Fake Dog for Home Security | Hacker News Reader

Fake Dog for Home Security

t0.vc

318 pointstannercollin360 comments

> 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.

Haha came here to say the same thing. My stupid dog barks at everything. The wind, the sun, the rain, ants, if he thinks im home, if he thinks im leaving, if he sees me, if he doesnt see me, he even barks in his friggin sleep. Does he bark when he needs to take a piss or a shit and needs to go outside? Nope. Prick.

Train your dog to piss or shit. If your dog likes food it should be very possible.

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...

Oh dear. Can’t say I’ve had that problem...really ever.

How many squirrels have you had to chase/escort out so far?

Oh, I'm sure a squirrel outside is plenty to cause a problem. My dogs have historically not needed anything at all to actually be moving outside to trigger an endless barking spree.

Yep. Especially given big glass doors and squirrels that quickly realize barking dog behind the glass door poses no danger whatsoever, so it's ok to proceed with their business.

One of the cats in our neighborhood likes to sit in front of our glass doors to antagonize our dog. The dog goes nuts and the cat sits there washing itself.

The barking sure (though I set up my office in the basement because FAMILY LOUD and so when they go off, it's pretty well muffled and people on zoom calls don't even hear it), it was the "bringing a squirrel inside and then setting it loose in the house" part that I was wondering about, ha.

No I meant it is running around outside. Often literally around because there are fruit trees in the garden around the exit from the house, and there's a big glass door where the dog can see outside. The squirrels learn pretty quickly that we don't want the dog to actually catch the squirrel (who knows what it has eaten and what diseases it may have), but to the dog it's hard to see squirrel just going about its business right under his nose...

I think you're confusing some awkward phrasing from the poster. They were taking the meeting with the CEO in their home office, and the squirrel was running around presumably outside causing the dog to bark.

But I can see how you read it as thet were having a meeting and the dog brought a squirrel into the home office and ran around.

I don't know about during a meeting, but my count of squirrels I've had to chase/escort out of my house currently stands at two. Although only one escort was successful. The other one I thought had left, but I found its desiccated body under the ashes in my fireplace about a week later.

Certainly a feature. I recommend a sensitivity level which uses breeds for each level. I further recommend the highest sensitivity be "Great Pyrenees" as I can attest my dog barks at every false positive.

Came here to say that :) Our recently-adopted rescue terrier will bark at anything. Right now he's especially targeting birds that dare to land on our (his!) bird feeder.

It's definitely a feature. Next door get a delivery? Trigger!

Interesting! They might be both working from a similar algorithm.

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?

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

Wouldn't you say that a neural network that learns to play a game by playing the game does so via experimentation?

A lot of human "choice" is actually just a neuron firing or chemical in the brain going off

Because most people define sentience as 'a black box that reacts meaningfully to inputs in a sufficiently unpredictable and inexplicable manner', and for most people (especially researchers in these fields), current neural networks do not meet this bar.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> There are still places where people don’t lock doors because they don’t need to.

Yep. I grew up not ever locking our doors, and I still don't. I even usually leave the keys in my cars in the driveway, especially in the one that the neighbors all know they can borrow if needed. I do have a dog who will bark when anybody unknown approaches the house, though.

When I lived in the city for a few years, I did lock my doors, but I left my car unlocked. I would relatively frequently come out to the car in the morning and it was obvious that somebody had rummaged around in it. But I didn't really care, and it was better than having the windows smashed, which did happen in that neighborhood.

I’d say that lots of areas in Australia are like that. Even in big cities like Syd and Melb.

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.

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.

In Japan many people use flimsy locks on bikes. It is not to deter a determined thief, but to mitigate the possibility of an opportunistic "borrowing".

Just about all the bike locks I've seen here are flimsy, and most only used to lock the wheel to the frame so it can't be ridden away. Most bike thefts are from drunk salarymen "borrowing" a bike to ride home (riding while drunk is illegal BTW, just like driving drunk).

I've the same about the Netherlands. Everyone knows it's a country with huge bicycle ownership and use, then later people discover it also has huge bicycle theft. From talking to people that have lived there, anecdotally all the theft is drunk or mistaken "borrowing".

My childhood home didn't had a lock. We were all surrounded by relatives. Everyone knew everyone else. Sadly, not anymore. (I am from Kerala, India)

The sleepy suburbs have their downsides, but also their upsides for sure.

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.

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.

Also a perfectly normal thing in cities in most of the world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A "beware of the dog" sign would probably be just as (if not more) effective regardless of whether there's an actual dog.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

What amazes me that Facebook and Google has faces and identity of 99% population and could be solved in an instant. FB even used to auto-tag people for you if you upload their photos. Probably still do internally. Solving a crime is like one checkbox away. Yet "the privacy" of doing crime is more important.

This might be reflected in a rise of crime rates, as I suspect that criminals prefer not to commit a crime if they know for sure that they will be caught. Likewise if they know that they will be confronted.

