[HN Gopher] Fake Dog for Home Security
___________________________________________________________________
Fake Dog for Home Security
Author : tannercollin
Score : 236 points
Date : 2022-07-27 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (t0.vc)
(TXT) w3m dump (t0.vc)
| el_benhameen wrote:
| " The dog has a lot of false positives from the cameras being
| triggered by car headlights or small animals."
|
| That's ok, the original version can also be triggered by small
| animals and cars.
| arsome wrote:
| Unless you have a dog that's trained to attack, generally they're
| pretty docile with just a treat or two, might be good enough to
| stop opportunistic crimes though.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is such an armchair take that I hear over and over.
| Classic rock-paper-scissors thinking.
|
| If a rat were in your living room, you'd not want to go in
| there. Rats will almost never actually harm you, probably less
| than a dog. You can easily scare them out. But it's terrifying
| when one dashes across the room. It's biological/instinctive.
|
| Yet an unknown dog in an unknown house that's actually aware of
| you and mad about it? No way. Off to another target.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| They don't attack but they do alarm.
| FredPret wrote:
| I emigrated from a third-world country to Canada. One of the
| first things I noticed was the docility of the dogs.
|
| Maybe back in the third world they pick up on their humans'
| stress. There, they'd definitely attack at any opportunity.
| duxup wrote:
| >I noticed was the docility of the dogs.
|
| Depending on where you're from, some places spay / neutering
| dogs is much less common. It can impact their behavior a
| great deal.
| FredPret wrote:
| Even the spayed dogs are on another level regarding
| aggression. I'm sure it's psychological
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder if they're just used to being around non spayed
| dogs / so they're kinda on edge in a way.
|
| Local suburban / trained dogs around here mostly just
| want to play with each other / random people / kids. I
| think they might be used to that kinda lifestyle even if
| just by example from other dogs.
| FredPret wrote:
| Lots of people back home would keep their dogs in the
| yard all the time. The dogs wouldn't really ever
| socialize with the neighbours' dogs (maybe that's the
| issue?) For a lot of these dogs, if they ever got loose,
| they'd go and bite someone as soon as possible. This is
| true even/especially for the dogs of the rich, who have
| very easy lives.
|
| But with Canadians, I'm never scared of their dogs,
| because at worst they'll hump me!
| 300bps wrote:
| The house of a friend of mine was broken into. It was someone
| who went to every house in a neighborhood, broke whatever glass
| they could find with whatever was on hand (mostly paving
| stones) and went into the house. Dog didn't deter them at all.
| For his large (for the breed) black lab the burglar just
| grabbed a towel, waited for the dog to bite on it and then
| maneuvered the dog into a bedroom and locked the dog in there.
| Then ransacked the house in 5 minutes and moved onto the next
| house.
| duxup wrote:
| I suspect most burglaries are just that, opportunistic. If
| there's some sense of extra risk or hassle, they're on to the
| next opportunity.
| remir wrote:
| My brother in law's father had 2 German Shepards trained to
| guard his commerce and one night the burglars came in and
| killed them both. Very sad.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Yes, unfortunately if you're being specifically targeted,
| they'll probably know about your dogs and have a plan.
| joegahona wrote:
| I was going to add something similar. There was a rash of
| petty burglaries in my neighborhood about 10 years ago, in
| broad daylight. Cops told me they were meth heads and didn't
| care about dogs -- they'd either risk the dog leaving them
| alone or harm the dog to get their business done.
| 300bps wrote:
| This along with a fake TV lighting source on a timer will deter
| most people casing your house.
|
| I got the fake TV lighting source generator on Amazon probably 15
| years ago - really looks like someone is watching TV in the room.
| ComputerCat wrote:
| ahah oh my gosh I love this! Neat project, thanks for sharing!
| nyingpo wrote:
| It reminds me of a story that made the news[0] some years ago.
|
| The local police received complaints that a dog was being
| mistreated, chained on the same spot for days.
|
| Arriving at the scene they found out that an elderly couple were
| using a Rottweiler statue for keeping burglars away from their
| house.
|
| OP's fake dog is a great improvement over that one!
|
| [0] https://g1.globo.com/mg/sul-de-
| minas/noticia/2019/05/09/pm-e...
| marcodiego wrote:
| A dog was mistaken for a lion:
| https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/01/labradoodle-m...
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Beards of similar length and greyness to mine might remember this
| was a project, probably from the brow of R. A Penfold posted in a
| monthly electronics magazine. Damnit, I can still recall a
| schematic: ORP12 and LED + lens broken beam detector, 555 timer
| as clock, 74590 binary counter, an EEPROM, 8 bit DAC and push-
| pull power amplifier based on TIP30/31 transistors. IIRC the
| crazy part was you needed to build an EEPROM programmer as step
| one, and hand program the sound sample using a BBC micro parallel
| port. Digitised dog barks were available by floppy disk in the
| mail.
| swayvil wrote:
| Here's a nasty story.
|
| Small college town. Nice, lots of bookstores. Retired professors.
| Food co-op etc
|
| Once excellent school, now on the skids. Student population in
| decline.
|
| Local student-housing management companies, slumlords, etc, are
| alarmed. They're losing money.
|
| Solution. State-subsidized housing of low income families and ex-
| prisoners.
|
| Nice college town now has riots and shootings every night.
| Burglaries of nice retired professors' homes skyrocket.
|
| Town builds new triple-sized police station.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This is awesome. It will probably bark more than my actual dog
| haha
| Wistar wrote:
| How about barking and a door shaker mechanism to rattle the door
| as if the dog is throwing itself against the door in an effort to
| get to the intruder?
| mxuribe wrote:
| Now that is scary! My partner's parents had a doberman pincher
| years ago that often went crazy to try to get through the front
| door to attack whoever was on the other side - that is, if they
| were not a family member/friend - and one time he cracked the
| door, and very nearly broke through. He was just overall crazy
| and crazy strong for a dog. I can only imagine anything like
| that, even if only a little door shaking , would be pretty
| scary.
| Wistar wrote:
| So, add the sound of splintering wood?
| mxuribe wrote:
| Yes definitely! And also maybe add in a recording of some
| human yelling for dog to calm down and "don't go ripping
| apart another visitor!" :-)
| Wistar wrote:
| "Bluto! STOP IT! I am tired of replacing doors! STOP!"
| mxuribe wrote:
| Lol nice!! :-)
| dvtrn wrote:
| > The dog has a lot of false positives from the cameras being
| triggered by car headlights or small animals.
|
| My real dog has the same feature, so you're at least doing a good
| job mimicking nature, heh.
| kleer001 wrote:
| Interesting! They might be both working from a similar
| algorithm.
| smsm42 wrote:
| The dog also doesn't come with an off switch in case you have
| an important meeting with your CEO, taking it in your home
| office and there's a squirrel running around...
| dvtrn wrote:
| Oh dear. Can't say I've had that problem...really ever.
|
| How many squirrels have you had to chase/escort out so far?
| mlcrypto wrote:
| That reminds me of the argument about sentience lately. Why
| can't a neural network be sentient if all our actions have been
| trained by interacting with the world since birth?
| tremon wrote:
| The operative word in your comment being "actions". What
| "actions" can (current generation) neural networks undertake?
| Can they initiate anything? Can they choose their own
| learning material? Can they even choose when or whether to
| repeat a certain training set?
|
| There was a recent HN comment about this that I think
| illustrates the point well [0]:
|
| _experimentation is an act on the world to set its state and
| then measure it. That 's what learning involves. These
| machines do not act on the world, they just capture
| correlations._
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32201757
| SahAssar wrote:
| Wouldn't you say that a neural network that learns to play
| a game by playing the game does so via experimentation?
| netr0ute wrote:
| If our minds are like computer neural networks, then we can
| only achieve sentience by priming an existing "human person"
| neural model with data, which is how every human has worked.
| spapas82 wrote:
| If the OP was in Europe he could be sued by the trespasser due to
| the GDPR for posting the trespasser photo on a website without
| his consent.
| duncan_idaho wrote:
| Don't think GDPR applies to individuals if its not commercial
| smcl wrote:
| Ha, it sounds possible but I'm not a GDPR expert. However one
| thing I do know is that you'd basically be publicly outing
| yourself as a burglar and the press would have a field day.
| Streisand effect - maybe better to just keep your head down and
| hope nobody recognises your blurry face :)
| ghaff wrote:
| You'd have to convince me that anyone in the EU has to
| basically get a model release from everyone they take a picture
| of in public before posting it anywhere on the web.
| eertami wrote:
| In Switzerland (Europe but not EU I suppose) it would be
| illegal to have a home security camera in a public area like
| this - dashcams aren't legal for the same reason, they invade
| privacy without a justified lawful reason.
|
| Being in the background of someone else's holiday photo isn't
| a problem, but you can't just post publicly identifying
| photos of people where they are the subject of the photo if
| you do not have consent.
| ghaff wrote:
| Indeed seems to be the case. [1] I expect it's widely
| ignored however unless the Swiss use the internet
| differently from the citizens of just about every other
| country on earth.
|
| [1] https://www.ifolor.ch/en/inspire/image-rights-in-
| switzerland
| scrollaway wrote:
| Yeah, this isn't how it works at all, and GP is not a lawyer.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| bt1a wrote:
| This was clearly a jab that went over the heads of a lot of
| folks. Thanks for the cheap guffaw.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Door needs a hint. "By entering this property without prior
| approval from the owner you agree to the terms and conditions
| (see link)".
|
| But seriously, that's not how GDPR works, people are using it
| as a replacement term for privacy. GDPR is aimed at companies,
| not individuals running a blog. You could still sue just under
| regular civil law.
| duxup wrote:
| When I bought a house I picked up a dog dish and put it by my
| walkout basement sliding door. Also the pond next to my house has
| old tennis balls show up in it now and then so I put them next to
| the dish.
|
| According to the local cops break ins in my area are mostly just
| kids going into open garage / garage side doors / back doors that
| are left open and stuff to steal is out and obvious and so on.
|
| I figure just the sense of hassle / unknown of "who knows how
| this dog is" might be enough of a deterrent.
| sizzle wrote:
| There is a "guard" feature for the Ring home security setup
| that plays dog bark noises from your Alexa speakers if motion
| if is detected or doorbell is rung, etc. and random lights turn
| on at night, super cool features.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| A "beware of the dog" sign would probably be just as (if not
| more) effective regardless of whether there's an actual dog.
| pg_bot wrote:
| I wonder if a more effective deterrent would be communicating
| that you are an abusive and neglectful dog owner. 'Beware of
| dog' signs communicate to me that a person is responsible and
| they don't want to be sued in case of an accident. If there
| was a sign outside that was just a silhouette of a pit bull
| with the words 'dog fighter' underneath, I would not want to
| rob that house.
