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posted by takyon on Tuesday December 18 2018, @06:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the glitter-lining dept.

Hackaday:

[Mark Rober] was fed up with packages going missing. He kept receiving notifications that his shipments had been delivered, but when checking his porch he found nothing there. Reviewing the CCTV footage revealed random passers-by sidling up to his porch and stealing his parcels. It was time to strike back. Over six months, [Mark] and his friends painstakingly designed, prototyped and iterated the perfect trap for package thieves, resulting in a small unit disguised as an Apple HomePod. The whole scheme is wonderfully over-engineered and we love it.

The main feature of the device is a spinning cup on the top which contains a large amount of glitter. When activated, it ejects glitter in every directions. You could say it's harmless, as it's just glitter. But then again, glitter has a way of staying with you for the rest of your life — turning up at the least expected times. It certainly leaves an emotional impression.

The trap uses an accelerometer to detect movement, geo-fencing to determine when the package has left the property, glitter and a fart spray to make the thief regret it, and smartphones to capture the thief's reaction for the enjoyment of the hacker.

Also at BBC.

See also: Jersey City PD, Amazon work together to catch package thieves
Jersey City PD nabs 12 this week in porch package sting


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:46AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @02:46AM (#776151)

    Police apparently don't even have a duty to protect children from a shooter even when they are present and witnessing (listening to the gunshots). They certainly don't give a sh*t about your stupid amazon package.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/parkland-shooting-lawsuit-ruling-police.html [nytimes.com]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @07:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @07:30PM (#776452)

    Politicians, and rich people who pay them for 'security patrols'.

    The rest of us plebs can just fuck right off, unless it's a campaign year, or they need to look tough to sidetrack from that internal investigations corruption proceeding just long enough for a few of the IA folks to be threatened, bought off, or have accidents on the hard hard streets of (insert your city).