11 ms·

If you are harassed by lasers

237 points by 1970-01-01 1y ago

donnybrook007 1y ago
great instructions for AI to learn
mrguyorama 1y ago
It's fascinating how much of this has to be devoted to "You are probably not seeing a laser. You are probably not being harassed by an organized group" People who have delusions or people deep into their conspiracy theories have an insane level of insistence. They will refuse to accept "That's just not how that works" as an answer. It's scary.
- jandrese 1y ago
  There are diagnoseable mental illnesses that cause people to believe they are being targeted by sinister forces. They can't believe because their brain is malfunctioning.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Reddit's r/gangstalking is where they meet. Yet another group that might benefit from therapy or mental help.
    - lawlessone 1y ago
      The kind of reinforcement they give each other is the same kind some people are now getting from chatbots instead.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      Wait, that isn’t a parody sub?
      - culi 1y ago
        Nope. The phenomenon is more widespread than people realize. Here's an Aeon piece worth reading about it https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders-those-who-hear-voices https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders...
      - XorNot 1y ago
        Parody subreddits have a bad habit of becoming serious. I think the big surprise of the internet and subsequently the SCP wiki's focus on cognitohazards and "killer memes" is that the phenomenon in it's own way is an extreme version of a real danger - as a species we are really not well equipped for the information environment we've built, and it's prudent to tread very cautiously.
  - vintermann 1y ago
    I think what they feel is that they've had some experience, and they have an unshakeable feeling that it's deeply significant. As Philip K. Dick said, of his own "laser pointer" incident: "If you were me, and had this happen to you, I'm sure you wouldn't be able to leave it alone." Remember, that even for us healthy people, there's ultimately no objective answer to what's important or not. There may be more or less objective conditional answers (e.g. if it's important that I don't starve to death tomorrow, it's important that I eat), but those already assumes something is important. It has to bottom out in something that's important for its own sake, something whose importance can't be justified from something else's importance. I think the "gangstalking" people have had experiences that their mind does not allow them to dismiss. They may be capable of accepting different explanations for why the experience mattered - but they can't accept that it isn't important, because it's somehow a root important thing for them. In that very same Philip K. Dick essay, he more or less apologized for this, and listed up various different explanations that he'd tried. But he was lucky enough that his "ultimate importance" experience was basically pleasant. The genuinely paranoid people are not so lucky.
    - fullStackOasis 1y ago
      For those who are curious, this seems to be a link to the Philip K. Dick essay referenced in your comment: https://philipdick.com/mirror/essays/How_to_Build_a_Universe.pdf https://philipdick.com/mirror/essays/How_to_Build_a_Universe... "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978). It holds some interesting parallels to the current times.
    - peddling-brink 1y ago
      It's more than just importance though. I had a friend experience a psychotic episode and suffer from delusions. It was more than just, "this is really happening to me". Any suggestions that we offered that they weren't able to refute became part of the delusion. "You're right, it's not the police breaking into my house, it must be the FBI!"
- armada651 1y ago
  The problem with such delusions is that people desperately need a physical explanation. Because the alternative is that they are seeing things that are not real, which is an even scarier thought than some organized group pointing lasers at you.
  - kragen 1y ago
    Nothing anyone sees is real. People aren't capable of observing reality directly. At best, their perceptions give them some information about reality, but they are never reality itself.
- munificent 1y ago
  > They will refuse to accept "That's just not how that works" as an answer. For many people with mental illness, it's not a "refusal". That implies agency and deliberate choice from a properly functioning mind. When it's the mind itself that is malfunctioning, those kinds of verbs don't really work. The very definition of "delusion" is a thing you are compelled to believe even in the absence of evidence. If you are able to stop believing it, if you are able to not refuse to change your belief, then it's not a delusion in the first place. Further, some people suffering in this way have anosognosia, which means not only are they delusion, but their mind is also incapable of perceiving its own malfunction.
- goopypoop 1y ago
  "That's just not how that works" isn't an answer; it's a dismissal. Who's convinced by "lol no ur stupid"?
- OkayPhysicist 1y ago
  Every biohacking community ends up with a page like this talking about implants. "Yes, we implant ourselves with little devices that interact with electromagnetic radiation. No, you probably didn't have such a device implanted in you without your knowledge. If you did, it wouldn't be much use to your adversaries. Please seek psychiatric help".
  - kragen 1y ago
    This sounds interesting; got some links? Not to the psychiatric help pages, I mean, the pages about how they make their implants.
- tencentshill 1y ago
  The run-on sentence style paranoid people type is getting a lot more common online.
- culi 1y ago
