How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb • Hacker News Board

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#281

Post by narohi » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:36 PM UTC

subhro wrote: post #211

barrkel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hotels with self catering and a door between living area and sleeping area are scarce on the ground and often overpriced. Even something as simple as a fridge with usable space, not packed with minibar stuff, is hard to find. Hotels aren't very comfortable places to stay.

I forget the exact chain, but wasn't Embassy Suites or Homewood suites (or some Marriott brand), was an exclusively, living room + dining + kitchen + bedroom setup? They were also much cheaper than typical JW Marriott, regular Marriott and similar hotels.

Residence Inn.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#282

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #267

TeMPOraL wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's people who break social contract. The sin of AirBnB isn't that they create those people where they didn't exist before. The sin of AirBnB is that they organize those people on a massive scale and put them in a position where breaking the social contract is the default behavior. Tourists are noisy and careless. That's to some extent forgivable - tourism is a leisure activity. Hotels and other legit tourism-o…

A lot of startup culture is about breaking the social contract for profit. "Value" is locked up in norms, but you can show up to a place, throw those norms away and make lots of money. Cutting down apple orchards to put in tract housing. Making employees contractors and gaming the system so they compete rather than cooperate. This pattern causes others to seek out norms that can bent for profit, so it has spread like…

Yup. That's why for the last few years I've been so outspoken about Uber and (less often) AirBnB - I view those companies not as just poisoning the spaces they work in, but as a general threat to the fundamental underpinnings of societies worldwide. This may sound extreme, but as you correctly pointed out - others see how successful those companies are, how much media praise they're getting, and try to copy them.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#283

Post by BurningFrog » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

rodw wrote: post #228

BurningFrog wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also something no one ever signed, and is a concept loved only by those benefiting from the current order.

I think I'm probably more pro-revolution that most, but c'mon, really? You really think that basic rules of human courtesy are the boot on the neck of humanity? We're talking about something much more fundamental than social norms you might call patriarchal or cis-/hetero-normative or anything like that. This is the kind of behavior that keeps you from getting punched. And most people are explicitly taught these beha…

I think people are calling the current collection of laws and regulations "The Social Contract".

You seem to refer to something else.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#284

Post by noxToken » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #239

fastball wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so the owner is potentially breaking the social contract by maybe allowing someone without respect for others to stay in their home (though ratings systems are generally used exactly to allow this type of vetting in advance). But the guest is not automatically breaking the social contract by staying in an AirBnB, which is what was implied by the OC.

The OC said, "the system breaks the social contract". > the owner is potentially breaking the social contract by maybe allowing someone without respect for others to stay in their home And a person walking around the gas station with an open flame is only potentially a fire hazard, because they may very well get lucky and not set any fuel fumes on fire. Reality doesn't work like that. You drop the "potentially" once…

I guess I feel this way, because I feel a small bit of responsibility towards my neighbors. Renting out a place is not inherently a violation of a social contract.

> Reality doesn't work like that. You drop the "potentially" once the risk becomes predictably high. The owner is breaking the social contract by putting their neighbors at very high risk of dealing with guests who don't respect other people.

A flood of legitimate complaints about poor guest behavior would likely make me stop - i.e. the pattern is now predictably high enough to make a logical conclusion. I hope that my neighbors would be courteous enough to do the same.

> But AirBnB should know better than enabling this problem in the first place.

I think someone else touched on this, but I have a feeling that the location attracts different types of guests. Beaches are a great example. The surrounding area is a good indicator if the beach is a party beach or more oriented for family vacations. The former typically has brighter lights, more bars, clubs, and places open later. Family-friendly beaches usually shut down activity around 10 or 11 save for the corner store that's open later. I bet the Airbnb guest behavior reflect this as well.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#285

Post by rags2riches » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #96

pentae wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the Dutch come up with a very fair and reasonable compromise.

>> Of course the Dutch come up with a very fair and reasonable compromise. Why ? what's different about dutch culture?

