I understand cultural differences but taking business meetings in the bathroom seems inappropriate under effectively all circumstances.
Amazing show.
I won't lie, though, I secretly enjoyed timing flushes to match when he was talking.
Or porcelain-shattering dumps. Such a liberating experience by itself in a public bathroom, doing it to someone on the phone would give me a memory that would bring a smile to my lips for many years.
Not legal but there’s a technical solution that’s worked in the past: pocket cell jammer. Range isn’t very far but it’ll work to boot callers a stall away or a booth away at a diner, etc. Only need to run it a few seconds to drop a call.
Do want to stress these do see enforcement now (in the US at least) but a low power pocket one used occasionally is unlikely to attract attention. It will be noticed if it’s higher power or runs in a regular location. Fines are severe and risk jailtime but hey it’s your life.
I can emphathise with someone stuck in meetings all day in a predominantly listening role, that they consider perfunctory or mostly pointless, or maybe in a very active role that has them stressfully bouncing from meeting to meeting.
I can easily envision how this would lead to a kind of nihilistic resignation and a determination to just do normal life stuff with a headset on one's head.
I would never do either. But one is less weird than the other.
An old business partner had meetings which felt like 24/7. He had zero issue taking a phone call in the bathroom. I doubt anyone on the other end ever knew.
Just like jerking off, defecation should be done in private. Meetings are not private. Very few people want to see/hear/smell you do that and that includes over zoom or phone conference. Most people really do want to mind their own business, and that means having no part in you doing those very private things.
If someone is in a meeting on their phone while in a bathroom stall it's also very rude to everyone else in the bathroom trying to do their own business as privately as they possibly can under the circumstances.
"Minding your own business" when it comes to antisocial behavior is enabling when the correct response in shaming and ostracizing. It's not going to work with LBJ but it will probably work with Kevin from accounting.
It’s the breaking of a norm that makes me be question your judgment, either way.
Asking because I was pretty much on-board with the comment and took it as being fully serious, up until the point of “jerking off in public shouldn’t be anybody else’s business, unless they stain something” being mentioned.
Now, I am not so sure. Either the entire comment was sarcastic or I am missing something major. But putting jerking off in public and talking on the phone in a public bathroom into the same bucket of activities (in terms of appropriateness) feels crazy to me.
And surely anyone mentioned is a hundred times less harmful than a guy smoking on the street. That should be illegal. Yet people for some reason act as if it's ok, and it is broadly legal in most places (unlike jerking off in public).
This is like some 4chan post.
I had consumed a large amount of spicy food the day prior, and it pulled the fire alarm right in the middle of a phone screen. I foolishly thought I could silently and secretly handle both tasks at once.
These were the days before background noise filters. The poor candidate obviously heard unpleasant things but neither of us acknowledged it directly.
He accepted the job though. But this still bothers me decades later. Never again!
These are not cultural differences. This behavior is across-all-cultures lack of decency.
I would say the answer is education, but like the law doesn't even prevent all speeding, maybe the answer is speed bumps (this app?)
I agree that flushing toilets could have been muted, but isn't it a Zoom/Google-Meets issue when they're supposed to remove the noise?
Of course, disable your camera and mute your mic while dropping or flushing.
And how to deal with it becomes vastly different when you've done it. It's just human. Just ignore it.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/06/politics/toilet-flush-supreme...
This would be escalated to upper management to find out why people are under so much time pressure that they need to take calls in the bathroom, and at the very least doing so would be made some kind of violation of new policy.
These are the kinds of reports the organization needs as ammunition in order to fix what sound like bigger problems with the organization and work culture. There's very little chance this hasn't been noticed and isn't a symptom of something more going on.
Or why there are people so idle that they can defecate without working.
Remember, HR protects the company, and complaints about heavy hitters because they work on porcelain aren't going to reflect well on the complainant.
You're correct that HR is there to protect the company. The original post did not specify "heavy hitters", nor did I ever say to make an accusatory report. HR doesn't have to specifically know who is taking their calls this way.
I'm sorry if you or others have had such bad experiences with the most basic of HR interactions, though if I assume you're taking your own advice I doubt you've ever tried.
