My backyard neighbor installed a backup generator with a very annoying green led that shines right through my kitchen window. I hate HOA's and I don't live in one but I really lost sleep about this. One night I just went a back there and put a small green sticker on the plastic case. Still shines on but the annoying glow shines elsewhere. Inspection passed.
There was a time in the electronics world when bright, house illuminating leds first came about and manufacturers used them in place of the dull red/green indicators. Black tape everywhere. Macbooks were one of the worst offenders. They had an extremely bright and worst of all pulsating led that was on when the device was in standby. Used to shine right through laptop bags and keep everyone nearby awake.
Fortunately that fad is somewhat over and manufacturers mostly learnt not to put in the brightest led they could source.
The situation still hasn't improved all that much. Just looking around I have electrical tape over the LEDs of my modem, router, computer monitor, soundbar, humidifier, fan, entryway intercom, thermostat. And these are all new devices.
The one that got on my nerves recently is a little bedside 3-in-1 wireless charger.
Has one of the brightest LEDs I've seen lately right on front of the charger whenever a device is on it. Why would they put a bright light on a night-stand accessory, and put it in the front where its shining right into your eyes as you try to sleep?
Or better yet, why have an LED on it at all in the first place? Any device I'm putting on it has its own charging indicator, I don't need the charger itself to have one.
Many toys can be physically dampened, but another way is throwing a resistor in parallel across the speaker. I did this with a Little People princess castle my daughter had when she was very young and it was quite a nice way to do it— same bright and unmuffled music when you put the dolls on the stand, but at about 20% the volume.
I much prefer two or three coats of black nail polish. It looks much nicer than tape, is more durable, and the light can barely be seen - just enough to see it when you want to. Like it should have been from the factory.
I use stickers designed for dimming LEDs. They’re almost like a thick window tint cut into various shapes. Dim enough to stop the LED from being annoying but you can still see its status.
A little more expensive, but they look a little nicer too.
You can buy a sheet of LED blocking stickers on Amazon for a few bucks. I keep some in my suitcase and leave every hotel room a little better than I found it.
When I needed to dim the backlight on a new bedside clock, I asked a local window tint company for a couple of pieces of offcut film. I'm glad someone had the idea to turn that into a business.
IME consumer electronics have gotten a lot better about this, but appliances and other things outside the tech sphere are still awful. My portable AC unit has a bright-as-hell seven-segment display for the temperature which shows "--" even when it's turned off!
This might just be amateur EEs doing their thing in an organization that doesn't constrain these aspects of the product. Data sheet says If(cont)=20 mA? Okay, 20 mA it is.
Most of my devices have had ways to turn them off.
Router has a button which disable all lights until it's pressed again, monitors have the setting in their menus.
The only device thats shining brightly in my home is a storage controller I've got in my home server, with no way of turning it off - or at least dimming it down
yeah my routers' LEDs are obnoxiously bright, luckily they have an option in the app to turn it off on a schedule. The super bright green LED in my smoke detector unfortunately does not have this option. Nor do the blue LEDs in my smart outlets...
I had the tenant before me install fake fire detectors once. Always a green flash every few seconds but that was the only electronics in there. I only noticed because after a few years, I never had to change the batteries, so I decided to check them.
When you move into a new place, always check they are real and work.
Also, shake the ABC fire extinguishers. The powder can clump in the bottom of the cylinder. Or replace them if they're 15+ years old - the local fire station will take them to use in their training classes.
My brand new Netgear router I just bought is so bright it's actually blinding if I catch a glimpse late at night so we might not be out of the woods just yet.
The pulsing macbook leds were horrible. I was in college then, living in dorms or other shared housing where my laptop was always in my bedroom overnight. I got in the habit of putting a dark shirt over it.
I still have electrical tape right now over the power LED on my computer case: it's a pretty bright white LED that pulses in sleep and as far as I know my motherboard won't let me turn that behavior off. I guess I could have just pulled the leads to the LED instead.
Now that I think about it, that was probably actually one motherboard ago and it might be different now... but the tape's working just fine so who needs to check?
Can't vouch for every model, but on all the ThinkPads I've owned every single LED can be disabled, including on the X13 I got last year.[1] This is actually one reason I buy ThinkPads. Other models I've had were T61, X270, E585, X280. I've heard the Carbon models are quite different from the T/X ones, so maybe you can't disable on those? That would be disappointing.
If you're on Linux the dot on the cover is /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::lid_logo_dot. See the other files in that directory for other LEDs.
I don't know about Windows off-hand because I don't use it, but the BIOS exposes the functionality so there should be a program to do it. In a quick search: https://github.com/valinet/ThinkPadLEDControl
FreeBSD doesn't support it, but quite easy to write a patch for it if you want it (I actually wrote a patch for this, but didn't really put the finishing touches on it and submit it as my previous one got no feedback at all, so *shrug* – I ended up just installing Linux again). Same for the other BSDs.
[1]: You need to compile your own kernel for the charging/power LED which wasn't needed on older models, because that's registered as "unknown LED" and protected behind a compile option. It's a tad annoying, but it's possible.
Was just about to post this - thought I was neurotic for taping over LED displays in the 2000s. My sight and hearing get annoyingly sensitive when I'm in bed at night.
Although there are a number of charging stations designed for IOS devices that have bright blue LEDs that you can't turn off. Some good number of these devices are going on someone's nightstand where a bright blue LED is exactly what most buyers don't want.
Remembering the blue power LED on my old 2007 Dell laptop, that thing would light up the whole room and yes, it did flash ("softly", at least) in sleep mode.
When blue LEDs first became available they screamed “premium” and “high tech” and it seemed like a race to put the brightest, most-blue LED possible in every device. That was hell.
Two additional ways to calm an indicator LED are with the modern self-laminating labelmaker tape:
* White tape -- Put 1 or more layers over the LED, to dim and diffuse.
* Black tape -- Use a pin to poke a hole through the tape, from behind, before putting it over the LED. (If there's 3+ LEDs, like on a network switch or server front panel, it will look neater if you measure the pitch of the centers of the LEDs, then use a ruler over the back of the labelmaker tape to match that with the holes. If the back of the tape has two strips you peel off to expose the adhesive, you can use that as a guide for keeping each hole level.)
You could also put black tape over white, but I haven't had to do that so far.
> Depending on the neighbours, may be asking for more trouble
Idk, I’d consider it highly provocative if a neighbour installed anything on or tampered with my property without not only my permission but even the decency of notification. At that point, they not only lose the benefit of doubt but the benefit of civility since I’m not sure what other social conventions and laws they may be comfortable casually violating.
OTOH, if you talk about it first, then you forfeit the option to do the sticker thing later, because then the neighbor will know it was you who tampered with device. If you do it like OP did, then the neighbor will not be sure who was responsible, if anyone at all - they might assume they're just imagining things, or not even notice at all, because they're not paying attention. Asking first is a guaranteed way to make them pay attention.
Not advocating any course of action, just gaming out the options a little.
Exactly. People usually know their neighbors enough to know whether they'll get a reasonable response or not.
If the neighbor had antisocial personality traits (narcissism is most common), trying to talk to them would only trigger a conflict which cannot be resolved.
Yeah at that point you are almost obligated to confront the person who was trying to avoid conflict. Like, dude, just say something. Assuming the worst is a very bad habit and very antisocial.
People know their neighbors. Consider that the neighbor might have been known to be anti-social instead (e.g. had one of the subtypes of narcissism) and resolving the issue directly was more likely to lead to a satisfactory outcome for both sides than confronting them because they were likely to escalate / not let go.
Assuming the worst at first is a bad habit but assuming bad intent after a bad track record is established is healthy and helpful.
Umm, but didn't you already "casually violate a social convention" and perhaps a law or local ordinance when your green led shined through your neighbour's kitchen window? Then perhaps you should not complain, since you forfeited the benefit of civility by your own terms.
Sure, but we don't know that. Besides, it's becoming increasingly common to avoid confrontation. A lot of people might consider it too much trouble because they don't know their neighbors. If you don't go in angry/"swinging" then people are usually pretty reasonably
Flash brights at them, as you would do with anyone else. I drive a lifted 4x4 and through honest oversight failed to re-adjust headlights after the lift.
Just took a few people flashing brights at me to make me realize and do the (very easy) adjustment to proper specs.
Doesn’t solve people behind you, but it’s not like they’re going to pull over and adjust anyway. Flash brights and consider it a favor to the person in front of the offender.
Telling people they're doing something annoying / dangerous / etc is surprisingly effective. Ask the person smoking next to you to move downwind. Ask the neighbor next door to turn down the TV. Ask the tourist in public transport to move their suitcase so it doesn't block the door. Works every time, most of the time.
But yeah, it's kind of shocking how often people are like "I hate this thing that person is doing" and I'm like "Have you asked them to stop?" and they haven't. Just... ask? Worse case scenario they say no and you're in the same spot you were.
People prefer to avoid rejection because if you get denied, depending on stability of your self-esteem and feeling of security, you may enter a new reality where you are inconsequential, not loved/respected, and so on. It may end up being a vicious loop of self-fulfilling prophecies and self-hate.
Avoiding such negative consequences of rejection may require a confrontation and possibly very expensive dental treatment (or sponsoring one for the victim of your assault, which it may be interpreted as if you win even if you do not hit first) when it is between two men, and other concerns for personal safety if it is a woman against a man.
(Anecdotally, unfamiliar women seem to have less of an issue asking each other to change their behaviour this way, as do men asking women.)
So, it is more preferable to not complain and instead raise your social status such that you do not come in contact with those people (either real status or at least imagined one, through bottled-up contempt towards those rubes or whatever offending term the context calls for).
I’m not saying it is ideal, just describing why it seems pretty to me obvious how person A would often rather not “simply” ask person B to stop doing something or change something to accommodate person A.
