver update! Windows Defender scan
| results! USB drive not ejected properly!..."). They're also
| often embarrassing when screen sharing.
| vasco wrote:
| But do you want these cookies?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is a bigger problem, not just of software developers, but
| all businesses thinking you care about them as much as they do,
| not seeming to understand that I've made purchases from tens of
| thousands of businesses over the course of three decades as an
| adult, with more to come, and no matter how much I might care
| in theory or principle about any one of them, there is no
| universe in which I can read daily, weekly, or even monthly
| e-mails, SMS messages, or pop-up notifications from _all_ of
| them, because if I actually did that, my entire life would
| consist of nothing but filling out surveys. The cheeky little
| smiley emoji asking if they can take just five minutes of my
| time misses the point. Sure, I 've got five minutes, but you're
| one of 30 businesses asking for that every day, and it's no
| longer "just a moment" when it adds up to two and a half hours
| across all of them.
| gblargg wrote:
| Any app that pops up a notification when NOTHING EXTERNAL HAS
| HAPPENED has all its notifications turned off immediately and
| permanently. It's literally just deciding "hey, I'll bother the
| user about something pre-programmed right... now!" No.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| When arcade machines needed to cycle players to keep the the
| quarters flowing, it created a aesthetic in game design that took
| a decade or more to shake when we switched to an economic model
| that rewarded keeping players on the site; in that earlier era,
| even things that didn't benefit from kicking users off did so,
| because...well, that's just the way you did things.
|
| Now that the dominant economic model is driven by attention and
| engagement, even systems that don't benefit from it in the
| slightest are nonetheless infected by that aesthetic. I keep
| expecting to see a toaster that asks me to "like and subscribe"
| or a toilet that has pop-up notifications.
| gblargg wrote:
| > or a toilet that has pop-up notifications.
|
| Toilets occasionally do that, but dismissing it requires a
| plunger and mop.
| magneticnorth wrote:
| My previous Roomba had a bug where it would complain loudly at
| 3am about being unable to dock, 14 hours after its run cycle.
|
| This led me to discover that there is no setting to disable
| sounds, you must take it apart and rip out the speaker, which I
| happily did.
|
| I've switched to another brand of robot vacuum since then and
| that poor experience makes it pretty unlikely I'll use a Roomba
| again.
| taeric wrote:
| This problem seems exacerbated by increasing number of
| stakeholders involved with feature development. Especially ones
| that you can't easily say no to.
|
| This is often communicated as too many project managers involved
| with a program. Hilariously visible in something like GMail. I
| can quickly count about 5 badges on my page of numbers that I
| don't think I'll ever actually care about.
|
| Gets more difficult with things like disaster alerts. These are,
| generally, life saving. But, as we have gotten better at
| detecting things, it can feel silly if we have them too often.
| (My favorite is the alarm people have when they start to learn
| that coyotes are always passing through the yard.)
| browningstreet wrote:
| My favorite no-longer-works feature: I have a classic car and I
| used to be able to sit my phone upside down in the drink
| holder, so that the power port could be connected to the power
| cable, and the iPhone would rotate the screen around so I could
| still use navigation. Somewhere along the line, iOS/Google
| Maps/Apple Maps will no longer rotate the screen upside down.
| This just can't be done anymore.
| pdevine wrote:
| Go to a modern hospital emergency room, it's a cacophony of
| devices all vying for attention. I walked down the hallway and
| realized every room in the place had a different audible alarm--
| all active! I suspected the device manufacturers were all worried
| about liability for their device, making sure to notify that a
| patient had a problem. The end result for the medical staff was
| an endless chaos of noise. Complete systemic failure of UX from a
| practical standpoint.
| aarmenaa wrote:
| Yes. I have a family member that has had many hospital stays
| over the last few years, and one of the most obnoxious things
| is that the staff just lets _everything_ beep. The last time we
| were in the emergency room the blood pressure monitor did not
| work and the staff didn 't notice for over an hour. Even when
| it does work, they're constantly in an alarm state because
| patient has chronic high blood pressure. They either can't or
| won't silence the alarms, so every room is beeping, the nurse's
| station is beeping, their phones are beeping, and it's all
| being ignored. It's the very definition of alert fatigue.
| JohnFen wrote:
| In the regional hospital near me, they've begun actively
| fighting for fewer alarms. In part because they annoy
| everyone: patients, visitors, and hospital staff alike. But
| mostly because the inevitable alarm fatigue that the
| cacophony results in actively endangers patient safety.
|
| The policy of this hospital is that all alarms, beeping, etc.
| should be disabled except in limited circumstances.
| Particularly at night.
| andy99 wrote:
| And in my experience (not surprisingly) they have all developed
| a good sense of what alarms can be ignored, so like a pump
| beeping because it's done delivering some medicine doesn't
| matter so they ignore it and let it beep, but it matters to the
| parents with new baby trying to get some sleep.
