Live data from Hacker News

Everything Is Getting Louder

theatlantic.com

201–210 of 316 posts

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#201
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold my previous house precisely because of noisy neighbors (or rather their dogs). Their three dogs lived in the backyard permanently no matter what the weather - never seen them walked. Talked to the neighbors twice about the noise - no action. Called the cops at 3 in the morning - still nothing. Finally, I decided to sell the house and move somewhere where there is low dog density. I developed a dislike for dogs…

I live with an endless barking dog. It isn't mine, but it wakes me constantly. If there has been peace for a while and it barks, I can feel my entire body change "mode" to stressed. It is uncanny. Even if mentally it hasn't bothered me, my body still goes into battle mode.

I have the same reaction (physical) to a screaming kid. It has made raising my baby incredibly difficult (especially the first year). Mentally, I understand that it's just a crying baby and that's what they do, but physically I was shutting down - body tensing, a surge of extremely stressful energy rushing through my body and ultimately being left unable to function. My wife thought I was nuts and was just faking it. I tried searching for a medical explanation but came up short. The closest I would describe it as something I hear chronic fatigue people say -- not having energy to get up, no matter their mental state. I would sit there, practically paralyzed by stress, or whatever that stress induced.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#202

I found this article's style infuriatingly slow. If it had been a quarter or a third of the length I think it would have been much stronger. It took quite a while to figure out what the hell was going on. And then you get to things like this halfway through: > Thallikar took his campaign to his homeowners’ association and to his neighbors. The response was tepid, though he did persuade one person to email the city. W…

Same thoughts as well. I just scrolled half way through to see what the person ended up discovering. The whole bit in between was infuriating.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#203

For me the trigger is TVs. I've been renting a flat in a poorer area for over a year now. The walls are a lot thinner than in other places. There are a lot of people today (mostly 50+ year-olds) who cannot fall to sleep without the TV on. My neighbor is one of them. And the thing with TVs is that the most irritating sound frequency they emit is the one that is barely audible when you're in the same room, but when you…

If the noises aren't too loud, a noise machine can help. I have one on 24/7 and most of the sounds that were irritating me before now get drowned in the noise and I don't even notice them.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#204
post #26

Many people either cannot hear very low frequency sound, and they cannot understand what it’s like for those of us who can. The sounds don’t necessarily get louder at night - there are just fewer competing sounds to mask them. Earplugs and other sound barriers make it worse by filtering out higher frequency sounds, making the remaining VLF sounds seem louder. VLFs also penetrate earth, stone, concrete, etc. And becau…

As a trained sound engineer, I don't find this explanation wholly plausible. Human hearing is increasingly less sensitive at low frequencies; the threshold of hearing is typically around 60dB at 20Hz and 72dB at 10Hz. Anyone who has configured a large public address system knows that vast amounts of power are needed to deliver useful response at these frequencies; many systems simply fake the presence of low bass by…

60dB

As trained sound engineer on HN, you sould use units which mean something, now you essentally just said '60 times more' so people will ask you 'more than what?' :)

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#206

For me the trigger is TVs. I've been renting a flat in a poorer area for over a year now. The walls are a lot thinner than in other places. There are a lot of people today (mostly 50+ year-olds) who cannot fall to sleep without the TV on. My neighbor is one of them. And the thing with TVs is that the most irritating sound frequency they emit is the one that is barely audible when you're in the same room, but when you…

These are some of the many reasons that I'll never voluntarily live in a shared-wall apartment or townhouse again. People coming and going, dogs barking, couples fighting or having loud sex (or both at the same time), bass music from the ghetto-cruisers in the parking lot, and TVs, TVs, TVs! No way, never again. Unless I fall into total financial ruin, for me it's single family home, ideally with lots of space and ve…

What's stopping your from buying a lot and then hiring a contractor to build a house on it?

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#207
post #179
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if you get caught? The neighbor could also go berserk when finding out, I imagine there's not too many suspects.

How could they know who did it? It could be any one of their neighbors, and most lots have 5 adjacent lots. In a place I used to live, there was a rooster that would constantly crow. Someone killed it. I wasn't involved but I'm certainly glad it happened. That rooster was driving the neighborhood insane. The police were useless in that situation. They never cared about noise complaints. Basically if the state doesn't…

That's why police exist in the first place (if you're not thinking too cynically about it). The main job of police is to reduce vigilante justice and mob violence. If the police don't shut up someone's dog, convict a blatant rapist, or punish a murderer, expect the people to take it into their own hands.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#208
post #200

Ever since I moved to the states, I've had nothing but stress from noise. First in Midwest where neighbor never walked their dog. They blasted music at 3 am (confronted many times and all). Then on the west coast - noisy streets nearby my apt. Then between the 405 and the 5 in Irvine (the highway noise never ends) Then again when I moved to Washington and had an upstairs neighbor who would have kids over every day ru…

I'm quite sensitive to noises. Here are some of my hard-learned lessons:

- try to always rent the flat on the top floor - the noises coming through the celing are by far the worst. The roofs in my country are usually poorly insulated, which means hot apartment in the summer. It's still better than the noise - heat can be dealt with by installing AC, while you can't do anything about the neighbors.

- try to live in a building with as few apartments as possible. Noise travels well through construction materials, and if you live in say 200-meter long building, chances are there will often be someone currently renovating his flat with a jackhammer etc. and that noise will be infuriatingly loud in your apartment.

- no windows coming out to the street that's a transit street (i.e. used regularly by anyone else than the people who live on the street and around). Double no if public transit goes there. Also, it's worse to have a window near a crossroad with lights or near a turn (people slow down and/or stop there, and then accelerating generates a lot of noise). Ideally, no windows coming on a street at all, but for example cull-de-sac road is ok, because it's guaranteed to be used by locals only.

Apart from that, I'm always insiting on seeing some landscape, or at least a big patch of the sky, out of my window. Nothing more depressing than 100% of your view being just a wall of the opposing building.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#209

I found this article's style infuriatingly slow. If it had been a quarter or a third of the length I think it would have been much stronger. It took quite a while to figure out what the hell was going on. And then you get to things like this halfway through: > Thallikar took his campaign to his homeowners’ association and to his neighbors. The response was tepid, though he did persuade one person to email the city. W…

The article clocked in at 8900 words and had a vague click-baity 'tech industry' sub-title. Hard pass.

Jesus Christ that's longer than a novel chapter. What kind of conceited ass actually writes this and thinks it's good?

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#210

I found this article's style infuriatingly slow. If it had been a quarter or a third of the length I think it would have been much stronger. It took quite a while to figure out what the hell was going on. And then you get to things like this halfway through: > Thallikar took his campaign to his homeowners’ association and to his neighbors. The response was tepid, though he did persuade one person to email the city. W…

This. I have no problem reading a 8000+-page article if it's about a complex subject and I'm really learning things all the way through. But here, the signal-to-noise ratio is just too low. I could have learned the same in a quarter of the length.

In general, for me, articles where the first sentence talks about a particular person (meaning that they are going to tell a personal story to exemplify whatever issue they're talking about) are a red flag. They all feel samey and they are a waste of time to read. I wonder why that writing style is so common nowadays.

I did skim this one because I was particularly bored...

Post reply on HN