  Sounds like the writings of a "targeted individual". Or "gangstalking". It's a more common phenomenon than people realize. There's even a subreddit community of individuals experiencing this https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/ Here's a fascinating Aeon piece on the phenomenon https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders-those-who-hear-voices https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders...
- jlarocco 1y ago
  Honestly, "That's just not how that works" isn't a very convincing argument. If you can't explain why it doesn't work that way, there's no reason anybody should believe you.
- ascorbic 1y ago
  It's a very carefully-worded page from somebody who has clearly had to deal with a large number of people suffering from paranoid delusions.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  It very much reminds me of discussions of people finding or seeing meteors falling. The consensus is, if you see the rock falling, then it is not a meteor. Both the lasers and the meteors have in common the fact that there are far more false negatives than true positives.
rolph 1y ago
in preparation for the shift to projected energy weapons, "If you see light or feel heat from an unknown source" the whole thing reads a little like a paranoia trigger.
- lawlessone 1y ago
  >"If you see light or feel heat from an unknown source" "If you see the flash, it's already too late"
- anon84873628 1y ago
  I read it as sympathetic to the paranoid people who believe these things, and gently steering them towards medical help instead.
- wildzzz 1y ago
  The section above seems to explain why this article is written the way it is. Many people do experience sensations or see things that we otherwise cannot. They may have heightened sensitivity or could have a mental or neurological condition that produces these experiences. Some people may feel like they are going crazy seeing or hearing things that aren't actually there. Others feed into the experiences and believe they exist, like targeted individuals do. Someone that may be unsure if they are really seeing lasers or feeling indeterminate heating may and hasn't totally fallen down the DEW or TI rabbit hole could benefit from seeing something that basically says "I believe you're hearing/seeing/feeling these things, there may be medical explanation so you may want to see a doctor."
- JALTU 1y ago
  It's in the title itself! lol
- Theodores 1y ago
  Only the paranoid survive... I am going there. What about LIDAR on self-driving cars? I have heard that these damage cameras and I am curious as to whether they are equally damaging to eyeballs. Do I need my tin hat or is there nothing to worry about?
Exoristos 1y ago
A long page of human drama at https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html, e.g.: "Suspended sentence, rehab for 55-year-old who aimed a laser pen at a helicopter after it interrupted his audiobook".
- pryelluw 1y ago
  That hole page explains why aliens won’t come visit.
  - nurettin 1y ago
    I have seen a crab brush his eye with one of his foldable mouth arms. We already have aliens. They are more weird than anything I saw on star trek.
  - muzani 1y ago
    Arecibo's radar had a EIRP of up to terawatts. They were basically pinging space for asteroids etc. It feels a lot like using lasers at a helicopter kind of thing. Quiet and suddenly a sharp pulse. The cables snapped at some point. These things were tough, able to last decades. This whole thread made me think aliens cut it.
    - immibis 1y ago
      The investigation pointed to lack of maintenance.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  >A South Australia Police helicopter checking on COVID compliance during a three-day lockdown [...] Whew.
- stepanhruda 1y ago
  Fighting noise pollution with light pollution
  - 1y ago
LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
...don't read to much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis_(novel)#Synopsis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis_(novel)#Synopsis
- number6 1y ago
  I read and read and it totally reminded me of Valis
h1fra 1y ago
what's up with the submit date? @dang
- cpach 1y ago
  Apparantly their user name is ‘1970-01-01’
  - washmyelbows 1y ago
    fantastic username
  - h1fra 1y ago
    oh wow ahah
- ric129 1y ago
  that’s the submitters‘ user name, not the submission date
amelius 1y ago
More dangerous are infrared lasers.
- giantg2 1y ago
  Or UV
- notherhack 1y ago
  Is there an effective anti-IR coating for eyeglasses like there is for UV? Seems like a good thing to have but a web search doesn't turn up much. It might interfere with facial recognition, but maybe that's a feature.
  - compass_copium 1y ago
    Zenni sells one now, with privacy as a selling point
  - mrob 1y ago
    Thin films of gold are reflective in the infrared and transparent in blue/green optical wavelengths. Gold can be applied to most surfaces by various physical vapor deposition processes in a vacuum.
  - ottah 1y ago
    Any laser light strong enough to damage your vision, might also pass through a optical coating. Distance can attenuate the strength, but really the only defense is proper rated glasses for the spectrum.
  - somat 1y ago
    Off topic: but in regards to UV protection, poly-carbonate(common in lenses) is UV-opaque. Completely clear uncoated PC lenses block most UV light. https://www.apollooptical.com/material-transmission-data-graphs https://www.apollooptical.com/material-transmission-data-gra... Note the sharp drop-off in transmission for wavelengths shorter than 400 nm.
  - brookst 1y ago
javier_e06 1y ago
My backyard neighbor installed a backup generator with a very annoying green led that shines right through my kitchen window. I hate HOA's and I don't live in one but I really lost sleep about this. One night I just went a back there and put a small green sticker on the plastic case. Still shines on but the annoying glow shines elsewhere. Inspection passed.
