Chasing Cats • Hacker News Board

Re: Chasing Cats

#41

Post by developer2 » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 12:35 AM UTC

jacobsladder wrote: post #6

Why does this guy hates cats so much?

Chances are the cats are digging in his yard/garden/flower bed and leaving feces everywhere, or leaving dead animals in his yard. Outdoor cats are destructive pests; it should be illegal to allow pet cats to roam freely outdoors.

If you think it's "natural" and your cats should be free to roam, then you simply should not own cats. Your cat is not just "visiting neighbours". It is destroying other people's yards and killing off local bird populations. Yet you don't care, because it's out of sight and out of mind. All you care about is how you feel for allowing your cat to be free, while shunning all responsibility for how your cat is impacting others.

People who keep "outdoor cats" remind me of an acquaintance I once knew who owned birds with clipped wings, kept in tiny cages for 23-24 hours a day. Her reasoning for not finding it morally reprehensible? "Well these exotic birds cannot survive our Canadian winters, they need to be kept indoors!". So... you're buying exotic birds that do not belong in our climate, mutilating them, imprisoning them... and somehow manage to revamp the logic in your head to make yourself their savior?

I hope one day aliens come to our planet, put us all in 10x10 foot cages after severing our spinal columns so we can't walk, while making sure to let us know it's for our own good and has nothing to do with their own agenda. Or the aliens can come and cohabitate with us, but let their human-eating pets roam outdoors and deny any responsibility for those pets' actions.

Re: Chasing Cats

#42

Post by Qwertious » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 12:38 AM UTC

For some reason, I expected this to be a sequel to "Chasing Ice".

Re: Chasing Cats

#43

Post by 6502nerdface » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 12:43 AM UTC

I remember back when Slashdot was cool (i.e., 2002), there was a post [0] about a guy who built [1] a cat-door with attached camera and software that could detect whether the cat was carrying something in its mouth, and only allow the cat to enter the house if not.

[0] http://slashdot.org/story/24258

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010405175311/http://quantumpic...

Re: Chasing Cats

#44

Post by addled » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 12:46 AM UTC

And when he gets old and crotchety, he can train the model on children as well.

Re: Chasing Cats

#45

Post by zump » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 12:52 AM UTC

aab0 wrote: post #7

How necessary is the deep model there? It seems like a simple motion detector would work just as well since he doesn't mention using the lawn himself.

Yeah this guy needs to read more. Anything that could perform a simple matrix multiplication could be used.

Re: Chasing Cats

#46

Post by yoo1I » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 1:17 AM UTC

I like how he's training a neural network to, in turn, train the cats to avoid his lawn.

Re: Chasing Cats

#47

Post by garbage_stain » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC

developer2 wrote: post #41

jacobsladder wrote: post #6

Why does this guy hates cats so much?

Chances are the cats are digging in his yard/garden/flower bed and leaving feces everywhere, or leaving dead animals in his yard. Outdoor cats are destructive pests; it should be illegal to allow pet cats to roam freely outdoors. If you think it's "natural" and your cats should be free to roam, then you simply should not own cats. Your cat is not just "visiting neighbours". It is destroying other people's yards and k…

Hey, not all outdoor cats are pests! My cat is too incompetent to catch any birds and she just grazes on grass, so she's actually improving my yard by making it so I don't need to mow. Now if only I could get her to consistently eat it all to a certain height...

Re: Chasing Cats

#48

Post by bobwaycott » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 1:30 AM UTC

minimaxir wrote: post #23

reitanqild wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I read you correctly? Flagging first without reading in deed seems like abuse of flags. (Possible exceptions for very obvious offenders against site guidelines.)

Exact quote from the guidelines: > If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link.

I think the issue here is flagging a story without bothering to check the story. Excluding obvious dupes, the recent article posted for Greek sex escorts, and similarly irrefutable garbage, you have no defensible basis for flagging on title alone.

Real-world example:

There have been a couple articles recently posted with titles such as "Do X with all the things using this one weird trick". The articles were solid, informative, and on-topic, despite the otherwise regrettable titles. I even complained about the titles in the comments, but not the content. I could only make this judgment by reading the articles and denying my flag-hammer until I knew they weren't garbage.

I think we're disagreeing on a difference between the proverbial letter and spirit of the law/guidelines.

Re: Chasing Cats

#49

Post by anotherevan » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 1:56 AM UTC

mmanfrin wrote: post #27

A similar DIY approach to dealing with cats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goZ2DqMnaGc

Hadn't seen his second video! Here's his first attempt which is also quite entertaining.

https://youtu.be/uIbkLjjlMV8

Re: Chasing Cats

#50

Post by discardorama » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 2:03 AM UTC

I have a problem with my neighbor's cats deciding to pee and poop in my front yard. I decided to go with a few of these: https://www.amazon.com/PetSafe-KIT19001-SSScat/dp/B000RIA95G .

They worked reasonably well, but the cats have learned that if they run quickly past one, it won't hiss. So now I'm thinking of modifying them so they use an IR beam, and a beam interruption would trigger the hiss.

The eternal battle goes on.