Everything Is Getting Louder • Hacker News Board

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#271

Post by pretendscholar » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

summm wrote: post #247

frankzander wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dogs are not the problem - the people are. Your dislike of dogs should be more a dislike of freckless pet owners. It's the same with some special birdies in aviary. They can drive you nuts because they don't belong to this environment. It's mostly not the animals but the owners who are the cause of the problem.

This is a strawman argument and simply not relevant. Dogs are animals, and therefore they cannot have "fault" in the philiosophical sense. By the way, it is funny how the same people then go on to anthropomorphize dogs, as "loving" and so on. The point is that dogs can be dangerous, or annoying, and irrespective of any fault should be removed or banned in certain circumstances, just to remove the annoyance, not to pu…

Aren't people animals too?

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#272

Post by oriettaxx » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 3:40 PM UTC

switch007 wrote: post #192

KoftaBob wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where the hell do you live where those two are a common thing? In the US, the vast majority of places have noise pollution laws where neither would be allowed.

Plenty of places in Europe have catholic churches and mosques/less formal places of worship, such as France, Italy and Spain. France has thousands of mosques

yes, exactly, plus Turkey (a lot), Ethiopia (crazy, really a lot, too!), Montenegro, India (as already stated)

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#273

Post by tjalfi » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 3:56 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #176

crooked-v wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and now you know why nosy HOAs are so common even though people always talk about hating them.

It should be possible to have a simple rule requiring noise not to cross into a neighbor's residential property, without having a dedicated organization of busybodies collecting dues and micromanaging everything with a constantly changing set of restrictions.

It's easy to define a rule; the hard part is enforcing it.

I've been on an HOA board for a couple of years.

Here are some of the things I have learned.

Some people (about 5%) are cranks. We have received legal threats because another owner parked in "their" unreserved parking space. Another owner disputed the cost of a roof repair: they had calculated the size of the roof over their condo and that's all they were willing to pay. It's easy to resolve a disagreement when both parties are reasonable but challenging when one of them isn't.

Some people don't read or listen. Some of the same people ask the same questions every month. You can send emails and place flyers but you will never reach everyone.

Some people are special snowflakes. Any HOA board receives regular requests to bend the rules for individuals.

Our rules have changed several times since I joined the board. None of these changes were done on a whim - each time it was in response to an issue or a liability to the association. Owners don't see the many emails and discussions behind a rule change.

Serving on an HOA board is a thankless job and can be a substantial time commitment. I joined the board because most of the other owners had already served and someone had to do it. I ran again last year because we are in the middle of a major construction project and I didn't want to leave the other board members hanging.

TLDR - HOAs are an exercise in politics on a small scale.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#274

Post by cgriswald » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #156

rhacker wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh you know that happens in everywhere right?

Apparently not in the US, or not often enough to have an effect.

It happens here in the US, too[0]. The consequences, both criminal and civil, are generally not very severe. It may not be happening frequently enough to have an effect, or it may not be happening publicly enough to become a concern for owners. Plus, generally, the owners who are problems are already not very concerned about their dogs.

[0] - https://gazette.com/news/colorado-springs-woman-pleads-guilt...

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#275

Post by xavi » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #225

I think it's time we start to think seriously about noise pollution and regulation. Most countries have laws around noise, but policing typically isn't helpful. You tend to have a 'self-mediation first', 'police warnings second' and 'court cases third', policy, which I think is mostly fine. But if authorities don't take it seriously, it usually gets stuck in the first phase and never progresses beyond neighbour-dispu…

I think that when there's regulation, the problem is that sometimes filing a complaint may take too much time, and same for the police to check anything. It should be automated.

I submitted this to Hacker News some months ago, and seems relevant here...

Tell HN: Steal idea for product to automate reporting of barking dogs complaints https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19436807

(although I was thinking of dog barking when I wrote it, it's actually applicable for any kind of noise pollution)

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#276

Post by cgriswald » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

abjKT26nO8 wrote: post #6

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…

> Then there are dogs whose owners don't seem to realize that dogs need to be walked and otherwise they will bark without end.

FWIW, the problem is not always a lack of walking. One of my dogs developed separation anxiety after I left for two weeks, and began howling in his crate. (We train dogs and are fixing the underlying anxiety with training. Bark collars can be effective at fixing the symptom.)

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#277

Post by j-conn » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #171

There's an app opportunity here. Write something which captures audio, timestamps it with millsecond accuracy, annotates it with GPS info, and sends it to a web site for correlation. When you want to find some noise source, get a few people to walk around running this app. Then the site can locate it from the time differences, with a much longer baseline than human inter-ear distance.

Love this idea. My first thought is that calibrating mics could be difficult. I wonder how good existing decibel meter apps are

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#278

Post by wool_gather » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:05 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #76

blunte wrote: 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…

As a trained sound engineer, you should know that the experience of low-frequency sound is not largely via the eardrum. The whole body is involved.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#279

Post by blunte » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:46 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #249

blunte wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t say whether it is an ear hearing or some other sensitivity to resonance (of the skull?). The sensation is stronger on one side/ear, and it feels like the pressure you feel if someone goes “puh” softly in your ear in a quiet room... except that it happens over and over at a low frequency. I have experienced it in several different places. One place was at college on the cliffs overlooking the Mississippi river…

TLDR: Please have your hearing thoroughly tested. I have no idea if this anecdote relates to your experience: My SO was hearing a rhythmic noise. More so at night. Very disturbing. Much drama. An audiologist (?) determined some of the tiny hairs inside one of the ears were flopping around. The supporting membrane got slack with age. A form of tinnitus. These tiny hairs are sensitive to motion, so even heartbeats and…

Were there it not that my perception of the sound was highly dependent upon my location (even within one room), I might be inclined to believe it was my problem.

If you’ve ever played with a good subwoofer, you know that where you stand relative to the speaker and the frequency it is generating greatly impacts your ability to hear it. You can be in a dead zone and hear almost nothing, but a few steps back or forward and suddenly your eyeballs are vibrating. Same thing with these environmental hum situations, but much more subtle.

Re: Everything Is Getting Louder

#280

Post by stellar678 » Sun, Oct 13, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

clarry wrote: post #54

KoftaBob wrote: post #42

One of the biggest benefits of electric vehicles will be quieter streets. Gasoline cars are so damn loud when you really pay attention.

Round where I live, it's the wheel noise that gives me a massive headache whenever I go for a walk. Engine noise barely registers, except in the case of some (intentionally) loud cars or trucks. Simply reducing speed limit in urban & residental areas would help a lot, but that appears to be an unpopular proposition. I guess people really are in a hurry to sit in the next set of red lights.

Twenty's plenty! Popular in the UK, but in the US we seem to think it's more appropriate to mark residential streets at 25 but design them to encourage driving at 45+.