15 ms·

Objects should shut up

490 points by gm678 1y ago

actionfromafar 1y ago
Yes. Also, instantiated objects from some random library shouldn't write to stdout and stderr, which I thought it would be about.
- growthwtf 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
throwback to https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/054/961/748.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/054/961/748...
gregatragenet3 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  What does a squelch switch do?
  - polishdude20 1y ago
    Silence
  - etrautmann 1y ago
    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.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - bruce343434 1y ago
    Sets a minimum on the incoming signal to be amplified. For instance, only amplify stuff above x dB, silence stuff below x dB (noise).
    - Aerroon 1y ago
nikanj 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  I constantly forget my food in the microwave for hours at a time.
  - brettermeier 1y ago
    Let it beep 3 times maximum(!), if you keep forgetting, you probably weren't very hungry.
  - nikanj 1y ago
    And yet you are still miraculously alive, despite not being alarmed of the terrifying situation
- hypeatei 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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.
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  That's every microwave that I have ever seen. I don't know the reason either. And it's not like those machines are silent when they are running, so you would need some sound to identify that they are not...
lucumo 1y ago
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 1y ago
  100% agree. I leave negative reviews on any app with sound that doesn't give me the ability to mute it.
apples_oranges 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Sound sensitivity varies by person. It's not generational.
- andrewrn 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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.
- 1y ago
fouronnes3 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        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.
    - foobarchu 1y ago
-warren 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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.
    - alterom 1y ago
      > 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. Your grandpa implemented an IRL Adblock. He was really ahead of his time.
  - kaonwarb 1y ago
    This is something Eero routers do well: you can turn off the light (which is a more subtle white to begin with) in settings.
ecshafer 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - ziml77 1y ago
    One thing that drives me up the wall on macOS is when an application demands attention and its dock icon starts bouncing... and doesn't stop. It happens over fullscreen stuff too. The flashing icons in Windows are far less obtrusive, and I was just looking at the latest insider preview for 11 where they are making it so the icon will only flash a few times and then change the little "application is running" bar that sits under the app icon from white to red to indicate that it wanted your attention. Which sounds like an excellent way to handle it to me.
    - kjkjadksj 1y ago
      The worst is when the dock icon does one jump and stops. You have to wait around for it to happen again if it even does.
MarkusQ 1y ago
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 1y ago
  > or a toilet that has pop-up notifications. Toilets occasionally do that, but dismissing it requires a plunger and mop.
- porridgeraisin 1y ago
  I recently went to buy a toilet for a new house. I saw one with a touch screen. Kohler "intelligent" toilets. God knows what horrors the touch screen would have revealed. Needless to say I didn't buy it.
magneticnorth 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - bzzzt 1y ago
    Probably so apps don’t have to deal with the notch on the bottom.
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  > I can quickly count about 5 badges on my page of numbers that I don't think I'll ever actually care about. Oh, I just noticed a few minutes ago that Watsapp has 4 main-screen tabs now. Not that any one besides "chat" is useful for anything... And the "search for contact" functionality didn't go into any of them, apparently it was just replaced with "talk to AI".
pdevine 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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.
- philwelch 1y ago
  Gasoline prices are, from what I’ve gathered, significantly higher in the UK than the US, which provides a greater economic justification.
  - rubyn00bie 1y ago
    Aye. I was just more so curious as to what vehicle this is, I looked around but have had trouble finding anything that looks like it’s built that way at the factory. I suppose I’d get more useful results if I used a VPN with a European IP.
andrewrn 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    Do you mean returning the wireless earphones, and then getting different?
    - bsghirt 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        Most decent noise cancelling headphones cost hundreds of dollars, so not exactly low ticket items.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - igouy 1y ago
        In that case, "consumer preferences [wont] fix stuff like this" because no signal is sent back to "corporate design".
  - 1y ago