There's the tactful way to do this, and then there's whining to HR. I would be very careful taking advice from whiners because they're the ones who keep propagating this bad faith myth about HR.
All I'm saying to do is notify them about ongoing behavior with an emphasis on how it probably makes the company look bad and that it's done by many. They don't care who is doing it and it's not personal. I'd honestly be very surprised if this behavior doesn't already fall under some existing policy.
Now, now ... if she is pretty ...
One way I deal with people talking on speakerphone, is inviting myself into their conversation and making comments as if I were an active participant. That usually earns me a weird look, and then they go off speaker so I can't hear what's been said. Success.
Similar with folks watching reels on speaker, I fake a laugh or make comments about the content. It's awkward enough that they usually stop because they want a moment alone, not an interactive session with a stranger. Which ironically is the same thing I want too.
I don't even have to act like I'm bothered by it, or that I find their behavior offensive. They change their behavior because they are bothered by mine.
I used to have to deal with unhinged people on the regular and one of the techniques that keep the peace and stay safe is to present an edge that gives the vibe that you may be more unhinged.
My dad used to run housing projects, and my uncle was an assistant principal at one of the most violent schools in New York City. They were like Jedi masters of presence. They had stories that were absolutely insane.
Also what's up with the people hiking (by themselves) with a bluetooth speaker. You're by yourself, in nature. If you want to listen to music wear headphones!!
Also why are people using speaker phones in public places at max volume. The speaker in your phone is designed to deliver the sound directly to your ear, probably at higher fidelity.
I'm loving the fact that battery technology will eventually eliminate weed wackers.
Sorry if I sound cranky, I find loud noises challenging.
I'm really not sure where some of the other people replying to your comment are coming from. Forcing every human and animal you come across to listen to what you're listening to is selfish. Full stop. And not doing it costs $0, which preempts any question of resources.
But also, for all the reasons described, I just use transparency modes if I want that. That way nobody else has to hear my poor taste in music.
that's like harley riders with unmuffled motors "for safety".
On the other hand, I remember being in japan and watching some construction vehicles in tokyo. They were surprisingly quiet. After a while I realized what it was - in the united states all construction vehicles have these annoying "beep-beep-beep" sounds while they're working (for safety).
I wonder if one day they can play those only when someone walks nearby or play in some technologically quieter way.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BljL3XO0fyg&pp=0gcJCTIBo7VqN5t...
1) earbuds are not the only headphone style
2) listening to speakers is not a necessity.
So fine if you don't want to use earbuds, but not necessarily fine to annoy those around you with music/talk shows or whatever sounds you want to introduce to the enviroment.
This. Even when you are seemingly quiet on a trail, 90% of wildlife are hiding from you. It’s amazing what happens when you stop and sit in complete silence for 5-10 minutes — a whole hidden world comes alive around you. 10/10, highly recommend.
> I have zero patience for such excuses from people who choose to impose their preferences on other people.
This as well. Somewhere along the way, civics teachings in America’s school left folks w/ the impression that the spirit of our liberty is, “It’s a free country, I can do what I want!”, rather of, “I have the liberty to pursue happiness, up until it infringes on the liberty for others to do so.”
Imagine if everyone decided they were entitled to play their music on speakers. The result would be a cacophony where nobody can hear their own music and life is worse for everyone. People who play music in public spaces are claiming a common resource for their own exclusive use.
Sincerely - someone who's lived with 7 other people in a 3-bedroom house.
Great news - there are a TON of alternatives! You're still an asshat if you play loud music without regard for your surroundings.
My personal pick? Get a bone conduction headset (ex: Shokz or cheaper alternative). Comfortable, lightweight, waterproof, you can still hear your surroundings.
Fun hack: when I travel I prefer my over-ear noise cancelling Ankers, but they're bulky. So, for traveling light, I use Shockz and then silicone ear plugs to block out external sound on e.g. the airplane. Creates a little bit of a "swimming pool" effect acoustically, but works well and is tiny to carry.
