Top
Best
New

Posted by robin_reala 5 days ago

Doorbell prankster that tormented residents of apartments turns out to be a slug(www.theguardian.com)
267 points | 152 comments
pflenker 1 day ago|
The article makes it sound like there was some ringing, but instead of looking out of the window or checking the door the residents called the police - probably because they were afraid of kids from across the road, which is a framing that their source, the very shitty Bild, just _loves_.

What really happened is that the ringing happened multiple times, residents looked out of the window and out of the door but couldn't find anyone, and only then called the police. More trustworthy sources than the Bild do not mention any abandoned house over the road, just that they assumed it must be someone who does the ringing, which is a very sensible assumption.

I suspect that German media only picked up on it because they could end their articles with the pun that "the perpetrator has been turned into a slug", which is a direct translation of a proverb which means that the perpetrator has been dressed down.

andy99 1 day ago||

  "I thought it might be the kids from the abandoned house over the road,” Lisa, 30, a shop sales assistant told the tabloid Bild.
More concerning that there's an apparent house of feral children across the road.
IncRnd 1 day ago||
There should be those sorts of houses everywhere, or the feral children would roam in street gangs, steal pies from window sills, and ring doorbells.
sterlind 1 day ago||
the way the world economy's going I could see Oliver Twist becoming relevant again.
robertlagrant 1 day ago||
Please sir - can I have some more...screen time?
skeezyboy 1 day ago||
no go and play with your friends... oh yeah thats right they live miles away and the only way to get hold of them is via a screen but because of hysterical adults (who decry the ills of social media from social media) theyve banned me from using it because it will do general detriment to me much like TV was feared to cause, much like books were feared to cause. This time is no different, hysterical parents
robertlagrant 1 day ago|||
> This time is no different, hysterical parents

How do you know this?

skeezyboy 1 day ago||
because it it were so toxic to health the parents themselves would stop using them
robertlagrant 1 day ago||
This seems to forget the difference between adults will fully-developed brains, and children who are still forming. I hope you'd agree with the principle through this analogy: an adult who looks at pornography would not want to show their child pornography.
skeezyboy 1 day ago||
> I hope you'd agree with the principle through this analogy: an adult who looks at pornography would not want to show their child pornography.

but its nothing like pornography. were talking about "screen time" which is a vague generic idea, just the same as "social media" encompasses pretty much any major tech companies website/app instead of actual mediums for socializing like IRC, forums etc that were around for decades prior just never called that

robertlagrant 1 day ago||
But you agree with the principle that parents doing things they don't let their kids do is not evidence that the thing would be fine for their kids.
darkwater 1 day ago|||
Well, maybe it actually didn't work out so well because in a society where information can travel so fast, we have more and more people thinking hoaxes are real because they've been trained to do it... I'm not saying there is a conspiracy behind this, just that maybe we are ignoring the bad outcomes and mark them as "bah, it's normal, we always behaved like this"
Pesthuf 1 day ago|||
Who knows if that interview even happened. Bild makes up stuff all the time, or bends the truth to make it more interesting or fit their narrative better.

My ass would be offended if so wiped it with a BILD "news"paper.

tracker1 23 hours ago|||
For some reason, I'm thinking of the Foot Clan hideout from the 1990 Ninja Turtles movie...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDJev_Sw-j8

tempodox 1 day ago|||
Im the world of tabloids that’s a profitable allegation.
harrall 1 day ago|||
Kids hanging around in abandoned houses to smoke or do dumb shit is like a staple of childhoods.
pineaux 1 day ago||
Actually, what they mean is squatters. In many parts of Europe -especially germany and spain- it's quite normal for 16 to 25 year olds to squat abandoned buildings and live there until the police kicks them out. These kids tend to get intoxicated and do stupid stuff. Like ringing a bell in the middle of the night. The squatting thing is seen by many as a measure against speculation on living space and at the same time giving young kids a cheap place to live and get on their feet. In most places in Europe the squatting is semi-allowed because of remnants of old roman law. It's quite fascinating and -in my opinion- a tragedy that it is disappearing.
Larrikin 1 day ago|||
Drunk kids unable to afford housing, in a society where owners of property would rather let it get run down instead of develop it or sell it, and where it's expected that the homeless youth will harass their neighbors, sounds like a failure of society.

