11 ms·

Blank screen if kids yell too much

225 points by ivoflipse 14y ago

Tichy 14y ago
Great answer: "You have done this so many times manually that you feel you need to automate it... Doesn't that suggest to you that this method isn't working? "
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Evbn 14y ago
  Yeah, I feed my kids every day and they still want more. Feeding must be wrong.
ck2 14y ago
How about a feedback headset where the local loop from the microphone has such high volume that a whisper is rather loud. Of course that won't work if the game doesn't need a headset but you could disable external speakers and make it only work via the headset.
skreech 14y ago
It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person. Why not tell them "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud"? Same result, more truthful method.
- chakalakasp 14y ago
  Son, I hate to tell you this, but I invented the Internet to keep you preoccupied as a child. It took me a good half year of coding in my off time, but I finally got it right and, well, your posts and this response are the only human-input things you've read on this screen since you were 7. Love, Pa
  - neya 14y ago
    Brilliant reply, sir!
    - critium 14y ago
      when i first read this, i thought you put in SIRI not SIR! That would have been more awesome :)
- damian2000 14y ago
  I don't think its wrong, its just stretching the truth. Kids know its a machine, but believe that its sensitive to noise.
  - rytis 14y ago
    I agree. Furthermore, if you think about it, why are we sensitive to noise? In simple terms, because we have sensors, processing "circuit" and some sort of analogy of "code" that has this primitive logic - "high sound pressure -> pain". Now looking back at a machine - it has microphone, and sound card. So the input mechanism is in place, the only missing bit is the logic that determines machine's reaction to stimuli. Without the scrip, the machine cannot be "upset by the noise", but with the script it actually can be, IMHO. So there is some grain of truth in what the guy is saying to his kids...
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Yes, but if you intentionally altered someone's brain to add a sensitivity, and then say ”gosh, it seems sensitive for some reason...”
- ajuc 14y ago
  > It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person. In 2100 your comment will be evidence of wild anti-AI sentiments popular in our backward times.
  - onlyup 14y ago
    No it won't.
  - reinhardt 14y ago
    Check your meatspace privilege, human.
  - angersock 14y ago
    ahahahahhahaha yeah okay when duke nukem forever is ported to common lisp running on the hurd suuuuure Edit: More seriously, trends in AI seems to be running towards statistical analysis and away from anything that might resemble actual "sentience"--even were we to define such a thing. I doubt that an overgrown Bayes engine would take offense at anything I do.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Brains also tended to run towards statistical analysis.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- cnvogel 14y ago
  The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me. Even though I understand that in this case it is for sure a pretty harmless feedback mechanism (stopping the computer game), I don't like the idea at all. Furthermore, on the technical side, it's not too easy to calculate some number corresponding to the perceived loudness level, especially not as some answers suggested to parse the RMS-signal number output by the command-line tools "aplay"/"arecord". You'd need at least to take the (non-linear in amplitude, dependent on frequency) weighting curves shown on the wikipedia-page for "Loudness" into account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness Then, you'd have to take into account how annoying a sound is, which is obviously highly dependant on the circumstances: A colleague might drive you mad with only very quiet squeeking of his chair, but a lound regularly humming machine you might be able to completely mask out mentally so that you don't even remember if it was turned on or off at some day. Putting these technical things back to the (morally questionable) problem at hand: If you don't "punish", "educate" or "feedback" your children according to a quantity that they can actually perceive and whose magnitude they can judge, they will experience this apparatus to be highly unfair. And, additionally, if I would put such a machinery to use, my children would with absolute certainty become masters in creating the most appallingly unpleasant and annoying sounds one can imagine that just don't reach the threshold of the machine. And they would be completely right doing so ;-). Edit: Typos, "tools aplay/arecord".
  - dsr_ 14y ago
    The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me. Do automated traffic lights bother you?
    - ordinary 14y ago
      Traffic lights do not condition humans. Traffic accidents, driving instructors, parents and policemen do. I find myself sharing the grandparent's discomfort. I'm an avid gamer, yet sometimes, when I lie awake at night and mull over the events of the day, I find myself wondering if I've truly mastered the game or if the game has only taught me what succession of button presses and mouse movements give me the highest levels of dopamine.
- skriticos2 14y ago
  Children are told that a fat man climbs down the chimney on Christmas to deposit presents under a tree and other stories that are total lies. It's probably better that they get a chance this way to figure out not to believe everything without question.
