[HN Gopher] Making Quieter Technology ___________________________________________________________________ Making Quieter Technology Author : nicbou Score : 41 points Date : 2022-08-07 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (nicolasbouliane.com) (TXT) w3m dump (nicolasbouliane.com) | sumul wrote: | I endorse getting away from as much news as possible. I made that | choice after the 2016 US elections, and it has been a big, | sustained improvement in my quality of life. I've found that if | something is important, I'll hear about it from friends, family, | or co-workers. Hearing about important things from people I trust | is way better than hearing about them from news outlets trying | their hardest to keep me hooked. Sometimes I get the bewildered, | mouth-agape reaction of "you haven't heard of this???" but it | took a surprisingly short amount of time to feel no embarrassment | about being out of the loop and simply responding with, "nope! | please tell me all about it." | sneak wrote: | > _I can 't delete social media because my job depends on it._ | | Unless you are Mark Zuckerberg or employed by Facebook or Reddit, | I question the veracity of this statement. | | Your world will not end if you delete your social media accounts. | You probably won't even reduce your income. | | Social media is invested in you believing that you simply _must_ | be on it for your business to survive. This is a lie. | nicbou wrote: | I use it to follow people's recent experience with various | bureaucratic processes. These discussions happen on social | media, so it's where I look for them. | dan-robertson wrote: | There are two totally different kinds of technology noise I | dislike: | | 1. Why do so many gadgets have to beep? Microwaves, washing | machines, ... | | 2. Engine noise. Some cars/motorbikes are specifically | designed/modified to be loud because that's what the customer | wants. Some small/uninsulated engines (eg in a cheaper | motorbike/scooter) are also loud. | thfuran wrote: | Engine noise inside the vehicle is horrible and I don't know | why anyone would want it. Engine noise outside the vehicle | probably reduces the rates at which collisions occur. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Engine noise. Some cars/motorbikes are specifically | designed/modified to be loud because that's what the customer | wants. | | Then there are the cars that aren't loud, so they play | recordings of engine noise over the audio system. | | BMW has apparently gone as far as making the fake engine noise | user-configurable, except that _you can 't turn it off_. | Because if you don't want to be forced to listen to fake engine | noise, you're not the type of customer BMW wants, I guess. You | probably shouldn't be allowed to vote or own property either. | spoonjim wrote: | Oof. Now is probably your last chance to get a decent | naturally asprirated I6 BMW without all that nonsense. | julik wrote: | I think this is a case of some misguided product managers | (and since German car companies are known to be huge | bureacracies - no wonder). It seems like there is a great | important safety aspect to it - that first you can hear that | the vehicle is moving (there is an audio cue), and second is | the affordance that you pressing on the accelerator has an | effect (that the accelerator/electronics is not broken) - | idem for braking. | | Interestingly enough, railway engines had this problem solved | a number of decades ago when they started using mechanical | speedometers based on a clock. When the vehicle would start | moving, the speedometer would start ticking. The faster you | go the faster the ticking. Seems like electric cars need | something similar (it does seem like a very useful safety | feature to be honest). | thaumasiotes wrote: | > When the vehicle would start moving, the speedometer | would start ticking. The faster you go the faster the | ticking. Seems like electric cars need something similar | | This would effectively prevent many people from listening | to music in the car. It would not be tolerated. | | Which brings up the point that people very frequently | choose to drown out the engine noise. That obviously limits | how useful the engine noise can be, though of course it | isn't very useful anyway. You cannot fail to sense that the | car is moving if your eyes are open. You cannot fail to | sense whether the brakes are working even if your eyes are | closed. | vbezhenar wrote: | Playing engine noise is one of the most ridiculous thing I've | ever known. I love BMW noise. I owned old BMW and I loved its | sound. But I loved it because it was produced by engine that | I loved, not because it was produced by some stupid | subwoofer. I have no idea how would anyone