4 ms·
In around the year 2000, for career day I went to work with my uncle. He worked in IT for General Mills. Their office was very much a stereotypical poorly lit I
by donatj 2y ago
In around the year 2000, for career day I went to work with my uncle. He worked in IT for General Mills. Their office was very much a stereotypical poorly lit IT cave in the basement.
All their computers were a constant barrage of custom pop culture sound effects for every action. Minimize a window and a computer would emit like a "Ooh baby" clip for instance. Place had the tone of a morning radio show. Seemingly every action you could attach a sound effect to, they had. It would drive me insane trying to work like that.
Tech culture is very different from what it once was.
- whatnotests2 2y agoYes, this. Imagine an elevator, gas pump, vending machine, or laundromat emitting sound effects constantly. Quite the dystopian hellscape.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago> gas pump Most of them play advertisements while you fuel up. I hate it. The only thing that I like about New Jersey forbidding me from touching a gas pump is that I'm not subjected to ads for diarrhea medication or low-APR loans every time I fuel up.
- LgLasagnaModel 2y agoPro tip: on most pumps, the second button from the top on the right side mutes the volume.
- phs2501 2y agoA local station had (I think past tense, though it made it a lot less likely for me to go there to check) their pumps playing ads in "attract mode" when nobody was using them. So going there late at night and filling up involved listening to a poorly-timed round of "BUY NOW" utterances from eight different sources (because of course they weren't synchronized). And you couldn't really mute it because it was all the other pumps. It was horrible.
- cdchn 2y agoGreat ready for the newest innovation, putting a small cellphone sized screen on the nozzle that you put into your vehicle. https://www.dekra.nl/en/smarter-nozzle/ https://www.dekra.nl/en/smarter-nozzle/
- panzagl 2y agoWhy must Maria Menounos yell at me while I pump gas....
- vundercind 2y agoI’ve been doing an unfortunate amount of driving the last year, across a bunch of states, and have still only seen this at two or three stations ever. One of them in my home city, and I avoided that (conveniently-located) station for that reason. Maybe there are a few cities where it’s a ton more common than most of the rest of the country.
- manuelmoreale 2y ago> Most of them play advertisements while you fuel up I guess this must be a US thing. The only thing my gas pump shows is how much money I’m paying and that’s it.
- thih9 2y agoThere are pumps with ads in Germany[1], although not as annoying. [1]: https://www.threads.net/@twind.fotografie/post/C6f4n28gdqY https://www.threads.net/@twind.fotografie/post/C6f4n28gdqY
- xandrius 2y agoMost where specifically? Never ever encountered those in most countries in the world, haven't checked them all yet.
- dubya 2y agoGas pumps at the local grocer play beeps when you hit a key (consumer loyalty # entry), but with a random delay. It's maddening how much harder this makes typing. OTOH, these pumps don't have video ads yet.
- washadjeffmad 2y agoJust wait until they integrate the devices with AGI + TTS and either tie it to your ad history or one-click purchasing. AI Fridge: "We noticed you're almost out of cheese. Would you like to make your dairy extraordinary today with Tillamook Sharp Cheddar? Say OK to order now!" Enfleshened One: "No. Please self destruct." AI Fridge: "...Take that back, or I'll wilt all your lettuce."
- tanseydavid 2y agoEnfleshened One: "Do as thou wilt."
- klausa 2y ago>Imagine an elevator, gas pump, vending machine, or laundromat emitting sound effects constantly. This a non-that-inaccurate depiction of how life in Japan is, but thankfully one adapts quite quickly to that.
- boredtofears 2y agoOne of my first experiences with our home PC's was downloading wav files of movie and TV clips off of AngelFire and GeoCities sites and assigning different windows tasks to play them to prank my dad. Error dialog popup? Beavis and Butthead's "Breaking the law, breaking the law". Out of disk space? Johnny Mnemonic "I can carry nearly eighty gigs of data in my head". He thought it was hilarious and would reassign them to his own clips that he found and we continuously tried one-upping each other to find the most annoying possible sound for every windows function.
- wormlord 2y agoThis could be kind of fun if done in moderation. Maybe a git hook that lets the creator of the PR select a song to play over the speakers when the merge request goes through. Some people might get pissed off, but I think it would be nice to have a bit more whimsy in software dev. As long as everyone is on the same page, should be fine.
- wildzzz 2y agoI worked at a help desk one summer and every inbox had a different sound effect. We had several different external customers each with a dedicated machine to handle their tickets. The most critical customers (i.e. the biggest fines) got the loudest, most annoying sounds. Everything was an animal sound so the place literally sounded like a zoo on busy days. The manager absolutely hated bringing various big shot tours through our call center because of the ridiculous noise but we also had a perfect record.
- jurassicfoxy 2y agoI worked for a woman who had the Microsoft helper (like Clippy) but chose the cat avatar, and it would meow ALL day. It was funny for about 2 hours and unbearable beyond that!
- mtrovo 2y agoWell, that's one way to get rid of open floor layouts.
- jasonjayr 2y agoIn my collection of CDROMs, I had one titled "Wired For Sound Pro" -- it was some custom software that could add sound effects to a ton of Windows events, as well as a huge library of sound files to attach to those events. I think products like this were to showcase "Multimedia PCs" that were starting to make it big in the mid 90s...