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Comment by kgeist | Hacker News Reader

I also hate microwaves, why do most of them have such loud sounds. If I set the timer to 1 minute there's no need to remind me when it ends, I'm literally standing next to it. Yet it produces this loud sound, so you can't use it when someone is sleeping nearby.

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I have that issue with many appliances. Both the washer and drier in my house buzz so loud when they are done I'm surprised my neighbors 2-3 apartments away have not complained.

Also have that issue with MacOS!!!! If you have headphones on (so volume not zero) and you need to reboot it will Chime out loud via the build in speakers. that sound does not go through the headphones period. So you're sitting near someone sleeping and for some reason you need to reboot and PPPPPPOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNN! Thanks Apple! >:(

I'd prefer to just disable it 100%. Maybe some mac guru knows how. You have to remember to set the volume to zero before you reboot. Maybe Apple should make iOS and iPad OS also have startup sounds just to be consistently annoying.

It's in the Sound settings in the System Preferences app, the option is called "Play sound on startup"

If we are thinking about the same thing, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211996 works.

In addition to other commenters, command line from macOS and other OSes: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mac#Mute_startup_chime

My biggest frustration is that if you stop it with 4 seconds left it will still be sitting there with 4 seconds left the next day. Brand new microwaves still do this.

How hard would it be to implement a timer that just sees after x minutes there's no activity, so reset to the clock? I guess this just isn't a feature that sells microwaves or that you can even put in marketing material, so it never gets done.

One solution: just also hit cancel or whatever button it is to clear the time. Another solution: only use +30 seconds to add time and think of the 4 seconds as "rollover seconds".

You can connect the power cable through one of those "push the button for 30 min of electricity" boxes.

Look up your microwave's manual, almost all modern ones actually have a setting to disable beeps.

It was life-changing when I discovered this, yeah.

... and then I moved into an apartment that has a microwave that has no mute option. I'm getting closer and closer to just finding and cutting that beeper wire...

I did that on my previous microwave (and then when it eventually broke I got one that had a mute option). You do have to be very careful when opening a microwave (the high-voltage capacitor can store charge for quite a while if the bleeder resistor goes open-circuit), but it's generally not to hard to avoid that part and just remove the damn buzzer.

Yeah, I assume it'll be on or facing the faceplate, so it should be fairly safe to access and murder, for great justice.

Microwaves have substantial amounts of power going through them, I entirely agree on the safety callout - they're probably the scariest thing in your house to poke around in, now that vacuum tubes are mostly gone.

My trick is to stop the heating just before it ends.

My parents have a toaster that beeps very loud twice when the toasting is done. Come on, I'm waiting at the table next to the toaster and the natural noise of the bread being released is more than enough. I wonder if the engineers actually tried their shit in real conditions. These beeps are just annoying especially just after waking up and there's no way to disable them. And yes, I would be afraid of using the toaster when someone is still sleeping.

The engineers are from cultures where loud noises are a part of life. More expensive appliances will (usually) have softer tones

With my microwave, toaster, and desktop PC, I opened up the appliance and put a piece of electrical tape over the beeper to dampen the sound.

my current favorite example of useless noise is UPS - battery backup.

If the power goes out, i don't really need the UPS beeping to tell me so. The beeping is so maddening. Power goes out at night, i don't care! don't wake me up! Power goes off during the day? I'm fairly confident all of the lights and computer monitors and fans shutting off will clue me in.

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