| zhivota wrote:
| From time in hospitals I've gotten very good at disabling them.
| Most nurses are fine with it but every now and then one would
| come on shift and tut tut at me for having done it. They
| usually shut up when I point out that they don't respond to the
| alarms in any sort of prompt way - as I'm sure if I were to
| continue pointing that out up their chain of command they would
| then find some trouble.
|
| I always tell people though that being in the hospital doesn't
| make you healthier, mainly because you can't sleep. The
| hospital should be the absolute last resort, and your first
| priority on finding yourself in one should be to figure out how
| to get out of it, even if it involves nursing care at home.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Outta curiosity what kind of car is this? Or what brands offer
| the dual tank setup? Living in the US, I'm not aware of any cars
| that come from the factory with dual gas/lpg tanks. Here in the
| US it seems to largely be an aftermarket modification some folks
| make.
| andrewrn wrote:
| Man I love ranty britishisms. Author's right though, at my last
| living place I had a drier that summons screeches from hell when
| clothes were dry. I mean that buzzer would make your heart stop,
| and if I didn't open the door, it would run again for a short
| period to keep the clothes warm then _do the abhorrent sound
| again_ , all for a state (dry clothes ready for folding) that is
| absolutely non time-sensitive. Horrific user-centered design.
| Revisional_Sin wrote:
| When my wireless earphones reach 20 minutes of charge it starts
| warning me about this every minute. So this essentially cuts 20
| minutes off it's battery life cause it's too annoying to use from
| then.
| bsghirt wrote:
| I know it's annoying to suggest that consumer preferences will
| fix stuff like this when clearly it comes from some corporate
| design culture that completely ignores consumer preference.
|
| But in this case (a $50 device rather than a washing machine or
| something) why wouldn't you just get a different pair made by a
| different company?
| igouy wrote:
| Do you mean returning the wireless earphones, and then
| getting different?
| bsghirt wrote:
| No I mean just consider the money spent on the annoying
| ones lost and buy another pair.
|
| No one wants to do that but for a relatively low ticket
| item which one uses for hours every day it seems
| masochistic not to do so.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| Most decent noise cancelling headphones cost hundreds of
| dollars, so not exactly low ticket items.
| mort96 wrote:
| 1) A huge amount of wireless devices have these annoying low
| battery warnings which make the last 20 minutes a terrible
| user experience, you'd probably go through a whole lot of
| headphones/earbuds before you'd find one which doesn't. (And
| good wireless headphones and earbuds are typically
| significantly more expensive than $50)
|
| 2) There are many factors which go into how good
| earbuds/headphones are. While incredibly annoying and
| unnecessary, the quality of the "low battery" warning's
| implementation is realistically gonna be very low on the list
| of priorities for pretty much anyone. It's likely that the
| overall best product (when considering audio quality,
| Bluetooth implementation quality, battery life, price,
| comfort, weight, extra features like water/sweat/dust
| proofing, etc etc) is gonna have an annoying "low battery"
| warning.
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Oh yeah. My headphones scream "battery low" every few minutes
| when they go to 20 mins of charge too. It's fucking annoying.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I will defend the dryer alarm case somewhat. For my dryer, it
| displays a time until the cycle is complete, but that time is
| wildly inaccurate (as in, the display will say 45 mins and
| sometimes the cycle takes twice that to complete). It _is_ useful
| to get a notification when the dryer is actually done in my case.
| Granted, the dryer should accurately report how long it will take
| to run, but given that it doesn 't a "cycle complete" alarm is
| the next best thing.
| throwanem wrote:
| The dryer can't know. It lies to you because you prefer the lie
| to the truth, which is why you bought laundry machines with
| screens, while only one of mine even has LEDs.
| JohnFen wrote:
| There's no question that some sounds, in some circumstances for
| some people, are very useful. But it should _always_ be
| possible to configure the machine to remain silent.
| alwa wrote:
| That bothered me for a while about a dryer I use. Eventually,
| it clicked for me that it based its estimates on a best guess
| at the material and quantity you'd be drying in that cycle; but
| it (correctly, in my view) _actually_ timed the cycle based on
| feedback from humidity /temperature sensors in the air path.
|
| I prefer low-heat, "delicate" settings for most everything (and
| even that, only in the rare cases where I don't have time to
| line-dry). And I favor heavy natural fibers. So it routinely
| takes much longer than the upfront estimate for a light load of
| polyester dainties.
|
| But I'm happy to accept the error now that I understand it's
| the same tradeoff I'd choose: doing a proper job of things,
| instead of cranking up the heat or something to hit the time
| target!
|
| That infernal 30-second end-of-cycle jingle, though... I'd much
| prefer an assertive but ambient kind of droning sound or
| something.
