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Posted by firefoxd 5 days ago

Teaching my neighbor to keep the volume down(idiallo.com)
837 points | 367 commentspage 3
neverminder 5 days ago|
I was in a similar situation, but I fought fire with napalm. My new neighbor got one of those shitty hi-fi systems with a sub apparently and separating us was only a thin wall. Our shared landlord and authorities were both powerless to fix the problem, or just didn't care enough, so I took it in my own hands. Unfortunately to my ignorant new neighbor, there's always a bigger speaker and it just so happens that I have a touring grade PA set - I am talking tops and subs with 130+ db output power each. I placed my speakers facing our shared wall and whenever he would crank up his hi-fi, I'd put on noise cancelling headphones and blast him right back at about 20-30% volume of my system which effectively turned the wall on his side into a giant speaker. He persisted for about a week and then gave up. Then tried it again a couple of weeks later, only to quit for good. Giving them the taste of their own medicine is most effective.
davej 5 days ago||
I had a housemate in college who used to party until all hours, bring people back at 3AM and put on loud music. Even during exam season. I tried talking to her a couple of times but she would roll her eyes and say "sure". Never stopped though.

One evening my girlfriend was using a hair straightener in my bedroom, it tripped the central fuse and turned off the electricity. I told my GF that I would buy her a new hair straightener because this one isn't safe.

Now every time my housemate started blaring music at 3AM then I just needed to plug in the hair straightener. It only took 3 or 4 attempts for me to Pavlov my housemate into not playing loud music at 3am. :-)

ajb 5 days ago|
I had the same problem when I was in uni. Funnily enough, the RCD switches for each block were behind a panel in the common toilets, which did not have a real lock; just a hole for a "cabinet key" (a square rod).
bschwindHN 5 days ago||
That reminds me of my Xbox One. I could reliably turn it on by starting some heavy wifi traffic on my phone, typically by opening a YouTube video. The console lets you turn it on with the wireless controller, so I assume the wifi traffic was somehow recreating that signal.

I never solved it though, I moved and never really set up the Xbox again.

helsinkiandrew 5 days ago||
That sounds like a great microcontroller/decibel meter project, something that could run 24 hours a day unattended.
samrus 5 days ago||
One problem is the risk of false positives messing up the "training"
sejje 5 days ago||
What's the risk? You turn on the TV when it was off?

And then detect the noise and turn it back off?

lloydatkinson 5 days ago||
That's actually where I thought the article was heading
skulk 5 days ago||
This is the stupidest nitpick, but it's not really Pavlovian conditioning (as mentioned in the last paragraph) but rather operant conditioning. Pavlovian, or classical conditioning is the triggering of a biological response after a neutral stimulus (ring a bell before feeding each time and the dog will salivate when it hears the bell even if there's no food anywhere nearby).

Operant conditioning is where the agent learns that an action produces an outcome and learns to perform (or not perform) certain actions to get the desired outcome.

throwaway150 5 days ago||
Whether stupidest nitpick or not, thank you for posting this. I learned Pavlovian conditioning better from your comment. This is the kind of comment I come to HN for. Appreciate it.
blazers777 5 days ago|||
it might not be anything, but the neighbor simply yielding to every little rule in the head of another neighbor.

we haven't established that the neighbor knows whether or not someone is screwing with him.

when my building had a person like that, who played these games all day for decades, some either just ignored all of it, while others simply moved out when they could.

internet_points 5 days ago||
this is why I read hn
elcapitan 5 days ago||
Thank you for realizing my ultimate power fantasy.
amelius 5 days ago|
To be fair, it was luck that realized it. If those controls were not set to the same frequency the story would not exist.
tartoran 5 days ago||
But there are devices out there that can be tuned to any frequency. Flipper and other clones could pull this feat for example.
amelius 5 days ago||
Yeah, but you still need luck. In reality it will not work out e.g. because their setup uses an IR control. Reminds me of:

https://xkcd.com/538/

joncp 5 days ago||
I’d love to find a way to do something similar with neighboring dogs.
Biganon 5 days ago||
Ultrasound whistle?

Sounds a bit cruel though, I dunno how it makes them feel

wingworks 5 days ago|||
Usualy doesn't work. Needs a specific type of dog, and the right device. Most of the ones sold online are scams.
sejje 5 days ago|||
It makes them bark more, in my experience.
kgwxd 5 days ago||
loud thunder sound using a big sub woofer?
kingo55 5 days ago||
Funnily enough about 10 years ago, I had noisy neighbours playing music late at night and after some fruitless attempts at politely asking them to turn the sound down, I found their wifi and ran a 'deauth attack'. Effectively flooding their wifi with packets disconnecting devices. Followed by a, "fuck!"

Safe to say we got peaceful nights sleep.

unsupp0rted 5 days ago|
Is this a felony?
throwaway150 5 days ago|||
Since there are people from all countries here, the answer to your question depends a lot on who you ask. I don't think even the specific word you used is relevant in all parts of the world.
sejje 5 days ago||
Is it a felony where you live?
throwaway150 5 days ago|||
That term doesn't exist in the legal language where I live. And I don't know your term well enough to know what it maps to in our law.
sejje 5 days ago||
In the United States, there's felonies and misdemeanors. Felonies are a big deal, and misdemeanors are a small deal.

Felonies carry sentences over a year, and time is served in state or federal prison, not in a local jailhouse.

tempestn 5 days ago|||
No, it was self defense.
mstaoru 5 days ago||
We moved into a new flat with really bad lighting and I decided to buy those "AmazeFun" (or whatever generic named CN brand) "smart" LED ceiling lights. Bought one for each of four rooms.

Installed, tested them with the app, everything works, great!

Got out the remotes since pulling out the phone to use the app every time you want to turn on the light in the room is a bit much for me. Pressed Power, boom, the whole house is powered on. Dimmer, light temperature, everything syncs between all four lights. Power off turns them all off.

Wrote to "AmazeFun" support, turns out it's "normal behavior". Right.

paradox460 5 days ago|
Fwiw, get bulbs that run something like wled. You can pair them with esp-now remotes, like the wiiz remote

https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/wled-15w-color-bulb

feydaykyn 5 days ago|
While we are on the topic, any idea of how I could teach the same lesson to people listening to their phone without a headset in public transports ?

Asking them is out of question most of the time, for safety reasons...

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