The young people shouldn't have to squat and abandoned buildings shouldn't be allowed to just sit and rot.

potato3732842 1 day ago|||
> in a society where owners of property would rather let it get run down instead of develop it or sell it,

Nobody would "rather" do this. They are incentivized to, typically as an Nth order consequence of public policy.

skeezyboy 1 day ago||
you think nobody runs out of money, or finds themselves up shit creek? what about inherited properties that you dont have the money, time or ability to renovate and youre waiting for someone else to buy it from you?
potato3732842 1 day ago||
Those situations happen but they are rare and usually short lived. The reason we see boarded up store fronts and unoccupied homes for literally years is because we incentivize it.
inglor_cz 1 day ago|||
You are making too many assumptions. Some squatters are the homeless, some are young-ish adherents of the far left, for whom this is a lifestyle choice.

The most famous Prague squat, Klinika in Žižkov, was full of blue-haired nepo babies whose parents were well connected politicians or businesspeople. That is also why it was tolerated for a fairly long time, and it was always able to summon a crowd of friendly journalists whenever someone tried to empty the building.

(Note that this is something that actual poor people rarely are able to - but lifestyle squatters who studied the same faculty before dropping out can do easily, as they still have the phone numbers of their graduated friends).

The common feature is freewheeling attitudes to drinking and drugs. Most homeless shelters or cheaper landlords won't tolerate too much consumption on the premises, or even have a dry policy. In a squat, anything goes.

sersi 1 day ago||||
A friend of ours is an old lady who needed to spend a few weeks in the hospital. While she was there, her house was squatted and removing the squatters took a bit more than a year during which time she was effectively homeless. So I am glad that the laws are gradually being tightened against squatters
gyomu 1 day ago|||
Yep, a very common story. Or someone whose parents pass away, they take a few months to put affairs in order and start selling the house, only to find out the house is now being squatted and they have a nightmare to deal with.

But somehow people much prefer the “bohemian squatters sticking it to greedy capitalistic landlords who don’t use their property” narrative.

mr_toad 1 day ago||||
Apparently in France it’s common enough that you can hire people, effectively goons, to harass and intimidate them into leaving.
sersi 14 hours ago|||
Yup that was in France. Now with the law of 2023, it's significantly easier to deal with squatters.
jimnotgym 1 day ago||||
I think it was in Andy Mcnab's autobiography, where there was a story of a British SAS (Elite special forces) soldier who came home from an overseas tour to find squatters in his house. Apparently he sent flowers to them while they were in hospital.
Dilettante_ 1 day ago|||
Be careful though when hiring goons, you might get involved with the wrong kind of people.
skeezyboy 1 day ago||
did you learn about the world from a comic book or something?
Dilettante_ 3 hours ago||
I know a couple guys that are big into gooning.
potato3732842 1 day ago|||
It didn't take a year to remove the squatters. In fact, it probably took about 10min.

It took a year to remove the squatters without risk of government violence being applied to the owner.

There's a subtle difference.

Loughla 1 day ago||
What's the point of what you wrote here?
ThePowerOfFuet 1 day ago||
Think about that a little more.
amanaplanacanal 1 day ago||
It's not uncommon to be able to illegally do something very quickly that would take longer to do legally. I'm sure most of us are already aware of that.
inexcf 1 day ago||||
Where do you get all that from? Except for famous cases like the Rote Flora in Hamburg or i guess Berlin in general there's not a lot of squatting going on in Germany, or is there?

