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Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered if playing back recordings at loud volumes could full these things... do a flyby with a drone that has a big enough speaker on it every 15 minutes. How sophisticated is their audio analysis?

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You probably don't even need a recording for a car, if it's like ShotSpotter, a lot of common noises that will trigger them. ShotSpotter has a specific "firework suppression mode" turned on for holidays and still 1 in 10 alerts were from fireworks: https://data.aclum.org/2024/04/08/boston-shotspotter/

Yeah this whole effort is just more money wasted on security theater and this whole discussion thread is filled with disgruntled tech workers who drive into the city rather than take Bart and are so clearly salty about the inconvenience of people being people. To be honest I would have thought sideshows would’ve gone out of style by now I’m sort of impressed it’s this much of a problem lol

A sideshow is a very specific sound that lasts much longer than a gunshot.

In the summer with windows open, I can hear them from miles away and they last for 30-40 minutes sometimes. On Friday and Saturday the usual time is around 1-3am, too. It’s hard for me to believe the cops don’t know about them in time to do something. They probably don’t have enough officers on duty at this time of night.

The mics for shot spotter are mounted high up. The word on the street is if you shoot the ground in an area confined from sound on the sides but not above your neighbors won't be too accosted but the police will probably get an alert.

I assume this tech is similarly half baked.

You know you’re not allowed to shoot the ground in a city right?

For what purpose do people on the street want to shoot into the ground to elicit a police response while not unduly inconveniencing the neighbors?

Is this a way to jump the queue on the emergency service phone line or something?

People who are morally adjacent to the kind of people bringing stolen cars to sideshows do this because "fuck the police" or something along those lines and they only care about their neighbors so far as they don't want their neighbors thinking there's a shootout going on and manually calling it in.

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