> Dont over estimate how dumb they are.

Somehow, I can't parse this.

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.

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.

Exactly — it's about underestimating how dumb people are (which your comment refers to), not overestimating (which GP refers to).

Nice try AI.

Everyone wears masks these days so the only way to identify a thief is if they are wearing a unique jacket etc

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.

Any supermarket (or company that does their loss prevention) could run pass their AI and id them in milliseconds.

Same with cars - even if you don't have a licence plate, there are tons of little fingerprints around your car that licence plate reader companies use.

" 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.

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.

"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).

This shouldn't be a problem if there's no actual dog present, only a robotic dog.

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.

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.

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.

Or, buy a fake skeleton, hang a plate around his neck with “ex-burglar killed by me” engraved words :-)

My old man + goth neighbor has an outdoor dragon statue / sculpture.

No break ins, must work.

"Warning: Protected by a cloud connected camera which will violate your right to privacy"

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...

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?

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.

Interesting! I hadn't considered that. :)

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.

Would a cell jammer stop it?

"Protected by Glock"

My favorite: "There's nothing in here worth dying for."

"Free firearms inside"?

Sounds like a bad idea either way, the trespasser might return the favor.

Is your claim that there is a class of people who invade homes while carrying a firearm, but will only use it if the other person also has one?

Yes, assuming "use" means pull the trigger while aiming at a person. If you get threatened by a gun then you'll be more likely to shoot. Do you find that unlikely to be true?

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.

What kind of area has a significant amount of kids walking into peoples garages and stealing stuff?!

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.

That sounds like a low risk, high reward amusement. Before cameras were everywhere, of course.

A nice suburb with almost no other crime to speak of ;)

Chicago

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.

> who is gonna think to go through your snack food

Your kids and your houseguests, that's who!

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.

A trained guard dog will only eat when given a command. Even my (non-guard dog) will attack a perceived intruder before going for food; adrenaline/perceived threat trumps food.

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?

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."

In case this isn’t common knowledge, advertising you have a gun on premise makes you a more attractive target for burglaries

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.

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.

A buddy got pulled over by a cop who gave him a warning and then told him he recommended for him to remove his sigsauer sticker because people will walk through a parking lot looking for trucks typically with weapons manufacturer names and break in looking for a weapon to steal.

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.

> justifiable homicide Killing somebody for breaking in...

Oh what a world.

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.

Stop valuing the acquisition of other people's stuff over your own safety and you won't have this problem :)

> 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.

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.

"I've told you a million times not to exaggerate."

:-)

Where do you live?

There’s also the classic: “Dont beware of the dog, beware of the owner”

My sister, who has 3 big dogs, always says: "They (the bad guys) might get into my house. But they're not leaving."

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.

I feel this way too. If you're breaking into someone's home, you're asking to die.

I don't like burglars, but a death penalty without trial is a bit much. And what about accidents and misunderstandings?

In the USA, perhaps. Most of the world isn't that lethal.

My labrador would run to the front door in 1.2s, but then roll over and demand to be stroked.

I want to break into your apartment, pet your dog and leave without a trace.

a Golden Retriever would be happy to show you around and help you pack the loot

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Same. My Springer Spaniel puppy would roll over and pee with excitement.

I grew up with 2 labradors that were huge attention seekers. One worked out how to open the back gate and if he escaped he knew we'd find him in a certain retired neighbours garden getting strokes and biscuits. That said, one time someone did break in to our house and the labs kept them pinned by the front door until the police arrived.

Is the 1.2s timing standardized among breeds? Or is it a General Dynamics dog?

This one became famous in Brazil: https://g1.globo.com/mg/triangulo-mineiro/eu-amo-meu-pet/not...

It means "cute but ordinary".

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!”

Also if you have a Dangerous Dog signand your dog does then injure someone it's clear you knew the dog could cause damage. There was the case recently, Jacqueline Durand, who went to dog sit, opened the door and got attacked by 2 pitbulls. The owners tried to argue their dogs weren't violent despite the attack but the fact they had a sign up was one of the major points against them and was included specifically in the lawsuit.

I think it very heavily depends on where you live.

Hence my wording: depending on your local laws and the whims of the judicial system.

Boston Dynamics pupper: I’m behind you

Or it’s already locked in a precision drone strike on your location.

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.

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.

Thanks for that, perfect for my porch light.

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.

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.

My favorite Far Side cartoon depicting a small (but smart) dachsund:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/67/66/1b/67661bbc78344ddcbd32...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=far+side+cartoon+usual+barking+fre...

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.

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.

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.

Napoleon syndrome. Small dogs feel much more threatened and not on control.

This is 100% accurate (small dogs are better for home security). Uh, speaking for a friend.

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...

A dog was mistaken for a lion: https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/01/labradoodle-m...

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.

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?

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.

So, add the sound of splintering wood?