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  There was a time in the electronics world when bright, house illuminating leds first came about and manufacturers used them in place of the dull red/green indicators. Black tape everywhere. Macbooks were one of the worst offenders. They had an extremely bright and worst of all pulsating led that was on when the device was in standby. Used to shine right through laptop bags and keep everyone nearby awake. Fortunately that fad is somewhat over and manufacturers mostly learnt not to put in the brightest led they could source.
  - giantg2 1y ago
    I think I've used more electrical tape covering LEDs than I have for any other purpose.
  - thr0w 1y ago
    Was just about to post this - thought I was neurotic for taping over LED displays in the 2000s. My sight and hearing get annoyingly sensitive when I'm in bed at night.
  - zerocrates 1y ago
    I still have electrical tape right now over the power LED on my computer case: it's a pretty bright white LED that pulses in sleep and as far as I know my motherboard won't let me turn that behavior off. I guess I could have just pulled the leads to the LED instead. Now that I think about it, that was probably actually one motherboard ago and it might be different now... but the tape's working just fine so who needs to check?
  - paxys 1y ago
mmaunder 1y ago
Someone pointed a laser at someone.
numb7rs 1y ago
On a side note, this site reacts to window size changes (phone rotation portrait <-> landscape) with a really nice animated shuffle of the content. It's more visible on the "Sentences" page linked in another comment [0]. I've not seen that before, and certainly wasn't expecting it on a site that is otherwise pretty no-frills. [0] https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html
- dotancohen 1y ago
  I see no such effect in Firefox on Android.
  - hamaga 1y ago
    I see the effect in Firefox on Android...
- Theodores 1y ago
  I was extremely impressed by that too. However, if you click on anything else in the sidebar then you get the animation again. I would prefer the visual treat to work once on initial entry into the site. I suspect that Google would punish the screen rewrites that go on in this dance, there most definitely is layout shift and Google don't like that.
gweinberg 1y ago
Phish has a helpful song explaining how to deal with laser ahrassment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YpLTljxq6M&list=RD2YpLTljxq6M&start_radio=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YpLTljxq6M&list=RD2YpLTljxq...
Animats 1y ago
The US military doesn't even use laser pointers much any more. Maybe for pointing at a map during a briefing, but not for pointing at the enemy. Single-pulse range finders, yes. Continuous laser designators are "Hi, I'm an enemy, kill me now." They were more popular in the 1980s before everybody else got IR sensing technology.
- LorenPechtel 1y ago
  Yeah, a beam of anything is asking for a beam-rider to find it. (Doesn't have to be a missile--wake-follower torpedoes are a form of beam-rider. They don't look for a ship, they try to follow a wake until they run under/into a ship. Passive so the enemy doesn't hear your sonar pinging, nor do sonar masking systems have any effect on it. The weakness is such torpedoes are very predictable and can be tricked into going for a towed decoy.)
- ACCount37 1y ago
  There are still a few laser designators and munitions that use them. Mostly LGBs, as far as I'm aware - JDAMs didn't eat everything yet.
  - ghssds 1y ago
    For the benefit of everyone -- including me -- not knowing the meaning of those abbreviations, I looked it up on the Interweb. LGB : Lyrically gifted brother JDAM : Japanese digital art museum
- godelski 1y ago
  True, but I think this post is for a more general audience. Where continuous (and visible) lasers are still found on many things, including weapons. It's also worth mentioning that the power rating in many commercial laser pointers should not be considered reliable. It's also possible to overdrive them. I'll put out this way, in my undergrad I spent a lot of time in the optics lab and the post doc had a fun story about where she was working with IR lasers. Basically it was "There's light! Yay! It's working! ... oh fuck! There's VISIBLE light! I'm burning my eyeballs!" It's easy to do some serious damage even with cheap electronics and expertise. The big problem is that laser damage happens without you feeling a thing. If you do feel it, you're probably getting seriously fucked up.
groos 1y ago
Some statistics from the sentencing page: Median age 27 Male: 98% Female: 2% Youngest: 19 Oldest: 64 Median prison time: 12 months Median probation time: 24 months All of the above were Copilot inferred. Don't know why I need to know the above, though. :-)
- sebastiennight 1y ago
  For things like this (extracting precise computed data from unstructured blobs) I find that it's often more effective to ask your AI tool to provide a program (I usually ask for a HTML page with a JS form, or a bookmarklet) that can do the actual math. Otherwise you're just as likely to be getting hallucinated answers based on the AI model's existing biases and training (if it's an American model, it might start telling you the sentenced convicts are young male and non-white even without looking at the data on the page).
  - arcfour 1y ago
    I have noticed AI getting much better at correctly doing math than it used to be. Not perfect, but nearly so, and a far cry from this being required for most simple math calculations. (My experience is largely with Claude.)
    - sebastiennight 1y ago
      I've heard that there's been experimenting around giving thinking models access to tools inside of the "thinking" part, so that e.g. calculations could use a Python interpretor, which would give the illusion that the model did the math correctly. Not sure if it's just OpenAI or if Anthropic has tried this too.
      - arcfour 1y ago
        They have that, but I have been reading that new models are so good at math already (solving complex math problems) I am guessing it's generally not needed?
