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Comment by eswat | Hacker News Reader

An office building nearby renovated their ground floor with a new food court. Great idea but they also added a semi-circle of TVs all tuned on CBC News that pretty much looks over most of the seating and the food stalls. It’s hard to avoid.

Easy enough to modify the environment on our phones and desktops but it’s more inconvenient to avoid IRL distractions.

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Gyms that have wall mounted TVs always on is a peeve of mine, especially when it's nonsense political commentators. I actively have to avoid glancing at the TV screens.

But that takes an active effort to look away so it’s still stress.

Whenever I got to the gym in my office, if nobody else is there, I just turn the TVs off. So much better that way.

It really should be made illegal to put TVs and other noise making devices into the public space. I don’t understand why it’s acceptable to put that stuff everywhere. It’s basically visual and auditory littering, not much different from throwing away trash.

When I talk to others about this their justification is that it helps them be aware of local and world news. But ironically we seem to have more TVs at a time where we have more agency to check the news whenever, wherever anyway.

You’re right in that it’s pretty much is visual/auditory littering at this point.

If people have to really on this kind of programming to be aware of news they are in pretty bad shape ....

how is the lobby of an office building "public space"? its private space owned by that company...

You're being pedantic.

The point is, many people use that lobby. Sure, the owners can legally run 24x7 porn on the screens if they really wanted, but wouldn't we all be better off with no screens there at all?

It makes me crazy that the gas station has installed news shows on the pumps.

In most cases, those types of gas pumps have a series of eight buttons on the side of the screen, 4 per side. The second button down on the right side will usually mute it.

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