In Germany squatting laws dictate you have to openly live at a place for 30 years and the property needs to be registered to your name in order for you to be able to claim ownership.So here it can hardly be a measure anyone can take to get a cheap place to live.

anshorei 1 day ago|||
I have several friends who have squatted abandoned buildings in Europe. I have other friends who live in otherwise abandoned buildings under agreement with the owner to prevent squatters breaking in to the building. When I moved into my house several years back it looked abandoned (because it had been before buying it), and when I invited friends over for the first time some assumed I was squatting there upon arrival. Squatting is really not an unusual thing. Squatters aren't squatting in order to claim ownership. Often they're students looking for a cheap place to stay.
Propelloni 1 day ago||||
No, there is not a lot of squatting going on in Germany. AFAIK, the only EU countries with rather active squatting scenes are Italy and Spain, but my information is probably 20 years out of date.
LtdJorge 1 day ago|||
Same as in Spain. I know multiple cases of "okupas", not of what OP describes.
Frieren 1 day ago||||
> The squatting thing is seen by many as a measure against speculation on living space and at the same time giving young kids a cheap place to live and get on their feet.

This is true for abandoned empty buildings. If the owners are not using a building and someone starts to live in there, they are allowed. The idea is that the right to housing is greater than the right to own empty buildings just for speculation.

In cities were housing offering is lacking this is seen as a measure to push speculators to sell or rent their properties.

sterlind 1 day ago||
this was known in the US as "squatter's rights." unfortunately it's mostly vestigial now.
vasco 1 day ago||||
Underage kids that ran from their family should be brought back to the family or into foster care, not live in crack houses, that's not a tragedy, it's progress.
CalRobert 1 day ago|||
If you're an independent and clever 16 year old you might be better of on your own than in foster care.
bobthepanda 1 day ago||
There are enough foster care horror stories that I don't think anyone "must" be there.
watwut 1 day ago||
Young teenagers live in streets and squats are abused a lot. By a lot I mean, massively lot.
Frieren 1 day ago|||
That they will do with anyone below 18.

But there are some rules that allow teens above 16 to work in certain jobs and they may be considered adults depending on the circumstances depending on a judge interpretation. Below that age the police will bring the kids to their parents or to a foster home.

aswegs8 1 day ago||||
You make it sound like a common occurence in Europe. For my country (Germany) it has been only 1000~ buildings in total since the 1970s and I am pretty sure 90% of that has been in Hamburg in Berlin. So no, it's a very unlikely explanation for an abandoned building in rural Bavaria.
alexey-salmin 1 day ago|||
So yeah, feral children
rTX5CMRXIfFG 1 day ago||
There’s an alternate universe where programmers are fixing slugs because it wasn’t a bug that died in a mainframe transistor
rob74 1 day ago||
I think that was a relay back then (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/First_Co...). Also, if the climate inside your mainframe is so humid that it attracts slugs, you have bigger problems...
sellmesoap 1 day ago||
You wouldn't get the same pride in development on your liquid computer if you didn't have to wrestle with some slugs now and then :D
ahoka 1 day ago|||
Etymology of "bug" goes back far more than that.
hcs 1 day ago|||
I need to deslug my computer, it's getting sluggish.
ainiriand 1 day ago|||
A long morning of slugfixes awaits me...
orphea 1 day ago||
Will you do a hotslug release today?
neuronic 1 day ago|||
At least Firehen has released new deslugging tools.
jve 1 day ago||
Meh, a month ago slug destroyed a robot lawnmower: https://imgur.com/a/k6guVxi
Hamuko 1 day ago||
I’m guessing it was mutually assured destruction.
9x39 1 day ago||
I had a report from a business of possible unauthorized remote access in a point of sale. A touchscreen system was found logged in by an unknown admin overnight. There had been weird reports of the mouse cursor moving on its own.

After a lengthy quarantine and investigation that turned up nothing, I decided to go see this machine myself for context. While I was standing there taking everything in, a fly landed on the dirty touchscreen on a smear and tripped an on-screen button as it rubbed its legs together.