bigstrat2003 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        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.
ratelimitsteve 1y ago
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 1y ago
> 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_ 1y ago
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
- Zak 1y ago
  If you're in the unenviable position of being unable to edit your phone's hosts file, you can block most ads using a DNS-over-HTTPS provider. Mullvad has a free service. https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls
willquack 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - speed_spread 1y ago
    It's a cost saving measure warranted by open spaces. We used to have walls and closed offices instead.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      Open plan vs private office is a totally different conversation. Adding the white noise isn't cost-saving, it costs money to install.
- mdavidn 1y ago
  My building has this too. I wear noise cancelling headphones with no music to eliminate the white noise.
  - teach 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Have you had a Samsung washing machine and dryer lately? https://youtu.be/IAoVDOkNq3k https://youtu.be/IAoVDOkNq3k
  - tiagod 1y ago
    Luckily, my Samsung washing machine can be completely muted.
seemaze 1y ago
I read this article to the sound of Cake's 1996 album 'Fashion Nugget' song - 'Nugget' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3sQDwOTFJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3sQDwOTFJU
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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.
- vladvasiliu 1y ago
  My fridge’s door doesn’t fully close on its own if only gently pushed. But the beeping detector doesn’t detect the door as open if it’s almost but not fully closed. Otherwise it’s great, I’ve only ever heard it once or twice, when I was /really/ taking my time.
- bombela 1y ago
  I removed the beeper module on mine. Couldn't load the groceries in peace.
phkahler 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44789587
    - delecti 1y ago
      I don't think that rule matters here, because the car in question (in phkahler's comment) is stationary.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
  - andyferris 1y ago
    They are definitely intended to have a specific meaning (like turning indicators, but for backwards).
bilekas 1y ago
> 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.
- frosted-flakes 1y ago
  Some Bosch dishwashers do this, to let the steam escape quickly. Also, the controls are hidden at the top of the door, so it projects a red dot onto the floor when it's running, because it's so quiet that you would have no idea otherwise.
trinix912 1y ago
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.
- arp242 1y ago
  Unexpected comment in comment area
lo_zamoyski 1y ago
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 1y ago
Anyone have any good literature on alert fatigue as a general concept in design?
tonymet 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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.
- speed_spread 1y ago
  IMO it's only clickbait if actual content doesn't live up to the title. I believe this article to be a justified rant and effective reflection about why objects should shut the fuck up. Title matches the tone, content is relevant, no deception.
iforgotpassword 1y ago
Appliances that only have touch controls and make beeping sounds for every button pre^Wtouch. UX design has truly peaked. >:(
p1necone 1y ago
Important exception: If the noise my whiteware makes is a fun jingle, I'm all for it.
DanHulton 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - ziml77 1y ago
    They survive by doing the much simpler thing of using a piece of tape to cover the hole up. Yes, I know it doesn't look super nice, but you don't need much to cover the light.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    Before blue LEDs existed, green and amber LEDs were the thing and still are in some dated-appearing designs. In some ways, those are worse. But originally, red LEDs were the staple electronic equipment after transitioning from neon and incandescent lamps. Red LEDs were at least more subtle somewhat. I think what people want is light pollution customization controls so they're not kept awake with LED Christmas trees.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Involuntary light pollution makes for a bad UX. Side cutters, foil tape, and/or electrical tape. I sometimes don't completely cover status LEDs but instead reduce them to a pinhole. I much appreciate Ubiquiti APs being able to turn off the LED ring.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Bill Shatner played a character in the 80's that expressed this sentiment: https://youtu.be/Ebo0aLLPYwA?t=20 https://youtu.be/Ebo0aLLPYwA?t=20
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  I can't get behind blinking and flashing lights! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAWP9Oxdn9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAWP9Oxdn9Q
gblargg 1y ago
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.
dreamcompiler 1y ago
Crappy technology calls attention to itself. Good technology doesn't.
foxfired 1y ago
I always thought I was weird for not ever letting the microwave beep when it ends. I always open the door a second before it ends. Sometimes you'll see me running across the house just so I can turn it off before that annoying beep. But then I started working at a co-working space, and I see a sticker on the microwave that says "Be kind, open the door before it beeps".