  - Jach 14y ago
    I second the idea that it's good for kids to be able to learn things on their own and not have all the answers immediately given to them. However if I had a kid I'd try my hardest not to intentionally lie--if they pick up the Santa lie or other lies from other kids, I'll neither confirm nor deny them and let them figure it out. (I might give hints toward avenues of testing a belief, though... but especially the importance of making beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences...)
    - jjsz 14y ago
      Off topic: I disagree, when I have kids I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it, if this includes telling it Santa Clause is not real- I'm going to do it. I rather have him learn from me then some snob egotistic kid who thinks he knows the secrets of life preaching about how unfair it is that other parents are lying to his friends or another ignorant kid, who is figuring it all by himself, confusing my kid. Having a kid who is aware might pay off..or not, like someone in the top said, us without kids don't know how the robot methodology isn't going to work. On Topic: Putting the tv to a certain volume level and a tablet, with a voice monitoring application- if it passes a certain threshold it will change the channel to a 1 minute pre recorded message telling him not to yell, sounds more productive than a white screen and a notification for you to go to the room and explain to him why that keeps happening or sending him to the room for yelling to loud after a few warnings. We can all agree there's a certain level of yelling one can stand from kids!
      - abstractbill 14y ago
        I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it Good luck staying married, with that attitude. If you don't parent as a team, you'll fail in much worse ways than doing the "wrong" thing wrt Santa.
- kawera 14y ago
  An interesting book by Donald Norman on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Signals-Facial-Expressions-Automobiles/dp/020162236X http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Signals-Facial-Expressions-Automo...
- CodeMage 14y ago
  Because the "truthful" method doesn't get the desired results. I'm a father (and I also remember something about being a kid) and I can tell you that 4 year old kids are unbelievably egocentric. A lot of the rules adults try to impose that are perfectly reasonable to anyone with enough empathy seem completely arbitrary to a 4 year old. So, "don't yell because that distracts/bothers me" is an "arbitrary" rule coming from a "cranky" dad. "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud" gets translated into "I don't want you to yell", which is, again, an "arbitrary" rule kids don't care about. On the other hand, "computer doesn't like loud sounds" is a perfectly "reasonable" rule, because the computer is "in charge" of letting you play the game. You disturb the computer, the computer reacts. And you can't argue with it or try to manipulate it. Crying at it or throwing a temper tantrum won't do any good. It has no mouth, so you can't have a conversation with it. In short, you have to follow its rules. If you want to avoid having the kids jump to the "logical" conclusion that the machine is a person, you can formulate it differently: instead of saying "the computer doesn't like loud sounds", you can say "the computer is a machine that doesn't work well when there's a lot of yelling". Then again, someone else already pointed out that kids believe that an old, fat man can come down their chimney and leave gifts in a matter of minutes -- and do so for every kid in the freaking world -- without suffering any psychological scars from an "untruthful" method of influencing their behavior (because Santa brings gifts only to kids who are "good"), so I don't see what the big deal is with going through a short period of believing the machine is a person.
  - maeon3 14y ago
    When I discover anyone has deceived me successfully, my shields are up around them, forever, because a deceiver is always a deceiver, I always have to spend more cpu cycles to wonder: "Are they deceiving me now"? This could be an elaborate lesson for the kid to teach them about deception. But it looks to me like this is a dysfunctional family in the making. When you break the bond of trust, it takes YEARS to get it back, and for me, it's like 5 years. Father is playing with fire here, and I'd kick that guy in the shins and post an image to reddit for all to laugh, why? Because it's FUNNY!
    - stch2 14y ago
anigbrowl 14y ago
Fast forward to 2030... ... for (int month = 1, month <=12, month++) { printf ("You never call. I'm your Dad you know. :-( "); }
- kmfrk 14y ago
  I'm afraid I can't let you eat that icecream, Dave.
- blazingfrog2 14y ago
  This is appalling. Without knowing the OP's life circumstances or much about the dynamic of human relationships for that matter, jumping to this kind of conclusions only make for a witty post, at best. Raising kids who will want to "call their Dad" once grown up is hardly about letting them make as much noise as they wish at age 4. I sometime envy how some people view life as a simple If-Then-This-That... Much easier to sleep at night that way.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    Well, that's how I feel about automating the parenting of 4 and 5 year olds. I'm not saying he should let them make as much noise as they wish - although he probably should, some of the time, I'm a quiet-loving person myself. I am saying that he's better off telling them in person. If he's tired of doing so and automates that task away they're learning something from the experience, but not necessarily what he intends.