I did try their bone-conduction headphones, but the quality was slightly worse and they didn't feel as nonexistent to wear.
now, imagine showing up to a hike and the person youre meeting whips one of these out and proceeds to blast rap music. its happened to me and it feels like Seinfeld but 2020s
"Not everyone owns headphones" is such a dumb response because 1. This entertainment is purely optional (not needed for survival) and 2. There are $4 headphones on amazon making me believe in cheaper/poorer markets you could get them for about 1/2 that.
Or the DJ school at 20th and Mission playing music outdoors every Friday
Someone playing music is annoying and does not physically harm you in any way.
These are not remotely the same thing. There is a clear bright line between them.
You don't have a right to freedom from annoyances, within reason.
I used to hold this same opinion. Unfortunately, times have changed and now everyone is constantly in their phones, isolated in their own universes, typically with earbuds or headphones. At least the obnoxious speaker dude is present; in a shared physical reality with the world around him. A lesser evil.
I'm baffled by this too, but I think some people get accustomed to just having a soundtrack around them at all times, like they're living in a Hollywood movie. It gets to the point where they actually sleep with something always on (in the old days that would be a TV, not sure today. Probably a podcast)
(and nobody will notice during slow times that we donn't actually have that many customers)
I've moved to all electric lawn equipment. Snow blower, lawn mower, weed wacker, leaf blower. They all work great, are quieter, and I don't have to deal with carburetors and oil ever again.
Finally, it's my time to shine. OK, so I do this. Granted, I hike spots where I rarely run into other people. I listen to music out in nature because:
- I enjoy it and it creates a mood.
- I don't wear headphones because I want to be comfortable but I also want to hear the environment (for safety and enjoyment reasons).
- It also lets bears and cougar know I am around.
But yeah, it'd be rude to be doing it where other people are trying to enjoy nature.
Boy, that one really gets to me when I'm on the trail. Both hikers and mountain bikers are guilty of that. Also, the people with their AirPods in oblivious to anything going on around them...
I've not done this, and I don't think I would ever do this, but I can sympathize with having the idea that they don't want to be so isolated from nature so as to have headphones blocking out the sounds of the world around them dampened, but also feel like it would be super sweet if they could listen to Bowie right now.
It's also been shown that having music reduces the feeling of loneliness, having similar effects to having had a conversation recently, so if a person is hiking along perhaps it offers them companionship?
_If_ I ever did this (I wouldn't) I'd probably have it down to a whisper such that you would hardly be able to make it out unless you were right beside me.
Washington Department of Natural Resources recommended bluetooth speaker playlists for hiking:
https://unofficialnetworks.com/2022/08/20/washington-roasts-...
It's about enclosed spaces (airport) or open, quiet ones (hiking)
It was kind of surreal - sketchy looking person playing high-pitched voice female vocals (imagine k-pop).
But I have a question:
> I'm loving the fact that battery technology will eventually eliminate weed wackers.
Is this a non-sequitur, or a euphemism/figure of speech/etc. which I have never previously encountered?
> I find loud noises challenging.
They're basically comparing other people's speaker music to noise pollution. Two stroke engines can be heard from a long way off, and I've got box fans that are louder than my electric weedwhacker.
Also yes, hiking with a bluetooth speaker is particularly galling. you're in nature! For that reason I've been considering buying (or building) a portable bluetooth jammer. I wouldn't do all the time, no reason to punish someone using wireless earphones respectfully. It'd need to have a trigger for JIT intervention.
Maybe they don't know of or don't have access to bone conducting earphones. Whatever they're listening to, that way they'd also still hear their environment.
Maybe they don't know of or don't have any access to any sense of boundaries, as if they skipped the infant stage of development where they should have learned that "mom" is another person with her own coequal set of needs. And anybody with the urge to push back on this notion, please cover the case where it might apply to you to.
As others have said - not really a big deal. Either get ahead of them and maintain a significant distance, or stay behind and do so.
If a trail is crowded, you won't hear much of the sound of nature, whether someone is playing music or now.
It all depends on where you live, and what access you have. Nature is not far from me, so I have several options within an hour's drive.
1. I didn't say I do this. It's not my problem.
2. You're exaggerating by saying "everyone else's problem". As is clear from the thread, only certain people view it as a problem.
I also don't like people taking selfies on trails. But I know how not to have my contentment be affected by minor problems.
