I taught my neighbor to keep the volume down
by firefoxd on 2/1/2026, 7:00:46 PM
https://idiallo.com/blog/teaching-my-neighbor-to-keep-the-volume-down
Comments
by: shibel
Reminds of a neighbor I had back when I was renting in a big city. He didn’t seem to understand what’s wrong with keeping his TV on for very long periods broadcasting the sleaziest (at least at the time) reality show on full volume.<p>I tried talking to him multiple times to no avail. He’d basically say “yeah I’ll pay attention no problem” but nothing changed for weeks.<p>Coincidentally at that time I was working morning shifts at a radio station. Those start really early so you gotta wake up at around 4am.<p>I decided one day to change my alarm (triggered on my Sony Vaio) from the peaceful iPhone-like tunes to System of a Down’s “Chop Suey”. I also decided to forget it on, on repeat, full volume, while leaving the apartment.<p>I don’t think 3 days passed before he knocked loudly at my door, moaning and complaining.<p>I told him: “you gotta understand, your TV was so loud I couldn’t sleep for nights on end, the old tune wouldn’t wake me up anymore. I had to change it. I’m so tired that I even forget to turn it off.<p>But yeah, I’ll try to pay attention to it”
2/1/2026, 8:29:08 PM
by: tantalor
> We had interference somehow. Our remotes were set up to operate at the same frequency. Each remote controlled both devices.<p>That's not "interference" in the technical sense.<p>Interference actually causes signal degradation, distortion, or loss.<p>This is the system "working as expected" technically. It was just set up wrong.
2/1/2026, 8:52:41 PM
by: zh3
In a similar vein, many years ago I helped someone with a similar problem with a neighbour who had the volume too loud. As the aerial cable was accessible, I suggested he stick a pin through the neighbour's cable whenever the volume got too loud, and pull it out when the volume went down.<p>Sure enough, after a while the neighbour learnt their TV only worked if they kept the volume down in the evening.
2/1/2026, 7:41:51 PM
by: jofla_net
I had a very similar story related to this as well.<p>For the longest time I always assumed RF remotes were the ancient ones, as growing up, we had an old large Magnavox console tv, with just such a remote. As time progressed we went to IR, which was, as I'll explain below, a welcome relief!<p>The tv was positioned in a basement room, just under my bedroom. Every few months I would be rustled from my sleep, at 4AM, to come downstairs to the tv turned on, blaring full volume and on channel 99 (static). This continued for a while until I realized that my father, who is HAM operator, and an early riser, would somehow be injecting into the remote sensor on certain frequencies occasionally. Needless to say it was thusly unplugged afterwards!
2/1/2026, 8:00:46 PM
by: jakedata
There was a Windows 2000 bug that would allow the computer to be crashed via a malformed IrDA packet. Of course someone crafted a Palm Pilot app to zonk all the vulnerable PCs in the vicinity. It worked on servers as well. Endless fun for a little while.
2/1/2026, 8:15:22 PM
by: MomsAVoxell
I have a TV-Be-Gone device, which is designed to disable TV’s in a certain radius. It has been an absolutely wonderful little accessory during business trips .. someone watching something obnoxious at the hotel bar? TV-Be-Gone!<p>A Flipper Zero would be the modern equivalent, I suppose. I like the idea of being able to turn off devices in a certain radius - but I don’t like the idea of everyone having one. Having ultimate power over the wireless noise in my immediate vicinity - awesome .. but seeing someone empty their pockets at the airport and a Flipper Zero in the inspection box - not so fun.<p>It’s going to be a wild and woolly future, the more these kinds of shenanigans become relevant.
2/1/2026, 7:46:50 PM
by: redbell
This reminds me of this guy [1]<p><pre><code> My neighbor is smoking on the balcony, and smoke goes to my home with little kids. I talked with him several times, didn't help. It's his territory, so not much I can do, besides closing the doors. But at least i can use this fake smoke detector with VERY ANNOYING random buzzer. It starts buzzing when i connect to it my iPhone via BLE. Makes it not as relaxing to smoke on the balcony as it planned to be for him. I'm going to train this mofo with reinforcement learning like a fkn Pavlov Dog. </code></pre> ___________<p>1. <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1ojv6x4/smoking_neighbors_hate_this_little_trick/" rel="nofollow">https://old.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1ojv6x4/smokin...</a>
2/1/2026, 8:58:59 PM
by: smeej
The HTC One smartphone came with a programmable IR port. All you had to do was determine the TV brand (easy if you can see it), then point the top of the phone at the TV pushing the "power" button until it went off. Then you knew you had the right configuration.<p>I mostly used it for turning volume down in waiting rooms or at bars, but a bar was also where I figured out most of their TVs tend to be set to the same control because they had a few with their sensors in a line where I was sitting and they all went off together while I was programming it.<p>One of the phone features I miss most, after the 3.5mm jack. Nobody <i>needs</i> to hear loud daytime TV in a waiting room.
2/1/2026, 7:57:24 PM
by: umvi
Seems like a good reason you should need to "pair" the RF remote to the device, similar to Bluetooth. Otherwise a bad actor in an apartment complex could get a "universal" RF remote and randomly try stuff until they can control your devices.
2/1/2026, 7:35:40 PM
by: bschwindHN
That reminds me of my Xbox One. I could reliably turn it on by starting some heavy wifi traffic on my phone, typically by opening a YouTube video. The console lets you turn it on with the wireless controller, so I assume the wifi traffic was somehow recreating that signal.<p>I never solved it though, I moved and never really set up the Xbox again.