simplexion 14y ago
Wow... why did this guy think it was a good idea to have children if he didn't want children? "Hi, I need a script to kill fun. I hate when children are having fun."
- dasil003 14y ago
  To be fair, no one has the first clue what they're getting into when they have kids.
  - corin_ 14y ago
    And to be more fair, it's a bit of a stretch to imply that "wanting his kids to yell at the computer less" means "doesn't want those kids".
    - simplexion 14y ago
      He doesn't want his kids to yell less, he wants them to not yell. I hear someone say they want their kids to be quiet more and I hear, "I want my children to be adults."
      - pestaa 14y ago
        Instead I hear "I want my children to play more quietly so they may become better adults."
        neumann_alfred 14y ago
        How do repressed children make for "better adults"?
        fastball 14y ago
        That's not repression, it's polite behaviour. I'm fairly certain that every mother ever has told her children to stop yelling in the house at least once. If they want to yell while playing games, then they can play games outside. From the single bit of data I have, your idea of repression seems to be anything less than complete anarchy... do you have children?
tlrobinson 14y ago
Now if only this worked with other peoples' kids on Xbox Live...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- pi18n 14y ago
  I have a solution for that. The more a person says "faggot" the more images of men kissing they see in the game. A homophobic 13-year-old would be totally horrified by this whereas a reasonable adult that (somehow) didn't use the word as an insult wouldn't care.
  - abcd_f 14y ago
    > A homophobic 13-year-old Do you seriously think 13-year-olds are homophobic? They just repeat what their peers say like parrots. It doesn't really matter to them what it means as long as it sounds offensive and they can pronounce it.
    - pi18n 14y ago
      If peer influence is the cause the perceived shame of viewing men kissing will have the same effect. Also what I presented is not a serious solution to kids acting like jerks. Kids would just invent new words to get around a filter like that. They need some kind of JerkRank algorithm to allow players to rate other players and machine learn what kind of people are compatible to game with each other.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
Can anyone explain how the OP's solution works, in particular the chvt 3/7? I looked up chvt and it seems like it would switch a different terminal into the foreground, but this raises more questions than it answers. Like how does he know what 3 and 7 have on them? And would this work on a windowing system? And why does it appear as if the screen has turned off?
- rosser 14y ago
  X typically runs on vt 7. Switching away to any other vt would probably show a login prompt, unless he had something else running on vt 3 that presented only a blank screen.
- younata 14y ago
  On linux, it defaults to virtual terminals 1-6 (for the keys 1-6) behave like command lines, and X11 will occupy virtual terminal 7. Basically, he's switching between a near-blank screen, and the graphical environment.
- chli 14y ago
  terminal 7 is were X resides... So basically it's : switch to text terminal wait 15 seconds switch to X Window
- mappu 14y ago
  Are you running linux currently? You have a number of virtual terminals, commonly Ctrl+Alt+F1 through Ctrl+Alt+F7, with 1-6 running text consoles and 7 with your X11 session on it. If you boot into the GUI and spend all your time there, then although 1 will probably contain remnants of the boot process, 2-6 will be unused, a blank screen with some text in the corner.
dzb 14y ago
I would be careful with the solution of turning off the screen. My young cousins would go straight for the reboot in such a situation.
- Fargren 14y ago
  Even if the game continued to make sounds? That should give him at least a moment's pause.
alan_cx 14y ago
Um...... Get a stick. Stand over child. If child makes noise, hit child with stick. Repeat until child quiet, becomes adult, or gets stick. If child gets stick, leave home. And that is the "British" way. :)
- alexjeffrey 14y ago
  was the British way
  - alan_cx 14y ago
    Ah, the good olde days!!
bnegreve 14y ago
I saw this yesterday and run this script all night: while true; do sox -t .wav "|arecord -d 1" -n stat 2> /tmp/tmp; echo -n `date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S"` " "; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Maximum amplitude" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d '\n'; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Midline amplitude" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d '\n'; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Rough *frequency" | cut -d ":" -f 2; done and got this: http://i.imgur.com/oD6ZKIg.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/oD6ZKIg.png?1 Interesting things: When my neighbor walks in his apartment above mine, it creates a amp peak with low frequency. I have no idea what are those approx. one hour long periodic variations in the frequency, maybe my computer's fan or me snoring. Anyway, pretty useless...
- elteto 14y ago