Learn to share the trail and live with others different from you.
There you go. Quite comfortable, don’t have to stick them inside your ears, and still allows you to perceive the sounds around you.
In the spirit of fairness, I’ll also share the cons from my experience: First is battery life isn’t as good as headphones. That’s somewhat obvious as they’re much smaller, but they will still last you the whole day so not really an issue for hiking. Second one is that because they don’t block outside sounds, they’re not appropriate for audiobooks/podcasts while walking in the city. Again, not an issue for hiking.
Additionally, “I can’t afford the alternative” is not a valid excuse to be an asshole to those around you.
Not everyone owns headphones. Some people might have received the speaker as a gift or decided on the speaker instead of headphones. How people spend their time outdoors is not up to you or I to decide. If they want to listen to music from a bluetooth speaker, that's what they want to do. There's a lot more outdoors for you to use as well so rather that stewing, just find more outdoors. Especially on trails. Just keep going. Or wait until they have kept going. I've never seen a bluetooth speaker that's big enough for someone to be on a trail with that doesn't "go away" after a minute or so.
I have discussed the speaker on trails issue with friends, and we've noticed that the louder one's speaker is the shittier the music it is playing.
There are also many deep caves in which you can listen to music on speakers. Why aren't you going to these caves?
The societal contract is that your freedom stops where your neighbours freedom starts. This also applies to the noise you produce.
What if it interferes with my desire to NOT listen to their music on their bluetooth speaker?
If they're blasting music in a normally quiet place, they are deciding for me. You're literally giving priority to whoever chooses to be less considerate of others.
I have a lot of wired headphones I got off of Temu, I just give them a pair.
Oh no, it absolutely is. Societies have laws, and even just social norms, that don't stop applying "outdoors". Unless you're in the ocean, I suppose.
Pack out what you pack in. Stay on the trail. No loudspeakers. Very simple.
Staying on the trail is mostly a suggestion for your safety (and to preserve the area) - definitely not a law.
Ditto for loudspeakers. People often go into nature and throw concerts.
[1] OK - trails in state parks and perhaps some national parks likely have more rules. But trails in general public lands (BLM, forest, etc)? Not many.
This “it’s not technically illegal so it’s not a problem” sentiment is unhealthy for civil societies. I for one would like basic social norms to be respected without law-enforcement being involved.
As for social norms, one only has to read the comments to understand that there clearly isn't consensus on this point. People go to nature for many reasons - not all related to enjoying the sounds of nature. What dylan604 is pointing out is to be mindful of that.
I'd argue that unspoken rules apply even more strongly in actual outdoors setting, because a good number of those norms actually have serious consequences when violated. Anybody seriously hiking or offroading gets to save a non-zero number of behinds of people who ignored those rules, every single year.
And they also know they need to rely on those rules, because they might get them out of trouble too. The outdoors is not always friendly.
The "No speakers" thing is just the "let's try not be an ass to the same person who might need to pull me out of a ravine next" part of the rules.
I am very open to the argument of "you do you", which is pretty much my philosophy also. But I do think there are /some/ limits to this, because some behaviors are inherently anti-social. My philosophy is more than "you do you" should apply to policy and regulation, meaning that we should not criminalize or directly punish anti-social behaviors that don't cause direct and immediate harm. But that definitely does not mean that we should not shame people for acting in completely inappropriate ways, or directly inform them that their behavior is unwelcome, or otherwise seek to ensure that we act to exist in spaces devoid of anti-social behavior.
I've had this same exact scenario happen, and I simply spoke to the person and told them to lower the volume, use headphones, or stop altogether because they were scaring away the wildlife that I was there to see and photograph. They apologized, lowered the volume, and we both went back to doing our own thing. Most people are reasonable, and act in anti-social ways due to lack of awareness not malice. We are both sharing the trail, and we are both there to experience nature, and that very well might include many different modalities (including accompanying music), but if someone is acting in a way that completely prevents me from enjoying nature I definitely have the right to say something, to complain about it, and to complain about it after the fact, and "you do you" is not a valid argument in response to that.
Sometimes. I’m pretty sure that very often it’s because they simply do not care that they are being rude/inconsiderate/whatever. But even the willfully rude will likely lower the volume if you ask them nicely because not caring about being rude is not the same as wanting confrontation.