People hate(d) teslas for a while because software updates reset their headlight angle and made them blind everyone, and recalibrating was apparently a bastard at the time
What kind of car do you drive? It’s highly likely if your vehicle is low-slung that the pickup is not using high beams, just its regular lights, but the height difference means they shine straight in your eyes.
Similar to the effect when an oncoming car is cresting a small hill and the headlight angle of incidence changes to impact your eyes
If you mean rear extra bright red lights those are for fog to prevent being rear-ended. If there was no fog it is illegal. Whether or not it is enforced depends on location, agencies, priorities. Example usage would be in Bakersfield, CA there is a location that at times goes from clear to not being able to see lights 2 feet away nearly instantly. Beyond pea-soup fog. It's a very unnerving experience if one is not ready for it.
Those are standard equipment on many big rigs for backing up in the dark. I had the same experience as you when I forgot to dim my brights coming up on a trucker on the interstate at night!
Not to hijack your post with a PSA but I think you'll endorse it...
If you are building a product and it has any indicator lights please dim/diffuse/lightpipe them.
It seems to be a trend these days of ultra bright LEDs for indicators, I have so many devices I've either disconnected, dimmed or taped over the LEDs because it is so bloody bright.
Extra helpful if you can add a photodiode to the system that can adjust brightness accordingly. It costs effectively nothing in parts and should take any competent engineer less than 5 minutes to include it. Better, use multiple because redundancy is better! I wish my car had redundancy so it's entertainment panel could go back to adjusting from being visible during the day to not being blinding at night (it has brightness adjustments but that's insufficient for a car and living anywhere outside a major city)
For people doing software, press for the love of god just make that shit adjustable. Only fucking noobs hard code variables. Practicing good habits will help everyone, including you. Unless you got a serious reason not to, expose that to the users. Even if you don't think anyone will want it, I promise you, someone does. There's a lot of people and everyone thinks differently. So only lock down what needs to be locked down.
Unless you're trying to create e-waste or piss people off. Which in that case I only have two words for you and they aren't nice
Cheapest light pipe on digikey: 16 cents
Cheapest photodiode on digikey: 11 cents
Cheapest LED (obviously that annoying blue): 625 milli cents!
Part costs matter! Its not just the BOM, its the NRE from the increased complexity. Im not saying saying its OK, just that its inevitable considering the economic conditions.
I do board level designs and drop down LEDs. If you are not specialising in indicators, its hard to visualise how bright 10mA through your diode is going to be. Add to this that sometimes you never even see the thing you designed!
On DigiKey the cheapest is $0.125[0]. On Alibaba I can find much cheaper, including less than penny [1,2]. Now pretend with me that you're building in lots. You're going to get cheaper than Alibaba, though maybe not by much.
> I do board level designs and drop down LEDs. If you are not specialising in indicators, its hard to visualise how bright 10mA through your diode is going to be.
I think if it is annoying enough that at presumably >10m away it can keep the gp awake you don't really need to be that precise in your measurement. It's basically way too bright.
But if you want to get creative you could use the diodes in the circuit or even your led if you'll blink it. But that last one doesn't tell you the led brightness, only ambient.
The digikey costs are more (I quoted qty=1 prices though), its the ratio between the component types which is more interesting though.
I think annoying at 10m is sufficient power to require a 'power' LED, so that shouldnt be hard to avoid in a design I would agree. Annoying in your kitchen however is much harder to eyeball a value for (excuse the pun).
Yet on the unit I linked it is $0.14 per. 2c difference, but hey, that's a full photodiode on Alibaba.
A big part of the assumption that I was making in my original comment is that you're mass producing devices, not treating it as a hobby project. I agree, the constraints are very different in these two settings. A major difference is the cost/ratio of parts to other costs/time. In mass production the price per part is going to approach <$0.01 for standard COTS parts. Same reason Alibaba has them for so cheap (which doesn't include shipping)
> Annoying in your kitchen however is much harder to eyeball a value for (excuse the pun).
Yes, I agree with this. Though In that setting I think you may be able to dual use the LED. Periodically blink it to detect ambient light. You can be pretty rough with this frequency and your accuracy level. But the best solution is always adding some little POT so it can be adjusted. It adds a little cost and design time, but if you're actually selling products that's very likely going to be a inconsequential amount of time and inconsequential cost.
*BUT* it is something the bureaucrats will be able to look at and say that they need to remove it because at scale it will save "a lot of money." But does it? I'm unconvinced. To me it seems to just make the consumers more upset and annoyed. Sure, you might have saved the company $100k because you are producing 10M units, but I'm pretty confident most consumers would rather pay $0.10 to have that part. The bigger problem might be a Lemon Market type of problem where consumers don't actually know/realize they want such a feature at time of purchase but randomly and intermittently realize it over the next week or couple years. It never gets priority thought because there's usually other things to complain about and well then we need to have a larger conversation about if we're doing our jobs as engineers. Are we actually providing value to people with the products we make? Can we take pride in our work? You may be making something dumb, but can you honestly tell yourself "I made the best thing I could"?
The business people need pushback because they don't care about the product, they only care about the profits. That's part of your job as an engineer. Because your job as an engineer isn't to be concerned with the profits, it is to be concerned with the product. Your engineering managers are the bridge, not you the engineer. And a good engineering manager doesn't fully align with the business people either. Because when push comes to shove you have to decide between either: 1) sacrificing the product in favor or profit or 2) sacrificing profits in favor of the product. As an engineer, your job is to have the latter.
This is actually one of the best things that Apple did with their devices (except a few like the MacBook MagSafe) that PC users with their 1000 lights on everything just don't get.
Hey now, don't blame us PC users. It's almost impossible to buy decent hardware that isn't RGB`d up the wazoo. Do I want all that crap lighting? No. Do I have a choice? No.
So the LED on these generators is intended to signal issues with the machine to the property owner. The green sticker might be fine at first glance (i.e., when the machine is healthy), but when it switches to yellow (routine maintenance alert) or red (will not autostart due to fault), the owner might not notice.
If my neighbor had come to me saying my genset indicator light was annoying them I would have marched right out with side cutters and removed it. It's a pity that people can't just talk to each other rather than having to resort to vigilante stickering.
If you want more "human drama" read up on Hong Kong protesters' extensive use of lasers against police and security cameras. A powerful enough laser can pretty quickly render a security camera unusable. Ofc it can also blind someone (even indirectly looking at the beam) quite easily
A lot of helicopters today are being used to harass entire neighborhoods where complaints to local government go completely unresolved, so I can emphasize with that situation, not that I'd ever do something that stupid.
Its not uncommon to have them hovering for 1-2 hours straight 3-7 times a week, every week, at times with no active calls on the community police dashboard almost entirely between 11pm and 4am, often less than 1000 feet in altitude (high dBs enough to shake windows).
That aside, using a helicopter as a broadcast mechanism over a loudspeaker to a neighborhood is entirely unacceptable during hours people normally sleep.
Everyone is complaining and they've been doing that at least 3 years now.
How many times can you hear, "Missing person, or Felony Suspect", black shirt, denim pants, black suspect, call 911", or "suspicious person, black hoodie, call 911", before they lose all credibility. Around 10?
It seems really racist too, always hispanic or black, where the descriptions provided apply to most if not all people of those demographics.
Makes the average person feel like we live in a police state without due process or a rule of law when the only means to resolve is front-of-line blocked through local government which ignores complaints.
I shouldn't be hearing this at 2am regularly, some people work.
Seems an awfully extravagant use for extended periods of time. The hourly cost of operating a helicopter, particularly a turbine ship, is very high, several hundred per hour.
We're near a non-military regional airport. Apparently the military likes the airspace above our neighborhoods to train Blackhawk crews. IDK which branch because the craft have zero insignia. Flightradar24 only id's them as Blackhawks.
They fly 1-3 at a time in a several mile loop. The parade begins late afternoon and ends at 10pm. I'm grateful we don't get the giant all-night FU, that the GP gets from their local LEO.
But it costs the individuals nothing, and it sends a strong “we are watching you” message to the undesirables. Dystopian AF but I’m sure they rationalize somehow.
Sure but this is in the category of "I decided to shoot at the plane with my gun" type logic. What possible outcome is someone expecting from aiming a high power laser at an aircraft expecting?
Like the top-end of that is "after considerable discussion they abort whatever expensive activity they are engaged in and return to base". Literally everything else ranges from "inflicting grevious bodily harm" to "mass casualty event".
The gravity of the crime to the one that commits it is lessened by the ease of committing that crime. Brutally stabbing someone to death is heinous because the person commiting that crime had to get up and personal with their victim and the weapon and the act. Meanwhile, if I angle my foot down by 10 degrees while in my car, I'm speeding, and hardly anyone considers that a reprehensible act that should ruin my life forever. The problem with lasers is there's no gravitas to them. They can be powerful and dangerous af, and barely make a sound. And they're way too easy to get off eBay. Shooting an RPG at a airplane... nevermind how big and heavy one is, how would I even get one? Operating one is non-trivial, too. Because a laser is a simple pushbutton to complete the circuit and turn it on, to the uncareful, and impulsive, you can commit a felony before your brain comprehends that it's even a crime in the first place. You have to really think things through before doing them an unfortunately not everyone is blessed with a brain that has that capability. I don't say this to excuse someone hurting other people, but to promote laser education.
I do consider excessive speeding as reprehensible. A little over, fine, whatever, but there's a threshold where it becomes dangerously reckless.
But otherwise I agree. Someone might not consider just how dangerous a laser pointer is. I do hope they know how dangerous their car is though.
I understand the frustration but in the case of aircraft, that's a nope-not-ever. Even a 50mw handheld can wreak havoc on night vision equip. Put away lasers until they're gone.
A larger but somewhat different issue is that pilots have some obligation to report laser sightings. Most reports are beams waving elsewhere and not striking their aircraft.
But even those sightings are an issue because officials commonly (and misleadingly) present the stats as if they were all aircraft strikes. News orgs repeat the claims without vetting.
Generally, I treat handhelds of >1W with weapon-ish caution. I won't point them in a direction where people are likely to be.