  I look at that command line and feel amazed at what you can do with a command prompt. These are the two things that strike me as incredible: * You didn't write a single line of code (well technically you did write one), nor researched about sound APIs or any kind of sound analysis algorithms or theory. * You used several tools that just seamlessly shared their inputs and outputs and each one worked as supposed. Granted, you need to know some bash and figure out how every utility works and the right command line switches to use, but still, pretty impressive.
  - dllthomas 14y ago
    This is the advantage of living at the command prompt. If you're mostly working through GUI (or CUI) interfaces that hide those details it can be somewhat convenient in the short run but you trap yourself: the effort needed when you want to do something complex that requires that knowledge is now suddenly much greater, because first you need to learn how to talk to each of the components of that pipeline before fitting them all together. I'll still need to check a man-page or two for less familiar functionality or a less familiar utility, but that's much better than checking five (the number of commands in the above pipeline that are passed at least one switch) and that's assuming you know which commands you'll want to be using in the first place.
    - Camillo 14y ago
DanBC 14y ago
The children are four and five. Who is monitoring them while they are playing video games? It's reasonably easy to calm children down when you need to, you just need to learn some techniques. These techniques would probably require someone to be in the room for them to work, but once you've succeeded in calming down the over-boisterous behaviour they'd be okay. And, of course, children enjoy being boisterous, so I hope they get opportunities to let off steam in a more appropriate setting. Soft play rooms[1] are good, as are parks and gardens and some games in the home. The adult could investigate various parenting courses. "Webster Stratton" is an example of a respected course. [1] In the UK you might have a Sure Start centre near you with a soft play room for hire. These are lovely because you will be in the room with your child alone, and you can really enjoy the experience. There are also commercial providers such as Play Barn which will be full of screaming, crying, poorly supervised children and stressed harried parents. This is, for some people, a hellish experience.
glass- 14y ago
Children make too much noise. Children don't get to use the computer for a week. Eventually children will learn and stop making too much noise. This is a parenting problem, not a technical one.
- maeon3 14y ago
  When you use this manipulation to get your way to your kids, the kid watches you, and you find yourself the lab rat of a psychological manipulator far more capable then yourself. And the kid uses tricks you never heard of to shape your behaviour. Which causes a feedback loop of who can trick the other into doing what they want better. Then you end up with a dysfunctional family. Funny joke, but there are serious child education problems in this joke. It's like laughing at a baby seal getting kicked around by teenagers. It's hilarious to people who are emotionally present-oriented. yolo, if it feels good, then it's good.
  - pretoriusB 14y ago
    >When you use this manipulation to get your way to your kids, the kid watches you, and you find yourself the lab rat of a psychological manipulator far more capable then yourself. And the kid uses tricks you never heard of to shape your behaviour. Which causes a feedback loop of who can trick the other into doing what they want better. It's not a manipulation or a trick. It's a "reward system". You get X only if you do Y. Period. It has worked wonders for ages. Still does in most parts of the world. The US has a messed up system that ends with annoying, over-self-indulged, entitled children and adults.
    - Cushman 14y ago
      > The US has a messed up system that ends with annoying, over-self-indulged, entitled children and adults. [citation needed]
      - pretoriusB 14y ago
        Citation is needed in novel and unexpected statements and conclusions. ("Extraordinary claims", etc). Well known facts should need no citation upon an audience of educated adults. Still, here's a secondary corroboration for you: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020474090457719...
gregpilling 14y ago
I have noisy kids. Three of them. They make lots of noise when playing games, when watching TV, and right now are making lots and lots of noise (at 7.33am on a Saturday morning) by playing in a cardboard box that holds a bathtub (we are remodeling a bathroom, it goes in Monday). Kids are noisy. I have dealt with it by installing a solid door at the end of the hallway. No scripting required. Occasionally I tell them to quiet down if they get out of hand. Kids are noisy, that is just part of the experience.
- shortlived 14y ago
  Greg speaks the truth. Let kids be kids. Stop acting like an old lady.
  - gruseom 14y ago
    Many "old ladies" are experts in letting kids be kids. They're the ones with the most experience, after all.
    - shortlived 14y ago
      Sorry to the old ladies on hn. I should have used the word crotchety. This is a hot topic for my wife and I as our immediate family is not happy when are kids are noisy, even in our own house. They have a valid argument in places outside of the home, but let us be, in our home. They equate noise with illmanners.
- CodeMage 14y ago
  I have dealt with it by installing a solid door at the end of the hallway. Read the comments on SuperUser. He's a single dad. Being unable to hear what your 4 year old kids are up to is a bad idea when there's no one else to monitor them.
  - angersock 14y ago