merksoftworks 1y ago
I dug around on this web page and found outlinks to: The "Stop Gangstalking Awareness Group", and especially this page about "Understanding Neuro Weapons." LaserPointerSafety has not evaluated the accuracy or usefulness of this group or their information. (Thanks to M.D. in July 2024 for bringing this to our attention.) These are kind of kooky links: https://web.archive.org/web/20240509210655/https://stopgangstalking.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240509210655/https://stopgangs...
- beeburrt 1y ago
  Not kooky to the (very real) people who these kinds of things are happening to. Ask me how I know. That's the problem with pages such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking where the author(s) try to make it sound like a mass-delusion, a mental health issue. These are actual events, happening to actual American citizens everyday. And then, to top it off, we treat them like they're insane. It's wrong. The problem is that some of the information about these events is dis-information which makes the entire thing seem made-up. It's not. I am a gang-stalking victim. I am not delusional or insane.
- throwaway7723 1y ago
  I confirm, not kooky at all, to those people who went through the gang stalking and other types of harassment. I am a victim of such harassment, for me it lasted for about 2 years. I have done something bad and kind of deserve the treatment/tortures. There is no issue there. But what got me suicidal is not the gang stalking itself but absolute lack of support from the so called "normal" people. Everyone thinks you are insane, even when I pointed out the obvious signs, showed proof or pointed to ongoing situations around me. People would still find it easier to outright dismiss those, usually coming up with "normal" explanations of things. The scariest part is when your closest people start to gradually loose trust in you and start thinking you might be crazy too. During that time I experienced absolutely no real support from the police or doctors, no one wants to listen to what you have to say, every one is busy with their own life. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. That's where the problem is. BTW, the stuff I have experienced with the tech these creeps use is quite amazing if evaluated without bringing the emotions.
geor9e 1y ago
Someone was harassing me for < 10 minutes with an illegally-bright green laser once from an apartment tower. I was busy protecting my eyes, so I didn't dare try to see what unit was doing it. I pointed one of my home security cameras at the tower to ID which unit it was and have evidence. They never did it again though. I was a little disappointed because I was ready to go to war.
- Wistar 1y ago
  Mirror
  - somat 1y ago
    specifically a corner reflector.
    - Wistar 1y ago
      I went and looked at those on Edmund and, oh boy, they are expensive—at least for the solid prism ones. https://www.meetoptics.com/mirrors/retroreflectors/corner-cube-prism/s/edmund-optics/p/43-301 https://www.meetoptics.com/mirrors/retroreflectors/corner-cu...
      - ludicrousdispla 1y ago
        yeah, you could build one with mirrors though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector
        smj-edison 1y ago
        Which if you do build your own, I highly suggest working with acrylic mirrors. Very easy to cut, and you don't have to worry about glass shards.
        Wistar 1y ago
tobr 1y ago
> The line on the left is a trail of a flying insect, not a laser beam. It is a curved, short line segment. That photo has some serious fisheye distortion going on though, so the line could very well be straight. Also, flying insects aren’t a common sight in freezing temperatures, and the photo clearly shows lots of snow. Not suggesting that it is a laser beam, just not convinced that it would be an insect.
- brokencipher 1y ago
  Indeed, looks more like a falling snowflake
victor22 1y ago
Just commenting to say I love your username. Then I opened your post history and its so funny lol way to go dude, got me on some funny rabbit hole.
Eisenstein 1y ago
Regarding the mental illness aspect, Amal Graafstra wrote a page about this. He sells chips that you can have implanted (RFID, NFC, etc) and a lot of people end up contacting him after finding out about his business and ask for help with what they believe are chips inside them that have been implanted against their will. * https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/so-you-think-youve-been-implanted-against-your-will/64 https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/so-you-think-youve-been-... Also a forum thread which continues to get constant activity. I feel incredibly bad for the people dealing with this. It is unfortunate that there is often absolutely nothing you can say to convince them that what they believe is occurring is not possible. * https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/microchiped-or-frequencies-mindreading-24-7-followed-or-watched/1458/1 https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/microchiped-or-frequenci...
- yard2010 1y ago
  Wow thank you for this rabbit hole this is pure gold. It doesn't matter if they are Ill informed trolling or both, it's fascinating to read an endless argument between illogical and logical people. It's like trying to connect two lines in a 2D space without ever knowing they're not on the same Z plane..
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
AfterHIA 1y ago
This sounds to me like a person that was teased by some teenagers and went banana apeshit and started a movement because he couldn't find the mean kids that were shooting laser pointers at him in lieu of him calling the FBI and local police repeatedly about how he was, "being targeted by energy weapons." ...or you know your average Hacker News user.
ceayo 1y ago
Sad to see these guides are needed.