buy that tech and | I lost my faith in humanity that BMW did not go bankrupt with | this move. I know that the only BMW car I would ever buy is | E34, it was last BMW worth those letters. | thefz wrote: | > A good operating system: Mac OS. Windows has become so user- | hostile that I refuse to get near it. Linux breaks the rule | above: a person's primary task should not be computing, but being | human. | | This is where I closed the window | JadeNB wrote: | > This is where I closed the window | | Just telling us that you simply didn't read the article is | probably a significantly less valuable contribution to HN than | offering your own (presumably contradictory) experience, | expertise, or opinion. | egypturnash wrote: | I've been taking a similar route for the past decade or so. It's | pretty nice. I still fall into the internet hole when I'm | slouched on the couch with the tablet, I need to ponder some ways | to fix that. | | ...ooh, Apple's "Screen Time" controls on the iPad will let me | limit my time on a website, and supposedly sync to my Mac, too. | Sharply limiting Twitter should break the habit of getting lost | in replies and scrolling when someone links to a good tweet. | Nice. Thanks for giving me a reason to examine my own habits | around the Internet, Mr. Bouliane! | blondin wrote: | i have made peace with the fact that technology will evolve in | the direction the masses want it. not the way i want it. i want a | quiet lifestyle like author, but maybe the majority does not. | | tiktok is proof that quiet is not what people want right now. | nicbou wrote: | Technology has become a sort of paperclip optimizer for | engagement. What we want only matters so long as we engage. | | People probably don't want to get into internet fights, but | it's how we're wired. The machine - its workers, managers, | C-levels and algorithms - found that strip mining our attention | and fuelling outrage somehow boosts its metrics. So it does | that. | verdverm wrote: | One thing that has been frustrating me is how many lights, and | bright ones, are on everything I buy these days. A single tiny | LED is lighting up entire rooms enough to navigate without | tripping on anything in the dark. | JadeNB wrote: | > One thing that has been frustrating me is how many lights, | and bright ones, are on everything I buy these days. | | While I am sympathetic to this, I'm lucky enough that it | doesn't much bother me and so I hadn't even noticed it; but I | _really_ miss the old Powerbook G4 heartbeat. | corytheboyd wrote: | I cannot sleep with gadget lights on, and LEDs are the absolute | worst. They're usually easy enough to block out as other | commenters have said, but it's so annoying to get into bed, | finally comfortable, and then BAM fucking LED that I have to | now get up and deal with. | nicbou wrote: | Black electrical tape to the rescue | xmddmx wrote: | Sometimes I still want to see the LED. In this situation, I | use blue painters tape, and keep adding layers until the LED | is at a reasonable level. You really need to check this in a | completely dark room to get it right. | verdverm wrote: | lol, I've done this a bit, but it makes everything look | broken | throwaheyy wrote: | A dot of black permanent marker seems to work well. Blocks | out enough light to remove the distraction, while still | allowing enough to indicate something working. | JaimeThompson wrote: | These, sometimes, look a little better than electrical | tape. I haven't used this brand, it was just the first one | I found. [1] | | [1] https://www.amazon.com/FLANCCI-Blocking-Stickers- | Dimming-Bla... | wvenable wrote: | I never thought to look for that before! Amazing. I | currently have a lot of black electrical tape over | everything. | crooked-v wrote: | That only helps when the device doesn't have an LED | that's inside an open casing and so ends up visibly | shining from every hole in the device and/or through the | thin plastic itself. | verdverm wrote: | these are the worst, or when they are on a button like my | monitor | cassianoleal wrote: | I've been sticking these things on everything. Not this | particular brand either, but I doubt there's much | difference between brands. | | It allows enoughlight through so you can see what's going | on but not enough that will illuminate the room or | distract you just by being there. | egypturnash wrote: | Black masking tape. It's not opaque enough to block the | light entirely; this means you can do a few layers to dim | it to taste. Once that's sorted, a quick trim with an | x-acto blade will tidy up the edges and make it all look | intentional from a distance. | [deleted] | jibbers wrote: | I was able to read about half the article before a black box | appeared with text saying