    My parents suggested that it was when we had gone quiet that they started to worry. My recollections of childhood seem to confirm this heuristic.
pretoriusB 14y ago
Beat them when they yell?
gyardley 14y ago
Good lord, just discipline your children. Set clear rules, make sure they understand those rules, and follow through with enforcing those rules.
- CodeMage 14y ago
  You left out the most important step: make sure kids understand the reason for those rules (other than "because I say so"). Speaking from my experience with my parents, yours is a great recipe for having your kids think you're an asshole when they're older.
  - gyardley 14y ago
    I don't think my parents are assholes. Sure, I did when I was a teenager, but that's because I was egocentric and had poor impulse control - in short, a teenager. Thank god my parents were doing their job instead of trying to be my buddy.
    - Karunamon 14y ago
      Because explaining a reason to teenagers (who despite having a lot of bluster, are usually fairly bright) is somehow asking too much. You use terms like "because I said so" with a 2 year old who literally can't understand why you shouldn't play in the street. Don't insult other people's intelligence, much less your kid's. There's no excuse for that.
      - abstractbill 14y ago
        Agreed, but... Funnily enough, my 2 year old understands exactly why she shouldn't play in the street; Every time we go for a walk around the block and a car passes us, she tells us all "look out for that car, it might hit us!". And then again, I know plenty of other 2 year olds who can barely talk, let alone say something like that. And then I know 2 year olds who have dexterity and body awareness that makes my daughter look like she's walking around with a blindfold and her arms tied together. If being a parent has taught me anything, it's that kids are just incredibly different from each other. Oh, that, and that nothing good can ever come of a parenting thread on Hacker News ;) So many strongly held opinions from such small samples (often zero!).
mosselman 14y ago
Have fun automating something that will prevent them from smoking or something, since you haven't taught them to listen to you, but to the computer by then.
- Tichy 14y ago
  Hooking up a smoke detector to the XBox should do the trick :-)
SoftwareMaven 14y ago
I'm don't have enough information to know whether I like the attempt to silence his kids. It would be easy to see kids that age getting out to control to the point that damage to the computer occurs and noise is almost always the first step towards that. But holy crap! Half of this place seems like they want to be raising robots, not individuals who all have their own needs and will need to be taught and treated differently. Worse, I have a strong feeling most of them haven't talked to a kid in years, much less ever raised one. And these people are not just giving advice, but being highly judgmental. Saying the father is wrong. I raise four kids with my wife. Two kids as a single dad would be twice as hard at least. Go walk a mile and see how your "build a robot" methodology works for your kid. (Sorry about the rant. I take fatherhood and other people judging it very seriously. I came from an abusive household, and that is the only kind of environment I would openly judge a father for. This is not abusive, even if it offends somebody's sense of logic.)
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  I forgot to mention, all parenting aspects aside, this is a really cool hack. I love seeing what can be accomplished with just scripts, pipes, and the occasional file.
- Cushman 14y ago
  Hear, hear. The way people second-guess everyday parenting decisions is annoying, but the way people here are reacting to this one is mind boggling. This is a clear and obvious win all around: Dad's happy, the kids are happy, and all because Linux saved the day. Let's ship it and go home, folks.
- hackoder 14y ago
  Thank you for that voice of reason. You make two very good points here and in your other post. 1) Kids are different. There is a whole spectrum of right and wrong decisions depending on what your kid is like. Would anyone suggest that the same methods would work with a kid who is stubborn and one who is easy going? 2) These decisions depend on a kid's age. A 2-5 year old is not logical or rational, and can do outrageous things just to see how you would react. Don't deceive them, let them be kids, yadda yadda are almost funny to read. Like you said, walk a mile in the parents' shoes. Anyway, getting back to the original post, I do see an issue with this approach (to parenting, not the technical solutions): I'd rather solve the bigger problem of the kids not listening to what the parent is saying rather than fixing this single instance. On the other hand, it is easy for kids to get rowdy without realizing it and this method seems to fix that particular issue well.
markokocic 14y ago
What's up with those submission title editing lately? There was nothing wrong with the original one, and the new one is so "inspring" that I wouldn't even click there unless for checking is this yet another title edit.
bjhoops1 14y ago
This makes me so happy. I've got my first on the way in about a month. I'll have to bookmark this for future use...
kakuri 14y ago
SNR is way too low in this discussion thanks to non-parents posting. Peace out.
protomyth 14y ago
4 and 5 year olds make lots of noise. When they are not making noise and being extremely quiet, they are doing something they shouldn't. Why would you want to screw up this parenting warning mechanism?