I have an LEP light and I'm more flexible with that but I still keep it off of moving objects.
For nightly walks, I carry a 21k lumen LED torch that helps with oncoming highbeams. The highest setting is a reasonable response to lightbars.
It's amazing to see how people are getting thrown to prison for years in the US and the same criminals getting suspended prison time/community service in the UK.
"They try to build a prison for you and me, oh baby you and me" ;)
Arecibo's radar had a EIRP of up to terawatts. They were basically pinging space for asteroids etc. It feels a lot like using lasers at a helicopter kind of thing. Quiet and suddenly a sharp pulse.
The cables snapped at some point. These things were tough, able to last decades. This whole thread made me think aliens cut it.
The US military doesn't even use laser pointers much any more. Maybe for pointing at a map during a briefing, but not for pointing at the enemy. Single-pulse range finders, yes. Continuous laser designators are "Hi, I'm an enemy, kill me now." They were more popular in the 1980s before everybody else got IR sensing technology.
True, but I think this post is for a more general audience. Where continuous (and visible) lasers are still found on many things, including weapons.
It's also worth mentioning that the power rating in many commercial laser pointers should not be considered reliable. It's also possible to overdrive them. I'll put out this way, in my undergrad I spent a lot of time in the optics lab and the post doc had a fun story about where she was working with IR lasers. Basically it was "There's light! Yay! It's working! ... oh fuck! There's VISIBLE light! I'm burning my eyeballs!" It's easy to do some serious damage even with cheap electronics and expertise. The big problem is that laser damage happens without you feeling a thing. If you do feel it, you're probably getting seriously fucked up.
I’m confused, how would she have seen the IR beam? Wouldn’t she be seeing some other effect, or was this literally so powerful it was in that realm of two-photon absorption
A beam of non-visible radiation can cause secondary radiation in various ways. Hopefully it’s the dust in the air fluorescing or being heated. Black-body radiation from some part of your eye would be concerning.
Additionally human eyes are sensitive to near infrared. Go look at a TV remote in a really dark place. Check with your phone because your phone can see it. If you can't then check with the nearest child, they'll tell you.
You lose sensitivity to this bandwidth as you get older. But if it's bright enough you'll see it. It's not like there's a hard cutoff in your eyes detection, it decays and you're very insensitive to big bandwidth, but not necessarily blind to them
This may be due to changes in the sources used for remotes over time perhaps.
> There was a slight loss of -0.6 dB per decade in the cumulative threshold, but regression analysis showed the lack of a significant correlation between age and sensitivity. The intergroup analysis confirmed that infrared vision did not significantly differ between the four decades of life. The sensitivity level did not significantly correlate with visual acuity, spherical equivalent, retinal thickness or straylight parameter. The comparison of values measured at the seven locations showed a significant difference between the central (19.7 ±2.2dB) and the peripheral retina (22.5 ±2.4dB).
Now that you mention it, I do remember occasionally being able to pick up on a faint red light in the remote control back when I was younger. It was easier to see with a phone’s camera I think?
Yes, your phone will be able to pick up many of these lights. Though some controllers no longer use IR technology so if you don't see it this could be an explanation. If in doubt, check with a child lol.
Yeah, a beam of anything is asking for a beam-rider to find it. (Doesn't have to be a missile--wake-follower torpedoes are a form of beam-rider. They don't look for a ship, they try to follow a wake until they run under/into a ship. Passive so the enemy doesn't hear your sonar pinging, nor do sonar masking systems have any effect on it. The weakness is such torpedoes are very predictable and can be tricked into going for a towed decoy.)
Um, they used laser dazzlers pretty commonly in Iraq back in the 2000's? Soldiers fucking around with them would sometimes make the news: https://www.wired.com/2009/03/dont-lase-me-br/
I dug around on this web page and found outlinks to:
The "Stop Gangstalking Awareness Group", and especially this page about "Understanding Neuro Weapons." LaserPointerSafety has not evaluated the accuracy or usefulness of this group or their information. (Thanks to M.D. in July 2024 for bringing this to our attention.)
I confirm, not kooky at all, to those people who went through the gang stalking and other types of harassment.
I am a victim of such harassment, for me it lasted for about 2 years. I have done something bad and kind of deserve the treatment/tortures. There is no issue there.
But what got me suicidal is not the gang stalking itself but absolute lack of support from the so called "normal" people. Everyone thinks you are insane, even when I pointed out the obvious signs, showed proof or pointed to ongoing situations around me. People would still find it easier to outright dismiss those, usually coming up with "normal" explanations of things.
The scariest part is when your closest people start to gradually loose trust in you and start thinking you might be crazy too.
During that time I experienced absolutely no real support from the police or doctors, no one wants to listen to what you have to say, every one is busy with their own life. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. That's where the problem is.
BTW, the stuff I have experienced with the tech these creeps use is quite amazing if evaluated without bringing the emotions.
I have managed to survive that period somehow and since then I live "normal" uneventful life. But it always gets me when people start talking about gang stalking or electronic harassment and dismiss it outright as non existent. Just because you didn't experience it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist or didn't happen to other people.
The section above seems to explain why this article is written the way it is. Many people do experience sensations or see things that we otherwise cannot. They may have heightened sensitivity or could have a mental or neurological condition that produces these experiences. Some people may feel like they are going crazy seeing or hearing things that aren't actually there. Others feed into the experiences and believe they exist, like targeted individuals do. Someone that may be unsure if they are really seeing lasers or feeling indeterminate heating may and hasn't totally fallen down the DEW or TI rabbit hole could benefit from seeing something that basically says "I believe you're hearing/seeing/feeling these things, there may be medical explanation so you may want to see a doctor."
Was interested in this also but hardly any comments. Maybe we're the only paranoid ones?
Aside, I hate oncoming Teslas at night, feels like high beams permanently on. Effect seems more with Tesla. Flashing high beams at them does no good maybe it's all AI controlled or the drivers don't care.
It's ok. When someone finally weaponizes this for terror purposes, you probably won't have time to react before you're permanently blind. No sense worrying about it.
Someone was harassing me for < 10 minutes with an illegally-bright green laser once from an apartment tower. I was busy protecting my eyes, so I didn't dare try to see what unit was doing it. I pointed one of my home security cameras at the tower to ID which unit it was and have evidence. They never did it again though. I was a little disappointed because I was ready to go to war.
It's 3 mirrored surfaces at right angles, yes. However the purpose is to reflect the light back where it came from, and if you want to do that accurately over a significant distance the right angles have to be very precise.
Say the laser-toting miscreant is 100m away and you want to direct the beam back onto the hand holding the laser. For that you'll need the right angles to be correct to within around 0.05°. You're not going to do that by gluing mirrors together by hand. (That isn't to say that you couldn't make a useful one by hand, depending what you're trying to achieve. Just illustrating the precision calculation.)
The expensive prism reflectors gp linked are even more precise than that. They say 3 arcseconds, which is less than 0.001°.
There are corner reflectors placed on the moon for precisely measuring the distance to it. I bet those are really precise ones.
Also from the perspective of engineering, if I wanted to DIY an accurate corner reflector cheap then I'd use the property of returning laser beams to their origin over distance to do it. Make a jig to hold the three mirrors, make sure they can be fixed to the jig firmly and glue them up. Test the ability to return a laser over distance. Calculate (somehow...?) the error in the jig, adjust it, rinse and repeat.
Another idea for a far cheaper way to turn the tables: create some fine mist or dust in the air near the dot so that you can see the beam then take a picture, or even better a video where you move around a bit to create proper perspective. Then you or authorities should be able to better identify where the beam originated.
I think they’d need to be first-surface mirrors. Here are some 94% reflective acrylic mirrors. They are not outlandishly expensive. The high end glass ones are, though.
On a side note, this site reacts to window size changes (phone rotation portrait <-> landscape) with a really nice animated shuffle of the content. It's more visible on the "Sentences" page linked in another comment [0]. I've not seen that before, and certainly wasn't expecting it on a site that is otherwise pretty no-frills.
I was extremely impressed by that too. However, if you click on anything else in the sidebar then you get the animation again. I would prefer the visual treat to work once on initial entry into the site.
I suspect that Google would punish the screen rewrites that go on in this dance, there most definitely is layout shift and Google don't like that.
It's fascinating how much of this has to be devoted to "You are probably not seeing a laser. You are probably not being harassed by an organized group"
People who have delusions or people deep into their conspiracy theories have an insane level of insistence. They will refuse to accept "That's just not how that works" as an answer. It's scary.
There are diagnoseable mental illnesses that cause people to believe they are being targeted by sinister forces. They can't believe because their brain is malfunctioning.
I think what they feel is that they've had some experience, and they have an unshakeable feeling that it's deeply significant.
As Philip K. Dick said, of his own "laser pointer" incident: "If you were me, and had this happen to you, I'm sure you wouldn't be able to leave it alone."
Remember, that even for us healthy people, there's ultimately no objective answer to what's important or not. There may be more or less objective conditional answers (e.g. if it's important that I don't starve to death tomorrow, it's important that I eat), but those already assumes something is important. It has to bottom out in something that's important for its own sake, something whose importance can't be justified from something else's importance.
I think the "gangstalking" people have had experiences that their mind does not allow them to dismiss. They may be capable of accepting different explanations for why the experience mattered - but they can't accept that it isn't important, because it's somehow a root important thing for them.
In that very same Philip K. Dick essay, he more or less apologized for this, and listed up various different explanations that he'd tried. But he was lucky enough that his "ultimate importance" experience was basically pleasant. The genuinely paranoid people are not so lucky.
For those who are curious, this seems to be a link to the Philip K. Dick essay referenced in your comment:
https://philipdick.com/mirror/essays/How_to_Build_a_Universe...
"How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978). It holds some interesting parallels to the current times.
I had a friend experience a psychotic episode and suffer from delusions. It was more than just, "this is really happening to me". Any suggestions that we offered that they weren't able to refute became part of the delusion. "You're right, it's not the police breaking into my house, it must be the FBI!"
