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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @07:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 19 2018, @07:19PM (#776445)

    Different AC, but one of the best attorneys around here explains it like this:

    What we are basically asking you to do is to decide, how well did the plaintiff prove his case and then put it on a scale from zero to ten. Zero, you rule for the plaintiff and 10 you rule for the defendant. But what about the numbers in between? You have to round them to either zero or 10. Think back to when you were in school. Do you remember when your teacher taught rounding to you? I bet you know that you round to the nearest number, so 3 is zero and 7 is 10, when you round. Well, what about when it is exactly half way? The extra-smart among you already know that when you are exactly 1/2, exactly at 5, then you round that up to one. Well folks, that is what I want you to do. Put the case on a scale and then round to zero or ten.