237 points by 1970-01-01 1y ago

great instructions for AI to learn

It's fascinating how much of this has to be devoted to "You are probably not seeing a laser. You are probably not being harassed by an organized group" People who have delusions or people deep into their conspiracy theories have an insane level of insistence. They will refuse to accept "That's just not how that works" as an answer. It's scary.

jandrese 1y ago
There are diagnoseable mental illnesses that cause people to believe they are being targeted by sinister forces. They can't believe because their brain is malfunctioning.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Reddit's r/gangstalking is where they meet. Yet another group that might benefit from therapy or mental help.
  - lawlessone 1y ago
    The kind of reinforcement they give each other is the same kind some people are now getting from chatbots instead.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Wait, that isn’t a parody sub?
    - culi 1y ago
      Nope. The phenomenon is more widespread than people realize. Here's an Aeon piece worth reading about it https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders-those-who-hear-voices https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders...
    - XorNot 1y ago
      Parody subreddits have a bad habit of becoming serious. I think the big surprise of the internet and subsequently the SCP wiki's focus on cognitohazards and "killer memes" is that the phenomenon in it's own way is an extreme version of a real danger - as a species we are really not well equipped for the information environment we've built, and it's prudent to tread very cautiously.
- vintermann 1y ago
  I think what they feel is that they've had some experience, and they have an unshakeable feeling that it's deeply significant. As Philip K. Dick said, of his own "laser pointer" incident: "If you were me, and had this happen to you, I'm sure you wouldn't be able to leave it alone." Remember, that even for us healthy people, there's ultimately no objective answer to what's important or not. There may be more or less objective conditional answers (e.g. if it's important that I don't starve to death tomorrow, it's important that I eat), but those already assumes something is important. It has to bottom out in something that's important for its own sake, something whose importance can't be justified from something else's importance. I think the "gangstalking" people have had experiences that their mind does not allow them to dismiss. They may be capable of accepting different explanations for why the experience mattered - but they can't accept that it isn't important, because it's somehow a root important thing for them. In that very same Philip K. Dick essay, he more or less apologized for this, and listed up various different explanations that he'd tried. But he was lucky enough that his "ultimate importance" experience was basically pleasant. The genuinely paranoid people are not so lucky.
  - fullStackOasis 1y ago
    For those who are curious, this seems to be a link to the Philip K. Dick essay referenced in your comment: https://philipdick.com/mirror/essays/How_to_Build_a_Universe.pdf https://philipdick.com/mirror/essays/How_to_Build_a_Universe... "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978). It holds some interesting parallels to the current times.
  - peddling-brink 1y ago
    It's more than just importance though. I had a friend experience a psychotic episode and suffer from delusions. It was more than just, "this is really happening to me". Any suggestions that we offered that they weren't able to refute became part of the delusion. "You're right, it's not the police breaking into my house, it must be the FBI!"
armada651 1y ago
The problem with such delusions is that people desperately need a physical explanation. Because the alternative is that they are seeing things that are not real, which is an even scarier thought than some organized group pointing lasers at you.
- kragen 1y ago
  Nothing anyone sees is real. People aren't capable of observing reality directly. At best, their perceptions give them some information about reality, but they are never reality itself.
munificent 1y ago
> They will refuse to accept "That's just not how that works" as an answer. For many people with mental illness, it's not a "refusal". That implies agency and deliberate choice from a properly functioning mind. When it's the mind itself that is malfunctioning, those kinds of verbs don't really work. The very definition of "delusion" is a thing you are compelled to believe even in the absence of evidence. If you are able to stop believing it, if you are able to not refuse to change your belief, then it's not a delusion in the first place. Further, some people suffering in this way have anosognosia, which means not only are they delusion, but their mind is also incapable of perceiving its own malfunction.
goopypoop 1y ago
"That's just not how that works" isn't an answer; it's a dismissal. Who's convinced by "lol no ur stupid"?
OkayPhysicist 1y ago
Every biohacking community ends up with a page like this talking about implants. "Yes, we implant ourselves with little devices that interact with electromagnetic radiation. No, you probably didn't have such a device implanted in you without your knowledge. If you did, it wouldn't be much use to your adversaries. Please seek psychiatric help".
- kragen 1y ago
  This sounds interesting; got some links? Not to the psychiatric help pages, I mean, the pages about how they make their implants.
tencentshill 1y ago
The run-on sentence style paranoid people type is getting a lot more common online.
culi 1y ago
Sounds like the writings of a "targeted individual". Or "gangstalking". It's a more common phenomenon than people realize. There's even a subreddit community of individuals experiencing this https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Gangstalking/ Here's a fascinating Aeon piece on the phenomenon https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders-those-who-hear-voices https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-psychiatric-narrative-hinders...
jlarocco 1y ago
Honestly, "That's just not how that works" isn't a very convincing argument. If you can't explain why it doesn't work that way, there's no reason anybody should believe you.
ascorbic 1y ago
It's a very carefully-worded page from somebody who has clearly had to deal with a large number of people suffering from paranoid delusions.
dotancohen 1y ago
It very much reminds me of discussions of people finding or seeing meteors falling. The consensus is, if you see the rock falling, then it is not a meteor. Both the lasers and the meteors have in common the fact that there are far more false negatives than true positives.