| orwin wrote:
| Our dryer just stop, and the lack of noise is often enough, but
| every 20 minutes, it tumble and blow dry air on clothes, whcih
| to be honest, seems a better option than sounding an alarm
| alex-moon wrote:
| Smartphone notifications. Every now and again I turn off DND
| because I'm expecting a call, and every time I turn it on again
| soon after - the continuous barrage of pinging noises makes the
| phone unusable. I have notifications turned off for all apps by
| default!
| SuzukiBrian wrote:
| My brand new car has a feature called forward attention warning
| which is driving me insane. It is essentially a small camera
| located at the steering wheel column which emit a series of high
| beeps and have an eye icon blink in the dashboard if the car
| doesn't think I am looking forward.
|
| Cases in which this can happen. - I orient myself before
| overtaking another car on the highway or motorway. - I position
| my hand wrong on the steering wheel and the camera can no longer
| see me. - I put on sunglasses when I am driving against a low
| sun.
|
| It can be turned off, but if you live in the EU it is required to
| enable itself once the car has been turned off/on.
|
| It will also happily warn me if it thinks I am speeding based on
| errornous gps data. This feature also turns itself back on once
| the car has been turned off.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| My subaru will beep and flash a signal to let me know that it
| can't see the lanes well enough to use the lane departure
| warning.
|
| A safety feature takes my eyes and ears off of the road to let
| me know that it is not keeping me safe for the moment.
| mdavidn wrote:
| On my spouse's 2019 model, I could disable that alert in the
| menus. Even after I disabled every alert in the menus, the
| car still emits an urgent tone with an unknown meaning.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| The thing is that I like the safety feature itself. It's
| just asinine that it distracts me to tell me that for the
| next 1 second it's not keeping me safe. Also the fact that
| there is absolutely nothing it changes in my driving
| behavior when it is off. I'm still the one driving.
| mdavidn wrote:
| I just drive with lane keeping enabled. The car will keep
| itself in the lane without audibly alerting me. If I
| really wanted to depart the lane, e.g. to avoid debris or
| to give a cyclist more space, the blinker or a slight
| nudge of the steering wheel will override it.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I'm talking about it alerting me that it has turned off
| for a moment because the lane isn't marked well enough.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| My Tesla often beeps loudly at things I have my focus on
| completely to let me know that I don't have focus on them,
| thereby forcing me to look around to see if I missed
| something and making me lose focus on the thing i needed to
| focus on.
|
| The one that annoys me the most is the one right near where I
| live where a wider street becomes a narrower street, which
| makes my car think I'm going to rear end parked cars at 30mph
| and always beeps loudly. Even when I know it's coming, it
| startles me and makes me lose focus, sometimes when there's
| pedestrians trying to cross the street. Very dangerous.
| alterom wrote:
| Thanks, looks like I'll be repairing my 2010 Honda Fit (Jazz in
| EU markets) forever to avoid getting anything of the sort of
| antifeatures you describe.
|
| That, or the manufacturers and regulators wisening up, but I
| ain't holding my breath for that.
|
| Same with touchscreen controls in a vehicle.
| mdavidn wrote:
| Honda was still good in recent years. I drive a 2024 Honda
| CR-V. No tones that annoy me. No interior cameras. All of the
| important controls are still physical.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm generally pro-EU but they sure know how to not fix things
| by annoying people as much as possible. C.f. the cookie laws,
| headphone volume warnings, etc.
| rapnie wrote:
| Cookie dialogs easily avoided wherever companies care about
| their customers/users.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Is this the sort of naive reasoning that led to the law in
| the first place?
| SuzukiBrian wrote:
| I understand the spirit of the law, but any implementation by
| the EU feels like making a wish to a monkey paw these day. I
| would love for people to stop watching tiktoks on their
| phones while driving on the motorway, but the implementation
| means that I now get to be constantly distracted by my own
| car while driving.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| I'm really surprised that there hasn't been a requirement
| for phone screens to not turn on over 10mph and gps located
| on a road
| star-glider wrote:
| About the only thing they've gotten right recently was
| forcing Apple to switch to USB-C.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Why'd you buy it?
| SuzukiBrian wrote:
| Because it's otherwise a great car. I did notice the problems
| during the test-drive, but I figured it wasn't a problem,
| since it could be turned off in the console. So I turned them
| off and forgot all about it. I would never have imagined that
| some obscure EU-regulation, that I've never heard about,
| would require them to turn back on.
| mort96 wrote:
| You can't avoid cars with these anti-features if you want a
| new car. They're required by law in the EU.
| Blackthorn wrote:
| In a lot of places in the world you can return new cars. I
| would return one that did that. Manufacturers won't get the
| hints until they start seeing returns wreck their bottom line.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Wouldn't that wreck your credit score though? Pardon my
| ignorance.