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| "Oh no, it looks like that dog is being abused, we need to
| get Police and Animal Services to arrest and charge the
| owner and take the animal to a shelter [where it can be
| euthanized]" is what would likely happen in a municipality
| where guard dogs are put down when they bite thieves on
| private property with all of the mitigating factors for the
| dog (the dog was chained up, and could not escape, and it
| was in the middle of the night) and all of the aggravating
| factors for the thief (the area was well-secured, signed
| and alarmed, they could not have entered by mistake, and it
| was in the middle of the night).
| watwut wrote:
| People who rob houses don't tend to be the smartes one on
| the street. If you think about consequences and risks, you
| don't rob houses.
| bavila wrote:
| Your common street criminal also tends to go after low-
| hanging fruit. A "Beware of Dog" sign and a security
| camera (even a fake one) will go a long way in your
| favor.
| bjt1234 wrote:
| Dont over estimate how dumb they are.
|
| Installed security cameras, they still came onto the
| property.
|
| So, next I installed a sign "BEWARE OF THE SECURITY CAMERA",
| and didn't work, infact one guy broke into my car and simply
| just covered his face from the canera.
|
| So then I installed a cheap security light next to the sign
| that would light up when they entered.
|
| That worked.
| bluedino wrote:
| Everyone wears masks these days so the only way to identify
| a thief is if they are wearing a unique jacket etc
| wildzzz wrote:
| Mr. Blue Basketball Sneakers has been stealing all kinds
| of stuff from parked cars in the radius of my home. He's
| been caught on camera probably a dozen times. He wears a
| black mask, hoodie, and pants but wears some very
| conspicuous blue basketball sneakers that absolutely glow
| from the motion lights he ignores. I'm sure he lives
| nearby as he's always on foot with a backpack and the
| hits all seem to be one big neighborhood. Hopefully the
| cops catch him before some crazy homeowner with a gun
| does.
| rootsudo wrote:
| " Dont over estimate how dumb they are."
|
| I don't know... you setup deterrents, as a bluff and it
| took a while before one worked.
| copperx wrote:
| > Dont over estimate how dumb they are.
|
| Somehow, I can't parse this.
| Spivak wrote:
| Imagine dumb is on a scale [0, 10] where 0 is "not dumb"
| and 10 is "dumbest a person could possibly be."
|
| Now on this scale estimate how dumb someone is. If you
| say 2 (a little dumb) but in actuality they're a 7 (very
| dumb) you underestimated how dumb they are.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Exactly -- it's about underestimating how dumb people are
| (which your comment refers to), not overestimating (which
| GP refers to).
| copperx wrote:
| Yes, but the OP was talking about overestimating
| dumbness, and it being bad for protecting against home
| invaders. It still doesn't make sense to me.
| bbarnett wrote:
| He thought a camera would be good enough, but the thief
| was smart enough to cover his face. He over estimated how
| dumb the crook was, for the solution (camera), required a
| thief to walk around showing his face.
|
| See? He overestimated how dumb crooks are, and was
| robbed.
| mos_basik wrote:
| Thanks! I think reread this subthread about five times
| before it clicked that "overestimate" was truly the word
| OP intended to use and there was a valid point being made
| via that word.
|
| Totally changes the meaning of the comment if one assumes
| that it was a typo and OP intended to use
| "underestimate".
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Criminals have wisened up to the police's uselessness - in
| many places, video evidence of a crime even with a clear
| picture will no longer result in any police action.
|
| The light still works as a deterrent because the light
| makes them visible to a potential occupier. They'll fear
| real, immediate confrontation/violence, not some lazy
| policeman looking 5 minutes at the picture before moving
| onto something easier such as kids dealing weed.
| cudgy wrote:
| For larger properties, a "Beware of Unexploded Land Mines"
| might work too. Or copy Vladimir the Impailer's technique of
| using scarecrows impailed on stakes with the word "Thief"
| drawn on them.
|
| Might scare the neighbors away too though, but that's not
| always a bad thing.
| mandeepj wrote:
| Or, buy a fake skeleton, hang a plate around his neck with
| "ex-burglar killed by me" engraved words :-)
| duxup wrote:
| My old man + goth neighbor has an outdoor dragon statue /
| sculpture.
|
| No break ins, must work.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I doubt it.
|
| A dog and a sign send different messages, and the message of
| the sign is "the resident is afraid of being robbed".
|
| EDIT:
|
| I want to make explicit that I am comparing something that
| gives the impression of a dog without a sign vs a sign with
| no other evidence of a dog. I am explicitly not commenting on
| the message sent by a sign _combined with_ other evidence of
| a dog, just "fake (but, for the sake of argument, convincing)
| dog" vs. "dog sign", each alone, as deterrents.
| gumby wrote:
| Interesting. I put up such a sign to try to reduce my
| liability if someone tried to get into my yard and
| encountered my 150 lb dog.
| [deleted]
| opo wrote:
| In many jurisdictions, this won't help you and may
| actually increase your change of being held liable. For
| example:
|
| >...A Beware of Dog sign may or may not count as
| protection against lawsuits. In Alabama, the court is
| likely to consider that if you need a sign telling people
| to beware of your dog, then you already know that the
| animal is dangerous. This can still apply even if your
| dog has a lack of violent history.
|
| https://www.drakeinjurylawyers.com/do-beware-of-dog-
| signs-le...
| mauvehaus wrote:
| My former neighbor's father owned a junkyard with a
| fairly mean junkyard dog. Said dog did its job with a
| would-be thief, and the local government made them
| exterminate the dog.
|
| Apparently the logic behind that decision included the
| argument that the fact that they posted a "beware of dog"
| sign indicated that they knew the dog was dangerous (duh,
| that's sort of the point) and therefore shouldn't be
| given further chances.
|
| Yes, I realize that this wholly ignores the fact that the
| would-be thief was trespassing and that the meanness of
| junkyard dogs is so well-known as to be mentioned in a
| popular song. And that, again, the risk of getting bitten
| by the guard dog is precisely the deterrent factor in the
| system.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| And what would the local government had done had the
| owner happened to be there and had put a bullet in the
| thief instead of waiting for the dog to do it?
|
| It's not about the outcome or the dog. It's about sending
| a message to everyone else in town that that level of
| defending one's property is not going to be let slide.
| munk-a wrote:
| Depending on the jurisdiction you might end up paying
| quite a lot of money. Potentially lethal boobytraps left
| in derelict buildings are mostly illegal in the US[1] and
| in other western countries shooting a thief is generally
| illegal unless you can prove fear of bodily harm since
| you are escalating a situation from damage to property to
| damage to body. While the US is rife with stand your
| ground laws - most of the rest of the western world finds
| using potentially lethal force in response to property
| damage abhorrent.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV9ppvY8Nx4
| watwut wrote:
| You might get charged for it.
| oicu812 wrote:
| In most of the United States, that is no longer true. The
| law previously required a "duty to retreat" if the home
| owner encountered a potentially violent assailant.
| However, most states now have "Castle Doctrine" laws
| which shift the burden of proof from the defense to the
| prosecutor. [0]
|
| Most prosecutors will not charge a home owner due to this
| change in laws. Civil liability is separate factor, but
| criminal charges are rare.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine
| kube-system wrote:
| Obviously people have guard dogs to guard things.
|
| But dangerous dogs who attack strangers don't ask
| questions. If they'll bite a strange thief, they'll bite
| other strangers without bad motives. Dogs are smart, but
| they don't understand "Hi I'm your new mailman", etc.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah some little kid wanders into the wrong space,
| shouldn't result in a dog attack.
| exolymph wrote:
| By this logic nobody should be allowed to own a pool.
| Instead we require pools to be fenced, which is the same
| thing people do with guard dogs.
| kube-system wrote:
| Pools don't jump over fences, though.
| osigurdson wrote:
| In what reality are kids inadvertently wandering into
| junkyards and getting harmed by junkyard dogs in large
| numbers?
| kube-system wrote:
| Kids were brought up as the reason that pools are fenced.
| Because adults tend to have motor controls and an
| understanding of their ability to swim, so pools aren't
| usually a danger to adults.
|
| By contrast, people of all ages can be bitten by vicious
| dogs ... and shouldn't be. Yet, they are, in large
| numbers.
|
| Dogs go to the vet. Dogs jump over fences, they run out
| open gates. People go to junkyards. There are many
| opportunities for a junkyard dog to interact with people
| it shouldn't bite.
| krzyk wrote:
| But kids do.
| kube-system wrote:
| No, the small children who are at risk for falling into a
| pool do not jump fences.
|
| Regardless, if your pool had a history of safety issues,
| you should be expecting attention from regulators and
| insurers. Query your favorite search engine for "pool
| closed following death"
| exolymph wrote:
| Mailboxes are typically outside of the fenced area where
| the dog is. Stay off my property and you won't have
| issues, is the point.
| kube-system wrote:
| That was just one example of many plausible scenarios.
| There are dozens of scenarios where dogs and people may
| be on different sides of said fence. The issue is an
| indiscriminate danger to people. It's the same reason you
| can't booby trap your own property.