225 points by ivoflipse 14y ago

Tichy 14y ago

Great answer: "You have done this so many times manually that you feel you need to automate it... Doesn't that suggest to you that this method isn't working? "

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Evbn 14y ago
Yeah, I feed my kids every day and they still want more. Feeding must be wrong.

ck2 14y ago

How about a feedback headset where the local loop from the microphone has such high volume that a whisper is rather loud. Of course that won't work if the game doesn't need a headset but you could disable external speakers and make it only work via the headset.

skreech 14y ago

It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person. Why not tell them "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud"? Same result, more truthful method.

chakalakasp 14y ago
Son, I hate to tell you this, but I invented the Internet to keep you preoccupied as a child. It took me a good half year of coding in my off time, but I finally got it right and, well, your posts and this response are the only human-input things you've read on this screen since you were 7. Love, Pa
- neya 14y ago
  Brilliant reply, sir!
  - critium 14y ago
    when i first read this, i thought you put in SIRI not SIR! That would have been more awesome :)
damian2000 14y ago
I don't think its wrong, its just stretching the truth. Kids know its a machine, but believe that its sensitive to noise.
- rytis 14y ago
  I agree. Furthermore, if you think about it, why are we sensitive to noise? In simple terms, because we have sensors, processing "circuit" and some sort of analogy of "code" that has this primitive logic - "high sound pressure -> pain". Now looking back at a machine - it has microphone, and sound card. So the input mechanism is in place, the only missing bit is the logic that determines machine's reaction to stimuli. Without the scrip, the machine cannot be "upset by the noise", but with the script it actually can be, IMHO. So there is some grain of truth in what the guy is saying to his kids...
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Yes, but if you intentionally altered someone's brain to add a sensitivity, and then say ”gosh, it seems sensitive for some reason...”
ajuc 14y ago
> It seems wrong to teach your children that the machine is a person. In 2100 your comment will be evidence of wild anti-AI sentiments popular in our backward times.
- onlyup 14y ago
  No it won't.
- reinhardt 14y ago
  Check your meatspace privilege, human.
- angersock 14y ago
  ahahahahhahaha yeah okay when duke nukem forever is ported to common lisp running on the hurd suuuuure Edit: More seriously, trends in AI seems to be running towards statistical analysis and away from anything that might resemble actual "sentience"--even were we to define such a thing. I doubt that an overgrown Bayes engine would take offense at anything I do.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Brains also tended to run towards statistical analysis.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
cnvogel 14y ago
The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me. Even though I understand that in this case it is for sure a pretty harmless feedback mechanism (stopping the computer game), I don't like the idea at all. Furthermore, on the technical side, it's not too easy to calculate some number corresponding to the perceived loudness level, especially not as some answers suggested to parse the RMS-signal number output by the command-line tools "aplay"/"arecord". You'd need at least to take the (non-linear in amplitude, dependent on frequency) weighting curves shown on the wikipedia-page for "Loudness" into account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness Then, you'd have to take into account how annoying a sound is, which is obviously highly dependant on the circumstances: A colleague might drive you mad with only very quiet squeeking of his chair, but a lound regularly humming machine you might be able to completely mask out mentally so that you don't even remember if it was turned on or off at some day. Putting these technical things back to the (morally questionable) problem at hand: If you don't "punish", "educate" or "feedback" your children according to a quantity that they can actually perceive and whose magnitude they can judge, they will experience this apparatus to be highly unfair. And, additionally, if I would put such a machinery to use, my children would with absolute certainty become masters in creating the most appallingly unpleasant and annoying sounds one can imagine that just don't reach the threshold of the machine. And they would be completely right doing so ;-). Edit: Typos, "tools aplay/arecord".
- dsr_ 14y ago
  The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me. Do automated traffic lights bother you?
  - ordinary 14y ago
    Traffic lights do not condition humans. Traffic accidents, driving instructors, parents and policemen do. I find myself sharing the grandparent's discomfort. I'm an avid gamer, yet sometimes, when I lie awake at night and mull over the events of the day, I find myself wondering if I've truly mastered the game or if the game has only taught me what succession of button presses and mouse movements give me the highest levels of dopamine.
skriticos2 14y ago
Children are told that a fat man climbs down the chimney on Christmas to deposit presents under a tree and other stories that are total lies. It's probably better that they get a chance this way to figure out not to believe everything without question.
- Jach 14y ago