| tupac_speedrap wrote:
| I don't know the law in your country but most forms of
| credit have a 'cooling off' period where you can return the
| money or asset and reset the credit agreement within a
| certain time but I'm not sure if doing it a lot in a small
| period of time would flag to a future creditor though.
| epolanski wrote:
| Manufacturers can't do anything about it if it's required by
| law.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| They can lobby the politicians
| epolanski wrote:
| Why would they on such things?
|
| In any case, it's law, there's no coming back from this.
| gffrd wrote:
| possibilities: (1) they get lots of angry customers and
| bad press, and are tired of being made to look bad
| because of gov req's (2) it costs them more to
| manufacture all the fancy nanny tech, so their bottom
| line would be positively impacted by rolling back the
| requirement for it
| newdee wrote:
| Laws are immutable now?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| They do. They know this will make cars more expensive and
| most people don't want any of it.
| Mawr wrote:
| The law requires bad design/implementation?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Yes, pretty much.
| trinix912 wrote:
| I've found that disabling the lane assist in my 2020 Civic
| permanently disables that too. It's an EU model. For anyone
| looking for a solution, try if this solves it (if you wouldn't
| miss the lane assist, of course).
| SuzukiBrian wrote:
| Unfortunately as I've later learned, it's a requirement in
| all cars in the EU from 2025, so there is no way to disable
| it permanently. Thank you for the suggestion though.
| orwin wrote:
| My understanding was that it is only required for lane
| assist/cruise control, unless i misunderstood. Hopefully if
| you deactivate those, your car will allow disabling this
| "feature".
| SuzukiBrian wrote:
| No, it is mandatory for all new cars in the EU since 2025
| and while you can turn them off, they will turn
| themselves on again once the car has been turned off. It
| doesn't matter if you use lane assist or cruise control.
|
| Unfortunately.
| vasco wrote:
| The assist to keep you in the lane that also auto turns on has
| been the only cause of 3 near crashes I've had, when renting
| cars. Never have I even had a slightly dangerous situation
| other than this bullshit turning the fucking wheel for me. Who
| the heck thinks that a machine knows best if it should turn the
| wheel than a human, with eyes, driving? I cannot understand how
| it ever helped anyone and it's much worse than just a beep,
| literally trying to steer against you.
| SuzukiBrian wrote:
| I actually knew about this one going in, since it's been a
| requirement for a bit longer. My Hyundai has two modes, one
| where it simply beeps if you cross the lines without the
| turn-signal and the dangerous one where it locks the steering
| wheel.
|
| Only the slightly annoying beeping one seems to be mandatory,
| the extremely dangerous steering wheel locking one isn't.
| Otherwise I wouldn't have bought the car at all.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Steering wheel lock? Is that seriously a thing, or is that
| a strong exaggeration?
|
| My car just gently applies a tiny bit of force on the
| steering wheel, to keep the car in the lane. It's very easy
| to override manually. In fact, it feels quite similar to
| moving out of pretty shallows ruts in te road, and could
| even be mistaken for it.
| thedanbob wrote:
| I rented a car in the UK a few years ago and by the end of the
| trip I was ready to set it on fire.
|
| - Adaptive cruise control would randomly slam on the brakes on
| the motorway (just passed a 30 kph exit, the speed limit must
| be 30 now!), or match speed with a car in the next lane that
| was I trying to pass
|
| - Emergency braking would trigger if I got too close to a car
| that was turning out of my lane, or a shrub while parking
|
| - Lane assist reenabled itself every time I started the car
|
| - Radar system would fail every ~3 starts, which would disable
| adaptive cruise control (ok) and blast a warning sound (bad)
|
| At least now I know that if I'm shopping for a car in the
| future, one of my criteria needs to be "won't actively try to
| kill me".
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Ren
| mort96 wrote:
| There is truly a scourge in the EU of increasingly intrusive
| "safety features" which I truly believe are making cars less
| safe.
|
| I've been driving a family member's new Nissan. Nice car for
| the most part, but it has this "safety" feature (that's on by
| default and cannot be permanently switched off, thanks to the
| EU) which watches out for the white stripe on the right-hand
| side of the road and JERKS THE STEERING WHEEL when it thinks
| you're "too close".
|
| Where I often drive, there are many narrow roads. No yellow
| line in the middle of the road. The only way to avoid hitting
| oncoming traffic is to drive with your wheels on the white
| stripe when you meet another vehicle. This can be stressful
| enough in itself, especially when the other vehicle is some
| huge bus or semi truck. Not exactly the time you want alarms
| going off AND YOUR STEERING WHEEL TURNING BY ITSELF. I've taken
| to calling it the car's auto-crash feature. Always gotta
| remember to disable the auto-crash. Every time I start the car.