I associate the Netherlands with pragmatic and sensible, live and let live kind of policies for things like sex, drugs, traffic, squatting. In my mind it's similar to Denmark. I think it's a common association but I don't know how it would hold up to scrutiny.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#286

Post by dsl » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

lnsru wrote: post #13

dsl wrote: post #2

If you are concerned about cameras in Airbnbs, consider picking up a camera detector off Amazon for ~$30. They are basically a ring of super bright LEDs with a colored lens in the middle you put up to your eye and scan around the room. The light reflects off the curved glass of the lens and the filter helps you see it. The less effective but impromptu version of this is just holding a super bright flashlight between…

Could this be improved creating an app for smartphones? They have light source and camera with zoom, so suspicious reflections can be identified for manual inspection later. Probably integrated WiFi scanner also doable. Is there market for this?

Not really. White light doesn't work as well as flashing red and green.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#287

Post by Fins » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

ryanmarsh wrote: post #266

TeMPOraL wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the hotel cabal. "Hotel cabal" is bullshit. Slightly less bullshit than Uber's "taxi mafia", but still a steaming pile of bovine excrement. AirBnB is a multinational corporation. It's displacing not just large hotel chains, but also all the local legal forms of short-term accommodation - small hotels, hostels, motels, BnBs, etc. It really bewilders me that people have fallen for the same reality-inverting marketing…

If you can’t see the harm in a few companies owning the vast majority of hotel rooms (under many brands) then I don’t know how we can have a productive discussion about this. Having personally made “status” in the various hotel cabal loyalty programs, and having used AirBnb/VRBO/HomeAway/etc... many many times as well. I say with confidence that the hotel chains have negative externalities that exceed those of the va…

Yeah, I absolutely can see how someone who pays (sometimes living) wage to lots of people, pays taxes, obeys the law, and generally does not push costs on bystanders would be an evil cabal in the VC-fueled SV bubble!

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#288

Post by dsl » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #85

Tade0 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To that I raise you this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_junction_detector Expensive, but surely there's someone providing such a service nearby?

That will basically pick up every piece of electronic equipment in the room. Given that cameras can be hidden in them too, and that you'd have to take apart each one to be sure, I don't think a NLJD will tell you much. They were developed at a time when electronic equipment was far less common, so the presence of electronics was more suspicious; now, you can come across things like deeply embedded RFID tags (only use…

You are correct, they pick up a lot. But depending on the type of engagement, you just end up taking apart every single thing with a circuit in it anyway.

There are defeats for nonlinear detectors, like a three port circulator with a resistor. In turn there are more advanced detection methods, but now you are getting in to tools not publicly available.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#289

Post by TeMPOraL » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #283

rodw wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm probably more pro-revolution that most, but c'mon, really? You really think that basic rules of human courtesy are the boot on the neck of humanity? We're talking about something much more fundamental than social norms you might call patriarchal or cis-/hetero-normative or anything like that. This is the kind of behavior that keeps you from getting punched. And most people are explicitly taught these beha…

I think people are calling the current collection of laws and regulations "The Social Contract". You seem to refer to something else.

It's both, really. A part of the social contract is that, unless there are strong extenuating circumstances, everyone is expected to obey the law of the land.

It's kind of like with sports. Both football and basketball are perfectly fine disciplines on their own, but the most fundamental rule of any game is that all players play by the same rulebook. You can't have a game if every player thinks they're playing a different sport.

Re: How to Find Hidden Cameras in Your Airbnb

#290

Post by dnh44 » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

ianopolous wrote: post #162

voidwtf wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that ‘people’ break the social contract. These people know where they are, what time it is, and mostly what’s expected of their surroundings. I think they just don’t care. I’m guessing it’s similar to anonymity on the Internet, where people behave differently because they don’t expect to have to face those they harm.

There are no repeated interactions: https://ncase.me/trust

I just wanted to leave a comment saying that I thought this link is worth clicking.

I suspect people who regularly “cheat” in business for example are acutely aware of the necessity of finding a constant source new interactions.

I also suspect that the stereotype of people from small towns being more naive than people from cities is also related to this.

It all seems kind of obvious to me as I write this post but I don’t think I’ve actually consciously directly thought about things on those terms until just now.