rolph 1y ago

in preparation for the shift to projected energy weapons, "If you see light or feel heat from an unknown source" the whole thing reads a little like a paranoia trigger.

lawlessone 1y ago
>"If you see light or feel heat from an unknown source" "If you see the flash, it's already too late"
anon84873628 1y ago
I read it as sympathetic to the paranoid people who believe these things, and gently steering them towards medical help instead.
wildzzz 1y ago
The section above seems to explain why this article is written the way it is. Many people do experience sensations or see things that we otherwise cannot. They may have heightened sensitivity or could have a mental or neurological condition that produces these experiences. Some people may feel like they are going crazy seeing or hearing things that aren't actually there. Others feed into the experiences and believe they exist, like targeted individuals do. Someone that may be unsure if they are really seeing lasers or feeling indeterminate heating may and hasn't totally fallen down the DEW or TI rabbit hole could benefit from seeing something that basically says "I believe you're hearing/seeing/feeling these things, there may be medical explanation so you may want to see a doctor."
JALTU 1y ago
It's in the title itself! lol
Theodores 1y ago
Only the paranoid survive... I am going there. What about LIDAR on self-driving cars? I have heard that these damage cameras and I am curious as to whether they are equally damaging to eyeballs. Do I need my tin hat or is there nothing to worry about?

Exoristos 1y ago

A long page of human drama at https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html, e.g.: "Suspended sentence, rehab for 55-year-old who aimed a laser pen at a helicopter after it interrupted his audiobook".

pryelluw 1y ago
That hole page explains why aliens won’t come visit.
- nurettin 1y ago
  I have seen a crab brush his eye with one of his foldable mouth arms. We already have aliens. They are more weird than anything I saw on star trek.
- muzani 1y ago
  Arecibo's radar had a EIRP of up to terawatts. They were basically pinging space for asteroids etc. It feels a lot like using lasers at a helicopter kind of thing. Quiet and suddenly a sharp pulse. The cables snapped at some point. These things were tough, able to last decades. This whole thread made me think aliens cut it.
  - immibis 1y ago
    The investigation pointed to lack of maintenance.
moralestapia 1y ago
>A South Australia Police helicopter checking on COVID compliance during a three-day lockdown [...] Whew.
stepanhruda 1y ago
Fighting noise pollution with light pollution
- 1y ago

LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago

...don't read to much https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis_(novel)#Synopsis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valis_(novel)#Synopsis

number6 1y ago
I read and read and it totally reminded me of Valis

h1fra 1y ago

what's up with the submit date? @dang

cpach 1y ago
Apparantly their user name is ‘1970-01-01’
- washmyelbows 1y ago
  fantastic username
- h1fra 1y ago
  oh wow ahah
ric129 1y ago
that’s the submitters‘ user name, not the submission date

amelius 1y ago

More dangerous are infrared lasers.

giantg2 1y ago
Or UV
notherhack 1y ago
Is there an effective anti-IR coating for eyeglasses like there is for UV? Seems like a good thing to have but a web search doesn't turn up much. It might interfere with facial recognition, but maybe that's a feature.
- compass_copium 1y ago
  Zenni sells one now, with privacy as a selling point
- mrob 1y ago
  Thin films of gold are reflective in the infrared and transparent in blue/green optical wavelengths. Gold can be applied to most surfaces by various physical vapor deposition processes in a vacuum.
- ottah 1y ago
  Any laser light strong enough to damage your vision, might also pass through a optical coating. Distance can attenuate the strength, but really the only defense is proper rated glasses for the spectrum.
- somat 1y ago
  Off topic: but in regards to UV protection, poly-carbonate(common in lenses) is UV-opaque. Completely clear uncoated PC lenses block most UV light. https://www.apollooptical.com/material-transmission-data-graphs https://www.apollooptical.com/material-transmission-data-gra... Note the sharp drop-off in transmission for wavelengths shorter than 400 nm.
- brookst 1y ago

javier_e06 1y ago

My backyard neighbor installed a backup generator with a very annoying green led that shines right through my kitchen window. I hate HOA's and I don't live in one but I really lost sleep about this. One night I just went a back there and put a small green sticker on the plastic case. Still shines on but the annoying glow shines elsewhere. Inspection passed.