Parody subreddits have a bad habit of becoming serious.
I think the big surprise of the internet and subsequently the SCP wiki's focus on cognitohazards and "killer memes" is that the phenomenon in it's own way is an extreme version of a real danger - as a species we are really not well equipped for the information environment we've built, and it's prudent to tread very cautiously.
Sounds like the writings of a "targeted individual". Or "gangstalking". It's a more common phenomenon than people realize. There's even a subreddit community of individuals experiencing this
Every biohacking community ends up with a page like this talking about implants. "Yes, we implant ourselves with little devices that interact with electromagnetic radiation. No, you probably didn't have such a device implanted in you without your knowledge. If you did, it wouldn't be much use to your adversaries. Please seek psychiatric help".
> They will refuse to accept "That's just not how that works" as an answer.
For many people with mental illness, it's not a "refusal". That implies agency and deliberate choice from a properly functioning mind. When it's the mind itself that is malfunctioning, those kinds of verbs don't really work. The very definition of "delusion" is a thing you are compelled to believe even in the absence of evidence. If you are able to stop believing it, if you are able to not refuse to change your belief, then it's not a delusion in the first place.
Further, some people suffering in this way have anosognosia, which means not only are they delusion, but their mind is also incapable of perceiving its own malfunction.
It very much reminds me of discussions of people finding or seeing meteors falling. The consensus is, if you see the rock falling, then it is not a meteor.
Both the lasers and the meteors have in common the fact that there are far more false negatives than true positives.
The problem with such delusions is that people desperately need a physical explanation. Because the alternative is that they are seeing things that are not real, which is an even scarier thought than some organized group pointing lasers at you.
Nothing anyone sees is real. People aren't capable of observing reality directly. At best, their perceptions give them some information about reality, but they are never reality itself.
Regarding the mental illness aspect, Amal Graafstra wrote a page about this. He sells chips that you can have implanted (RFID, NFC, etc) and a lot of people end up contacting him after finding out about his business and ask for help with what they believe are chips inside them that have been implanted against their will.
Also a forum thread which continues to get constant activity. I feel incredibly bad for the people dealing with this. It is unfortunate that there is often absolutely nothing you can say to convince them that what they believe is occurring is not possible.
Wow thank you for this rabbit hole this is pure gold. It doesn't matter if they are Ill informed trolling or both, it's fascinating to read an endless argument between illogical and logical people. It's like trying to connect two lines in a 2D space without ever knowing they're not on the same Z plane..
> The line on the left is a trail of a flying insect, not a laser beam. It is a curved, short line segment.
That photo has some serious fisheye distortion going on though, so the line could very well be straight. Also, flying insects aren’t a common sight in freezing temperatures, and the photo clearly shows lots of snow.
Not suggesting that it is a laser beam, just not convinced that it would be an insect.
Is there an effective anti-IR coating for eyeglasses like there is for UV? Seems like a good thing to have but a web search doesn't turn up much. It might interfere with facial recognition, but maybe that's a feature.
Any laser light strong enough to damage your vision, might also pass through a optical coating. Distance can attenuate the strength, but really the only defense is proper rated glasses for the spectrum.
Thin films of gold are reflective in the infrared and transparent in blue/green optical wavelengths. Gold can be applied to most surfaces by various physical vapor deposition processes in a vacuum.
For things like this (extracting precise computed data from unstructured blobs) I find that it's often more effective to ask your AI tool to provide a program (I usually ask for a HTML page with a JS form, or a bookmarklet) that can do the actual math.
Otherwise you're just as likely to be getting hallucinated answers based on the AI model's existing biases and training (if it's an American model, it might start telling you the sentenced convicts are young male and non-white even without looking at the data on the page).
I have noticed AI getting much better at correctly doing math than it used to be. Not perfect, but nearly so, and a far cry from this being required for most simple math calculations. (My experience is largely with Claude.)
I've heard that there's been experimenting around giving thinking models access to tools inside of the "thinking" part, so that e.g. calculations could use a Python interpretor, which would give the illusion that the model did the math correctly.
Not sure if it's just OpenAI or if Anthropic has tried this too.
They have that, but I have been reading that new models are so good at math already (solving complex math problems) I am guessing it's generally not needed?
There is a large conceptual gap though, between "solving a complex math problem" which is navigating through logic/reasoning, versus "correctly predicting the next token in the multiplication of 2 or more large numbers".
Eg. If we've already worked out premises that A is larger than B, and 2C is smaller than B, than you can easily compute the next token in the sentence "Therefore C is..."
versus computing 123,287,211 times 971,222, where computing the first token is non-trivial, but computing what comes after "11973" in the result is even less obvious. (it would be tremendously easier if you were predicting the result backwards, starting with the last digit).
There is some evidence that models actually "plan ahead" somewhat (something like guessing more than one token at a time, eg. when writing a line in a poem, the model has an "idea" of what the ending word will be) but there are limits to the reliability of that, vs. using a calculator tool.
This sounds to me like a person that was teased by some teenagers and went banana apeshit and started a movement because he couldn't find the mean kids that were shooting laser pointers at him in lieu of him calling the FBI and local police repeatedly about how he was, "being targeted by energy weapons."
My backyard neighbor installed a backup generator with a very annoying green led that shines right through my kitchen window. I hate HOA's and I don't live in one but I really lost sleep about this. One night I just went a back there and put a small green sticker on the plastic case. Still shines on but the annoying glow shines elsewhere. Inspection passed.
There was a time in the electronics world when bright, house illuminating leds first came about and manufacturers used them in place of the dull red/green indicators. Black tape everywhere. Macbooks were one of the worst offenders. They had an extremely bright and worst of all pulsating led that was on when the device was in standby. Used to shine right through laptop bags and keep everyone nearby awake.
Fortunately that fad is somewhat over and manufacturers mostly learnt not to put in the brightest led they could source.
The situation still hasn't improved all that much. Just looking around I have electrical tape over the LEDs of my modem, router, computer monitor, soundbar, humidifier, fan, entryway intercom, thermostat. And these are all new devices.
The one that got on my nerves recently is a little bedside 3-in-1 wireless charger.
Has one of the brightest LEDs I've seen lately right on front of the charger whenever a device is on it. Why would they put a bright light on a night-stand accessory, and put it in the front where its shining right into your eyes as you try to sleep?
Or better yet, why have an LED on it at all in the first place? Any device I'm putting on it has its own charging indicator, I don't need the charger itself to have one.
I’ve clipped the RGB lights from multiple computer fans I’ve bought. Gawdy and unnecessary, and sometimes you can’t find items without them.
Don’t get me started on kids toys that are too loud!
Many toys can be physically dampened, but another way is throwing a resistor in parallel across the speaker. I did this with a Little People princess castle my daughter had when she was very young and it was quite a nice way to do it— same bright and unmuffled music when you put the dolls on the stand, but at about 20% the volume.
>Don’t get me started on kids toys that are too loud!
V-tech have a lot to answer for. As do all well-meaning relatives who buy them as presents. Straight under the stairs they go.
I much prefer two or three coats of black nail polish. It looks much nicer than tape, is more durable, and the light can barely be seen - just enough to see it when you want to. Like it should have been from the factory.
I bought a sticker pack that does this. Still being able to see the light is pretty useful
Plasti-dip also works.
Does that dim the light or completely occlude it? (Both options would be handy in different situations.)
I use stickers designed for dimming LEDs. They’re almost like a thick window tint cut into various shapes. Dim enough to stop the LED from being annoying but you can still see its status.
A little more expensive, but they look a little nicer too.
You can buy a sheet of LED blocking stickers on Amazon for a few bucks. I keep some in my suitcase and leave every hotel room a little better than I found it.
https://www.lightdims.com/
When I needed to dim the backlight on a new bedside clock, I asked a local window tint company for a couple of pieces of offcut film. I'm glad someone had the idea to turn that into a business.
I think those are the ones. I’ve been working on the pack of them for years.
Very interesting and worldwide shipping for pennies! Thanks!
IME consumer electronics have gotten a lot better about this, but appliances and other things outside the tech sphere are still awful. My portable AC unit has a bright-as-hell seven-segment display for the temperature which shows "--" even when it's turned off!
This might just be amateur EEs doing their thing in an organization that doesn't constrain these aspects of the product. Data sheet says If(cont)=20 mA? Okay, 20 mA it is.
At least it’s pretty easy these days to increase the résistance of an SMT resistor (if you can find it).
(Just scrape it down a bit)
Most of my devices have had ways to turn them off.
Router has a button which disable all lights until it's pressed again, monitors have the setting in their menus.
The only device thats shining brightly in my home is a storage controller I've got in my home server, with no way of turning it off - or at least dimming it down
yeah my routers' LEDs are obnoxiously bright, luckily they have an option in the app to turn it off on a schedule. The super bright green LED in my smoke detector unfortunately does not have this option. Nor do the blue LEDs in my smart outlets...
The smoke detector is mandated by legislation in a lot of places. The premise being it can break, you don't know, and thus die.
Not a fan of LEDs, but I at least understand why this as it is.
I had the tenant before me install fake fire detectors once. Always a green flash every few seconds but that was the only electronics in there. I only noticed because after a few years, I never had to change the batteries, so I decided to check them.
When you move into a new place, always check they are real and work.
Also, shake the ABC fire extinguishers. The powder can clump in the bottom of the cylinder. Or replace them if they're 15+ years old - the local fire station will take them to use in their training classes.
New anxiety source: not that I will move into such a situation as yours, but that I do so and not remember to check.
I think I've used more electrical tape covering LEDs than I have for any other purpose.
My brand new Netgear router I just bought is so bright it's actually blinding if I catch a glimpse late at night so we might not be out of the woods just yet.
The pulsing macbook leds were horrible. I was in college then, living in dorms or other shared housing where my laptop was always in my bedroom overnight. I got in the habit of putting a dark shirt over it.