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!" :-)

"Bluto! STOP IT! I am tired of replacing doors! STOP!"

Lol nice!! :-)

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

Nothing like popping deck canisters of carfanyl to diperse a cloud of sweet sweet dreams. "It's for the sharks"

> 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.

He meant carfentanil

A flare gun is common emergency equipment for a boat and could easily be repurposed if the occasion called for it

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.

> 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?

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.

> 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.

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, ...

> 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.

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..

It would be very bad if it were to come back down onto you, or someone else.

Why would pirates be scared of a dog though? They could just shoot it.

I read "opportunistic pirate" as a regular unarmed person who might just be tempted to steal stuff from a seemingly unguarded ship.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Yeah that's exactly it; it only takes a little uncertainty for burglars to be like "yeah nah".

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.

Outside the US most people don't carry guns, even pirates.

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.

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.

Agreed. Just got back from Marrakech there is very little crime there and certainly no baddies who would consider shooting your dog to rob you.

"gun culture" and people waving hand guns around for crime or "self defence" is, thankfully, limited to a small number of failed states, and the United States.

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.

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.

When I Google "somali pirates", almost every photo has automatic weapons in it. What do pirates typically use?

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.

Inside the US most people don't carry guns.

For sure. I’d bring a gun, personally.

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.

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.

Also, the difficulty of bringing a gun back into the US if you take it out of the US.

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.

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 :(

To scare off pirates at sea, I'd play Jaws Music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb8t3Lt8iJw

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.

> ive even driven him to a substance abuse program a few times.

I’m sorry.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

Even the spayed dogs are on another level regarding aggression. I’m sure it’s psychological

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.

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!

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.

They don't attack but they do alarm.

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.

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.

Yes, unfortunately if you're being specifically targeted, they'll probably know about your dogs and have a plan.

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.

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.

All dogs attack posties

"The dog has a lot of false positives"

Wow, just like my real dog!

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.

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.)

You must show him Lord Of The Rings - The Two Towers with the walking trees.

> 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 dog has eliminated 100% of threats so far. Pretty effective.

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.

>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.

Why is that funny? (asking genuinely)

OP should have used k8s to scale their workload

Or K9s

Solid pun! I'm gonna leave this here though for anyone who ever has to deal with k8s: https://k9scli.io/

Is K9s compatible with supervisord(og)?

No, it's monitored by datadog.

I liked supervisor but I disliked how slow it was. Systemd is doing the same job for me now at lightning speed.

Man, was really hoping it was this one: https://nypost.com/2022/07/21/robot-dog-with-submachine-gun-...

That would be the second (and more persuasive) line of defense.

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!

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.

We installed X-10 barking dog modules 20 years ago. https://www.powerhouse.eu/en/home-security/46-x10-dk10-barki...

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

“ 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.

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.

I used to walk home from school past a neighbour who had a similar system.

The speakers were quite pathetic, so we figured out it was a recording pretty quickly. And so we took to running past the house again and again, triggering the barking noise to our delight.

A few weeks later, the system was removed.

This need to run on a back up power system in case they cut the power before enter

When I was a kid, we had one of these things and it was triggered by a motion sensor. But we _also_ had a large taxidermied dog sitting in the window. Used to really trip people out.

> 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.

This is awesome. It will probably bark more than my actual dog haha

The extension kit include a fake dog door, dog bowl, chewed up bone, and fake dog poo (large).

Don't get a greyhound. Odds are the burglar wouldn't even know my dog was there.

I thought it was going to be like a physical one, but the sound makes sense.

Soon an add-on device for Alexa, Siri, Google home.

Actually I might buy one myself.

Would be great if this could be setup with Google home or Alexa!

v2. A running toy dog with speaker playing barking sound -- natural sound of steps plus a moving sound source

ahah oh my gosh I love this! Neat project, thanks for sharing!

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.

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 :)

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.

Yeah, this isn't how it works at all, and GP is not a lawyer.

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.

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

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.

This was clearly a jab that went over the heads of a lot of folks. Thanks for the cheap guffaw.

Don't think GDPR applies to individuals if its not commercial

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.

Soon all of America will be like this and we cant wait. No more white privilege for you ;)

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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 exposé.

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.

>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.

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.

> 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.

So you are opposed to the concept of "equal response"?

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.

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.

A bit? It has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea.

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.

Ok. Compared to developed countries, it has a waaay higher incarceration rate.

> 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."

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.

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."

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...

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)...

I think this needs a disclaimer that it only works in a failed state.

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.

Setup the sentry gun from Aliens :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQDy-5IQvuU

Don't get an AR-15, Get an RPG-29.

Don't get an RPG-29, get an F-18.

I can't be the only one building a nuke in my garage.

https://www.wearethemighty.com/popular/that-time-a-boy-scout...

Indeed you are not.

The author's use case is for when they are out town.

Wtf, no.

Wow, what a great way to kill yourself and/or your family. Thanks for the tip!

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