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Haha, just last night I noticed my daughter does that. I waited next to her until it was about to beep then knocked her arm out of the way so she missed the perfectly-timed door opening and the microwave beeped its hideous beep. Sometimes it's OK.
frosted-flakes 1y ago
I have a set of bike lights from Topeak that will flash the main headlight into the eyes of oncoming drivers when the battery is low, even though it has a battery indicator on the top. It gives me a heart attack every time.
userbinator 1y ago
I hate that it's not configurable Everything is configurable if you're determined enough. ;-)
philwelch 1y ago
I actually find that I really like East Asian appliances that sing little songs as indications. It’s much less annoying than loud beeping, and can be helpful once you learn what each song means.
MarkLowenstein 1y ago
My peeve: electric cars that make noise to make sure that blind people around them can hear them like they hear gas-powered cars--except they make it 10x as loud as any gas-powered car.
whoammi 1y ago
Unless it’s a smoke detector. In that case when it is running low on battery - despite also being hardwired - it should definitely warn you about the low battery… at 3am. Always. At. 3am.
- joquarky 1y ago
  Battery voltage drops with temperature.
  - BlindEyeHalo 1y ago
    This is also why taking the batteries out of the remote and back in works. Hands warming them up.
- hattar 1y ago
  More annoyingly, they'll beep intermittently with no other indicator. I have a house with ~15 fire alarms and when one is making an intermittent chirp every 30 seconds, it takes forever to figure out which one is low on battery. This could be solved with an LED that is lit when in a good state, and turns off when the battery is running low (or vice versa). For some reason I can't find a fire alarm with such a feature.
coastalpuma 1y ago
Amen. I am praying for the day when cars honking on lock is banned.
fud101 1y ago
That font looks hideous. why
mdavid626 1y ago
Reminds me of my water kettle. You can’t disable the beep, when water reaches boiling state. Why the fuck not?
- cjs_ac 1y ago
  I learnt at school that the thermostat in a kettle was a bimetallic strip, made from two metals with different thermal expansion coefficients. When the bimetallic strip reached 100 Celsius, the two sides of the strip would lengthen at different rates, causing it to bend. The strip was also part of the electric circuit, so the strip bending would open the circuit and switch the kettle off. This has been the standard design of kettles since 1955. Why is anyone bothering to ruin such a great design?
  - t14000 1y ago
    Maybe some people like different water temperatures: black tea, coffee, green tea, etc...
cobbaut 1y ago
I have a tendency to locate annoying beepers and disconnect them...
skrebbel 1y ago
Hahahahahah young parent rage is the best rage! > May the gormless cock-up who created this absolute potato of a device spend his entire life walking on legos. This one cracked me up.
Thorrez 1y ago
>My fridge: should I improperly close its door, it'll emit some faint noise for like 30 seconds. It's a totally valid important notification, as nobody wants to burn electricity to cold the room while the food goes bad. Note that it actually won't cool the room. It'll heat the room. The fridge works by putting hot air out the back. The more the fridge cools, the more hot air it puts out. The hot air is always more than the cool air. If the fridge was vented outdoors, like A/C, then it would cool the room.
- adammarples 1y ago
  It won't heat or cool the room, it's a heat pump so it will be neutral, pumping heat from inside back to inside
  - joha4270 1y ago
    The heat pump uses electricity to move the heat around, and this electricity will eventually turn into additional heat which will end up in the room.
  - kibwen 1y ago
    It will heat the room because the compressor is also inside the room, doing the work of moving the heat and thus generating heat itself.
    - adammarples 1y ago
      Ok but I think waste heat in this context is fairly trivial, we might as well claim that the room isn't perfectly insulated or something so it won't actually get heated
      - Thorrez 1y ago
        It might be hotter outside than inside. Someone might think "It's hot, therefore I'll open my fridge to cool it down in here." But that will lead to it getting even hotter, not cooler. If the A/C is on, it'll require the A/C to work extra hard to remove that extra heat. Also, would you claim a space heater doesn't heat the house if the house is at an equilibrium where the space heater produces heat at the same rate that heat escapes outside? I would say the space heater is still heating the house, but the house is losing heat at the same rate.
croisillon 1y ago
i loved the writing style (and the reference comes from from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dinner_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dinner_Game)
kissgyorgy 1y ago
The original title is "Objects should shut the fuck up". I don't like unnecessary cursing either, but it is emphasizing his frustration in this case and cursing objects, not people. Renaming the title is just losing information for no reason.