I still have electrical tape right now over the power LED on my computer case: it's a pretty bright white LED that pulses in sleep and as far as I know my motherboard won't let me turn that behavior off. I guess I could have just pulled the leads to the LED instead.
Now that I think about it, that was probably actually one motherboard ago and it might be different now... but the tape's working just fine so who needs to check?
My 2024 Lenovo Thinkpad inexplicably has that red light. Constantly fading in and out too. It could be my only reason not to buy a Thinkpad again.
Can't vouch for every model, but on all the ThinkPads I've owned every single LED can be disabled, including on the X13 I got last year.[1] This is actually one reason I buy ThinkPads. Other models I've had were T61, X270, E585, X280. I've heard the Carbon models are quite different from the T/X ones, so maybe you can't disable on those? That would be disappointing.
If you're on Linux the dot on the cover is /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::lid_logo_dot. See the other files in that directory for other LEDs.
I don't know about Windows off-hand because I don't use it, but the BIOS exposes the functionality so there should be a program to do it. In a quick search: https://github.com/valinet/ThinkPadLEDControl
FreeBSD doesn't support it, but quite easy to write a patch for it if you want it (I actually wrote a patch for this, but didn't really put the finishing touches on it and submit it as my previous one got no feedback at all, so *shrug* – I ended up just installing Linux again). Same for the other BSDs.
[1]: You need to compile your own kernel for the charging/power LED which wasn't needed on older models, because that's registered as "unknown LED" and protected behind a compile option. It's a tad annoying, but it's possible.
Oh that's perfect, thanks! Let me give it a shot.
Was just about to post this - thought I was neurotic for taping over LED displays in the 2000s. My sight and hearing get annoyingly sensitive when I'm in bed at night.
Although there are a number of charging stations designed for IOS devices that have bright blue LEDs that you can't turn off. Some good number of these devices are going on someone's nightstand where a bright blue LED is exactly what most buyers don't want.
Remembering the blue power LED on my old 2007 Dell laptop, that thing would light up the whole room and yes, it did flash ("softly", at least) in sleep mode.
When blue LEDs first became available they screamed “premium” and “high tech” and it seemed like a race to put the brightest, most-blue LED possible in every device. That was hell.
My electric toothbrush has a pulsaring led like that when charging. Which is especially annoying (in hotels etc.) because charging happens overnight.
That’s because the router and printer makers have bought all the superbright LEDs on the market.
That time is now
> small green sticker
Two additional ways to calm an indicator LED are with the modern self-laminating labelmaker tape:
* White tape -- Put 1 or more layers over the LED, to dim and diffuse.
* Black tape -- Use a pin to poke a hole through the tape, from behind, before putting it over the LED. (If there's 3+ LEDs, like on a network switch or server front panel, it will look neater if you measure the pitch of the centers of the LEDs, then use a ruler over the back of the labelmaker tape to match that with the holes. If the back of the tape has two strips you peel off to expose the adhesive, you can use that as a guide for keeping each hole level.)
You could also put black tape over white, but I haven't had to do that so far.
> One night I just went a back there and put a small green sticker on the plastic case
Did you try talking to them about it first?
Depending on the neighbours, may be asking for more trouble.
> Depending on the neighbours, may be asking for more trouble
Idk, I’d consider it highly provocative if a neighbour installed anything on or tampered with my property without not only my permission but even the decency of notification. At that point, they not only lose the benefit of doubt but the benefit of civility since I’m not sure what other social conventions and laws they may be comfortable casually violating.
OTOH, if you talk about it first, then you forfeit the option to do the sticker thing later, because then the neighbor will know it was you who tampered with device. If you do it like OP did, then the neighbor will not be sure who was responsible, if anyone at all - they might assume they're just imagining things, or not even notice at all, because they're not paying attention. Asking first is a guaranteed way to make them pay attention.
Not advocating any course of action, just gaming out the options a little.
Exactly. People usually know their neighbors enough to know whether they'll get a reasonable response or not.
If the neighbor had antisocial personality traits (narcissism is most common), trying to talk to them would only trigger a conflict which cannot be resolved.
Yeah at that point you are almost obligated to confront the person who was trying to avoid conflict. Like, dude, just say something. Assuming the worst is a very bad habit and very antisocial.
People know their neighbors. Consider that the neighbor might have been known to be anti-social instead (e.g. had one of the subtypes of narcissism) and resolving the issue directly was more likely to lead to a satisfactory outcome for both sides than confronting them because they were likely to escalate / not let go.
Assuming the worst at first is a bad habit but assuming bad intent after a bad track record is established is healthy and helpful.
It should be noted that trespassing near a residence at night, is often different than during the day. Where I live, at night it's criminal.
Where I live it’s criminal day or night, but certainly the likely reactions differ.
Yes, I'm not advising, just an idle thought.
Umm, but didn't you already "casually violate a social convention" and perhaps a law or local ordinance when your green led shined through your neighbour's kitchen window? Then perhaps you should not complain, since you forfeited the benefit of civility by your own terms.
Sure, but we don't know that. Besides, it's becoming increasingly common to avoid confrontation. A lot of people might consider it too much trouble because they don't know their neighbors. If you don't go in angry/"swinging" then people are usually pretty reasonably
This is more important, you have to give people a chance to rectify the situation.
Seems the authorities were here already.
What do you suggest I do about Ford pickup trucks with annoyingly high, bright high beams?
Maybe a light bar for the rear of the car and some reflective material for the sunvisor?
Flash brights at them, as you would do with anyone else. I drive a lifted 4x4 and through honest oversight failed to re-adjust headlights after the lift.
Just took a few people flashing brights at me to make me realize and do the (very easy) adjustment to proper specs.
Doesn’t solve people behind you, but it’s not like they’re going to pull over and adjust anyway. Flash brights and consider it a favor to the person in front of the offender.
Telling people they're doing something annoying / dangerous / etc is surprisingly effective. Ask the person smoking next to you to move downwind. Ask the neighbor next door to turn down the TV. Ask the tourist in public transport to move their suitcase so it doesn't block the door. Works every time, most of the time.
Doing so politely is effective.
But yeah, it's kind of shocking how often people are like "I hate this thing that person is doing" and I'm like "Have you asked them to stop?" and they haven't. Just... ask? Worse case scenario they say no and you're in the same spot you were.
People prefer to avoid rejection because if you get denied, depending on stability of your self-esteem and feeling of security, you may enter a new reality where you are inconsequential, not loved/respected, and so on. It may end up being a vicious loop of self-fulfilling prophecies and self-hate.
Avoiding such negative consequences of rejection may require a confrontation and possibly very expensive dental treatment (or sponsoring one for the victim of your assault, which it may be interpreted as if you win even if you do not hit first) when it is between two men, and other concerns for personal safety if it is a woman against a man.
(Anecdotally, unfamiliar women seem to have less of an issue asking each other to change their behaviour this way, as do men asking women.)
So, it is more preferable to not complain and instead raise your social status such that you do not come in contact with those people (either real status or at least imagined one, through bottled-up contempt towards those rubes or whatever offending term the context calls for).
I’m not saying it is ideal, just describing why it seems pretty to me obvious how person A would often rather not “simply” ask person B to stop doing something or change something to accommodate person A.
People hate(d) teslas for a while because software updates reset their headlight angle and made them blind everyone, and recalibrating was apparently a bastard at the time
What kind of car do you drive? It’s highly likely if your vehicle is low-slung that the pickup is not using high beams, just its regular lights, but the height difference means they shine straight in your eyes.
Similar to the effect when an oncoming car is cresting a small hill and the headlight angle of incidence changes to impact your eyes
Maybe a light bar for the rear of the car and some reflective material for the sunvisor?
I once came up behind a semi on a rural stretch of I-80 with my brights on. He hit me with a set of rear-mounted flood lights.
Probably illegal, but who's going to stop him? Plus, I got the message.
If you mean rear extra bright red lights those are for fog to prevent being rear-ended. If there was no fog it is illegal. Whether or not it is enforced depends on location, agencies, priorities. Example usage would be in Bakersfield, CA there is a location that at times goes from clear to not being able to see lights 2 feet away nearly instantly. Beyond pea-soup fog. It's a very unnerving experience if one is not ready for it.
No. Not red lights. Flood lights. Like you'd have to light up your backyard.
Those are standard equipment on many big rigs for backing up in the dark. I had the same experience as you when I forgot to dim my brights coming up on a trucker on the interstate at night!
Put tennis balls between your washer and the back windshield with a visible note "back off or feel my balls"
Night driving glasses. They don't reduce the lumens per se, but they reduce the blue light, leaving a yellow light which is not as headache inducing.
https://www.eagleeyes.com/collections/night-driving
Green stickers
Not to hijack your post with a PSA but I think you'll endorse it...
If you are building a product and it has any indicator lights please dim/diffuse/lightpipe them.
It seems to be a trend these days of ultra bright LEDs for indicators, I have so many devices I've either disconnected, dimmed or taped over the LEDs because it is so bloody bright.
Extra helpful if you can add a photodiode to the system that can adjust brightness accordingly. It costs effectively nothing in parts and should take any competent engineer less than 5 minutes to include it. Better, use multiple because redundancy is better! I wish my car had redundancy so it's entertainment panel could go back to adjusting from being visible during the day to not being blinding at night (it has brightness adjustments but that's insufficient for a car and living anywhere outside a major city)
For people doing software, press for the love of god just make that shit adjustable. Only fucking noobs hard code variables. Practicing good habits will help everyone, including you. Unless you got a serious reason not to, expose that to the users. Even if you don't think anyone will want it, I promise you, someone does. There's a lot of people and everyone thinks differently. So only lock down what needs to be locked down.
Unless you're trying to create e-waste or piss people off. Which in that case I only have two words for you and they aren't nice
You don't even need to do that. You can measure ambient light with the LED, using it as a photodiode
The sane one that's on? Is that light constant or blinking?