AnotherGoodName 1y ago
There was a time in the electronics world when bright, house illuminating leds first came about and manufacturers used them in place of the dull red/green indicators. Black tape everywhere. Macbooks were one of the worst offenders. They had an extremely bright and worst of all pulsating led that was on when the device was in standby. Used to shine right through laptop bags and keep everyone nearby awake. Fortunately that fad is somewhat over and manufacturers mostly learnt not to put in the brightest led they could source.
- giantg2 1y ago
  I think I've used more electrical tape covering LEDs than I have for any other purpose.
- thr0w 1y ago
  Was just about to post this - thought I was neurotic for taping over LED displays in the 2000s. My sight and hearing get annoyingly sensitive when I'm in bed at night.
- zerocrates 1y ago
  I still have electrical tape right now over the power LED on my computer case: it's a pretty bright white LED that pulses in sleep and as far as I know my motherboard won't let me turn that behavior off. I guess I could have just pulled the leads to the LED instead. Now that I think about it, that was probably actually one motherboard ago and it might be different now... but the tape's working just fine so who needs to check?
- paxys 1y ago

mmaunder 1y ago

Someone pointed a laser at someone.

numb7rs 1y ago

On a side note, this site reacts to window size changes (phone rotation portrait <-> landscape) with a really nice animated shuffle of the content. It's more visible on the "Sentences" page linked in another comment [0]. I've not seen that before, and certainly wasn't expecting it on a site that is otherwise pretty no-frills. [0] https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html https://laserpointersafety.com/sentences/sentences.html

dotancohen 1y ago
I see no such effect in Firefox on Android.
- hamaga 1y ago
  I see the effect in Firefox on Android...
Theodores 1y ago
I was extremely impressed by that too. However, if you click on anything else in the sidebar then you get the animation again. I would prefer the visual treat to work once on initial entry into the site. I suspect that Google would punish the screen rewrites that go on in this dance, there most definitely is layout shift and Google don't like that.

gweinberg 1y ago

Phish has a helpful song explaining how to deal with laser ahrassment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YpLTljxq6M&list=RD2YpLTljxq6M&start_radio=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YpLTljxq6M&list=RD2YpLTljxq...

Animats 1y ago

The US military doesn't even use laser pointers much any more. Maybe for pointing at a map during a briefing, but not for pointing at the enemy. Single-pulse range finders, yes. Continuous laser designators are "Hi, I'm an enemy, kill me now." They were more popular in the 1980s before everybody else got IR sensing technology.

LorenPechtel 1y ago
Yeah, a beam of anything is asking for a beam-rider to find it. (Doesn't have to be a missile--wake-follower torpedoes are a form of beam-rider. They don't look for a ship, they try to follow a wake until they run under/into a ship. Passive so the enemy doesn't hear your sonar pinging, nor do sonar masking systems have any effect on it. The weakness is such torpedoes are very predictable and can be tricked into going for a towed decoy.)
ACCount37 1y ago
There are still a few laser designators and munitions that use them. Mostly LGBs, as far as I'm aware - JDAMs didn't eat everything yet.
- ghssds 1y ago
  For the benefit of everyone -- including me -- not knowing the meaning of those abbreviations, I looked it up on the Interweb. LGB : Lyrically gifted brother JDAM : Japanese digital art museum
godelski 1y ago
True, but I think this post is for a more general audience. Where continuous (and visible) lasers are still found on many things, including weapons. It's also worth mentioning that the power rating in many commercial laser pointers should not be considered reliable. It's also possible to overdrive them. I'll put out this way, in my undergrad I spent a lot of time in the optics lab and the post doc had a fun story about where she was working with IR lasers. Basically it was "There's light! Yay! It's working! ... oh fuck! There's VISIBLE light! I'm burning my eyeballs!" It's easy to do some serious damage even with cheap electronics and expertise. The big problem is that laser damage happens without you feeling a thing. If you do feel it, you're probably getting seriously fucked up.

groos 1y ago

Some statistics from the sentencing page: Median age 27 Male: 98% Female: 2% Youngest: 19 Oldest: 64 Median prison time: 12 months Median probation time: 24 months All of the above were Copilot inferred. Don't know why I need to know the above, though. :-)

sebastiennight 1y ago
For things like this (extracting precise computed data from unstructured blobs) I find that it's often more effective to ask your AI tool to provide a program (I usually ask for a HTML page with a JS form, or a bookmarklet) that can do the actual math. Otherwise you're just as likely to be getting hallucinated answers based on the AI model's existing biases and training (if it's an American model, it might start telling you the sentenced convicts are young male and non-white even without looking at the data on the page).
- arcfour 1y ago
  I have noticed AI getting much better at correctly doing math than it used to be. Not perfect, but nearly so, and a far cry from this being required for most simple math calculations. (My experience is largely with Claude.)
  - sebastiennight 1y ago
    I've heard that there's been experimenting around giving thinking models access to tools inside of the "thinking" part, so that e.g. calculations could use a Python interpretor, which would give the illusion that the model did the math correctly. Not sure if it's just OpenAI or if Anthropic has tried this too.
    - arcfour 1y ago
      They have that, but I have been reading that new models are so good at math already (solving complex math problems) I am guessing it's generally not needed?