|
| I got so annoyed I looked up the relevant directive. Turns out
| new cars are _required_ to have a lane assist feature. It is
| _required_ to turn itself on automatically, and it is
| _required_ to warn the driver using at least 2 out of the 3
| methods: sound, visuals, haptic. So the steering wheel jerking
| isn 't even just a bad implementation, it's _the law_.
|
| _Sigh._
| star-glider wrote:
| I recently got back from Europe; rented a car. This "feature"
| is _insanely_ dangerous. Whatever idiot bureaucrat decided
| that having crappy machine vision software jerk the steering
| wheel around while you're driving should be sent to an island
| somewhere.
|
| The damn thing tried to kill me every time we came up on a
| construction area on the freeway, because it got completely
| flummoxed by the lane realignment. I couldn't turn it off
| until we parked the car, and we were on the freeway. Fighting
| that piece of crap for an hour made for the most exhausting
| drive of my life.
|
| Far from being mandated, I can't believe that safety
| regulators allow _anything_ to jerk around the wheel at
| 60MPH.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Or you could look at some of the research, which suggest
| that this feature may in fact reduce fatalities
| significantly (I'm finding estimates in the 20 to 25%
| range). Well done idiot bureaucrat!
|
| https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/fewer-drivers-are-opting-
| ou...
|
| https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication
| /...
| mort96 wrote:
| Surely they could've found a better way though than to
| make the car automatically swerve into oncoming traffic?
|
| I'm 100% on board with the idea that the lane assist
| feature might, on average, improve safety in many
| conditions. Maybe enough to be a net win. But I'm
| absolutely certain that its terrible implementation (in
| legislation, not just in cars) leads to situations where
| it _reduces_ safety. When I 'm driving on small country-
| side roads without a center line, no amount of "but it
| reduces traffic fatalities on highways" will convince me
| that automatically swerving towards the oncoming semi
| trailer is safe.
| vanviegen wrote:
| > When I'm driving on small country-side roads without a
| center line
|
| My guess is that people drive these types of roads a lot
| less often than they swerve on highways. Hence the
| statistics working out. Steering into oncoming traffic
| does indeed sound, uhm, suboptimal though. :-/
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| This just goes to show how bad at driving a large number
| of people on the road are. Driving test standards are
| way, way too low.
|
| Personally speaking I felt like I somehow accidentally
| cheated or something when I passed my test. It was too
| easy. Even now I sometimes question if I should really be
| trusted with piloting a 4k+ lbs steel box at highway
| speeds.
| vanviegen wrote:
| I thing most people are bad drivers _some_ of the time.
| It only takes a moment of being distracted
| /tired/angry/whatever to cause an accident.
| kalkin wrote:
| What the first article actually says:
|
| "Lane departure warning and prevention systems could
| address as many as 23% of fatal crashes involving
| passenger vehicles."
|
| That appears to be something like a stat about how many
| fatal crashes involve unintentionally leaving a lane. It
| provides approximately zero evidence in favor of
| specifically mandating haptic feedback from the steering
| wheel.
| kalkin wrote:
| The second article is marginally more on point - 24%
| fewer crashes for vehicles with lane keeping assist (so
| my guess at the meaning of the 23% stat may have been
| wrong). But the 95pct confidence interval is 2-42% and
| the study acknowledges that its efforts at controlling
| for confounding factors in the type of cars that have
| this feature are imperfect. It also took place in the US,
| so there's certainly no mandate for haptic feedback and I
| suspect very few cars had it. This is marginally more
| helpful evidence but not very good, I think--it seems
| very plausible that audible lane keeping features are
| helpful and moving your steering wheel (which sounds
| terrifying) is unhelpful.
|
| As an anecdote, I crashed a car as a teenager thanks in
| part to panicking (unnecessarily) when a rough highway
| started moving the car's wheels (which I noticed of
| course via the steering wheel) without my intending it.
| Fortunately there were no injuries.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This entirely tracks to me but hints at a different
| problem. I suspect if this really does reduce traffic
| incidents and fatalities in general, it's because a large
| number of people are driving while tired and drift into
| adjacent lanes without realizing it and the lane-assist
| jerks them awake. Problem being this is a blunt force
| instrument that annoys or even endangers drivers who are
| not impaired and know what they're doing.
|
| Thankfully, every car I've ever driven that has this
| feature allows it to be turned off and I have it turned
| off on my own car, which I drive for maybe ten miles a
| month in the middle of a Saturday when I'm wide awake.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Never. Take. Away. Control. Authority.
|
| The only way that system could be more dangerous is if the
| air bags were replaced by Claymore mines.
| saltcured wrote:
| Based on the recall patterns, I think that's a free
| upgrade that self-installs to every older car eventually.
| SuzukiBrian wrote:
| It's true, mine has that as well. While I can't turn off the
| default mode, it is thankfully only visuals and sound. It
| does however also have the assisted suicide mode, where it
| will either jerk the wheel or prevent the wheel from turning.