You'd measure when the LED is off, but you could do this many times a second
To reply to this and the above comment:
Cheapest light pipe on digikey: 16 cents Cheapest photodiode on digikey: 11 cents Cheapest LED (obviously that annoying blue): 625 milli cents!
Part costs matter! Its not just the BOM, its the NRE from the increased complexity. Im not saying saying its OK, just that its inevitable considering the economic conditions.
I do board level designs and drop down LEDs. If you are not specialising in indicators, its hard to visualise how bright 10mA through your diode is going to be. Add to this that sometimes you never even see the thing you designed!
But if you want to get creative you could use the diodes in the circuit or even your led if you'll blink it. But that last one doesn't tell you the led brightness, only ambient.
[0] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/harvatek-corporat...
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1-4V-20-30-45-60_6253...
[2] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/JST3-3MM-receiver-pho...
The digikey costs are more (I quoted qty=1 prices though), its the ratio between the component types which is more interesting though.
I think annoying at 10m is sufficient power to require a 'power' LED, so that shouldnt be hard to avoid in a design I would agree. Annoying in your kitchen however is much harder to eyeball a value for (excuse the pun).
A big part of the assumption that I was making in my original comment is that you're mass producing devices, not treating it as a hobby project. I agree, the constraints are very different in these two settings. A major difference is the cost/ratio of parts to other costs/time. In mass production the price per part is going to approach <$0.01 for standard COTS parts. Same reason Alibaba has them for so cheap (which doesn't include shipping)
Yes, I agree with this. Though In that setting I think you may be able to dual use the LED. Periodically blink it to detect ambient light. You can be pretty rough with this frequency and your accuracy level. But the best solution is always adding some little POT so it can be adjusted. It adds a little cost and design time, but if you're actually selling products that's very likely going to be a inconsequential amount of time and inconsequential cost.*BUT* it is something the bureaucrats will be able to look at and say that they need to remove it because at scale it will save "a lot of money." But does it? I'm unconvinced. To me it seems to just make the consumers more upset and annoyed. Sure, you might have saved the company $100k because you are producing 10M units, but I'm pretty confident most consumers would rather pay $0.10 to have that part. The bigger problem might be a Lemon Market type of problem where consumers don't actually know/realize they want such a feature at time of purchase but randomly and intermittently realize it over the next week or couple years. It never gets priority thought because there's usually other things to complain about and well then we need to have a larger conversation about if we're doing our jobs as engineers. Are we actually providing value to people with the products we make? Can we take pride in our work? You may be making something dumb, but can you honestly tell yourself "I made the best thing I could"?
The business people need pushback because they don't care about the product, they only care about the profits. That's part of your job as an engineer. Because your job as an engineer isn't to be concerned with the profits, it is to be concerned with the product. Your engineering managers are the bridge, not you the engineer. And a good engineering manager doesn't fully align with the business people either. Because when push comes to shove you have to decide between either: 1) sacrificing the product in favor or profit or 2) sacrificing profits in favor of the product. As an engineer, your job is to have the latter.
This is actually one of the best things that Apple did with their devices (except a few like the MacBook MagSafe) that PC users with their 1000 lights on everything just don't get.
Hey now, don't blame us PC users. It's almost impossible to buy decent hardware that isn't RGB`d up the wazoo. Do I want all that crap lighting? No. Do I have a choice? No.
Please forward this to the billboard advertising industry.
The entire advertising industry is cancer.
So the LED on these generators is intended to signal issues with the machine to the property owner. The green sticker might be fine at first glance (i.e., when the machine is healthy), but when it switches to yellow (routine maintenance alert) or red (will not autostart due to fault), the owner might not notice.
Yeah no kidding the lights are meant to indicate things
I can highly recommend aluminum tape or copper tape. Doesn't let any light through and super easy to apply.
If my neighbor had come to me saying my genset indicator light was annoying them I would have marched right out with side cutters and removed it. It's a pity that people can't just talk to each other rather than having to resort to vigilante stickering.
You ever think about not breaking the law by trespassing and just talking to your neighbor?
What happened when you talked to him about it and offered him the sticker?
One night I just went a back there and...
Expects vandalism or more serious crime.
...put a small green sticker
Ok, good engineer!
A long page of human drama at https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html, e.g.: "Suspended sentence, rehab for 55-year-old who aimed a laser pen at a helicopter after it interrupted his audiobook".
If you want more "human drama" read up on Hong Kong protesters' extensive use of lasers against police and security cameras. A powerful enough laser can pretty quickly render a security camera unusable. Ofc it can also blind someone (even indirectly looking at the beam) quite easily
Cameras can also be sensitive to invisible to human wavelengths. I remember this story from a few months ago:
https://petapixel.com/2025/05/20/lidar-lasers-on-volvo-suv-f...
It can also set off the alcohol-in-tube fire alarms
A lot of helicopters today are being used to harass entire neighborhoods where complaints to local government go completely unresolved, so I can emphasize with that situation, not that I'd ever do something that stupid.
Its not uncommon to have them hovering for 1-2 hours straight 3-7 times a week, every week, at times with no active calls on the community police dashboard almost entirely between 11pm and 4am, often less than 1000 feet in altitude (high dBs enough to shake windows).
That aside, using a helicopter as a broadcast mechanism over a loudspeaker to a neighborhood is entirely unacceptable during hours people normally sleep.
Everyone is complaining and they've been doing that at least 3 years now.
How many times can you hear, "Missing person, or Felony Suspect", black shirt, denim pants, black suspect, call 911", or "suspicious person, black hoodie, call 911", before they lose all credibility. Around 10?
It seems really racist too, always hispanic or black, where the descriptions provided apply to most if not all people of those demographics.
Makes the average person feel like we live in a police state without due process or a rule of law when the only means to resolve is front-of-line blocked through local government which ignores complaints.
I shouldn't be hearing this at 2am regularly, some people work.
> A lot of helicopters today are being used to harass entire neighborhoods
Where?
This is terrible behaviour on the part of the police.
An example of the solution being far worse than the problem.
Seems an awfully extravagant use for extended periods of time. The hourly cost of operating a helicopter, particularly a turbine ship, is very high, several hundred per hour.
We're near a non-military regional airport. Apparently the military likes the airspace above our neighborhoods to train Blackhawk crews. IDK which branch because the craft have zero insignia. Flightradar24 only id's them as Blackhawks.
They fly 1-3 at a time in a several mile loop. The parade begins late afternoon and ends at 10pm. I'm grateful we don't get the giant all-night FU, that the GP gets from their local LEO.
But it costs the individuals nothing, and it sends a strong “we are watching you” message to the undesirables. Dystopian AF but I’m sure they rationalize somehow.
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When you have a helicopter circling your house for hours, you do start to lose rational thought.
Sure but this is in the category of "I decided to shoot at the plane with my gun" type logic. What possible outcome is someone expecting from aiming a high power laser at an aircraft expecting?
Like the top-end of that is "after considerable discussion they abort whatever expensive activity they are engaged in and return to base". Literally everything else ranges from "inflicting grevious bodily harm" to "mass casualty event".
The gravity of the crime to the one that commits it is lessened by the ease of committing that crime. Brutally stabbing someone to death is heinous because the person commiting that crime had to get up and personal with their victim and the weapon and the act. Meanwhile, if I angle my foot down by 10 degrees while in my car, I'm speeding, and hardly anyone considers that a reprehensible act that should ruin my life forever. The problem with lasers is there's no gravitas to them. They can be powerful and dangerous af, and barely make a sound. And they're way too easy to get off eBay. Shooting an RPG at a airplane... nevermind how big and heavy one is, how would I even get one? Operating one is non-trivial, too. Because a laser is a simple pushbutton to complete the circuit and turn it on, to the uncareful, and impulsive, you can commit a felony before your brain comprehends that it's even a crime in the first place. You have to really think things through before doing them an unfortunately not everyone is blessed with a brain that has that capability. I don't say this to excuse someone hurting other people, but to promote laser education.
I do consider excessive speeding as reprehensible. A little over, fine, whatever, but there's a threshold where it becomes dangerously reckless. But otherwise I agree. Someone might not consider just how dangerous a laser pointer is. I do hope they know how dangerous their car is though.
> I do hope they know how dangerous their car is though.
It’s just a guess but the death toll from driving too fast is likely much higher than that from laser pointers.
Though people may know the risk and speed anyway.
Maybe its because comparatively a lot less people use dangerous lasers than drive a car?
I understand the frustration but in the case of aircraft, that's a nope-not-ever. Even a 50mw handheld can wreak havoc on night vision equip. Put away lasers until they're gone.
A larger but somewhat different issue is that pilots have some obligation to report laser sightings. Most reports are beams waving elsewhere and not striking their aircraft.
But even those sightings are an issue because officials commonly (and misleadingly) present the stats as if they were all aircraft strikes. News orgs repeat the claims without vetting.
Generally, I treat handhelds of >1W with weapon-ish caution. I won't point them in a direction where people are likely to be.
I have an LEP light and I'm more flexible with that but I still keep it off of moving objects.
For nightly walks, I carry a 21k lumen LED torch that helps with oncoming highbeams. The highest setting is a reasonable response to lightbars.
It's amazing to see how people are getting thrown to prison for years in the US and the same criminals getting suspended prison time/community service in the UK.
"They try to build a prison for you and me, oh baby you and me" ;)
all your taxes paid to wage the war against the new unrich
That hole page explains why aliens won’t come visit.
Arecibo's radar had a EIRP of up to terawatts. They were basically pinging space for asteroids etc. It feels a lot like using lasers at a helicopter kind of thing. Quiet and suddenly a sharp pulse.
The cables snapped at some point. These things were tough, able to last decades. This whole thread made me think aliens cut it.
The investigation pointed to lack of maintenance.
I have seen a crab brush his eye with one of his foldable mouth arms. We already have aliens. They are more weird than anything I saw on star trek.
>A South Australia Police helicopter checking on COVID compliance during a three-day lockdown [...]