  I second the idea that it's good for kids to be able to learn things on their own and not have all the answers immediately given to them. However if I had a kid I'd try my hardest not to intentionally lie--if they pick up the Santa lie or other lies from other kids, I'll neither confirm nor deny them and let them figure it out. (I might give hints toward avenues of testing a belief, though... but especially the importance of making beliefs pay rent in anticipated experiences...)
  - jjsz 14y ago
    Off topic: I disagree, when I have kids I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it, if this includes telling it Santa Clause is not real- I'm going to do it. I rather have him learn from me then some snob egotistic kid who thinks he knows the secrets of life preaching about how unfair it is that other parents are lying to his friends or another ignorant kid, who is figuring it all by himself, confusing my kid. Having a kid who is aware might pay off..or not, like someone in the top said, us without kids don't know how the robot methodology isn't going to work. On Topic: Putting the tv to a certain volume level and a tablet, with a voice monitoring application- if it passes a certain threshold it will change the channel to a 1 minute pre recorded message telling him not to yell, sounds more productive than a white screen and a notification for you to go to the room and explain to him why that keeps happening or sending him to the room for yelling to loud after a few warnings. We can all agree there's a certain level of yelling one can stand from kids!
    - abstractbill 14y ago
      I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it Good luck staying married, with that attitude. If you don't parent as a team, you'll fail in much worse ways than doing the "wrong" thing wrt Santa.
kawera 14y ago
An interesting book by Donald Norman on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Signals-Facial-Expressions-Automobiles/dp/020162236X http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Signals-Facial-Expressions-Automo...
CodeMage 14y ago
Because the "truthful" method doesn't get the desired results. I'm a father (and I also remember something about being a kid) and I can tell you that 4 year old kids are unbelievably egocentric. A lot of the rules adults try to impose that are perfectly reasonable to anyone with enough empathy seem completely arbitrary to a 4 year old. So, "don't yell because that distracts/bothers me" is an "arbitrary" rule coming from a "cranky" dad. "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud" gets translated into "I don't want you to yell", which is, again, an "arbitrary" rule kids don't care about. On the other hand, "computer doesn't like loud sounds" is a perfectly "reasonable" rule, because the computer is "in charge" of letting you play the game. You disturb the computer, the computer reacts. And you can't argue with it or try to manipulate it. Crying at it or throwing a temper tantrum won't do any good. It has no mouth, so you can't have a conversation with it. In short, you have to follow its rules. If you want to avoid having the kids jump to the "logical" conclusion that the machine is a person, you can formulate it differently: instead of saying "the computer doesn't like loud sounds", you can say "the computer is a machine that doesn't work well when there's a lot of yelling". Then again, someone else already pointed out that kids believe that an old, fat man can come down their chimney and leave gifts in a matter of minutes -- and do so for every kid in the freaking world -- without suffering any psychological scars from an "untruthful" method of influencing their behavior (because Santa brings gifts only to kids who are "good"), so I don't see what the big deal is with going through a short period of believing the machine is a person.
- maeon3 14y ago
  When I discover anyone has deceived me successfully, my shields are up around them, forever, because a deceiver is always a deceiver, I always have to spend more cpu cycles to wonder: "Are they deceiving me now"? This could be an elaborate lesson for the kid to teach them about deception. But it looks to me like this is a dysfunctional family in the making. When you break the bond of trust, it takes YEARS to get it back, and for me, it's like 5 years. Father is playing with fire here, and I'd kick that guy in the shins and post an image to reddit for all to laugh, why? Because it's FUNNY!
  - stch2 14y ago

anigbrowl 14y ago

Fast forward to 2030... ... for (int month = 1, month <=12, month++) { printf ("You never call. I'm your Dad you know. :-( "); }

kmfrk 14y ago
I'm afraid I can't let you eat that icecream, Dave.
blazingfrog2 14y ago
This is appalling. Without knowing the OP's life circumstances or much about the dynamic of human relationships for that matter, jumping to this kind of conclusions only make for a witty post, at best. Raising kids who will want to "call their Dad" once grown up is hardly about letting them make as much noise as they wish at age 4. I sometime envy how some people view life as a simple If-Then-This-That... Much easier to sleep at night that way.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Well, that's how I feel about automating the parenting of 4 and 5 year olds. I'm not saying he should let them make as much noise as they wish - although he probably should, some of the time, I'm a quiet-loving person myself. I am saying that he's better off telling them in person. If he's tired of doing so and automates that task away they're learning something from the experience, but not necessarily what he intends.