merksoftworks 1y ago

I dug around on this web page and found outlinks to: The "Stop Gangstalking Awareness Group", and especially this page about "Understanding Neuro Weapons." LaserPointerSafety has not evaluated the accuracy or usefulness of this group or their information. (Thanks to M.D. in July 2024 for bringing this to our attention.) These are kind of kooky links: https://web.archive.org/web/20240509210655/https://stopgangstalking.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240509210655/https://stopgangs...

beeburrt 1y ago
Not kooky to the (very real) people who these kinds of things are happening to. Ask me how I know. That's the problem with pages such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_stalking where the author(s) try to make it sound like a mass-delusion, a mental health issue. These are actual events, happening to actual American citizens everyday. And then, to top it off, we treat them like they're insane. It's wrong. The problem is that some of the information about these events is dis-information which makes the entire thing seem made-up. It's not. I am a gang-stalking victim. I am not delusional or insane.
throwaway7723 1y ago
I confirm, not kooky at all, to those people who went through the gang stalking and other types of harassment. I am a victim of such harassment, for me it lasted for about 2 years. I have done something bad and kind of deserve the treatment/tortures. There is no issue there. But what got me suicidal is not the gang stalking itself but absolute lack of support from the so called "normal" people. Everyone thinks you are insane, even when I pointed out the obvious signs, showed proof or pointed to ongoing situations around me. People would still find it easier to outright dismiss those, usually coming up with "normal" explanations of things. The scariest part is when your closest people start to gradually loose trust in you and start thinking you might be crazy too. During that time I experienced absolutely no real support from the police or doctors, no one wants to listen to what you have to say, every one is busy with their own life. YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN. That's where the problem is. BTW, the stuff I have experienced with the tech these creeps use is quite amazing if evaluated without bringing the emotions.

geor9e 1y ago

Someone was harassing me for < 10 minutes with an illegally-bright green laser once from an apartment tower. I was busy protecting my eyes, so I didn't dare try to see what unit was doing it. I pointed one of my home security cameras at the tower to ID which unit it was and have evidence. They never did it again though. I was a little disappointed because I was ready to go to war.

Wistar 1y ago
Mirror
- somat 1y ago
  specifically a corner reflector.
  - Wistar 1y ago
    I went and looked at those on Edmund and, oh boy, they are expensive—at least for the solid prism ones. https://www.meetoptics.com/mirrors/retroreflectors/corner-cube-prism/s/edmund-optics/p/43-301 https://www.meetoptics.com/mirrors/retroreflectors/corner-cu...
    - ludicrousdispla 1y ago
      yeah, you could build one with mirrors though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corner_reflector
      - smj-edison 1y ago
        Which if you do build your own, I highly suggest working with acrylic mirrors. Very easy to cut, and you don't have to worry about glass shards.
        Wistar 1y ago

tobr 1y ago

> The line on the left is a trail of a flying insect, not a laser beam. It is a curved, short line segment. That photo has some serious fisheye distortion going on though, so the line could very well be straight. Also, flying insects aren’t a common sight in freezing temperatures, and the photo clearly shows lots of snow. Not suggesting that it is a laser beam, just not convinced that it would be an insect.

brokencipher 1y ago
Indeed, looks more like a falling snowflake

victor22 1y ago

Just commenting to say I love your username. Then I opened your post history and its so funny lol way to go dude, got me on some funny rabbit hole.

Eisenstein 1y ago

Regarding the mental illness aspect, Amal Graafstra wrote a page about this. He sells chips that you can have implanted (RFID, NFC, etc) and a lot of people end up contacting him after finding out about his business and ask for help with what they believe are chips inside them that have been implanted against their will. * https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/so-you-think-youve-been-implanted-against-your-will/64 https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/so-you-think-youve-been-... Also a forum thread which continues to get constant activity. I feel incredibly bad for the people dealing with this. It is unfortunate that there is often absolutely nothing you can say to convince them that what they believe is occurring is not possible. * https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/microchiped-or-frequencies-mindreading-24-7-followed-or-watched/1458/1 https://forum.dangerousthings.com/t/microchiped-or-frequenci...

yard2010 1y ago
Wow thank you for this rabbit hole this is pure gold. It doesn't matter if they are Ill informed trolling or both, it's fascinating to read an endless argument between illogical and logical people. It's like trying to connect two lines in a 2D space without ever knowing they're not on the same Z plane..

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

AfterHIA 1y ago

This sounds to me like a person that was teased by some teenagers and went banana apeshit and started a movement because he couldn't find the mean kids that were shooting laser pointers at him in lieu of him calling the FBI and local police repeatedly about how he was, "being targeted by energy weapons." ...or you know your average Hacker News user.

ceayo 1y ago

Sad to see these guides are needed.