Whew.
Fighting noise pollution with light pollution
Wrong. Noise affects everyone around. The laser only affects the source of noise.
And the people the helicopter crashes into after the pilot is blinded.
Excessive copter activity is abusive. In an ethical society, it is best followed by action-changing consequences.
The solution must never involve lasers.
Each of these observations stands properly on it's own. If we're making them compete, we've lost the thread somewhere.
The US military doesn't even use laser pointers much any more. Maybe for pointing at a map during a briefing, but not for pointing at the enemy. Single-pulse range finders, yes. Continuous laser designators are "Hi, I'm an enemy, kill me now." They were more popular in the 1980s before everybody else got IR sensing technology.
True, but I think this post is for a more general audience. Where continuous (and visible) lasers are still found on many things, including weapons.
It's also worth mentioning that the power rating in many commercial laser pointers should not be considered reliable. It's also possible to overdrive them. I'll put out this way, in my undergrad I spent a lot of time in the optics lab and the post doc had a fun story about where she was working with IR lasers. Basically it was "There's light! Yay! It's working! ... oh fuck! There's VISIBLE light! I'm burning my eyeballs!" It's easy to do some serious damage even with cheap electronics and expertise. The big problem is that laser damage happens without you feeling a thing. If you do feel it, you're probably getting seriously fucked up.
I’m confused, how would she have seen the IR beam? Wouldn’t she be seeing some other effect, or was this literally so powerful it was in that realm of two-photon absorption
A beam of non-visible radiation can cause secondary radiation in various ways. Hopefully it’s the dust in the air fluorescing or being heated. Black-body radiation from some part of your eye would be concerning.
Additionally human eyes are sensitive to near infrared. Go look at a TV remote in a really dark place. Check with your phone because your phone can see it. If you can't then check with the nearest child, they'll tell you.
You lose sensitivity to this bandwidth as you get older. But if it's bright enough you'll see it. It's not like there's a hard cutoff in your eyes detection, it decays and you're very insensitive to big bandwidth, but not necessarily blind to them
This may be due to changes in the sources used for remotes over time perhaps.
> There was a slight loss of -0.6 dB per decade in the cumulative threshold, but regression analysis showed the lack of a significant correlation between age and sensitivity. The intergroup analysis confirmed that infrared vision did not significantly differ between the four decades of life. The sensitivity level did not significantly correlate with visual acuity, spherical equivalent, retinal thickness or straylight parameter. The comparison of values measured at the seven locations showed a significant difference between the central (19.7 ±2.2dB) and the peripheral retina (22.5 ±2.4dB).
Source: https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2745068
Now that you mention it, I do remember occasionally being able to pick up on a faint red light in the remote control back when I was younger. It was easier to see with a phone’s camera I think?
Yes, your phone will be able to pick up many of these lights. Though some controllers no longer use IR technology so if you don't see it this could be an explanation. If in doubt, check with a child lol.
Yeah, a beam of anything is asking for a beam-rider to find it. (Doesn't have to be a missile--wake-follower torpedoes are a form of beam-rider. They don't look for a ship, they try to follow a wake until they run under/into a ship. Passive so the enemy doesn't hear your sonar pinging, nor do sonar masking systems have any effect on it. The weakness is such torpedoes are very predictable and can be tricked into going for a towed decoy.)
There are still a few laser designators and munitions that use them. Mostly LGBs, as far as I'm aware - JDAMs didn't eat everything yet.
For the benefit of everyone -- including me -- not knowing the meaning of those abbreviations, I looked it up on the Interweb.
LGB : Lyrically gifted brother
JDAM : Japanese digital art museum
Um, they used laser dazzlers pretty commonly in Iraq back in the 2000's? Soldiers fucking around with them would sometimes make the news: https://www.wired.com/2009/03/dont-lase-me-br/
I don’t know if you’re ready to hear this, but the 2000’s was two decades ago…
20 years is like 3.5 years in military years
HELIOS is currently on USS Preble.
I dug around on this web page and found outlinks to:
The "Stop Gangstalking Awareness Group", and especially this page about "Understanding Neuro Weapons." LaserPointerSafety has not evaluated the accuracy or usefulness of this group or their information. (Thanks to M.D. in July 2024 for bringing this to our attention.)
These are kind of kooky links: https://web.archive.org/web/20240509210655/https://stopgangs...
I confirm, not kooky at all, to those people who went through the gang stalking and other types of harassment.
I am a victim of such harassment, for me it lasted for about 2 years. I have done something bad and kind of deserve the treatment/tortures. There is no issue there.
But what got me suicidal is not the gang stalking itself but absolute lack of support from the so called "normal" people. Everyone thinks you are insane, even when I pointed out the obvious signs, showed proof or pointed to ongoing situations around me. People would still find it easier to outright dismiss those, usually coming up with "normal" explanations of things.
The scariest part is when your closest people start to gradually loose trust in you and start thinking you might be crazy too.
During that time I experienced absolutely no real support from the police or doctors, no one wants to listen to what you have to say, every one is busy with their own life. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. That's where the problem is.
BTW, the stuff I have experienced with the tech these creeps use is quite amazing if evaluated without bringing the emotions.
I have managed to survive that period somehow and since then I live "normal" uneventful life. But it always gets me when people start talking about gang stalking or electronic harassment and dismiss it outright as non existent. Just because you didn't experience it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist or didn't happen to other people.
Not kooky to the (very real) people who these kinds of things are happening to. Ask me how I know.
That's the problem with pages such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking where the author(s) try to make it sound like a mass-delusion, a mental health issue.
These are actual events, happening to actual American citizens everyday. And then, to top it off, we treat them like they're insane. It's wrong.
The problem is that some of the information about these events is dis-information which makes the entire thing seem made-up. It's not.
I am a gang-stalking victim. I am not delusional or insane.
in preparation for the shift to projected energy weapons,
"If you see light or feel heat from an unknown source"
the whole thing reads a little like a paranoia trigger.
I read it as sympathetic to the paranoid people who believe these things, and gently steering them towards medical help instead.
The section above seems to explain why this article is written the way it is. Many people do experience sensations or see things that we otherwise cannot. They may have heightened sensitivity or could have a mental or neurological condition that produces these experiences. Some people may feel like they are going crazy seeing or hearing things that aren't actually there. Others feed into the experiences and believe they exist, like targeted individuals do. Someone that may be unsure if they are really seeing lasers or feeling indeterminate heating may and hasn't totally fallen down the DEW or TI rabbit hole could benefit from seeing something that basically says "I believe you're hearing/seeing/feeling these things, there may be medical explanation so you may want to see a doctor."
Only the paranoid survive... I am going there.
What about LIDAR on self-driving cars?
I have heard that these damage cameras and I am curious as to whether they are equally damaging to eyeballs.
Do I need my tin hat or is there nothing to worry about?
Was interested in this also but hardly any comments. Maybe we're the only paranoid ones?
Aside, I hate oncoming Teslas at night, feels like high beams permanently on. Effect seems more with Tesla. Flashing high beams at them does no good maybe it's all AI controlled or the drivers don't care.
I had an infra red laser for awhile and I was always very very nervous of it. Damaging ones eyes with it was very very easy.
>"If you see light or feel heat from an unknown source"
"If you see the flash, it's already too late"
If you're repeatedly contacted by paranoid people who want help from you that you can't provide, you might write something like this.
It's ok. When someone finally weaponizes this for terror purposes, you probably won't have time to react before you're permanently blind. No sense worrying about it.
It's in the title itself! lol
Someone was harassing me for < 10 minutes with an illegally-bright green laser once from an apartment tower. I was busy protecting my eyes, so I didn't dare try to see what unit was doing it. I pointed one of my home security cameras at the tower to ID which unit it was and have evidence. They never did it again though. I was a little disappointed because I was ready to go to war.
Mirror
specifically a corner reflector.
I went and looked at those on Edmund and, oh boy, they are expensive—at least for the solid prism ones.
https://www.meetoptics.com/mirrors/retroreflectors/corner-cu...
This one is just a tiny bit cheaper.
* https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CN3KBMFW/
A corner reflector is literally just a couple of mirrors at a right angle.
It's 3 mirrored surfaces at right angles, yes. However the purpose is to reflect the light back where it came from, and if you want to do that accurately over a significant distance the right angles have to be very precise.
Say the laser-toting miscreant is 100m away and you want to direct the beam back onto the hand holding the laser. For that you'll need the right angles to be correct to within around 0.05°. You're not going to do that by gluing mirrors together by hand. (That isn't to say that you couldn't make a useful one by hand, depending what you're trying to achieve. Just illustrating the precision calculation.)
The expensive prism reflectors gp linked are even more precise than that. They say 3 arcseconds, which is less than 0.001°.
There are corner reflectors placed on the moon for precisely measuring the distance to it. I bet those are really precise ones.
Also from the perspective of engineering, if I wanted to DIY an accurate corner reflector cheap then I'd use the property of returning laser beams to their origin over distance to do it. Make a jig to hold the three mirrors, make sure they can be fixed to the jig firmly and glue them up. Test the ability to return a laser over distance. Calculate (somehow...?) the error in the jig, adjust it, rinse and repeat.
or even better use something like putty to hold your three mirrors together temporarily while you fine-tune the angle and then glue them solid
Another idea for a far cheaper way to turn the tables: create some fine mist or dust in the air near the dot so that you can see the beam then take a picture, or even better a video where you move around a bit to create proper perspective. Then you or authorities should be able to better identify where the beam originated.
yeah, you could build one with mirrors though
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector
Which if you do build your own, I highly suggest working with acrylic mirrors. Very easy to cut, and you don't have to worry about glass shards.
I think they’d need to be first-surface mirrors. Here are some 94% reflective acrylic mirrors. They are not outlandishly expensive. The high end glass ones are, though.
https://www.firstsurfacemirror.com/acrylic-first-surface-mir...
Phish has a helpful song explaining how to deal with laser ahrassment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YpLTljxq6M&list=RD2YpLTljxq...