| Thankfully that can be turned off permanently.
|
| I still find it crazy that these are supposed to be safety
| features.
| heeton wrote:
| I've test-driven 2 cars in the last 2 years (because I'm
| environmentally interested in swapping my diesel for an EV),
| but each time has put me off that entire brand. First was
| Tesla, I can't stand the full iPad console with no physical
| controls. (And Elon... but that's a side thread).
|
| Then, Volvo, with blue lights filling the cabin and these
| types of safety features.
|
| Each time I've come away thinking what a shit-show the car
| was, and how that seems to be the opinion of the entire
| company line.
|
| I'm still driving my 15 year old diesel with manual controls
| and dim orange status lights at night. I just want a simple
| EV with aircon and speakers with media controls by the
| steering wheel. Minimal extra bullshit.
| mort96 wrote:
| I'm driving an 11 year old diesel, the main annoyance I
| have is that its rear proximity sensors pick up on the
| trailer hitch (which is detachable, but I prefer to have it
| attached -- besides, it's probably rusted in place or
| something now after 11 years). So I always have to disable
| proximity sensors when backing up. An awkward design, but
| not really a big issue in practice. You get used to it.
|
| I'm not looking forward to getting a fancy new car with
| government-mandated always-on systems which try to steer
| the car into oncoming traffic. The insanity is genuinely
| unfathomable to me. It is, without exaggeration, a fuck-up
| of such proportions that it's making me question the whole
| idea of the EU, as a Norwegian whose position on the EU has
| historically been that Norway should join it.
|
| Although I suppose being outside of the EU isn't exactly
| saving Norway from its harebrained legislation.
| aembleton wrote:
| In Hyundais this can be disabled by long pressing on the lane
| keep assist button on the steering wheel. Its the one with a
| couple of white lines and a steering wheel between them.
|
| You might be able to do similar in the Nissan.
|
| Of course, you have to do this every time you start the car
| thanks to EU and UK law.
| mort96 wrote:
| In the Nissan, you can customize all of these things and
| the car stores your configuration, you just have to press
| two buttons on the steering wheel every time you start the
| car to load it. And with those custom config loaded, I find
| the car really nice to drive. We (I and the family member)
| have gone through all the safety feature options and made a
| config which we like. Which mostly means just turning off a
| bunch of stuff, including the auto-crash and the obnoxious
| beeping which tells you you're going above (what the car
| thinks, sometimes incorrectly, is) the speed limit.
|
| Doesn't help when you haven't driven the car in a while so
| you forget to push those buttons and the car reminds you by
| automatically turning the wheel towards oncoming traffic :(
| monster_truck wrote:
| I love when you're trying to navigate through some zig zag
| construction bullshit and the lane assist keeps fighting you
| to eat some cones/barrels. It's also fantastic when the lines
| on the highway are wobbly and it starts trying to drive like
| a drunk person. All because of people who can't help but use
| their phones while driving...
|
| E: A 2022 subaru I rented for a long drive was by far the
| least worst of anything I've driven. I go out of my way to
| try something new every time I get to rent a car
| xenadu02 wrote:
| On the Kia EV 9 I had to go in and disable lane assist (which
| you can still disable here in the US).
|
| It was downright dangerous, jerking the steering wheel at
| seemingly random times when it gets confused.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| > is required to enable itself once the car has been turned
| off/on
|
| Get an older car. Screw panopticon tyranny.
| UomoNeroNero wrote:
| I'll keep my stupid, non-digital 2010 car running until the day
| I die. They'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. I'd
| rather register it as a vintage car and keep driving it.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| I miss writing like this. It feels like old internet. It was
| hyperbolic and silly but there was often a real point of view at
| the bottom of it and it felt crafted. Guys like Maddox and Jay
| Pinkerton and Tucker Max wrote like this, and they were wildly
| offensive and I disagreed with a lot of what they had to say
| (almost all of it, really) but I guess what I want to focus on is
| the format: it's nice to read something that isn't just a
| thought-terminating snowclone meme. It invited discussion by
| investing up-front in fleshing out the writer's thoughts. So much
| interaction on the internet now is just getting a shot in and
| disappearing back into the forest before the person you're
| responding to can reasonably react. It's generating the
| screenshot of their comment and your "drop the mic" response,
| designed to be consumed by people as a single serving after the
| comment rather than to engage in anything substantive.
|
| Also the author is absolutely right: whether it's my car, my
| washing machine, my oven, my fridge, an app on my phone, w/e it
| needs to stfu about anything that is non-critical. I do my best
| to enforce a rule where if I'm using a tool for a workflow and
| that tool interrupts with information or options not critical to
| that workflow I just stop using that tool. Difficult in the case
| of a car but at least in the case of apps I can usually enforce
| it via a three strikes mechanism. No, I don't want to sign up for
| email alerts. No, I don't want a tour of your new features. I'm
| using your old features, they're why I downloaded you. If you
| stop me from doing what I need to do in order to ask me for a
| rating in the app store, I assure you that you do not want my
| rating in that moment.