We all have rights to be in public parks/trails/etc. Cities have ordinances about nuisance things like loud anything. If you're on a trail and someone comes along with a speaker you don't like, just let them pass. They aren't hurting anyone/thing, you're just annoyed. If you've plopped down in the park or at the beach when someone else comes along, you can talk to them about, but they again have rights to do it.
You are free to talk to your local representatives to change ordinances if that's how you feel. Good luck with that if that's what you so choose.
Behavior, and the response to behavior, exist on a spectrum. The fact you responded to me pointing out that "you do you" has philosophical limits, but that those limits should not involve criminalizing behavior, by suggesting I should campaign to enact an ordinance seems extremely obtuse. There is no need to change the law to criminalize making noise in a natural area, but similarly it's perfectly appropriate to tell someone to stop doing it.
Many concerts, shooting ranges, and other loud activities occur in two of the three categories you mention above. All a lot louder than multiple hikers with Bluetooth speakers.
I won't even get into ATVs.
(Not disagreeing with your intent - merely pointing out to other readers of the various socially acceptable uses in these lands).
Finally, one older woman gets up and walks over to him. My wife and I are like "Oh shit, she's gonna let him have it, here it comes." She taps him on the shoulder and says "Excuse me, can you turn that down? It's very loud." And you know what he did? He said "Oh, sorry," and turned it down.
She said thanks and went back to her seat, simple as that.
The keyword is fantasy.
> so i built a tiny app that plays back the same audio it hears, delayed by ~2 seconds. asked claude, it spat out a working version in one prompt. surprisingly WORKS.
Note, they never said they actually played it and then person realized they were being disrespectful and stopped. That whole scenario is supposed to happen in a hypothetic fantasy world, and every reader here is supposed to take in the same way for themselves.
If you ask someone to turn it down, it can immediately come off as confrontational, even if you're being polite. With this solution, though, it's kind of hilarious because in one sense it's more confrontational, but the original music blaster would have to ask you to turn it down - but it's just their music.
I'm a pretty nonconfrontational person, but the one time I lost it was when this late middle aged woman kept chatting away on her cell phone in the quiet car of the LIRR despite other people previously telling her that she was in the quiet car (I believe my exact words were "Hey princess, what part of 'no cellphones' do you not understand" - there is a giant sign at the front of the car that says no cellphone use). But I don't think I'd ever do this in a public situation where the rules weren't so clearly spelled out.
"As with anything in life it depends on a huge number of variables such as location, number of allies the other person has, the threat potential you represent, the number of allies you have, your standing on the social ladder, if you're in a position of power, your ability to understand social clues, the exact method how you ask, yada yada"
It's tolerating the intolerant (their intolerance to understanding social order). They need to be bludgeoned back (metaphorically).
So then the question becomes how well you've sampled that catastrophic risk before you say what the real risk is. As an example, I've been mask off and partying since as soon as that became legal. Haven't gotten sick from COVID yet. Shows, house parties, sharing drinks with people who later had it. Tested often because I was this high risk. Zero positives.
I could say "actually, if you just do the things that I did you'll be fine". After all, I've been fine. Nothing happened. I just didn't get sick. I've got the winning formula.
Not the latest model, huh? That’s certainly a passive-aggressive way to suggest you upgrade…
If you are in a venue where politely asking someone to keep it down, results in them actually responding, you generally don't need to ask. You are among conscientious people to begin with.
For the most part, about 99% of the time, the whole point of drawing attention is waiting for someone to politely ask them to turn it down. And it isn't so they can respond in kind.
Conversely, if you are the kind of person able to come up to a stranger and ask them (politely and respectfully!) to change what they are doing, you likely the person with the social skill to do other things well too.
Now imagine the same situation but the person comes up to you and says “excuse me but would you mind turning your volume down a bit or using headphones? The sound from your phone is really bugging me and I would really appreciate it.” Which situation is more likely to piss you off?
And sure you might respond poorly to both but I see no universe in which you respond positively to the first while I think there is a good chance you respond well to the second.