On a side note, this site reacts to window size changes (phone rotation portrait <-> landscape) with a really nice animated shuffle of the content. It's more visible on the "Sentences" page linked in another comment [0]. I've not seen that before, and certainly wasn't expecting it on a site that is otherwise pretty no-frills.
[0] https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html
I was extremely impressed by that too. However, if you click on anything else in the sidebar then you get the animation again. I would prefer the visual treat to work once on initial entry into the site.
I suspect that Google would punish the screen rewrites that go on in this dance, there most definitely is layout shift and Google don't like that.
I see no such effect in Firefox on Android.
I see the effect in Firefox on Android...
It's fascinating how much of this has to be devoted to "You are probably not seeing a laser. You are probably not being harassed by an organized group"
People who have delusions or people deep into their conspiracy theories have an insane level of insistence. They will refuse to accept "That's just not how that works" as an answer. It's scary.
There are diagnoseable mental illnesses that cause people to believe they are being targeted by sinister forces. They can't believe because their brain is malfunctioning.
I think what they feel is that they've had some experience, and they have an unshakeable feeling that it's deeply significant.
As Philip K. Dick said, of his own "laser pointer" incident: "If you were me, and had this happen to you, I'm sure you wouldn't be able to leave it alone."
Remember, that even for us healthy people, there's ultimately no objective answer to what's important or not. There may be more or less objective conditional answers (e.g. if it's important that I don't starve to death tomorrow, it's important that I eat), but those already assumes something is important. It has to bottom out in something that's important for its own sake, something whose importance can't be justified from something else's importance.
I think the "gangstalking" people have had experiences that their mind does not allow them to dismiss. They may be capable of accepting different explanations for why the experience mattered - but they can't accept that it isn't important, because it's somehow a root important thing for them.
In that very same Philip K. Dick essay, he more or less apologized for this, and listed up various different explanations that he'd tried. But he was lucky enough that his "ultimate importance" experience was basically pleasant. The genuinely paranoid people are not so lucky.
For those who are curious, this seems to be a link to the Philip K. Dick essay referenced in your comment: https://philipdick.com/mirror/essays/How_to_Build_a_Universe... "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978). It holds some interesting parallels to the current times.
It's more than just importance though.
I had a friend experience a psychotic episode and suffer from delusions. It was more than just, "this is really happening to me". Any suggestions that we offered that they weren't able to refute became part of the delusion. "You're right, it's not the police breaking into my house, it must be the FBI!"
Reddit's r/gangstalking is where they meet. Yet another group that might benefit from therapy or mental help.
The kind of reinforcement they give each other is the same kind some people are now getting from chatbots instead.
Wait, that isn’t a parody sub?
Parody subreddits have a bad habit of becoming serious.
I think the big surprise of the internet and subsequently the SCP wiki's focus on cognitohazards and "killer memes" is that the phenomenon in it's own way is an extreme version of a real danger - as a species we are really not well equipped for the information environment we've built, and it's prudent to tread very cautiously.
Nope. The phenomenon is more widespread than people realize. Here's an Aeon piece worth reading about it
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders...
Sounds like the writings of a "targeted individual". Or "gangstalking". It's a more common phenomenon than people realize. There's even a subreddit community of individuals experiencing this
https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/
Here's a fascinating Aeon piece on the phenomenon
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders...
Every biohacking community ends up with a page like this talking about implants. "Yes, we implant ourselves with little devices that interact with electromagnetic radiation. No, you probably didn't have such a device implanted in you without your knowledge. If you did, it wouldn't be much use to your adversaries. Please seek psychiatric help".
This sounds interesting; got some links? Not to the psychiatric help pages, I mean, the pages about how they make their implants.
> They will refuse to accept "That's just not how that works" as an answer.
For many people with mental illness, it's not a "refusal". That implies agency and deliberate choice from a properly functioning mind. When it's the mind itself that is malfunctioning, those kinds of verbs don't really work. The very definition of "delusion" is a thing you are compelled to believe even in the absence of evidence. If you are able to stop believing it, if you are able to not refuse to change your belief, then it's not a delusion in the first place.
Further, some people suffering in this way have anosognosia, which means not only are they delusion, but their mind is also incapable of perceiving its own malfunction.
It very much reminds me of discussions of people finding or seeing meteors falling. The consensus is, if you see the rock falling, then it is not a meteor.
Both the lasers and the meteors have in common the fact that there are far more false negatives than true positives.
It's a very carefully-worded page from somebody who has clearly had to deal with a large number of people suffering from paranoid delusions.
"That's just not how that works" isn't an answer; it's a dismissal.
Who's convinced by "lol no ur stupid"?
The run-on sentence style paranoid people type is getting a lot more common online.
The problem with such delusions is that people desperately need a physical explanation. Because the alternative is that they are seeing things that are not real, which is an even scarier thought than some organized group pointing lasers at you.
Nothing anyone sees is real. People aren't capable of observing reality directly. At best, their perceptions give them some information about reality, but they are never reality itself.
Honestly, "That's just not how that works" isn't a very convincing argument.
If you can't explain why it doesn't work that way, there's no reason anybody should believe you.
Regarding the mental illness aspect, Amal Graafstra wrote a page about this. He sells chips that you can have implanted (RFID, NFC, etc) and a lot of people end up contacting him after finding out about his business and ask for help with what they believe are chips inside them that have been implanted against their will.
* https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/so-you-think-youve-been-...
Also a forum thread which continues to get constant activity. I feel incredibly bad for the people dealing with this. It is unfortunate that there is often absolutely nothing you can say to convince them that what they believe is occurring is not possible.
* https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/microchiped-or-frequenci...
Wow thank you for this rabbit hole this is pure gold. It doesn't matter if they are Ill informed trolling or both, it's fascinating to read an endless argument between illogical and logical people. It's like trying to connect two lines in a 2D space without ever knowing they're not on the same Z plane..
> The line on the left is a trail of a flying insect, not a laser beam. It is a curved, short line segment.
That photo has some serious fisheye distortion going on though, so the line could very well be straight. Also, flying insects aren’t a common sight in freezing temperatures, and the photo clearly shows lots of snow.
Not suggesting that it is a laser beam, just not convinced that it would be an insect.
Indeed, looks more like a falling snowflake
More dangerous are infrared lasers.
Is there an effective anti-IR coating for eyeglasses like there is for UV? Seems like a good thing to have but a web search doesn't turn up much. It might interfere with facial recognition, but maybe that's a feature.
Off topic: but in regards to UV protection, poly-carbonate(common in lenses) is UV-opaque. Completely clear uncoated PC lenses block most UV light.
https://www.apollooptical.com/material-transmission-data-gra...
Note the sharp drop-off in transmission for wavelengths shorter than 400 nm.
Any laser light strong enough to damage your vision, might also pass through a optical coating. Distance can attenuate the strength, but really the only defense is proper rated glasses for the spectrum.
Thin films of gold are reflective in the infrared and transparent in blue/green optical wavelengths. Gold can be applied to most surfaces by various physical vapor deposition processes in a vacuum.
Zenni sells one now, with privacy as a selling point
Smartphone cameras typically have IR filters, but no idea what the attenuation is and if the same coating would be sufficient.
What about visible lasers that lack an IR filter and have more IR energy in the beam?
They will at least trigger the blink reflex
Or UV
Some statistics from the sentencing page:
Median age 27 Male: 98% Female: 2% Youngest: 19 Oldest: 64 Median prison time: 12 months Median probation time: 24 months
All of the above were Copilot inferred. Don't know why I need to know the above, though. :-)
For things like this (extracting precise computed data from unstructured blobs) I find that it's often more effective to ask your AI tool to provide a program (I usually ask for a HTML page with a JS form, or a bookmarklet) that can do the actual math.
Otherwise you're just as likely to be getting hallucinated answers based on the AI model's existing biases and training (if it's an American model, it might start telling you the sentenced convicts are young male and non-white even without looking at the data on the page).
I have noticed AI getting much better at correctly doing math than it used to be. Not perfect, but nearly so, and a far cry from this being required for most simple math calculations. (My experience is largely with Claude.)
I've heard that there's been experimenting around giving thinking models access to tools inside of the "thinking" part, so that e.g. calculations could use a Python interpretor, which would give the illusion that the model did the math correctly.
Not sure if it's just OpenAI or if Anthropic has tried this too.
They have that, but I have been reading that new models are so good at math already (solving complex math problems) I am guessing it's generally not needed?
There is a large conceptual gap though, between "solving a complex math problem" which is navigating through logic/reasoning, versus "correctly predicting the next token in the multiplication of 2 or more large numbers".
Eg. If we've already worked out premises that A is larger than B, and 2C is smaller than B, than you can easily compute the next token in the sentence "Therefore C is..."
versus computing 123,287,211 times 971,222, where computing the first token is non-trivial, but computing what comes after "11973" in the result is even less obvious. (it would be tremendously easier if you were predicting the result backwards, starting with the last digit).
There is some evidence that models actually "plan ahead" somewhat (something like guessing more than one token at a time, eg. when writing a line in a poem, the model has an "idea" of what the ending word will be) but there are limits to the reliability of that, vs. using a calculator tool.
...don't read to much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis_(novel)#Synopsis
I read and read and it totally reminded me of Valis
Sad to see these guides are needed.
This sounds to me like a person that was teased by some teenagers and went banana apeshit and started a movement because he couldn't find the mean kids that were shooting laser pointers at him in lieu of him calling the FBI and local police repeatedly about how he was, "being targeted by energy weapons."
...or you know your average Hacker News user.
what's up with the submit date? @dang
Apparantly their user name is ‘1970-01-01’
fantastic username
oh wow ahah
that’s the submitters‘ user name, not the submission date
great instructions for AI to learn
Someone pointed a laser at someone.
Just commenting to say I love your username. Then I opened your post history and its so funny lol way to go dude, got me on some funny rabbit hole.