490 points by gm678 1y ago

Yes. Also, instantiated objects from some random library shouldn't write to stdout and stderr, which I thought it would be about.

growthwtf 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago

throwback to https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/054/961/748.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/002/054/961/748...

gregatragenet3 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago
What does a squelch switch do?
- polishdude20 1y ago
  Silence
- etrautmann 1y ago
  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.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- bruce343434 1y ago
  Sets a minimum on the incoming signal to be amplified. For instance, only amplify stuff above x dB, silence stuff below x dB (noise).
  - Aerroon 1y ago

nikanj 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
I constantly forget my food in the microwave for hours at a time.
- brettermeier 1y ago
  Let it beep 3 times maximum(!), if you keep forgetting, you probably weren't very hungry.
- nikanj 1y ago
  And yet you are still miraculously alive, despite not being alarmed of the terrifying situation
hypeatei 1y ago
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 1y ago
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.
marcosdumay 1y ago
That's every microwave that I have ever seen. I don't know the reason either. And it's not like those machines are silent when they are running, so you would need some sound to identify that they are not...

lucumo 1y ago

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 1y ago
100% agree. I leave negative reviews on any app with sound that doesn't give me the ability to mute it.

apples_oranges 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago

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 1y ago
Sound sensitivity varies by person. It's not generational.
andrewrn 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
1y ago

fouronnes3 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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.
  - foobarchu 1y ago

-warren 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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.
  - alterom 1y ago
    > 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. Your grandpa implemented an IRL Adblock. He was really ahead of his time.
- kaonwarb 1y ago
  This is something Eero routers do well: you can turn off the light (which is a more subtle white to begin with) in settings.

ecshafer 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.
- ziml77 1y ago
  One thing that drives me up the wall on macOS is when an application demands attention and its dock icon starts bouncing... and doesn't stop. It happens over fullscreen stuff too. The flashing icons in Windows are far less obtrusive, and I was just looking at the latest insider preview for 11 where they are making it so the icon will only flash a few times and then change the little "application is running" bar that sits under the app icon from white to red to indicate that it wanted your attention. Which sounds like an excellent way to handle it to me.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    The worst is when the dock icon does one jump and stops. You have to wait around for it to happen again if it even does.

MarkusQ 1y ago

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 1y ago
> or a toilet that has pop-up notifications. Toilets occasionally do that, but dismissing it requires a plunger and mop.
porridgeraisin 1y ago
I recently went to buy a toilet for a new house. I saw one with a touch screen. Kohler "intelligent" toilets. God knows what horrors the touch screen would have revealed. Needless to say I didn't buy it.

magneticnorth 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.
- bzzzt 1y ago
  Probably so apps don’t have to deal with the notch on the bottom.
marcosdumay 1y ago
> I can quickly count about 5 badges on my page of numbers that I don't think I'll ever actually care about. Oh, I just noticed a few minutes ago that Watsapp has 4 main-screen tabs now. Not that any one besides "chat" is useful for anything... And the "search for contact" functionality didn't go into any of them, apparently it was just replaced with "talk to AI".

pdevine 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago

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.

philwelch 1y ago
Gasoline prices are, from what I’ve gathered, significantly higher in the UK than the US, which provides a greater economic justification.
- rubyn00bie 1y ago
  Aye. I was just more so curious as to what vehicle this is, I looked around but have had trouble finding anything that looks like it’s built that way at the factory. I suppose I’d get more useful results if I used a VPN with a European IP.

andrewrn 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Do you mean returning the wireless earphones, and then getting different?
  - bsghirt 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      Most decent noise cancelling headphones cost hundreds of dollars, so not exactly low ticket items.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - igouy 1y ago
      In that case, "consumer preferences [wont] fix stuff like this" because no signal is sent back to "corporate design".
- 1y ago

bigstrat2003 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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.