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| > Mailboxes are typically outside of the fenced area
| where the dog is. Stay off my property and you won't have
| issues, is the point.
|
| They typically are, yet mail delivery personnel are
| attacked by dogs constantly.
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-postal-
| service-r...
| Spivak wrote:
| Yeah but if you up the stakes from injury to death by
| replacing replacing "junkyard dog" with "automatic
| killbots" I feel more sympathetic to the thief. The
| punishment for breaking and entering is stuff like fines,
| jail, and community service not injury or death.
|
| Despite the fact that if you were there you might have
| the right to stand your ground I don't think that extends
| to autonomous systems, even biological ones, acting on
| your behalf.
| 101008 wrote:
| After living in a dangerous city my whole life, I think living
| in a place where break ins are consequences of owners being
| lazy would be awesome.
| kube-system wrote:
| Crimes of opportunity are also the most common crimes in
| places with more crime.
|
| What's awesome is living somewhere that crimes of opportunity
| don't even happen. There are still places where people don't
| lock doors because they don't need to.
| [deleted]
| stanislavb wrote:
| I'd say that lots of areas in Australia are like that. Even
| in big cities like Syd and Melb.
| kube-system wrote:
| I live in a medium sized US city and my truck has been
| parked on a city street with tools in it, unlocked, for
| two years. Most people lock their doors here, but even in
| a city known for a medium amount of crime, it isn't
| really that bad.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Opposite anecdote: car was broken into to steal the
| stereo (yes its been a while ;)). The door lock was
| damaged and wouldn't close any longer.
|
| A day later the car was broken into again. While the lock
| was still broken and no stereo in the car. Someone
| smashed in the side window and left the door ajar too.
| Nothing got stolenthat time around.
| kube-system wrote:
| The one time I had my car broken into was in a nice quiet
| town with low crime. But I was on a not-so-great street.
| Crime is pretty localized. Most criminals don't go very
| far out of their way.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Worst part about it was that it was probably the same
| person breaking in both times.
| duxup wrote:
| The sleepy suburbs have their downsides, but also their
| upsides for sure.
| bluedino wrote:
| They're also easy targets for people to break in during the
| day while people are at work.
|
| I chased a person out of my garage in broad daylight who
| ended up being a porch pirate.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| People like to hate on suburbs for a lot of valid reasons
| but moving back to one as an adult after spending my 20s in
| the city was profoundly calming.
| duxup wrote:
| The whole "hey kids go outside and play" and I don't feel
| the need to monitor them is wonderful if you've got kids.
| prvit wrote:
| Also a perfectly normal thing in cities in most of the
| world.
| iakov wrote:
| In the ones that have an "outside" for the kids, sure. In
| my experience, most of the bigger cities in Europe just
| don't have the space for the kids to hang out. Sure there
| are parks with playgrounds here and there, but they are
| separated by kilometers of concrete and stone. At least
| suburbs have the spaces and the clean air.
| lmm wrote:
| Cities have a lot more for kids to do within a kilometer
| or two, IME. In a suburb you may have "space" but it's
| all just people's lawns and strips of grass next to the
| road.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Not all suburbs are set up like that. Mine has a nice
| "downtown" area in walking distance with plenty to do.
| There's mid-rise buildings, shops, restaurants, bars, and
| a train station to the city if you get bored.
| garborg wrote:
| Same. I've left my garage door open on the way out so
| many times (in a quiet, unremarkable cul de sac --
| neither upscale nor rundown) without consequence that I
| no longer worry about whether or not I closed it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If I leave my garage door open, the mice come in and set
| up shop. Takes a couple weeks to trap them all. Sometimes
| I even see them running in.
|
| I don't leave the door open unattended even for 5
| minutes.
| greggman3 wrote:
| I grew up in suburbs and we used to leave our garage door
| open often up until day our bikes were stolen out of it.
| matsemann wrote:
| Never heard of a break in in the city my family is from.
| No one ever locks their doors. It's one of the nice
| things about a society where most people get the help
| they need, no need for people to do these crimes to
| survive.
| iamthepieman wrote:
| Worst break in I've ever had was a skunk. Came in through a
| sliding door left open for ventilation on a hot summer night.
| Woke up to scuffling under my bed. Using my phone light I saw
| the telltale black with white stripe tail sticking out from
| under the bed and froze.
|
| Sat in bed for a minute pondering my sad and mostly likely
| odorous fate. Finally walked on furniture to the bedroom door
| while the skunk was apparently chewing my leather shoes, set
| a trail of cheese leading out the sliding door and sat in
| silence and darkness on the stairs overlooking the cheese
| trail.
|
| Eventually it came sniffling out methodically gobbling cheese
| right back out to where it belonged.
|
| Got a locking screen door after that...and a new pair of
| loafers.
| hgazx wrote:
| What kind of area has a significant amount of _kids_ walking
| into peoples garages and stealing stuff?!
| duxup wrote:
| A nice suburb with almost no other crime to speak of ;)
| garborg wrote:
| I grew up in sheltered outer suburbs where it's hard for kids
| to get around on their own, and older kids turn to some
| nonproductive amusements -- was surprised to hear a friend
| tell me he liked (after dusk) freeing trailers to watch them
| roll into cars.
| copperx wrote:
| That sounds like a low risk, high reward amusement. Before
| cameras were everywhere, of course.
| [deleted]
| edm0nd wrote:
| Chicago
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| In any case, the cost of a dog bowl and some free tennis balls
| is minimal compared to the potential benefit if even one break-
| in is prevented.
|
| When I sold security systems, I learned that one of those lawn
| signs alone that says "Protected by XYZ Security" has a
| deterrent factor. Cameras (even if they're fake or
| deactivated/unmonitored) also have a pretty significant
| deterrent factor. See https://www.angi.com/articles/do-
| security-signs-and-decals-s...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| "Protected by Glock"
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| My favorite: "There's nothing in here worth dying for."
| cinntaile wrote:
| Sounds like a bad idea either way, the trespasser might
| return the favor.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| "Free firearms inside"?
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I agree with the majority of your statement, but I would
| personally shy away from a specific "Monitored by company"
| sign, because I try to avoid advertising my security
| procedures. "Oh, they use Y instead of X? Guess I'll need to
| bring that other device, instead." I suppose a home owner
| could be _really_ tricky, and just buy the sign for Y, but
| have a security system for X?
|
| Oh! On a technical note, I was watching a TV show recently
| (Better Call Saul...?) where someone broke into a persons
| house undetected. When the home owner found the person and
| asked how they got in so easily, the person stated that they
| "Cut the phone line", and that was apparently all it took.
| Know if there's any truth to that?
| classichasclass wrote:
| Not in this house. The alarm system has a cell connection.
| By the time you find it, the alarm signal will have already
| been transmitted.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Yes, there is _some_ truth to it. Many older systems
| communicate with the central station over an ordinary
| telephone line. More modern systems will use either a
| cellular communications link or VOIP.
|
| But, the real truth here is that most criminals are pretty
| unsophisticated and won't even bother cutting phone lines
| or other cables. Most break-ins also happen through the
| front door, so, although it sounds great (and it _is_
| actually pretty great) to have contact sensors on every
| window and blanket the whole place with motion detectors,
| it 's not really necessary. If anything, you only really
| need sensors on the first floor, because in spite of how
| the movies sometimes depict these sophisticated, cat
| burgler types, it's mostly just thugs who bash in or take a
| crowbar to your front door. That's also why advertising
| exactly what company your security system is from isn't a
| big deal: they don't care. They see "security system" and
| just move on to the next house.
| chadash wrote:
| To add credence to this post, I once heard an interview with an
| incarcerated burglar who claimed that dogs where the one
| deterrent that scared him off. He said that an alarm as only as
| good as the response times of the police and he's usually in and
| out of there in five minutes anyway. But who wants to risk it
| with a dog? Better to just move on to the next house.
|
| A few more tips:
|
| - Best place to hide valuables is in the kitchen pantry. Master
| bedroom is the most common place, but who is gonna think to go
| through your snack food.
|
| - A lot of burglaries happen in the winter in the late afternoon
| or early evening when it is starting to get dark out, but before
| the homeowners get home from work.
|
| - Your house is only as strong as the weakest link. Fancy locks
| can be bypassed by breaking a window. Design your security system
| to handle low level burglars (who probably don't know how to pick
| a lock), not foreign spies. For most people, this also holds true
| for online security.
| larrik wrote:
| > who is gonna think to go through your snack food
|
| Your kids and your houseguests, that's who!
| djhworld wrote:
| I remember watching a thing from another ex-burglar who said
| dogs are a good deterrent but you can overcome them if you
| distract them with food, e.g. dropping a big bag of dog food
| all over the floor. He said it was a risky strategy though and
| probably not worth the effort.
| jlturner wrote:
| I can attest to having a barking dog being an excellent
| deterrent. One night about a year ago, somebody was snooping
| around our backyard (we saw them on the security camera), one
| sharp bark (from the little dog no less, our bigger dog isn't
| much of a barker) sent the snooper running.
|
| I've long thought that this could / should be a simple home
| security system. Glad to see somebody did it and that it worked
| for them!
| Dnguyen wrote:
| We installed X-10 barking dog modules 20 years ago.
| https://www.powerhouse.eu/en/home-security/46-x10-dk10-barki...
| [deleted]
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > The dog has a lot of false positives from the cameras being
| triggered by car headlights or small animals.
|
| To be fair, actual dogs have a lot of false positives too, so
| it's not too dissimilar.
| cbozeman wrote:
| Don't get a fake dog for home security.
|
| Get a real gun. Then go to a tactical trainer who has served in
| the military _ideally in a small arms instructor capacity_ - they
| 're all over the nation - and inquire about home defense courses.
|
| And don't get a "handgun", get an AR-15 "pistol". That is, an
| AR-15 platform, a stabilizing brace, and a shortened barrel. If
| you're unsure what all this means, don't worry, your local
| firearms dealer will almost certainly know and understand if you
| come in and ask for those things. If a break-in occurs, you'll be
| too nervous and too frightened to aim well with your standard 9mm
| handgun. An AR-15 with a stabilizing brace and a shortened barrel
| with a vertical forward grip is sturdy, you can brace it against
| your shoulder (obviously), and it has sufficient power to stop an
| intruder.
|
| At the end of the day, _you_ and _only you_ are responsible for
| your own safety. Even if you live in a gated community, you
| cannot count on your local security or law enforcement to arrive
| quickly enough to save you. Remember the old adage. "When
| seconds count, the police are only minutes away."