2/1/2026, 8:11:43 PM
by: moltar
Haha I did something similar to my teebage neighbour and his Bluetooth boombox that he’d blast at midnight when his parents were away. I’d connect to his device and disconnect immediately. He also learned to turn it down after that. That was our communication channel. Every time it was too loud I’d connect and disconnect. Immediately after he’d reduce the volume to something reasonable.
2/1/2026, 8:42:52 PM
by: helsinkiandrew
That sounds like a great microcontroller/decibel meter project, something that could run 24 hours a day unattended.
2/1/2026, 8:04:13 PM
by: elcapitan
Thank you for realizing my ultimate power fantasy.
2/1/2026, 8:05:48 PM
by: miduil
What a story. Be friendly to your neighbors, otherwise they might turn off your TV!<p>When I was living in Berlin, the entire apartment complex had a WhatsApp group and people would (of course it's Berlin) party a lot. People would ask each other to turn down the volume, which worked for the most part - at least for severe partying. Best messages were like "you've been partying all night, it's 2pm, I need some silence to have a meeting.<p>Back then I was dreaming of some shared application, people could put on their phone or laptop and then the collective could decide or at least hint through that software that the volume was up too high.
2/1/2026, 8:23:11 PM
by: godsinhisheaven
Remimds me of the thumper story, love it when people set their neigbbors straight
2/1/2026, 9:00:28 PM
by: joncp
I’d love to find a way to do something similar with neighboring dogs.
2/1/2026, 8:35:15 PM
by: wewewedxfgdf
When remote controls first became a thing for televisions and VHS machines there was great fun to be had confusing family members, who were used to reaching for the TV and turning the channel selector or twisting the volume up and down.
2/1/2026, 8:06:29 PM
by: unglaublich
My, that sums up apartment living quite well. I'm all for densifying popular urban areas, but man, add some fucking sound isolation cheap landlords.
2/1/2026, 7:55:59 PM
by: submeta
Many of us have an aging neighbor whose hearing gradually worsens. The TV volume creeps up over time.<p>A simple, thoughtful fix is to gift them a wireless TV speaker designed for this exact problem.<p>The Sony SRS-LSR200 sits close to the listener, so dialogue is clear without blasting the TV for everyone else. It lets them enjoy their shows again without turning the volume knob into a neighborhood event.
2/1/2026, 8:53:23 PM
by: kingo55
Funnily enough about 10 years ago, I had noisy neighbours playing music late at night and after some fruitless attempts at politely asking them to turn the sound down, I found their wifi and ran a 'deauth attack'. Effectively flooding their wifi with packets disconnecting devices. Followed by a, "fuck!"<p>Safe to say we got peaceful nights sleep.
2/1/2026, 8:06:54 PM
by: almostlikemagic
this just made my day, thank you.
2/1/2026, 8:54:51 PM
by: ErroneousBosh
A very long time ago, in the late 1990s, I worked for an early web design company and we had quite a nice little office in a shop unit, with computers, some plants, a couple of comfy sofas, but no television.<p>Then we got a commission to do some work for the local Sony dealer. We did some webby stuff for them, and they gave us some cameras and stereos to play with, and asked if we wanted a TV.<p>Yes, that'd be great actually, we were just discussing that.<p>So the guy gave us this lovely big 36" widescreen TV that was a customer return, but they didn't know what was wrong with it. It had been replaced under warranty at about a year old, and (judging by the service menu timers) had hardly even been used.<p>The first time everyone (even me, although I'm not really into football, it's part of community spirit) sat down to watch a football match together, the fault became apparent. Now I had heard someone say that the TV seemed to turn itself off right as the film was getting to the good bit, but I'd never seen that. But right here just as Hearts were about to take a shot at goal and knock St Mirren out of the cup, <PLINK> off it went. Turning it off and on again brought it back, until the next exciting moment and <PLINK> off it went.<p>Well this was just annoying, so with the time-honoured cry of "Hold my beer!" I got the tools out. Got the back off the TV, took a look around on the PCB for anything glaringly obvious and... and... annnnndd.....<p>... you know in books and magazine articles about soldering they show a diagram of a "dry joint" as being like a little volcano caldera of solder on the pad, and a little crusty ball of solder on the component leg with a perfect wee ring around it? Yup, on one leg of the line output transformer. That was it. A touch with the soldering iron, on all its pins, and tighten the little clamping screw that held it to the PCB once it was good and snug on the board, and that was it.<p>The TV lasted far longer than the web development company, and indeed it lasted longer than the company that came after it.<p>Oh, why did it only do it when the film got to the good bit, or when they were about to score a goal? Because it got louder, and the vibrations from the speaker wobbled the dry joint enough to break its contact, and the safety protection circuit kicked in and tripped the power supply.
2/1/2026, 9:15:57 PM
by: tibbydudeza
Awesome ;).
2/1/2026, 8:36:23 PM
by: readthenotes1
If you can hear your neighbor exclaim not too loudly, the problem is not with the neighbor but with the lack of sound isolation in the building.<p>Of course, that is not the landlord's problem: (
2/1/2026, 8:55:21 PM
by: scoperesolution
[flagged]
2/1/2026, 7:55:38 PM
by: dadrock
I bet it was an awesome shower when OP came up with this story. Nice and hot.
2/1/2026, 8:21:47 PM