ratelimitsteve 1y ago

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 1y ago

> 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_ 1y ago

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

Zak 1y ago
If you're in the unenviable position of being unable to edit your phone's hosts file, you can block most ads using a DNS-over-HTTPS provider. Mullvad has a free service. https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls

willquack 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.
- speed_spread 1y ago
  It's a cost saving measure warranted by open spaces. We used to have walls and closed offices instead.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    Open plan vs private office is a totally different conversation. Adding the white noise isn't cost-saving, it costs money to install.
mdavidn 1y ago
My building has this too. I wear noise cancelling headphones with no music to eliminate the white noise.
- teach 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago
Have you had a Samsung washing machine and dryer lately? https://youtu.be/IAoVDOkNq3k https://youtu.be/IAoVDOkNq3k
- tiagod 1y ago
  Luckily, my Samsung washing machine can be completely muted.

seemaze 1y ago

I read this article to the sound of Cake's 1996 album 'Fashion Nugget' song - 'Nugget' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3sQDwOTFJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3sQDwOTFJU

burnt-resistor 1y ago
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 1y ago

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.

vladvasiliu 1y ago
My fridge’s door doesn’t fully close on its own if only gently pushed. But the beeping detector doesn’t detect the door as open if it’s almost but not fully closed. Otherwise it’s great, I’ve only ever heard it once or twice, when I was /really/ taking my time.
bombela 1y ago
I removed the beeper module on mine. Couldn't load the groceries in peace.

phkahler 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44789587
  - delecti 1y ago
    I don't think that rule matters here, because the car in question (in phkahler's comment) is stationary.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- andyferris 1y ago
  They are definitely intended to have a specific meaning (like turning indicators, but for backwards).

bilekas 1y ago

> 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.

frosted-flakes 1y ago
Some Bosch dishwashers do this, to let the steam escape quickly. Also, the controls are hidden at the top of the door, so it projects a red dot onto the floor when it's running, because it's so quiet that you would have no idea otherwise.

trinix912 1y ago

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.

arp242 1y ago
Unexpected comment in comment area

lo_zamoyski 1y ago

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 1y ago

Anyone have any good literature on alert fatigue as a general concept in design?

tonymet 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago

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 1y ago

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.

speed_spread 1y ago
IMO it's only clickbait if actual content doesn't live up to the title. I believe this article to be a justified rant and effective reflection about why objects should shut the fuck up. Title matches the tone, content is relevant, no deception.

iforgotpassword 1y ago

Appliances that only have touch controls and make beeping sounds for every button pre^Wtouch. UX design has truly peaked. >:(

p1necone 1y ago

Important exception: If the noise my whiteware makes is a fun jingle, I'm all for it.

DanHulton 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.
- ziml77 1y ago
  They survive by doing the much simpler thing of using a piece of tape to cover the hole up. Yes, I know it doesn't look super nice, but you don't need much to cover the light.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Before blue LEDs existed, green and amber LEDs were the thing and still are in some dated-appearing designs. In some ways, those are worse. But originally, red LEDs were the staple electronic equipment after transitioning from neon and incandescent lamps. Red LEDs were at least more subtle somewhat. I think what people want is light pollution customization controls so they're not kept awake with LED Christmas trees.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Involuntary light pollution makes for a bad UX. Side cutters, foil tape, and/or electrical tape. I sometimes don't completely cover status LEDs but instead reduce them to a pinhole. I much appreciate Ubiquiti APs being able to turn off the LED ring.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Bill Shatner played a character in the 80's that expressed this sentiment: https://youtu.be/Ebo0aLLPYwA?t=20 https://youtu.be/Ebo0aLLPYwA?t=20

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
I can't get behind blinking and flashing lights! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAWP9Oxdn9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAWP9Oxdn9Q

gblargg 1y ago

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.

dreamcompiler 1y ago

Crappy technology calls attention to itself. Good technology doesn't.

foxfired 1y ago

I always thought I was weird for not ever letting the microwave beep when it ends. I always open the door a second before it ends. Sometimes you'll see me running across the house just so I can turn it off before that annoying beep. But then I started working at a co-working space, and I see a sticker on the microwave that says "Be kind, open the door before it beeps".