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Hello, can you please advise how I can use the gun to protect
| my home when I am "out of town on vacation" as quoted from the
| article. I will actually be taking a trip in august so this
| dicussion is quite timely. thanks.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Setup the sentry gun from Aliens :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDy-5IQvuU
| bluetidepro wrote:
| I kept reading this and kept waiting for the "/sarcasm" or
| something at the end. I really hope this is satire (even if not
| explicitly said)...
| mberger wrote:
| I think this needs a disclaimer that it only works in a
| failed state.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| The author's use case is for when they are out town.
| nautilus50 wrote:
| Don't get an AR-15, Get an RPG-29.
| clansimus wrote:
| Don't get an RPG-29, get an F-18.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I can't be the only one building a nuke in my garage.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| https://www.wearethemighty.com/popular/that-time-a-boy-
| scout...
|
| Indeed you are not.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| This is specifically for when he isn't home as mentioned in
| first sentence of the article.
|
| > I set up a fake dog that barks if my surveillance cameras are
| triggered while I'm out of town on vacation.
|
| Also owning a gun actually increases your chances of homicide
| at home.
|
| https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/
|
| https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/do-guns-m...
| [deleted]
| zorpner wrote:
| Wow, what a great way to kill yourself and/or your family.
| Thanks for the tip!
| wheybags wrote:
| Wtf, no.
| nimbius wrote:
| anecdotal story: my old rottweiler pepper once stopped a
| neighborhood kid from stealing a plasma cutter out of my garage.
| her pups had recently littered next to the lawnmower and she was
| sleeping under the table saw at the time. she had managed to chew
| him up badly enough to need an ambulance, and at the time it was
| a pretty horrifying experience for everyone involved, but eight
| years later his parents and I are pretty good friends. ive even
| driven him to a substance abuse program a few times.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _ive even driven him to a substance abuse program a few
| times._
|
| I'm sorry.
| nano9 wrote:
| >A Python script kept alive by Supervisor
|
| I laughed a little. Sometimes the job needs to be done quickly
| and in a familiar way, I suppose.
| uhtred wrote:
| Why is that funny? (asking genuinely)
| 89vision wrote:
| OP should have used k8s to scale their workload
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| Or K9s
| Tao3300 wrote:
| Solid pun! I'm gonna leave this here though for anyone
| who ever has to deal with k8s: https://k9scli.io/
| sgt wrote:
| Is K9s compatible with supervisord(og)?
| goodpoint wrote:
| No, it's monitored by datadog.
| hgazx wrote:
| I liked supervisor but I disliked how slow it was. Systemd is
| doing the same job for me now at lightning speed.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| Here's a video from a former burglar talking about break ins and
| I linked specifically to the section on dogs:
| https://youtu.be/DtwD-c9hn58
| [deleted]
| mallomarmeasle wrote:
| "The dog has a lot of false positives"
|
| Wow, just like my real dog!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Better false positives than a burglary I guess. Plus it's
| probably off when you're home... unless it's on at night as
| well.
|
| Anyway, improvements can be made, I'm fairly sure there's off-
| the-shelf "is this a person" detectors out there.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| > The dog has a lot of false positives from the cameras being
| triggered by car headlights or small animals.
|
| To my dog, those are _not_ false positives.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| The dog has eliminated 100% of threats so far. Pretty
| effective.
| sharkweek wrote:
| A sampling of things my lovable labrador has barked at over the
| last 48 hours:
|
| - Birds
|
| - Packages being delivered
|
| - My neighbor, who he knows well, working in their back yard
|
| - Me banging a door closed too hard
|
| - A neighborhood cat taunting him on the sidewalk
|
| - My kid dropping a toy on our hardwood
|
| - ??? (He was barking at a closet door)
|
| - Anytime I touch the hook where his leash hangs
|
| - etc.
|
| Still, love having his big bark around, even if when someone
| actually broke in he'd immediately befriend them.
| pxc wrote:
| When it's really, really windy, my dog likes to stare out the
| window and _bark at the trees for moving too much_. (It took
| me a long time to even figure that one out.)
|
| At the same time, he likes it when trees drop little pieces
| of fruit or seeds, like mesquite beans or pine cones. So on
| windy days sometimes he gets into a loop with a tree where he
| * stiffens up and barks at a tree for shaking its leaves
| * cautiously approaches the tree, sometimes growling *
| snatches something the tree has just dropped and runs away
| with it * runs around in circles with the tree debris,
| pausing and play bowing wvery now and then, batting it around
| with his paws, etc. * ... cautiously approaches the
| tree again
|
| and so on, where he gradually gets bolder and more casual
| about approaching the rustling, swaying tree on each
| iteration.
|
| (He's pretty suspicious of wind-related movement generally--
| he'll also yell at flags and banners sometimes.)
| karmaup wrote:
| v2. A running toy dog with speaker playing barking sound --
| natural sound of steps plus a moving sound source
| reaperducer wrote:
| Reminds me of the late 70's and early 80's when car alarms were
| becoming popular. You could buy fake scary-looking "Car alarm
| enabled" stickers for your window at Radio Shack. You could also
| buy a little box that stuck to your dashboard that was nothing
| more than a blinking light, in order to reinforce the thought.
|
| Back then it was not uncommon for car alarm installers to
| advertise their work on the driver's side windows of the cars.
| "Protected by Viper!" Stuff like that.
|
| I remember the first time I saw a car like that. It was in the
| parking lot of an amusement park. I threw a bunch of road trip
| crackers on the car, and let the seagulls have a party.
|
| They didn't seem to care about the computer voice: "Warning! This
| car protected by Viper! Stand away from the car!" -bloop!-
| -bloop!- -bloop!- -bloop!- -weee-awwww!- -weee-awwww!- -weee-
| awwww!- -booo-weeep!- -booo-weeep!- -booo-weeep!- -fweeeeeeeep!-
| -fweeeeeeeep!- -haaaaaank!- -haaaaaank!- -haaaaaank!-
| -haaaaaank!- And so on.
| Hippocrates wrote:
| Most family dogs will just roll over for belly rubs once the
| burglar is inside, but the barking is a great deterrent because
| it draws attention. The burglar has no idea if that is normal or
| not, and if someone else might hear it and come investigate.
| kqr wrote:
| In this spirit, I remember an ex-burglar on reddit saying that
| small dogs are the best guard dogs, because big ones typically
| have to be trained to be nice, but small ones just don't shut
| up.
| giardini wrote:
| My favorite Far Side cartoon depicting a small (but smart)
| dachsund:
|
| https://i.pinimg.com/originals/67/66/1b/67661bbc78344ddcbd32.
| ..
|
| or
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=far+side+cartoon+usual+barking+fre.
| ..
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Actually, I wonder why the consistent barking is more easily
| trained out of bigger dogs than smaller dogs. Anecdotally, my
| big husky rarely barks (usually only during play, or when
| "talking" with us), but my small shiba will never shut up if
| she hears a noise at the door.
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| Also, in my anecdotal experience, large dog owners end up
| putting in more training time because the consequences of
| not are much greater.
|
| My 50lb, German shepherd looking village dog jumps on
| grandma? Grandma breaks a hip. My parents 3lb Shit-Poo
| jumps on Grandma? Cue the cooing.
|
| Similarly with barking. Not saying it's true for all
| owners, but generally once you start training alot of other
| behaviours get cleaned up as a side effect.
| jedberg wrote:
| For all dogs barking is a defense mechanism. As the bigger
| dogs grow up, there are less things that they find
| threatening, whereas the small dogs always feels threatened
| because most things are a lot bigger than they are.
| lupire wrote:
| jimt1234 wrote:
| This is 100% accurate (small dogs are better for home
| security). Uh, speaking for a friend.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Man, was really hoping it was this one:
| https://nypost.com/2022/07/21/robot-dog-with-submachine-gun-...
| jansan wrote:
| That would be the second (and more persuasive) line of defense.
| omginternets wrote:
| I saw a rather comical sign posted in the first-floor window of a
| Philadelphia apartment. It had a silhouette of a German shepherd
| and text beneath, which read:
|
| >I can get from the second-story floor to the front door in 1.2
| seconds. Can you?