|
| To quote a meme someone posted in this thread (and make myself at
| least slightly guilty of the reductive, screenshot-oriented,
| thought-terminating type of dialog I railed against above), "I am
| a divine being. You are an object. You have no right."
| sc68cal wrote:
| > For example, my washing machine has an obnoxious alarm when it
| completes a cycle, that can fortunately be disabled via a
| (hidden!) menu
|
| This is why I really appreciate my GE washer which has adopted
| the Japanese aesthetic of a happy little jingle when it's
| finished instead of the ear splitting BUZZZZZZZZ of traditional
| American washers.
|
| I honestly think that some thought needs to be put into these
| alarms, and maybe take a note from Japan when it comes to the
| _tone_ of notifications.
| talos_ wrote:
| I find it infuriating that navigation apps throw ads when I'm
| stopped at a red light. This is THE moment where I should glance
| away from the road and plan my routing
| willquack wrote:
| I learned the other day my office building has hidden speakers
| dispersed throughout each floor which blast synthetic white
| noise.
|
| It's quite loud, I had assumed it was an improperly installed
| HVAC system...
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is extremely common and is a feature.
|
| Without it, suddenly you can hear every conversation happening
| all the way on the other side of your open plan office. It
| becomes extremely distracting.
| mdavidn wrote:
| My building has this too. I wear noise cancelling headphones
| with no music to eliminate the white noise.
| teach wrote:
| I have bad news for you -- those noise-cancelling headphones
| are "eliminating" the white noise by bombarding your ears
| with an equal and opposite white noise
| pavon wrote:
| There is nothing bad about that. The opposite phased sounds
| it plays genuinely do cancel out the vibrations from the
| original noise, decreasing the magnitude of the vibrations
| hitting your ear drum.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Hell yes. My Skoda makes the exact same "DONG!" for "screen wash
| running low" as it does for "engine failure you're about to crash
| and die". I have a slow leak in my screen wash tank so this is
| _really_ annoying.
| theturtle wrote:
| GE is a major offender. And it's meaningless noise... the little
| jingle that the oven plays when it's done preheating is the same
| as the one the dishwasher near it plays when the cycle is done.
| Zero useful information.
|
| Oddly, that song is a lot like one they used in the 1970s in
| pantyhose commercials.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Have you had a Samsung washing machine and dryer lately?
|
| https://youtu.be/IAoVDOkNq3k
| seemaze wrote:
| I read this article to the sound of Cake's 1996 album 'Fashion
| Nugget' song - 'Nugget'
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3sQDwOTFJU
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Lol. It might be too soon to ask machines to STFU because LLMs
| don't have clearly expressed feelings or persistent negative
| prompt feedback.
|
| PS: Coincidentally, I have the rare 33 box set and common 45's
| set too. Good tunes.
| waffletower wrote:
| Whenever I search my refrigerator or freezer for more than 20
| seconds or so, an infernal beep begins. I have found myself
| singing Pink Guy's STFU either aloud or to myself when this
| happens. Needless to say, I appreciated this article.
| phkahler wrote:
| One that I hate is GM cars that turn on the "reverse" lights in
| parking lots when the car isn't even turned on, or sometimes when
| there isn't even a person in the car. I'm sure someone wanted to
| turn those on as a convenience for people or maybe to indicate
| there is a person nearby? But those lights have a specific
| meaning which is no longer reliably conveyed by GM cars.
| delecti wrote:
| I think this might be a disconnect between what those lights
| are "really" for, and how they're actually used (de jure vs de
| facto, in a sense).
|
| They aren't meant to have a specific meaning, they're just
| headlights, but when going in reverse. So if the car has a
| feature to "turn on the headights" it makes sense to activate
| the ones on the back too.
|
| Though that's just pedantry that kicks the can down the road to
| the question, why are the headlights turning on with nobody in
| the car?
| echoangle wrote:
| Not really, there seems to be a specific rule that you can't
| turn on the back-facing headlights when you're going forward.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44789587
| delecti wrote:
| I don't think that rule matters here, because the car in
| question (in phkahler's comment) is stationary.
| andyferris wrote:
| They are definitely intended to have a specific meaning (like
| turning indicators, but for backwards).
| saltcured wrote:
| Yeah, you could have a whole article-length rant about how
| courtesy lighting has devolved into turning parked cars into
| simulations of a rocket launch site lit with flood lights.
|
| The dwell time on these modes is so long that you need a
| welding mask to protect your eyes if you make the mistake of
| waiting in a supermarket parking lot for someone who is
| running a quick errand. Just a constant stream of large,
| unattended SUVs blasting ridiculous light into surrounding
| cars. By the time one turns itself off, the next one is ready
| for duty.
