Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#61

Post by stevenicr » Fri, Jan 03, 2025, 6:34 PM UTC

kortilla wrote: post #40

stevenicr wrote: post #30

Pretty sure I saw a couple of party detection devices shown on some netflix airBnb creators show like 8(?) years ago. (show had a firehouse in DC revamp, then another episode with a california(?) 70's pad with 70s furniture, decor, pool.. definitely the kind of place you may want to party, yet the owners were hesitant to list it if they could not prevent that... I believe they used a combination of sound dB meters an…

Carbon dioxide* detectors, people don’t produce carbon monoxide

Thanks for the note! I tend to get all those things mixed up, I will try to remember this.

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#62

Post by giomasce » Fri, Jan 03, 2025, 9:12 PM UTC

zild3d wrote: post #52

giomasce wrote: post #46

The nice thing of intrusive sensors that sense things that are not sensed by your usual senses, like this, is that it's easy to saturate them while faking innocence. I.e., set up your laptop so that it does many scans and/or associations to the local WiFi, and then some light internet activity (the usual suspects: WhatsApp, Facebook, etc). The detector triggers, the landlord shows up to check what's going on, you sho…

what's the end goal? To convince the owner that the occupancy counter is malfunctioning for a couple days and then after that throw a big party? Maybe you can just ask if it's okay to host a party before renting..

Whose end goal? The tenant's goal might be, as you say, to convince the landlord that the device is unreliable, and cheat on the rent agreement. If you want to cheat, as I guess some people do (otherwise there wouldn't be need for a monitor), asking if it's ok to host a party isn't a good solution.

My personal end goal is speculation. Each time a technology is discussed it's pretty automatic for me to think about what are its weaknesses and strengths, and how its behavior can be subverted or the same thing can be used in unintended ways.

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#63

Post by dta5003 » Fri, Jan 03, 2025, 10:37 PM UTC

averageRoyalty wrote: post #49

dylan604 wrote: post #22

So what happens if I'm a tech nerd that has so many devices that I bring with me? Laptop, phone, tablet, streaming device, second phone because gotta keep work/life separate, and then spouse's phone, tablet, then 2.5 kids worth of tablets. Based on device count alone, we're partying like it's 1999.

Same thought. It's unlikely I won't have at least 4 devices just myself. I assumed some sort of thermal sensor would be used here, assuming one device per person is ridiculous.

Thermal sensor won't help without advanced smarts, those devices are hot too!

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#64

Post by amyfp214 » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 2:15 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #17

The new thing in Corporate controlled apartments is they have your apartment fully set up with remote telemetry, which also means they have WiFi Hotspots installed in all units. From there, they track things like the hot water tank, water in the sink, heating/cooling, etc.. I can see "PartySquasher" type technology becoming a feature in w/corporate controlled apartments. Mine is particularly intrusive (Park Place, Sa…

Gosh that's just awful. "Hi ghshepard, welcome home! Before we unlock your door for you, please watch this 30 second ad! Oh my, once a day you'll need to fill out a survey - what did you think of the ad?" "your commons room use is 5 minutes over the limit. you'll need to pay the $200 excess use charge, or you can upgrade to our UNLIMITED commons room plan, which lets you use the commons room for five hours a month"

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#65

Post by ghshephard » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

amyfp214 wrote: post #64

ghshephard wrote: post #17

The new thing in Corporate controlled apartments is they have your apartment fully set up with remote telemetry, which also means they have WiFi Hotspots installed in all units. From there, they track things like the hot water tank, water in the sink, heating/cooling, etc.. I can see "PartySquasher" type technology becoming a feature in w/corporate controlled apartments. Mine is particularly intrusive (Park Place, Sa…

Gosh that's just awful. "Hi ghshepard, welcome home! Before we unlock your door for you, please watch this 30 second ad! Oh my, once a day you'll need to fill out a survey - what did you think of the ad?" "your commons room use is 5 minutes over the limit. you'll need to pay the $200 excess use charge, or you can upgrade to our UNLIMITED commons room plan, which lets you use the commons room for five hours a month"

Even better - and I kid you not - the first notice I had that my door no longer accepted my key was when I came home one night and there was a new digital lock on the door. It was late, and thankfully I was able to find some details in my spam folder that let me get into my apartment that night.

They did the same thing to me a second time with the bluetooth connection to the apartment complex - and were very passive aggressive about let me know how to activate the application. Initially told me I had "a problem with email" if I hadn't properly read their single random-sourced mention of a new app I needed to install on my phone a couple weeks earlier that I had instantly dropped into a spam bucket as obvious phishing.

I really hate corporate apartment management.