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Boston Dynamics pupper: I'm behind you
|
| Or it's already locked in a precision drone strike on your
| location.
| teekert wrote:
| There are many variations, near my place there is a sign with a
| picture of dog saying: "I don't bite, I amputate." I also saw a
| sign with a picture of a Gun: "Forget about the dog, I rule
| here."
| tacitusarc wrote:
| In case this isn't common knowledge, advertising you have a
| gun on premise makes you a more attractive target for
| burglaries
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Specifically, because firearms are one of the highest
| value-for-portability, easy to move items burglars can
| steal, and America's gun culture is such that gun owners
| tend to have multiple guns, not take them all with them
| when they leave the home, and very often not have them
| effectively secured.
| googlryas wrote:
| Is this actually true? It makes some kind of sense, but it
| is hard to guess at what percentage of thieves will be
| deterred, versus what percentage of thieves will be
| encouraged.
|
| Perhaps we have a natural experiment, since California
| recently accidentally leaked a bunch of details about gun
| owners in the state: https://www.newsweek.com/gun-owners-
| personal-info-leak-outra...
|
| Maybe in a year we can see if those owners experienced
| higher or lower than expected breakins.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| This might vary from location to location. Everyone in my
| state is armed and about 2/3 of people are concealed
| carrying. Everyone here will look out for each other.
| Everyone in my area knows who lives where and what vehicles
| they drive. There is property crime but that also carries
| with it the added risk of justifiable homicide which sadly
| is not broken down in the homicide statistics as far as I
| know.
| andrewl wrote:
| Where do you live?
| [deleted]
| oefnak wrote:
| > justifiable homicide Killing somebody for breaking
| in...
|
| Oh what a world.
| tristor wrote:
| > Oh what a world.
|
| Sounds pretty reasonable to me. In what world do you live
| in where someone can violate the sanctity of your home
| with impunity and you find that to be an acceptable
| outcome? Boundaries in society are ultimately always
| enforced with death as the final arbiter. You can put as
| many layers of abstraction as you want between that type
| of enforcement and the action that leads to it as you
| want, but it's always there.
| whiddershins wrote:
| When someone breaks into your house _while you are home_
| you have no way of knowing what they plan to do. It is
| reasonable to assume the worst, burglars want to reduce
| risk and only break in when the house is vacant.
|
| It is very explicitly threatening your life.
| exolymph wrote:
| Stop valuing the acquisition of other people's stuff over
| your own safety and you won't have this problem :)
| seoaeu wrote:
| Stop valuing your stuff over other people's lives and you
| won't have this problem
| LinuxBender wrote:
| It is a messed up world. Sadly people that have bad
| things going on in their lives get depressed and look for
| an escape. Here as in many places that escape is
| typically alcohol and/or meth. When people become
| addicted and overuse drugs their rational mind is
| overpowered by emotions and desperation. When in that
| state of mind one can not presume their intentions or how
| they will react when confronted. My own theory of which I
| have zero data to back it up is that on some level they
| want to leave this world but want someone else to do it
| for them.
|
| As a pragmatic realist all I can do is work with the
| cards I am dealt. That is one of the many reasons I moved
| to a place I am allowed, encouraged and expected to
| defend myself, my family and my property. I do not
| consider myself or family to be replaceable. The best I
| can do otherwise is to mitigate getting into that
| situation in the first place by hardening my home but
| people will always find a way around it.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| "I've told you a million times not to exaggerate."
|
| :-)
| koolba wrote:
| There's also the classic: " _Dont beware of the dog, beware
| of the owner_ "
| jimt1234 wrote:
| My sister, who has 3 big dogs, always says: _" They (the
| bad guys) might get into my house. But they're not
| leaving."_
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The job of big dogs is to bark, growl, run around and be
| so intimidating that no sane person would dare enter. If
| the burgler does choose to come inside, the dogs have
| failed.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I feel this way too. If you're breaking into someone's
| home, you're asking to die.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| I don't like burglars, but a death penalty without trial
| is a bit much. And what about accidents and
| misunderstandings?
| DennisP wrote:
| In many states, it's a bit much for legality too. In mine
| for example, I have to be reasonably in fear for my life
| to shoot someone in my house.
|
| That said, not everyone who breaks in is just after your
| stuff, especially if they come at night.
| cle wrote:
| It's a tough line to draw. Personally, if someone has
| already demonstrated that they're willing to commit a
| felony (burglary), then I'm in fear for my life and the
| lives of my family. I get why some states don't consider
| that a justification for use of deadly force, but I also
| get why some states do.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I don't like burglars, but a death penalty without
| trial is a bit much. And what about accidents and
| misunderstandings?
|
| I'm tired of this trope, repeated several times in this,
| that is used to excuse people breaking into houses.
|
| Anyone breaking into a house _while people are in it_ are
| not burglars, they 're _attackers_.
|
| It's perfectly okay to defend your family with lethal
| force.
|
| Criminals breaking into the car in the driveway? No point
| in lethal force. Collect from the insurance.
|
| Criminals breaking into the house your kids are sleeping
| in? No amount of insurance is going to replace them, so
| _it is stupid_ to wait and see if the criminals will
| direct lethal force towards your kids before defending
| yourself.
|
| I repeat, _it is stupid to rely on the goodwill of
| attackers in your home to not harm your children!_.
|
| Stop trivialising attacks by calling it theft.
| jstanley wrote:
| But you could say the same thing about random people in
| the street that you don't like the look of: it's stupid
| to wait and see if they're going to murder your kids, so
| the best thing to do is murder them first.
|
| And no, someone who breaks into a house with the
| intention of burgling is not an attacker, they're a
| _burglar_ , regardless of whether other people are in the
| house. Someone who breaks into a house with the intention
| of attacking people is an attacker.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > But you could say the same thing about random people in
| the street that you don't like the look of: it's stupid
| to wait and see if they're going to murder your kids, so
| the best thing to do is murder them first.
|
| No, you couldn't, because they did not use force to get
| into the space of your children.
|
| > And no, someone who breaks into a house with the
| intention of burgling is not an attacker, they're a
| burglar, regardless of whether other people are in the
| house.
|
| If they wanted to burgle they'd come when there was no
| one home. The fact that they came _specifically when
| people are there_ is because they don 't care about doing
| damage to the people (in which case, yes, they are
| attackers), or they came specifically for the people.
|
| Really, if a burglar wants something, there's tons of
| opportunities when the house is empty.
|
| > Someone who breaks into a house with the intention of
| attacking people is an attacker.
|
| You only find out about their intention _after they have_
| done the damage (or lack thereof).
|
| The only clear indication you have of their intent is
| that they deliberately waited until the people were home.
|
| I am saying it is _stupid_ to wait until _after someone
| has killed your child_ to defend that child, especially
| when that person _intentionally waits_ for people to be
| home.
|
| It's hard to feel sympathy for attackers who wait for
| children to be home before they break in. If they didn't
| want to be dealt with as attackers, they should break in
| when no one is home.
| lmm wrote:
| > No, you couldn't, because they did not use force to get
| into the space of your children.
|
| Why is use of force the line? What about burgulars who
| enter without using force?
| wheybags wrote:
| Or maybe they didn't know anyone was home? It's not so
| hard to imagine many scenarios where someone just wanted
| to rob the place.
| omginternets wrote:
| Those are obviously bad and efforts should be made to
| reduce them.
|
| However, it's important to recognize the small proportion
| of events that _started_ as a burglary and evolved into
| something much worse. With this in mind, it stands to
| reason that burglaries are no ordinary encounters, and
| that the criteria for lethal force in that situation
| ought to be relaxed relative to _e.g._ walking down a
| crowded street at high-noon.
|
| Even in America, I don't know anyone who honestly thinks
| that shooting a burglar is _prima facie_ proportionate.
| The claim is usually more sophisticated, and has two
| parts:
|
| 1. Pointing a gun at someone who has unlawfully entered
| one's home is a proportionate response.
|
| 2. One cannot rightly expect the home-owner to prioritize
| the trespasser's safety over his own, even in ambiguous
| situations.
| medstrom wrote:
| In the USA, perhaps. Most of the world isn't that lethal.
| watwut wrote:
| I don't know why this is downvoted. It is true.
| kolanos wrote:
| I would assume people are tired of seeing this qualifier
| in every other HN thread? "It might be bad in the U.S.,
| but in the rest of the world...." Especially when it is
| verifiably false. [0]
|
| Of the ten most populous countries in the world, only
| China (2.114) and Indonesia (1.783) have lower peace
| indexes than the United States (2.337). Of the next ten,
| only four have lower indexes. In other words, two thirds
| of the twenty most populous countries in the world (of
| which the U.S. is third) are more violent than the United
| STates. Unless by the "rest of the world" we're going to
| ignore most of the people?
|
| [0]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/most-viol...
| koolba wrote:
| Having the right to defend yourself from home invaders
| with deadly force is a right that has existed long before
| the laws of man were codified. Hell, it's a right even
| animals recognize.
| runjake wrote:
| It should be mentioned here that posting these kinds of macho
| signs are not a good idea. They may open you up to criminal
| and/or civil penalties, depending on your local laws and the
| whims of the judicial system.
|
| "He was just looking to waste somebody!"
|
| I cringe any time I read my local neighborhood watch Facebook
| group and some internet tough guy comments with "They
| (criminal) better not show up at my house!"
| marcodiego wrote:
| This one became famous in Brazil:
| https://g1.globo.com/mg/triangulo-mineiro/eu-amo-meu-pet/not...
|
| It means "cute but ordinary".
| blowski wrote:
| My labrador would run to the front door in 1.2s, but then roll
| over and demand to be stroked.
| ushakov wrote:
| a Golden Retriever would be happy to show you around and help
| you pack the loot
| dsr_ wrote:
| The Maine Coon brothers we have like belly rubs and sitting
| on or next to you.
|
| They also have repeatedly cornered plumbers, electricians
| and HVAC folk. When we're expecting someone, we lock them
| up in the bedroom.
|
| Maine Coons are cats.
| runjake wrote:
| I say this tongue-in-cheek, here but I feel like you're
| being "breedist", here.
|
| I have a <1 year old male golden retriever and I was
| surprised to learn that he has a very strong guard instinct
| and will not STFU with his loud, deep barking any time he
| hears a strange noise, or some stranger is walking by.
|
| That said, this is a feature, not a bug. "Early warning
| system" was in the top two features I was looking for in a
| dog.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Your dog may behave uncommonly for its breed but dog
| breeds exist precisely because of common and predictable
| physical and behavioural traits.
|
| Great Danes are famously couch potatoes but mine could
| not stay still and demanded a ton of exercise - still it
| was the exception rather than the rule for that breed.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Have owned four litters of labs and some goldens. They
| behave the way you train them, with one or two
| personalities being more "out there" than others. Ours
| were incredibly loving to new people, but barked at
| anyone that approached our house, attacked people who
| entered without us. One golden was so well trained we
| loaned him out as a therapy dog for people who were
| scared of dogs. He nearly attacked a mailman running
| towards us (sorry mailman!). One black lab in particular,
| Princess, she was a... well, a bitch, and kind of a
| bully. Animals have personalities too.
|
| The myth of breed behavior is not good. It's the reason
| so many pitbulls are put down. They are absolute
| sweethearts until you abuse them and train them to fight.