On the other hand if the person approaches you and says “hey buddy turn that shit down”.. but the kind of person to use this 2 second delay thing in my experience would never have the confidence to do something like that so not even worth considering.
As opposed to building a tool to actively annoy them without politely asking them a question? This doesn't follow.
I doubt the tool was actually used.
Gotta start somewhere!
If someone has too much social anxiety or is too afraid to politely ask the other person to turn it down, using an actively annoying option like this isn't going to help. This is more likely to induce a confrontation.
if you have the balls to do this next to someone, they will immediately recognize what you're doing right after they stop (if they stop).
that's gonna be 100x more awkward than asking them politely would have been.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/japanese-researchers-make-speec...
That’s what I seemed to remember also.
I think 2 seconds like in the OP link is too long delay to work as actual jamming.
It’s basically the “Chinese food” Seinfeld gag.
I believe the concept of public decency is entirely cultural and has less to do with courage.
Where I live, if someone is being loud in public, you usually keep to yourself. So long as they are not being overtly offensive or profane.
In other countries, like the Netherlands for example, people will have no problem telling you to be quiet or verbalize any violation of cultural norms. I believe it's like that in Germany and Scanda as well, from what I hear.
In Sweden I have seen Swedes telling-off immigrants or people who don’t look Scandinavian for all sorts of ‘social infringements’ (parking wrongly, wearing shoes in the wrong place, pretty much any other minor infraction you can imagine).
But I can honestly say that in the past 25 years I have never, ever seen them saying anything remotely like this to another Swede.
Let me guess, you live in Stockholm? :)
As a Swede, I have definitely seen Swedes (usually older people) telling-off other Swedes and I even do it, recent examples: driving/parking like an asshole, being obnoxious, walking in the bike lane, not looking where they are going. I don't care if they're a Swede or a martian, it makes no difference to me.
I have a nonzero accept rate!
But you really have to be in the right frame of mind. If you approach someone in anger, they'll pick up on it and mirror you.
The best line I've found so far is, "I know Apple stopped giving out earbuds with their phones; would you like some?"
Person in a public space listening to reels at full volume? Get their attention, then loudly point out that their headphones got disconnected and everybody can hear the audio.
People leaving a train or bus and leaving behind trash? Loudly let them know that they forgot their water bottle or paper bag. If it's a single item, this works doubly well if you helpfully hand them the item, too.
It's also a simple, genius idea. Congrats.
[Edit: I guess this wasn't submitted by the author/prompter. Still, you get the point.]
I hardly imagine a situation where speaking up is less "couraging" than using such tool to mock annoying person.
EDIT: By performative contradiction I mean doing the thing the person is doing to demonstrate the contradiction.
I have hearing sensitivity and have repeatedly asked my parents to lower the volume on TVs, whatsapp videos, insta reels 100s of times. They always lower it for 5 minutes before raising it back. Likely because they are losing their hearing, but unable to admit that.
I tend to be very mindful of others (maybe because I grew up in America), but my parents are not even mindful of my requests. Maybe it's a cultural thing? I expect those who have grown-up (or spent their whole lives) in India would do the same.
Definitely need to test this out app out when I go home.
I used to carry one with me everywhere (it was small enough to fit on a keychain). One night at a sports bar, I showed it to a friend. Before I could stop him, he pushed the button and every TV in the place went black, right in the middle of some PPV sports event. Anyway, he bought one on the spot.
https://www.rtfms.com/wp-content/rtfms-com/LED-pinout.png
Then, with some special app, or even just playing some audiofiles — I don't remember — he'd do the same thing as the device above.
Anyway you'd get a handful of old Rover, Peugeot, Renault, or Citroën (and a bunch of others) fobs from the scrapyard and fit this pre-programmed PIC microcontroller, and when you pressed the button it would cycle through a bunch of volume down, mute, and power off commands for most common brands of TV.
However the real genius one - and it was about 20 quid - was this. Remember Furbies? They would chatter away to each other, using infrared to communicate so they'd go in sync. Well, this one that transmitted the "GO TO SLEEP RIGHT NOW" command to any Furby in the room. Relatively expensive but worth it.