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Haha, just last night I noticed my daughter does that. I waited next to her until it was about to beep then knocked her arm out of the way so she missed the perfectly-timed door opening and the microwave beeped its hideous beep. Sometimes it's OK.

frosted-flakes 1y ago

I have a set of bike lights from Topeak that will flash the main headlight into the eyes of oncoming drivers when the battery is low, even though it has a battery indicator on the top. It gives me a heart attack every time.

userbinator 1y ago

I hate that it's not configurable Everything is configurable if you're determined enough. ;-)

philwelch 1y ago

I actually find that I really like East Asian appliances that sing little songs as indications. It’s much less annoying than loud beeping, and can be helpful once you learn what each song means.

MarkLowenstein 1y ago

My peeve: electric cars that make noise to make sure that blind people around them can hear them like they hear gas-powered cars--except they make it 10x as loud as any gas-powered car.

whoammi 1y ago

Unless it’s a smoke detector. In that case when it is running low on battery - despite also being hardwired - it should definitely warn you about the low battery… at 3am. Always. At. 3am.

joquarky 1y ago
Battery voltage drops with temperature.
- BlindEyeHalo 1y ago
  This is also why taking the batteries out of the remote and back in works. Hands warming them up.
hattar 1y ago
More annoyingly, they'll beep intermittently with no other indicator. I have a house with ~15 fire alarms and when one is making an intermittent chirp every 30 seconds, it takes forever to figure out which one is low on battery. This could be solved with an LED that is lit when in a good state, and turns off when the battery is running low (or vice versa). For some reason I can't find a fire alarm with such a feature.

coastalpuma 1y ago

Amen. I am praying for the day when cars honking on lock is banned.

fud101 1y ago

That font looks hideous. why

mdavid626 1y ago

Reminds me of my water kettle. You can’t disable the beep, when water reaches boiling state. Why the fuck not?

cjs_ac 1y ago
I learnt at school that the thermostat in a kettle was a bimetallic strip, made from two metals with different thermal expansion coefficients. When the bimetallic strip reached 100 Celsius, the two sides of the strip would lengthen at different rates, causing it to bend. The strip was also part of the electric circuit, so the strip bending would open the circuit and switch the kettle off. This has been the standard design of kettles since 1955. Why is anyone bothering to ruin such a great design?
- t14000 1y ago
  Maybe some people like different water temperatures: black tea, coffee, green tea, etc...

cobbaut 1y ago

I have a tendency to locate annoying beepers and disconnect them...

skrebbel 1y ago

Hahahahahah young parent rage is the best rage! > May the gormless cock-up who created this absolute potato of a device spend his entire life walking on legos. This one cracked me up.

Thorrez 1y ago

>My fridge: should I improperly close its door, it'll emit some faint noise for like 30 seconds. It's a totally valid important notification, as nobody wants to burn electricity to cold the room while the food goes bad. Note that it actually won't cool the room. It'll heat the room. The fridge works by putting hot air out the back. The more the fridge cools, the more hot air it puts out. The hot air is always more than the cool air. If the fridge was vented outdoors, like A/C, then it would cool the room.

adammarples 1y ago
It won't heat or cool the room, it's a heat pump so it will be neutral, pumping heat from inside back to inside
- joha4270 1y ago
  The heat pump uses electricity to move the heat around, and this electricity will eventually turn into additional heat which will end up in the room.
- kibwen 1y ago
  It will heat the room because the compressor is also inside the room, doing the work of moving the heat and thus generating heat itself.
  - adammarples 1y ago
    Ok but I think waste heat in this context is fairly trivial, we might as well claim that the room isn't perfectly insulated or something so it won't actually get heated
    - Thorrez 1y ago
      It might be hotter outside than inside. Someone might think "It's hot, therefore I'll open my fridge to cool it down in here." But that will lead to it getting even hotter, not cooler. If the A/C is on, it'll require the A/C to work extra hard to remove that extra heat. Also, would you claim a space heater doesn't heat the house if the house is at an equilibrium where the space heater produces heat at the same rate that heat escapes outside? I would say the space heater is still heating the house, but the house is losing heat at the same rate.

croisillon 1y ago

i loved the writing style (and the reference comes from from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dinner_Game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dinner_Game)

kissgyorgy 1y ago

The original title is "Objects should shut the fuck up". I don't like unnecessary cursing either, but it is emphasizing his frustration in this case and cursing objects, not people. Renaming the title is just losing information for no reason.