| runjake wrote:
| You're not wrong, but there are definitely breed
| dispositions to be aware of.
|
| For example, you're going to need to train a Belgian
| Malinois or Pitbull much differently than a Golden
| Retriever.
|
| And yeah, dogs have their own personalities (so do
| practically all other animals), and it confuses me that
| more people aren't aware of this. The world can be much
| richer once one realizes this.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Good dog trainers train all breeds the same way. You may
| need to modify if one dog has a personality quirk, but
| not for anything breed-specific. It's all about the four
| quadrants.
| blowski wrote:
| I'd say you're both right.
|
| A Labrador is more likely to have been trained to be a
| sociable, a Rottweiler to be aggressive. It's reasonable
| to assume the breeds will behave in a particular way
| because they've probably been trained that way. Even when
| we don't think we're training them, our expectations
| cause them to behave in a certain way.
| runjake wrote:
| I didn't think I was disagreeing with them, just pointing
| out breed dispositions. :-)
| tomschlick wrote:
| Can confirm. My 1 year old Golden got extremely
| protective of my wife when she was pregnant and is now
| protective of my son to the same degree. Large loud
| barking, defensive stance until we either greet the
| person or tell him its ok. Otherwise a normal dopey and
| chill golden.
| Veen wrote:
| Same. My Springer Spaniel puppy would roll over and pee with
| excitement.
| copperx wrote:
| Is the 1.2s timing standardized among breeds? Or is it a
| General Dynamics dog?
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I want to break into your apartment, pet your dog and leave
| without a trace.
| fblp wrote:
| Would be great if this could be setup with Google home or Alexa!
| sitkack wrote:
| If you want to make the sound more authentic, paws/claws on the
| floor would do a lot. It makes it sound like the dog is present
| in the immediate environment.
| mberning wrote:
| I can not stand thievery. And the brazen nature of it is so
| irksome. The fact that people need a fleet of security cameras
| and a fake dog to protect their home is ridiculous. These people
| should be caught and sent off to labor camps for a very, very
| long time.
| sophacles wrote:
| So you are opposed to the concept of "equal response"?
| tristor wrote:
| One of the challenges of our modern society is that we've
| eliminated so much self-respect, after all look at social
| media. Without self-respect, you cannot build respect for
| others and their property. It is no surprise then that these
| types of incidents have become more brazen and more common. Any
| self-respecting person, then must determine how best to deal
| with this, because you cannot rely on others whether that be
| the police, the government, your community, or the would-be
| thieves themselves.
| dymk wrote:
| Breaking News: Facebook Causes Increase in Burglaries
|
| But in all seriousness, all forms of crime have just about
| monotonically decreased throughout all of human development.
| To say that "modern society" has an increasing problem with
| burglaries due to a "lack of self respect", there's no
| evidence it's true, and there is evidence to the contrary.
|
| Before you point out the bump in some crime types in recent
| years, let me remind you that recent years have not been
| typical, nor easy on our generally monotonically-improving
| social safety nets. Compare burglary rates in America from
| 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010. Lower, lower lower.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me.
| ..
| tristor wrote:
| To not put too fine of a point on it, while crime is
| decreasing in aggregate over time, it's also spreading into
| areas/communities where it historically has been lower.
| It's still generally true that if you avoid going into the
| bad parts of town or engaging in social relationships with
| known criminals you are unlikely to be a victim of crime
| generally, however upper class neighborhoods and quiet
| suburbs are now seeing an increase in property crime and
| general anti-social behaviors that are occurring due to
| shifts in social mores and a decrease in respect that are
| happening within society overall.
|
| What I'm referring to is far more subtle than some direct
| link between social media and these behaviors, but even in
| the cases of direct links such things exist... for instance
| consider TikTok trends like "devious licks"[1] which had
| students vandalizing and stealing from schools on video,
| including in upper class neighborhoods and at good schools.
|
| I am /very/ well aware of the overall trend of crime
| decreasing in aggregate. However, I am also aware of the
| shift I'm noting above, and I'm aware that some crimes are
| now simply under/un-reported. Property crimes are
| definitely on the rise /in aggregate/ in some areas of the
| US, and can be most directly linked to shifts in
| enforcement. Car-break ins and bike thefts in particular in
| cities like San Francisco are associated strongly to the
| refusal of the law enforcement in the area to actually
| enforce the law.
|
| We have a large number of social ills, and aggregate
| decreases in mental health, happening in the West, and I
| see this as being in the large linked to lack of self-
| respect and self-esteem. People with self-respect and self-
| esteem don't go and hurt others and destroy things, they
| create and produce. Lack of self-esteem is a significant
| driver for depression, which seems to be on the rise, along
| with many other related issues.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devious_lick
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I don't want to take away from anything else you've said
| because I mostly agree but this "Viral TikTok Trend" was
| not viral nor big. I would be careful fearmongering when
| this micro-trend that died almost as fast as it was found
| is essentially the same as an over-reported and
| exaggerated 4chan expose.
| tristor wrote:
| I don't think anything in my mention of it blew it out of
| proportion. FWIW, my wife is in the IT department of a
| school district and this was a major issue for them,
| nearly every one of their 60-some-odd campuses had at
| least one incident caused by this trend. Sure, it was
| short-lived, but it was also very widespread and affected
| even private/charter schools in well-to-do areas like
| what my wife works at, not just public schools.
|
| Me mentioning this trend was more to point out that my
| larger point was much more subtle and nuanced than
| "Facebook causes burglaries", but that also absolutely
| crime has been done in some circumstances directly
| because of social media trends.
|
| Part of my concern about social media is that people with
| low levels of self-respect and self-reliance are also
| more generally likely to follow trends... while we're
| back on the topic of "devious licks" specifically:
|
| "In March 2022, The Washington Post revealed that the
| devious lick challenge was utilized as part of an
| orchestrated campaign by Meta Platforms and Republican
| consulting firm Targeted Victory to damage TikTok's
| public reputation.[14]"
|
| So, here's one social media company that knows from their
| own data how influential social media is on society using
| that knowledge to intentionally cause social harm to
| damage the reputation of another social media company, by
| using how people are willing to follow trends when they
| have low self-respect and self-reliance.
|
| These are the times we live in, and I think being
| dismissive of this as the original respondent to my first
| comment was, by essentially saying that pointing this out
| is "old man yells at cloud" is not a productive way to
| resolve the difficulties society is facing and will
| continue to face due to social media and the larger issue
| of increased mental health issues and reduced self-
| respect and self-reliance in society.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| First, obviously I agree that crime can be influenced by
| social media trends.
|
| Second, I'm sorry for sounding dismissive of something
| that most likely directly affected you. I'm trying to
| argue that I believe your larger point is wrong. I'm
| contributing to your additive that goes farther than
| "Facebook causes burglaries."
|
| You're blaming the people equally or more than the
| organizations. You're saying that children's behavior has
| changed thus allowing more people to be manipulated in
| this way, where I'm saying the tools organizations now
| have to cause harm is a more important callout than
| pontificating about self-respect/reliance. If TikTok was,
| for example, invented in the 70's, and your theory of a
| shift in self-reliance is correct, it's incredibly likely
| the same thing would have happened anyway regardless of
| how much self-respect children had back then in
| comparison.
|
| That being said, I think talking about a shift in self-
| respect is in interesting conversation, albeit crotchety.
| I will say that I believe every generation feels this way
| about younger generations. It's also incredibly easy to
| have self-respect driven by pride which is it's own
| problem.
|
| Edit: You were saying someone else was being dismissive,
| my fault.
| tristor wrote:
| A few things to unpack and respond to here.
|
| > Second, I'm not being dismissive
|
| Agreed, I was referring to the response up thread by
| @dymk.
|
| > If TikTok was, for example, invented in the 70's, and
| your theory of a shift in self-reliance is correct, it's
| incredibly likely the same thing would have happened
| anyway regardless of how much self-respect children had
| back then in comparison.
|
| This is possibly true. I'll allow for the fact I am
| probably over emphasizing one aspect of a larger social
| shift that is probably driven by something multi-faceted.
| My basic hypothesis for this sub-discussion, is that
| someone with self-respect wouldn't put themselves on
| social media the way people do with TikTok in the first
| place. The people I interact with (regardless of age) who
| spend most of their time creating, producing, and doing,
| and have high levels of self-esteem don't spend very much
| time on social media pandering for imaginary points and
| validation from strangers, because they have no need of
| any such validation from strangers due to their self-
| esteem and self-respect.
|
| > That being said, I think talking about a shift in self-
| respect is in interesting conversation, albeit crotchety.
| I will say that I believe every generation feels this way
| about younger generations. It's also incredibly easy to
| have self-respect driven by pride which is it's own
| problem.
|
| Yes, I'd like to delve into this deeper. I want to
| clarify that I don't think this is necessarily
| generational. I'm an older Millennial / Xennial, and I've
| definitely seen the lack of self-respect in people in Gen
| X, as well as folks in my age cohort. This is not me
| saying "those damn kids and their TikTok", it's me saying
| that we have a widespread problem within our society,
| which is not caused by social media, but is greatly
| exacerbated by it and likely to some degree
| spread/communicated by it.
|
| The lack of self-respect and self-esteem began before
| social media rose to popularity, it's simply that social
| media has provided broad interconnection between people
| and a way to create and drive trends, as well as the most
| likely effects it has on mental health itself. If you
| think of lacking self-esteem or self-respect as a piece
| of mental health, this is most likely inter-related to
| the larger trend towards worsening mental health in the
| Western world. This effect cuts across age groups, class,
| wealth, and other demographics, so it's definitely not
| something generationally restricted, nor is it something
| that only happens to poor people. To no small degree,
| that's kind of the thrust of my original comment, which
| is that crime is on the rise in wealthier parts of
| communities/cities/country, when historically those were
| areas nearly fully insulated from criminality. Crime is a
| symptom, in my mind, of a shift in social mores, self-
| respect, and mental health.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I see, so you're saying that social media is exacerbating
| an already moving shift.