| dpifke wrote:
| I was curious, so I just checked the FMVSS requirements for
| these[0]:
|
| _Must be activated when the ignition switch is energized and
| reverse gear is engaged. Must not be energized when the vehicle
| is in forward motion._
|
| Seems that should be amended to not allow use when the vehicle
| is in park, just as they are prohibited while in drive. I'm
| tempted to write to the NHTSA and propose this change.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p...
| bilekas wrote:
| > My dishwasher: no sound whatsoever, it simply opens up when
| it's done.
|
| I need the model of this thing! Mine fires 5 deafening beeps when
| it's done and theres no option to turn it off. It has woken me up
| in a panic many times off the sofa.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Hopefully they do something about the annoying self-checkout
| machines too. The ones that yell back at you loudly for every
| cent you insert. Employees dislike them too.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Objects should notify when there is good reason. And ideally,
| these should be configurable.
|
| Just to nitpick...
|
| "You know, the alarm telling me that my clothes are dry... There
| is no reasons, let alone urgency, that I should get any form of
| audio notification about this. I could spent 6 months in the
| hospital after a car crash because of the aforementioned LPG
| seven trumpets, come back to my place, and find my cloths still
| impeccably dry."
|
| Removing your clothes when they are still warm reduces wrinkles,
| enough so that you can avoid ironing things like t-shirts, which
| is just annoying. (I recognize that some slobs are okay wearing a
| shirt that looks like it's been yanked out of the jaws of a dog,
| but I am not interested in addressing the pathological case.)
| BWStearns wrote:
| Anyone have any good literature on alert fatigue as a general
| concept in design?
| tonymet wrote:
| I can't believe the people making or testing these products have
| kids or even sleep at night. They must be vampires. We recently
| replaced Vornado fans . The older model had a basic mechanical
| switch -- silent, tactile , works 100% of the time, works in the
| dark. The new model has a capacitive touch interface that only
| works 30% of the time when touched. Impossible to operate in the
| dark. The worst part is the deafening shriek whenever you adjust
| the fan .
|
| They should have advertised on the box: wakes your kids and your
| wife at 2am!
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| Yeah I can't imagine a touch interface for fans. God. Atleast
| the ones which have a proper switch in your house, and then
| also let you control it with some random app are slightly
| better.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| I wonder if the LPG system is aftermarket, and as such doesn't
| know the amount of gas left in the tank.
|
| It reminds me when I get into my car. Ding ding ding ding to put
| on your seatbelt. Yet I haven't even put the car in drive.
|
| My phone is constantly sending me messages trying to get my
| attention to buy something (even though on iOS there should be a
| per-app marketing opt-out, it's not enforced at all)
|
| Or spamming 10 emails if you abandon a cart...
|
| I don't like the idea of 'levels' where we can set which messages
| to get (like TRACE, DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR), because that
| inevitably changes how these companies set their levels. After
| all, marketing affects their bottom line, so that makes it ERROR
| for them.
| dang wrote:
| We don't care about profanity on HN but we do have a problem with
| clickbait, which "Objects should shut the fuck up" arguably is,
| so I changed the title to "Objects shouldn't talk". I realize
| "talk" isn't quite accurate here but "should be quiet" or
| "shouldn't make noise" felt a bit _too_ bland. Suggestions
| welcome as always!
|
| Edit: never mind, an obviously better solution is to just de-"the
| fuck" the original.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Appliances that only have touch controls and make beeping sounds
| for every button pre^Wtouch. UX design has truly peaked. >:(
| p1necone wrote:
| Important exception: If the noise my whiteware makes is a fun
| jingle, I'm all for it.
| DanHulton wrote:
| Objects should also stop having always-on blue LEDs for power
| indication or whatever. When I turn off the lights at night, my
| living room basically stays the same luminescence, because of the
| wash of blue LED light from every stupid little gadget that is
| desperate for me to know at all times that it has power.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I've taken apart two theater systems and a blu-ray player to
| sort this. It wasn't even _THAT_ the LEDs were blue (though
| that 's annoying as all hell by itself) but these were even
| WORSE as they were bare straw-hat LEDs stuck out of holes in
| the cases facing directly outward. The little things would
| genuinely spot your eyes if you looked at them dead on.
|
| An afternoon soldering a red one + a resistor solved it. I
| genuinely can't fathom how people without electronics knowledge
| survive in this world. They must be just suffering constantly
| being unable to fix these things.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Bill Shatner played a character in the 80's that expressed this
| sentiment: https://youtu.be/Ebo0aLLPYwA?t=20
| gblargg wrote:
| I often stick some tape over the beeper in products. I was trying
| a ceiling fan and it made a loud beep every time you pressed a
| button on the remote. Not very good if say adjusting things in
| the middle of the night.
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