Not sure about that one either but its functionality has been cloned for the Flipper Zero [1]
I never in my life was confronted or even assaulted, even by noisy teenagers or grim looking men.
Not saying it’s impossible but I would guess it’s very unlikely. Ymmv
People that are perceived as no threat or a 100% chance of being a deadly threat if ignored typically have no problems here. It's the grey zone where conflict shows up. Think of a little 60 year old grandma asking nicely the vast majority of people will listen. Same if you're a 6'7" slab of rock with tear drops tattooed on your face. Meanwhile if you're a minority asking a racist to turn down the volume, this situation is going to cause conflict almost all of the time.
You can just ask people for things! And you will become a better person for it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1qdqztb/whe...
straight up honest - originally called this "make-it-stop" but then saw @TimDarcet also built similar and named it STFU. wayyyyy better name. so stole it. sorry not sorry.
```
Probably the reason that the code "worked" from a single prompt. Could potentially have downloaded the github repo first...
I took a look at the repo, and the whole thing is 12 lines of JS and some basic HTML and CSS. I'm not surprised at all it worked the first time from a single prompt. No need to copy someone else's project for something so simple.
I would never try to use it though, as you can very realistically get killed in retaliation.
Today I went to Munich on public transportation — with a mix of transfers on trams and regional trains. I think I read about 50 pages, all the while traveling. It may sound like an ad, but it's not; I really appreciate my Sony XM4 — would not have been possible to focus on reading without it — which I've been using for years now. I put it on with ANC, and play a non-distracting focus music. This helps quite a lot!
You're lucky to be able to read on public transport. I barely can anymore because of these people.
Something like that, with a directional microphone and one of those eerie directional speaker rigs I find in retail stores could be tons of fun for those irritating people who insist on using speaker phone in public.
> idk i'm not a neuroscientist. all i know is it makes people shut up and that's good enough for me.
Is it happening for the right reasons?
What is going through the minds of those people in that moment, when they hear an audio recording of what just happened played back to them?
Are they thinking they're being recorded? Are they nervous? Do they feel threatened? Might they act out on this in an unexpected and perhaps escalating way?
These are why I would not use this app.
It's working. Op might consider adding to readme
To be fair, the callousnes of the people blastimg any audio in public is just beyond me.
made with spite and web audio api. do whatever you want with it.We don't even get to see it in action! It's just the code, a gesture at what's possible if one could be bothered to pull the repo and run it themselves. "person asks LLM for an app that does audio recording and playback with a delay". fascinating, thank you
P.S. the so called "discussion" thread linked in the repo is wild. "Garbage will be there everywhere... Have zero hope in the political system regardless of party in power" what does this have to do with anything man, i'm just trying to look at cool dev articles
I have personally been threatened on multiple occasions because I asked someone to turn down (or turn off) their volume while watching videos on their phone in public.
In one instance, I was in a doctor's office waiting room and a rather large, otherwise normal-looking man (likely in his late fifties) was watching videos at full volume while 4-5 of us were sitting quietly. We were all annoyed by him and exchanging looks, so I politely asked him to mute the video or watch it outside and he stood up and started threatening to fight me in a doctor's office waiting room!
In my anecdotal experience in various tier 2 USA cities (i.e., not NY, SF, LA, etc), Gen-Xers and Boomers seem to be the worst offenders and also surprisingly, the most belligerent when confronted.
If you're going to try either approach (this app, or asking), please do not be surprised if you find yourself in a rapidly escalating confrontation that may quickly result in physical violence.
Sometimes, this calculus is more than worth it, sometimes it's not, but just don't think it can't happen.
Nice.
My wife is a speech pathologist and hooked me up to a DAF machine for some research, and the effect was totally shocking to me as a layperson. I think I did worse than average, but I was basically unable to speak with delayed sidetone.
Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) is the term you need to look into. Playing back what someone says to you back at them with a 200ms delay is literally a brain Denial of Service.
However, it seems that the cultural norms differ a lot, I've heard of people who disapprove of almost everything and don't have much sympathy for them. Politeness goes both ways, and in my opinion using that app is impolite, too.
Humans are social animals, we tune out conversations easily. Half conversations are just one interrupting, attention-grabbing … jarring start … … after … … … … another. It’s a series of unpredictable spontaneous one-sided outbursts, behaviours that otherwise belong to disturbed individuals.