|
| Crime on the rise in insulated communities could be a
| statement from those fed up. It could be a deterioration
| of mental health conditions. It could also be that we're
| growing and growing in population and getting ever closer
| in proximity to each other making it impossible to
| insulate physically. It's probably all of those things
| and more but I'm on your side now.
|
| >I'm an older Millennial / Xennial, and I've definitely
| seen the lack of self-respect in people in Gen X, as well
| as folks in my age cohort. This is not me saying "those
| damn kids and their TikTok",
|
| Yes and I don't think pointing out a shift in "fuck you
| behavior" is crotchety, I just thought that the specific
| example was not up to par because it didn't show a
| reflection of that shift. I've had poor and wealthy
| classmates do all of those things in the past and have
| heard stories from grandparents exhibiting the same
| behavior in that age group.
|
| >The people I interact with (regardless of age) who spend
| most of their time creating, producing, and doing, and
| have high levels of self-esteem don't spend very much
| time on social media pandering for imaginary points and
| validation from strangers, because they have no need of
| any such validation from strangers due to their self-
| esteem and self-respect.
|
| That is your microcosm, and it sounds like a good one.
| Most creators, producers, doers that exist, live for
| attention and validation.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Car-break ins and bike thefts in particular in cities
| like San Francisco are associated strongly to the refusal
| of the law enforcement in the area to actually enforce
| the law.
|
| Police in poor cities have never had enough enforcement
| resources to do anything other than write a report for
| petty crime yet you don't see the nearly amount of videos
| of brazen "petty crime in broad daylight while witnesses
| film" coming out of Detroit or Trenton like you do the
| richer cities.
|
| The problem is largely cultural and it largely begins and
| ends with the demographics who drive things like local
| police policy.
| tristor wrote:
| You're correct in your first paragraph and probably a
| quarter correct in your second paragraph. Just to be a
| bit more deliberate: poor communities have experienced
| high rates of crime throughout human history, it's a
| newly recurring phenomenon that high rates of crime are
| now happening in communities which are not poor, and it's
| a problematic sign for society. Without trying to crack
| open the entirety of human psychology and sociology in a
| comment on HN, a lot of people primarily gather wealth to
| build safety for their family, the entire reason that
| they become wealthier is to insulate themselves from the
| criminality that is common in poorer parts of their
| city/country/world. The fact that relative wealth is no
| longer as insulative as it once was is indicative of a
| wider ranging issue than poverty driving crime, and
| results in subtle shifts and cracks forming in society.
|
| There are absolutely cultural drivers behind crime, as
| well as demographic drivers, and I am positing that a big
| piece of what's causing criminal culture to spread and
| shift is social media acting as a communications platform
| to spread a different set of social mores and standards
| than those that have historically enforced cohesion
| within larger society and reduced criminality in
| wealthier areas. Again, case in point, children of
| wealthy families in posh schools engaging in vandalize
| and theft of school property for social media points.
| Social media is nothing if not a cultural force that
| creates a new demographic that cuts across other lines,
| their user-base.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Why is it an issue that wealth is not as insulative as it
| once was against crime?
|
| What about those who want wealth but can't acquire it but
| also do good in a community to prevent crime? What if we
| were forced to make communal change instead of buying our
| way out?
|
| Children across all spectrums of wealth have engaged in
| vandalization or theft for the entirety of humanity,
| whether for social media points or other variations of
| clout.
| tristor wrote:
| > Why is it an issue that wealth is not as insulative as
| it once was against crime?
|
| I think it depends on social context, but at least in the
| US, and I would suspect in much of the West generally,
| people work to acquire wealth primarily to better the
| lives of themselves and their family, and a big portion
| of that is where they live (e.g. a home purchase is
| usually the largest purchase in any person's life). Given
| that, if you cannot reliably buy a home in a safe place,
| it leads to significant increased risk for productive
| members of society and general breakdowns in social
| cohesion. I don't want to be that guy, but I see
| parallels between our current zeitgeist and the fall of
| the Roman Empire.
|
| > What about those who want wealth but can't acquire it
| but also do good in a community to prevent crime? What if
| we were forced to make communal change instead of buying
| our way out?
|
| "Buying your way out" is a form of communal change, it's
| literally the basis of suburban living, HOAs, inner-metro
| townships & associated township policing, et al. I don't
| know of anyone who "wants wealth but can't acquire it", I
| know of many people that want some subset of what wealth
| might bring and are unwilling to do the things necessary
| to acquire what they want. Unwillingness and inability
| are not the same, nor is materialism and safety/piece and
| quiet.
|
| > Children across all spectrums of wealth have engaged in
| vandalization or theft for the entirety of humanity,
| whether for social media points or other variations of
| clout.
|
| Yes, anti-social behavior is part of the human condition,
| but generally speaking is confined in some way except in
| times of social strife and turmoil. By most metrics this
| is not a time of social strife and turmoil, but we are
| seeing a rise in anti-social behavior that would indicate
| that it is.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > But in all seriousness, all forms of crime have just
| about monotonically decreased throughout all of human
| development.
|
| No, they haven't.
|
| Most of them may have decreased, but it hasn't been even
| approximately monotonic.
|
| > Compare burglary rates in America from 1980, 1990, 2000,
| 2010
|
| I like that you use a a few decades of decline from the
| well-known peak of a long surge as your proof of a
| monotonic decline over the entire history of human
| development.
| jck wrote:
| Obviously, crime sucks and society needs criminals to face some
| sort of consequence but your take (vengeance) is pretty sad and
| lacking to me. You need to understand that most of these sorts
| of crimes are committed by people in terrible socioeconomic
| conditions and you seem like you have the privilege to not know
| what that sort of despair feels like and how it can break
| people.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean that's the "revenge" school of thought, but there's two
| others; "rehabilitation", where people are re-educated
| otherwise, and the more difficult one... why do people steal in
| the first place?
|
| In practice it'll be things like poverty, lack of other
| opportunities, etc. Give people an education, gratifying jobs,
| a purpose in life and crime will drop.
|
| But that sounds too much like socialism.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Different people respond to different things. But I do think
| the US system is a bit too punitive. A lot of states have
| stuff like free community college for those who want it. But
| guess what? they still have a lot of car radios and catalytic
| converters being stolen.
| goodpoint wrote:
| A bit? It has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Sure, but they also have a pretty repressive regime where
| you might get executed for watching the wrong tv show.
|
| I think it's better to compare to other developed
| countries.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Ok. Compared to developed countries, it has a waaay
| higher incarceration rate.
| tristor wrote:
| > Give people an education, gratifying jobs, a purpose in
| life and crime will drop.
|
| I agree with everything but the first word of this sentence,
| "give". The challenge is that you cannot "give" someone self-
| respect, purpose in life, or gratitude. These are things
| which must be internally developed by people through their
| life experiences. The best we can do as a society is
| improving early childhood development and parenting, but once
| someone is an adult, it is exceptionally difficult to
| impossible to change someone's direction absent any desire to
| change on that person's part.
|
| The people doing these things are generally young adults or
| adults. Someone is not breaking into my garage to steal my
| tools because of "poverty" except in the most abstract
| definition. Generally, it's to feed a drug addiction, a drug
| addiction the person acquired due to self-medicating for
| ennui and depression or other mental health issues, mental
| health issues that may be partially caused by environment or
| genetics (we don't know, social / psych science is not there
| yet), and contributed to by the state of society and a
| complete lack of self-respect (someone with self-respect
| wouldn't stoop to theft).
|
| The opposition to your mode of thinking isn't "oh no
| socialism", it's about complete elimination of
| accountability, respect, ethics, and root cause analysis as
| part of the process. You cannot "give" someone an improvement
| in their internal state. Or as the saying goes "You can lead
| a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink."
| pid_0 wrote:
| jvanderbot wrote:
| In small communities (think, hundreds), thievery is much, much
| harder. People just "know" who the thieving-types are, or can
| find out pretty quick by gossip. And what would they do, build
| a house with the saw they stole? Sell it ... back to me?
|
| If I knew everyone I could possibly see sneaking around my
| house, it's pretty simple to go talk to their parents/ siblings
| / spouse to get them straightened out. If I didn't know, it
| doesn't take long to gossip my way into likely suspects.
|
| It's another responsibility we offloaded to the state, and it
| is now impossible to recognize people on the street, and so
| there's an infinite set of people each thief could exploit.
| This isn't bad per se (see witch hunts and mob rule), it's just
| a modern exploit.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| I met an older Australian woman that sailed around the world
| solo, and swore by the fake dog for scaring off opportunistic
| pirates. She didn't carry a gun or other weapon. Just a cassette
| tape on repeat when anchored.
| mellavora wrote:
| Generally speaking weapons are a problem on boats. Many
| countries will require you to have a permit for it, which can
| be problematic to obtain. At the very least you have to declare
| it, which probably also means handing it over to the harbor
| authorities. Which means you don't have it when you would be
| most at risk and most need it.
|
| Second, say you solve the above and decide to deploy the gun.
| You don't have a lot of time, and you don't know if the
| approaching boat is a pirate or a local fisherman who wants to
| sell you a fish. Make the wrong call, and bad things happen.
|
| Say you solved the permit/registration issue by hiding the gun
| and then you deploy the gun. Bad things happen. Ok, it might
| have been justified and might have saved your life, but you are
| still probably going to jail for not declaring the weapon.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > say you solve the above and decide to deploy the gun.
|
| We're talking about a handgun not a artillery peice,
| "deployment" is taking it out of a biometric gun safe, 5
| seconds max. Also you wouldn't open fire on someone just
| beacuse they are near your boat.
| mellavora wrote:
| ok. So you are on your boat. Small craft with three people
| is rapidly approaching on a direct course. You are nervous
| so you grab the gun (probably more than 5 seconds because
| you are out on deck and the biometric safe is fixed in the
| cabin, but I'll give you a pass on that).
|
| Where do you aim the gun? At them? At the deck?
|
| They see you are holding a gun, get a different look on
| their face, and one starts to reach under the seat.
|
| What do you do?
|
| Remember you are in a foreign country and don't speak the
| language, don't know the customs, cannot read the body
| language, ...
| anonred wrote:
| I would shoot a warning shot into the air. But maybe at
| that distance it wouldn't be clear enough and that'd just
| escalate the situation..