I was an "engaged reader." After | clicking on the question mark icon in the black box I was taken | to a page where it was explained how the author has hidden | "achievements" throughout their site and asks if I, the reader, | can find them all. | | This feels like the exact thing the author is rallying about in | this post -- technology designed to keep us in front of our | screens. | nicbou wrote: | Haha I forgot about those entirely! It was a fun time killer | from a few years ago, not a way to keep you hooked. I don't | have any tracking whatsoever on this website, so I wouldn't | notice if you engaged more. | iasay wrote: | That is some irony there. | | If you want people to be engaged, delivering content that | respects them is the only step. Engagement measurement and | mechanics that interfere with that only serve to reduce that | respect. | rahen wrote: | > I should be the user, it should be the tool, not the other way | around. | | > A good operating system: Mac OS. Windows has become so user- | hostile that I refuse to get near it. Linux breaks the rule | above: a person's primary task should not be computing, but being | human. | | That's certainly understandable, although it can also be | contradictory with your goal of having quiet technology that | leaves the user alone. | | MacOS can be opaque and annoying at times, especially when there | are no settings for something you want or need, but piles of | "social" settings junk you don't need. Recently macOS wasted my | time to find a way to map the begin and end keys of my K380 | keyboard, which wasn't even an issue with Linux. No settings for | that, it's still getting in my way. | | It also takes some effort to silence it; I routinely get popups | about my screen time, suggestions and whatsnot. All those are | distractions and wastes of time I don't have with Linux. | | Otherwise I use a slim stable distribution (Debian stable) with a | tiling WM and mate-settings-daemon: few processes running, few | updates, and I feel in actual control of the machine. It's really | leaving me alone, wastes little of my time and feels quieter to | me than macOS. | | Anyway, you're posting this on HN so I guess you assumed that | kind of answer. | nicbou wrote: | Yes, I expected it. It was offensive enough for someone else to | quit reading. I found my OS of choice. To each their own. | _gabe_ wrote: | > A good operating system: Mac OS. Windows has become so user- | hostile that I refuse to get near it. | | Like...? Windows annoys me at times too, but the most annoying | thing to me is the forced updates. Other than that, I can't | recall any time in recent memory that the OS has gotten in my way | of doing something. I'm genuinely curious which specific pain | points cause you to refuse to get near it. | jbay808 wrote: | I recently set up Windows on a bunch of new computers, and was | reminded of how atrocious the process is. All sorts of widgets, | telemetry, and bloatware coming along for the ride. There's a | laundry list of config changes and uninstalls necessary before | it quiets down and gets out of the way. Once you have it set up | the way you like it, it's easy to forget all that. | | If you go through that ritual a lot, or never do the deep | clean, or only use Windows occasionally and only see the | default setting, it's a perfectly understandable impression. | [deleted] | danuker wrote: | Windows defends me against the threat of privacy. | | Quite literally, a certain GPG binary triggers Microsoft | Defender. | | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/threats/malware-encyclo... | xmddmx wrote: | "I made my calendar louder to check my phone less. It vibrates | like an alarm until I get to it. " | | macOS and iOS user here - how do you configure that? | | I find that Calendar reminders are not loud enough (they give a | single notification which is easy for me to dismiss by accident). | When I need to really be reminded, I set an Alarm "Hey siri, set | an alarm for 4pm titled 'check your calendar'" | | What's your secret? | SV_BubbleTime wrote: | Well written. I wonder if I would have enjoyed the previous | version he mentions? Good writing comes from rewriting. | | I already do a few of these things and it's made a big | difference. I should try and expand with PiHole and/or | uBlacklist. | | Something I've really loved is running NoScript! in Firefox... | but I won't pretend at all it is even remotely appropriate for | non-programmers. You really need to understand JS and web design | to still have functioning websites. | | It would be nice to get a maintained list of "you actually need | this" scripts for websites and auto block the known bullshit. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-07 23:00 UTC)