Listening to people in the phone is inherently more annoying, backed by decent research IIRC.
Operating systems become redundant; you open any digital device, and it's just a portal into the most advanced LLM on the planet.
Obviously just spitballing here.
I wonder how far AI will advance.
Applications, yea, 100%.
Aside from getting an LLM up and running on a device, what's stopping AI from creating an operating system? I admittedly don't know much about operating system development, but aren't most operating systems written primarily in C?
I guess what I meant by that is it would be interesting if the AI prompt itself were the OS, and all software would be generated via prompting the agent. No downloads, just a "What do you need?" prompt with the AI generating everything on the fly.
Perhaps becoming so fast that you wouldn't even notice it thinking. Just: "I need to edit a document that was sent to my email" The AI would then retrieve the email, download the document and generate its own text editor to display the document in. All within a few milliseconds.
Call it AIOS
Nothing really... Creating a working operating system and understanding all the hardware bugs it could run into is a different story.
Simply put when you look at the combined energy expenditure to create something like Windows or Linux and the numbers would likely stagger a person, like hundreds of gigawatts, hell probably terrawatts. This entropy expenditure is reduced by us sharing the code. This is the same reason we don't have that many top end AI models. The amount of energy you need to spend for one is massive.
Intelligence doesn't mean you should do everything yourself. Sharing and stealing are solutions used in the animal kingdom as alternate solutions to the limited fuel problem.
And yes, I understand code re-use and distribution are valuable, and that's a good point. Having an LLM generate everything on the fly is definitely energy-intensive, but that hasn't stopped the world from building massive data centers to support it, regardless.
I guess the theory of my past few posts would be similar to rolling updates, so using the text editor as an example, you'd prompt the AI agent in the hypothetical OS to open a document, and it would generate a word processor on the fly, referencing the dozens of open source repos for word processors and pushing its own contributions back out into the world for reference by other LLMs - computationally expensive, yes. It would then learn from your behaviors, utilizing the program, and the next time you'd prompt the OS for a word-processor-like feature (I'm imagining an MS-DOS-like prompt), it would iterate on that existing idea or program - less computationally expensive because ideally the bulk of the work is already learned. Perhaps adding new features or key-bindings as it sees fit. I understand that hard-disk space is cheap, and you'd probably want some space to store personal files, but the OS could theoretically load your program directly into RAM once it's compiled from AI-generated source code. Removing the need to save programs themselves to disk.
Since LLMs are globally distributed, they're learning from all human interactions and are actively developing cutting-edge word processors tailored specifically to the end-users' needs. More of a VIM-style user? The LLM can pick up on that, prefer something more like MS Word? The LLM is learning that too. AIOS slowly becomes geared directly to you, the end-user.
That really has nothing to do with intelligence; you're just teaching a computer how to compute, which is what AI is all about.
Just some ideas on what the future might hold.
By the way, I've noticed that the younger crowd in India leans much more toward egalitarianism and tends to reject bizarre social constructs like caste. The fact that a young guy also thought of this solution speaks to their ingenuity as well.
Social pressure is a real thing and it affects both behaviour and outcomes, it’d be silly to ignore that.
I actually agree with this. And similarly, I'd argue that it's more socially acceptable to use this audio repeater than to "nicely" confront someone who is so brazenly violating social norms.
for me, the worst offenders are men watching sports on public transportation or restaurants. I hate it, but I think different cultures have different norms.
There is no singular solution that fits all situations. This entire discussion is pointless.
I don't think a rights-based framing is the best way to look at this. It's about courtesy and respect for social norms.
I don't see how society is becoming too intolerant, if anything I think we are more tolerant of anti-social behavior than ever before.
This is a fish shell function but you can probably get claude code to convert it to bash or zsh
function STFU
#alsa records incoming audio from the default input device for 2 seconds
arecord --duration 2 echo.wav
#alsa plays back the echo.wav of the recorded audio file
aplay echo.wav
#Ctrl+C when the target looks your way!!!
end
STFU
(Yes this is post is entirely sarcasm, except that I do use fish as my default shell.)