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ASK HN: What’s a small thing you’ve purchased which has made your life better?

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Re: ASK HN: What’s a small thing you’ve purchased which has made your life better?

#31

Post by navan »

HPsquared wrote: post #4

Noise cancelling headphones have been a revelation. I can now work in an open plan office without blasting music etc in my ears. I can drive my old cheap car on the highway without lots of annoying noise. Etc etc. The benefits are many.

It is illegal to wear headphones while driving covering both ears in many states in USA.

Re: ASK HN: What’s a small thing you’ve purchased which has made your life better?

#34

Post by MrDrDr »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #3

A tea-sieve specifically made to fit inside a thermos bottle. Lets you prepare loose-leaf teas and be able to drink them all day! Most useful thing ever!

Can you share which make/type? I’ve found the Oxo tea ball to be the simplest tea brewing device - very easy to clean and easy to travel with: https://www.oxo.com/twisting-tea-ball.html

Re: ASK HN: What’s a small thing you’ve purchased which has made your life better?

#36

Post by throw101010 »

megadeth wrote: post #2

Leatherman Wave+

In the same vein two of my favorite compact tools:

- Victorinox Cybertool (mostly to work on PC buils when I'm on the go and can't take lots of tools with me)

And for everyday use a keyring pocket knife:

- Victorinox Midnite Manager@work (somehow makes me feel safer to have a backup of my encrypted passwords on me on that USB stick, and I often use the small LED light at night or in dark corners of PC builds too)

Re: ASK HN: What’s a small thing you’ve purchased which has made your life better?

#38

Post by wildrhythms »

HPsquared wrote: post #4

Noise cancelling headphones have been a revelation. I can now work in an open plan office without blasting music etc in my ears. I can drive my old cheap car on the highway without lots of annoying noise. Etc etc. The benefits are many.

I find too many of noise cancelling headphones cause 'stuffy ear' feeling for me. I have yet to find a pair that doesn't cause me that discomfort.

Re: ASK HN: What’s a small thing you’ve purchased which has made your life better?

#39

Post by veave »

HPsquared wrote: post #23
crims0n wrote: post #10

AirPods Pro... I live in a lively household and the ability to activate noise cancelling so I can study/read/think is an amazing quality of life improvement.

Definitely. Avoiding noise used to be very expensive, now it's available to all.

Public libraries have always been an option

Re: ASK HN: What’s a small thing you’ve purchased which has made your life better?

#40

Post by giancarlostoro »

HPsquared wrote: post #4

Noise cancelling headphones have been a revelation. I can now work in an open plan office without blasting music etc in my ears. I can drive my old cheap car on the highway without lots of annoying noise. Etc etc. The benefits are many.

Someone told me that noise cancellation gave them tinnitus, and some weeks later out of cheer curiosity I was looking into how people who lose some of their hearing can get it back, and it turns out, when you have hearing loss, your brain / ear tries to adapt as much as possible, and you essentially could get tinnitus, its your brain trying to fill in the quiet. So if you've got any sort of hearing loss, I would take that into consideration when trying out noise cancellation. This is of course anecdotal as heck and a conclusion I drew on my own, but it made too much sense to me.

Either way, just posting this as a potential warning, if you use any noise cancellation, its not the technologies fault, its your brain trying to fill in the weirdly quiet bits its not hearing. Thankfully a lot of these noise cancelling headsets you can just not turn on the feature and they're just as good.

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