Glitterbomb 3.0 vs. Porch Pirates | Hacker News Reader

Glitterbomb 3.0 vs. Porch Pirates

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32 pointsColinWright22 comments

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These thieves got glitter on them!

Is this best we can hope for? Glittery vigilante vengeance?

Makes me sad for humanity.

its all staged anyway, its just fun to wish revenge on porch pirates...

Anything beyond that likely falls afoul with boobytrapping laws in many (if not all) states.

Rober even calls out that he attempted to report his porch pirate (with clear video) to the police, but they didn't take action.

Now, I'd love to see the US Postal Inspection Service take up this mantel by using their authority to take legal/criminal action against these porch pirates using bait packages like Rober uses. Seems quite similar to that of police running a sting with a bait car.

US Postal Inspection Service will only investigate if you know the parcel was sent by USPS.

Whether they will investigate at all, especially these days, is a separate question. There's been a lot of recent turmoil at the USPS.

That's why I was suggesting it be a fully US Postal Inspection sting. But yeah, they'd have little reason to start one, other than trying to scare porch pirates into giving up.

And yeah, with the current state of USPS right now, the likelihood of them doing something like that is practically zero. But I can still dream!

This is what they were created for. I think they were more diligent when the USPS was the primary telecommunication medium, even after telegraph and later phone developed.

Now, though letters matter less, parcels are increasingly important, especially given the pandemic. So you'd think they'd be interested in parcel theft.

Agreed. For me, the switch to group mailboxes in urban/suburban areas reduced package theft, since my last few group mailboxes have had parcel lockers, so I attributed that to the lack of USPS concern regarding package theft. I've only had one item delivered to the door by USPs in the last 6 years or so.

That's my major concern with the attempt to privatize the postal service. Right now, parcels through USPS are protected federally, but I don't think that extends to private couriers like UPS/FedEx/Amazon. These private couriers are also unable to use your mailbox/parcel lockers (which does make sense since these individuals aren't vetted like postal employees are).

Removing protections from parcels by privatizing all mail is rather chilling, as I strongly doubt we'll get similar legal protections.

> But yeah, they'd have little reason to start one, other than trying to scare porch pirates into giving up.

I hate laws intended to try to scare other people into compliance. They seem to almost universally fail, and in the process destroy people's lives. What kind of a penalty are we going to leverage to scare porch pirates? What's the highest penalty you feel is reasonable for a single instance of theft? I think the reality is going to be a revolving door in and out of jail for short sentences.

Of course, better yet would be to reduce the incentive people have to steal these.

Why are some of the faces of the thieves blurred but some aren't?

I was wondering that too..

1.0 turned out to be Mark Rober paying his friends to arrange "theft". Make your own conclusions.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/12/21/viral-g...

That's a pretty blatant mischaracterization.

He paid his friends (&friends of friends) to host the package, to compensate them for having to bring it in every night, charge it, and replace it. Unbeknownst to him, a friend-of-a-friend faked some of the thefts - I think potentially for additional compensation, but I'm not sure if that was the right motive.

I thought he handled it honestly and professionally - people noticed something off in the video, shared their data, he investigated, concluded what happened, edited the video to remove those thefts, and added an apology upfront.

https://twitter.com/markrober/status/1075767629703372800?lan...

I feel like characterizing it as Rober paying to arrange the theft is disingenuous. He stated that two of the five people he arranged to set out bait packages (and were compensated for setting out bait packages) had acquaintances "steal" them.

He came out and revealed this, as well as cutting the questionable footage from his video. That seems to me like an honest mistake and not intentionally misleading.

That was just damage control when he got caught.

There's no proof for either the accusation that it was intentional or that it was an honest mistake. I agree to disagree.

At this point, it's up to the reader to decide what they want to believe.

Whether it's staged or not, the package (glitterbomb) itself is rather interesting from an engineering aspect, as are the rest of his videos. They are all entertaining and educational, so I'm rather ok with staged porch pirates purely on the entertainment value, and given what passes for "Reality TV" anymore, I'm willing to bet it's less scripted than most of that anyways.

If the reactions are fake why would you suspect that the engineering is anything other than smoke and mirrors as well?

Because I've got enough experience in engineering, software, and electronics engineering that I can recognize what's possible.

I've also seen his other videos and know him indirectly (a personal friend worked with him at NASA) and know he's competent.

He didn't even make the thing. It was outsourced.

Proof? Without something to back up your statement that he didn't make it, I'm gonna keep my own counsel on that.

If your talking about the build quality, that's all possible at hobbyist levels of skill. And doubly so for someone who's a professional engineer.

PCB design and fabrication like that is rather inexpensive now, and plenty of free & open source software is available to design board like that. I've done it in college, at a past employer, and for personal projects.

The case? 3D printing has come a long way, and if you look closely, it's almost certainly printed given the visible layer lines.

I don't know why you seemed determined to shoot down this video, but whatever. Perhaps you've been bit by a glitter bomb and are vehemently opposed to them. Anyways, I'm done with this discussion.

Could it depend on the state where it was recorded? Do laws vary that way?

Age, most likely. He explicitly calls out one of the blurs as some teenagers. The rest look like they're younger from body shape too. All of the faces I saw were clearly over 18.

It's all staged.

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