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Where do you aim the gun? At them? At the deck?
|
| Nothing. You don't aim a firearm at anything you don't
| want to destroy. Until they take action like attempting
| to board the vessel, you don't even want them to know you
| have it. Keep it concealed until you need it.
|
| In this situation the first thing you want to reach for
| is the radio. The gun is more for situations where you
| would be below deck sleeping and hear someone kicking in
| the door. Going up against a fully armed team of men
| isn't possible as a single person with small arms, small
| arms are useful for one or two burglars breaking into
| boats on the slip though.
| derefr wrote:
| Do you still generally need a permit if the "weapon" is part
| of the boat -- for example, a harpoon gun mounted on a swivel
| -- rather than something you can pick up and carry?
|
| (My thinking being: pirates generally use speedboats, and a
| harpoon gun is plenty good at shooting holes in fiberglass
| and/or destroying outboard motors; and so pirates wouldn't
| want to get near your boat if you had one. But this sort of
| setup is not really useful for shooting at _people_ --
| especially people less than 50ft away from the boat, which
| puts them in a "blind spot" for aiming, and _especially_ not
| people who have already boarded -- and so it would be
| irrelevant when docked.)
| tyingq wrote:
| Maybe a water cannon that's big enough to create issues for
| typical pirate boats? I don't know what the cost is, but if
| the pirate boats are smallish, you have essentially
| unlimited ammo.
| nradov wrote:
| Large merchant ships do use water cannons for repelling
| small pirate boats. But that wouldn't really be practical
| to mount on a typical private yacht. They're just too
| bulky and heavy.
| closewith wrote:
| It depends where you go. In many places, you'll need a
| firearm license and a lot of marinas/harbours won't allow
| even licensed firearms.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Nothing like popping deck canisters of carfanyl to diperse
| a cloud of sweet sweet dreams. "It's for the sharks"
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| > carfanyl
|
| What is that? Brave Search showed results for Carvana,
| and I clicked "show me reaults for carfanyl," and it then
| showed me results for Carvana and Carnival.
|
| Google Search just shows your comment.
| floren wrote:
| He meant carfentanil
| [deleted]
| thomasjudge wrote:
| A flare gun is common emergency equipment for a boat and
| could easily be repurposed if the occasion called for it
| closewith wrote:
| Flare guns are considered firearms in many countries,
| which is why flare guns are nearly completely obsolete
| for international sailing. They're also much less visible
| than equivalent handheld flares.
|
| While there are USCG-compliant flare guns, you also
| cannot satisfy SOLAS requirements with a flare gun. You
| need to carry (depending on voyage and vessel) handheld
| distress, collision avoidance, and/or paraflares.
| jonahx wrote:
| > Say you solved the permit/registration issue by hiding the
| gun and then you deploy the gun. Bad things happen. Ok, it
| might have been justified and might have saved your life, but
| you are still probably going to jail for not declaring the
| weapon.
|
| Is your argument that death is preferable to jail?
| mellavora wrote:
| you are right that I didn't phrase it well, but no.
|
| My argument is that a method of defense that carries a jail
| sentence if it succeeds is suboptimal.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Why would pirates be scared of a dog though? They could just
| shoot it.
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| For sure. I'd bring a gun, personally.
| Xylakant wrote:
| A dog is an audible warning before the fact and may scare
| off thieves/robbers before an attempt. A gun is in the best
| of all cases helpful once the thief or robber has already
| decided to act.
| dymk wrote:
| That's why I have a solenoid triggered rifle in my
| backyard that shoots off a round every two minutes. It
| used to be full auto 24/7, but ammo got expensive :(
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| All other issues aside, even assuming you can get the
| proper permissions, bringing guns into foreign ports is a
| major hassle and involves significant legal paperwork.
|
| Companies that provide armed security for cargo ships for
| example will keep the weapons on a boat at sea in
| international waters, transfer them to the cargo ship at
| the beginning of their security detail, then take them off
| with another boat before the cargo ship proceeds.
| closewith wrote:
| During the height of the piracy in East Africa, seaborne
| armouries were used to distribute weapons which were
| thrown overboard before entering territorial waters, as
| it was cheaper than collecting them.
|
| I also think some (almost certainly American) people
| underestimate how big an issue importing a firearm or
| possession of an unlicensed firearm can be in most of the
| world. It's either many months of paperwork and almost
| guaranteed refusal, or risking many years in prison for
| an unlicensed firearm.
| mellavora wrote:
| Also, the difficulty of bringing a gun back into the US
| if you take it out of the US.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I would imagine a burglar would see two issues:
|
| 1) If there is a dog on the boat, maybe there's people too.
|
| 2) Plenty of other boats, why bother killing a dog and make
| lots of noise?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _2) Plenty of other boats, why bother killing a dog and
| make lots of noise?_
|
| Exactly. A lot of people seem to forget that a gun
| discharging is even louder than a dog, so a would-be
| amateur pirate would be solving a small problem by creating
| a much bigger one.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah that's exactly it; it only takes a little uncertainty
| for burglars to be like "yeah nah".
| DonHopkins wrote:
| To scare off pirates at sea, I'd play Jaws Music.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb8t3Lt8iJw
| madaxe_again wrote:
| They could, or it could chew up a hand pretty well, or turn a
| robbery into a multiple murder, or any number of things. A
| dog doesn't respond predictably or rationally.
|
| Criminal doesn't mean stupid - and you're not going to bother
| with a risky target when there are other, less risky targets
| nearby.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Angry guard dogs are fast and being low to the ground makes
| them difficult targets. One could easily cause serious
| injuries before being neutralized. If one knocks you down
| (which is very likely happen), then you also risk shooting
| yourself instead of the dog.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Outside the US most people don't carry guns, even pirates.
| Erik816 wrote:
| Inside the US most people don't carry guns.
| andai wrote:
| When I Google "somali pirates", almost every photo has
| automatic weapons in it. What do pirates typically use?
| nradov wrote:
| In that region, mostly AK-47s and RPG-7s, plus whatever
| other random weapons they managed to scrounge. Same as
| every irregular paramilitary force throughout the Middle
| East and Africa.
| fooker wrote:
| In large-ish cities, sure.
|
| People have guns in rural areas everywhere. There are some
| exceptions like China where guns are very uncommon but if
| you are traveling through Eastern Europe, or Africa, or
| rural parts of south Asia you are going to encounter a lot
| of people who have guns.
|
| There isn't a gun culture like in the US in these places
| though, so you'll have to know what to look for.
| reillyse wrote:
| People have some guns in rural places worldwide but you
| almost never encounter them. Gun ownership rates drop off
| fast after the US (I think the 10th highest country is
| 1/4 of the US rate) and the rates keep dropping from
| there. Also while rural farmers may own a shotgun or a
| rifle they mostly leave that locked up at home, the
| chances of you meeting someone with a gun is pretty tiny.
| Only exceptions I can think of are perhaps some Central
| American countries.
| watwut wrote:
| 100% not true here and not in Eastern Europe. People in
| villages don't have guns everywhere.
|
| Also, the one subgroup of villages who do have guns are
| actual mafia members. But their power is mainly in
| organization and in having bought cops. You having own
| gun will in no way help you if you are targetted. The
| rest of people have them generally only if they need them
| for job, very rarely otherwise.
|
| Villagers don't have guns for fun either all that much,
| it is also costly. The self defense laws are also such
| that gun is likely yo get you in serious trouble.
| lazerpants wrote:
| The implied gun ownership rate given by the firearm
| suicide rate in Hungary, for example, is rather high. It
| is also surprisingly high in Austria. Neither are like
| the US of course, but unless the primary reason people
| own firearms in those countries is for suicide, more
| people own guns than you may imagine.
|
| Granted, I did research on proxy gun rate estimators many
| years ago, using even older data, so it is possible that
| things have changed but I don't see why that would be the
| case.
| reillyse wrote:
| There are lots of things that could skew this data. What
| suicide rate seems to be measuring is access to guns.
|
| Lots of people in the police or other security forces
| have access to guns. Often people who have done military
| service have an issued gun at home (eg Switzerland I
| think). Military service generally overlaps with a time
| in life when males are more vulnerable to suicide.
| olalonde wrote:
| I read "opportunistic pirate" as a regular unarmed person who
| might just be tempted to steal stuff from a seemingly
| unguarded ship.
| the_only_law wrote:
| That might be it. Tbf I don't know much about modern
| piracy. I just imagine guys with AKs and RPGs coming up and
| boarding you, but that could easily be a media depiction
| only.
| lupire wrote:
| I don't think those guys are taking single people in
| small boats. They want $5M insurance payouts from
| corporations, not killing random people for their
| clothes.
| ge96 wrote:
| I thought it was going to be like a physical one, but the sound
| makes sense.
| sunshi23 wrote:
| This need to run on a back up power system in case they cut the
| power before enter
| Hippocrates wrote:
| I get package thefts, people pissing on my entryway, and general
| creeping late night. Of course I have a doorbell cam but it
| doesn't help. I've now set up a homekit automation which triggers
| via the doorbell's motion sensor. It flicks the exterior and
| interior hall lights on via smart switch, one after the other
| with a slight random jitter, to create the illusion of someone
| about to come out the door.
| reaperducer wrote:
| For those looking for a simpler, cheaper solution, you can buy
| exterior light bulbs with built-in motion sensors for about
| $15.
|
| It scores exactly zero geek cred, but it works if you're
| renting and don't want to go the full-blown home automation
| route.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| Thanks for that, perfect for my porch light.
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