Everything clicked - it was just a fly and eventually some digging revealed someone had carelessly left an admin user available: ID 2, no password, which the fly inadvertently tapped into the touchscreen login UI with two lucky clicks.

FireSquid2006 1 day ago||
To think that previously upon hearing "system so insecure it could be penetrated by a fly" I would have thought it a ridiculous hyperbole
porridgeraisin 1 day ago||
Hilarious
albert_e 1 day ago||
We had physical buttons for decades. That required a certain amount of deliberate physical action and force by a person to press the doorbell.

Now designers and manufacturers have decided that everyone wants and needs touch sensors.

Sacrifice in the process -

Inadvertent triggers and lack of tactile feedback.

franga2000 1 day ago||
They didn't even decide that we want them, from what I've heard, capacitive "buttons" are simply cheaper as they require not additional parts.
tirant 1 day ago|||
They are cheaper and they pass IPXX requirements on dust/water protection easily. But they seem to be good enough because customers, despite some complaints, keep buying devices with capacitive buttons.
astrobe_ 1 day ago|||
Also, mechanical stuff eventually wears out - at best with good quality ones, the product becomes obsolete before they do. For instance potentiometers [1] used for volume control on stereos rust over time and eventually become unusable. So there's a durability argument too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiometer

jimnotgym 1 day ago|||
In the case of cars, isn't it simply that there is no other option on the market?
neuronic 1 day ago|||
Yes, now the cheap cooking stoves have touch interfaces which is an OBVIOUSLY bad idea, much worse even than touch buttons in cars. The expensive professional stoves however...
ahoka 1 day ago|||
Expensive stoves also have touch screen, just with much better UX.
rlpb 1 day ago||||
> The expensive professional stoves however...

…have people whose job it is to clean everything every day anyway.

Symbiote 1 day ago|||
The touch buttons on my stove are easy to clean, but I think that's the only advantage.
voidUpdate 1 day ago|||
I didn't realise that it was a touch sensors, and was wondering through the article how on earth a slug was pushing the buttons to bell people, and maybe somehow its slime was conductive enough to get inside and short things?
skeezyboy 1 day ago||
if you look on the top of its head its got two arm like appendages that it can touch things with, probably did it with those
inkcapmushroom 1 day ago||
Those are its eye stalks. I don't imagine pressing with a lot of force on its eyestalks is something a slug likes to do, but then again I haven't asked any yet.
skeezyboy 1 day ago||
it was ringing the bell somehow, what else could it have been? even a particularly fat slug would have trouble pressing the bell as its vertically aligned.
beerandt 1 day ago||
Still miss the keyboard on my HTC Tilt2
thayne 1 day ago||
Indeed. Especially as I get older and my accuracy on a virtual touchscreen keyboard gets worse.
wewewedxfgdf 1 day ago||
I live in a pretty rough neighborhood - it happens around here a lot.

Teenage slugs causing havoc on a Saturday night after drinking beer in the park.

jaredhallen 1 day ago||
Slugs aren't known for quick getaways. Did no one check the doorbell before calling the police?
gus_massa 1 day ago||
They move a few inches per minute, so it's easy to ignore the irrelevant slug that is nearby but not over the button.
pengaru 1 day ago||
IME they tend to leave a lasting conspicuous shiny trail....
gitaarik 1 day ago|||
You could probably see there was nobody there without going outside and check the doorbell panel. So they would come to the conclusion they were too late to catch the little brat
szszrk 1 day ago||
That still makes it at best a fun story to tell during family dinner, not on international press.

Why is this on hackernews in the first place...

jimnotgym 1 day ago||
Slugs could probably have beaten the police response time in my country.
elwood_b 1 day ago||
It WAS playing ding-dong-ditch, but it couldn't get away fast enough
coldtea 1 day ago||
Sounds like a broken doorbell button design.
rcyeh 1 day ago|
Since slugs are cold-blooded, I wonder if it was captured by the (presumably backlit) doorbell touch panel because of the panel's warmth.
More comments...