simplexion 14y ago

Wow... why did this guy think it was a good idea to have children if he didn't want children? "Hi, I need a script to kill fun. I hate when children are having fun."

dasil003 14y ago
To be fair, no one has the first clue what they're getting into when they have kids.
- corin_ 14y ago
  And to be more fair, it's a bit of a stretch to imply that "wanting his kids to yell at the computer less" means "doesn't want those kids".
  - simplexion 14y ago
    He doesn't want his kids to yell less, he wants them to not yell. I hear someone say they want their kids to be quiet more and I hear, "I want my children to be adults."
    - pestaa 14y ago
      Instead I hear "I want my children to play more quietly so they may become better adults."
      - neumann_alfred 14y ago
        How do repressed children make for "better adults"?
        fastball 14y ago
        That's not repression, it's polite behaviour. I'm fairly certain that every mother ever has told her children to stop yelling in the house at least once. If they want to yell while playing games, then they can play games outside. From the single bit of data I have, your idea of repression seems to be anything less than complete anarchy... do you have children?

tlrobinson 14y ago

Now if only this worked with other peoples' kids on Xbox Live...

deleted 14y ago
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pi18n 14y ago
I have a solution for that. The more a person says "faggot" the more images of men kissing they see in the game. A homophobic 13-year-old would be totally horrified by this whereas a reasonable adult that (somehow) didn't use the word as an insult wouldn't care.
- abcd_f 14y ago
  > A homophobic 13-year-old Do you seriously think 13-year-olds are homophobic? They just repeat what their peers say like parrots. It doesn't really matter to them what it means as long as it sounds offensive and they can pronounce it.
  - pi18n 14y ago
    If peer influence is the cause the perceived shame of viewing men kissing will have the same effect. Also what I presented is not a serious solution to kids acting like jerks. Kids would just invent new words to get around a filter like that. They need some kind of JerkRank algorithm to allow players to rate other players and machine learn what kind of people are compatible to game with each other.
  - deleted 14y ago
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UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

Can anyone explain how the OP's solution works, in particular the chvt 3/7? I looked up chvt and it seems like it would switch a different terminal into the foreground, but this raises more questions than it answers. Like how does he know what 3 and 7 have on them? And would this work on a windowing system? And why does it appear as if the screen has turned off?

rosser 14y ago
X typically runs on vt 7. Switching away to any other vt would probably show a login prompt, unless he had something else running on vt 3 that presented only a blank screen.
younata 14y ago
On linux, it defaults to virtual terminals 1-6 (for the keys 1-6) behave like command lines, and X11 will occupy virtual terminal 7. Basically, he's switching between a near-blank screen, and the graphical environment.
chli 14y ago
terminal 7 is were X resides... So basically it's : switch to text terminal wait 15 seconds switch to X Window
mappu 14y ago
Are you running linux currently? You have a number of virtual terminals, commonly Ctrl+Alt+F1 through Ctrl+Alt+F7, with 1-6 running text consoles and 7 with your X11 session on it. If you boot into the GUI and spend all your time there, then although 1 will probably contain remnants of the boot process, 2-6 will be unused, a blank screen with some text in the corner.

dzb 14y ago

I would be careful with the solution of turning off the screen. My young cousins would go straight for the reboot in such a situation.

Fargren 14y ago
Even if the game continued to make sounds? That should give him at least a moment's pause.

alan_cx 14y ago

Um...... Get a stick. Stand over child. If child makes noise, hit child with stick. Repeat until child quiet, becomes adult, or gets stick. If child gets stick, leave home. And that is the "British" way. :)

alexjeffrey 14y ago
was the British way
- alan_cx 14y ago
  Ah, the good olde days!!

bnegreve 14y ago

I saw this yesterday and run this script all night: while true; do sox -t .wav "|arecord -d 1" -n stat 2> /tmp/tmp; echo -n `date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S"` " "; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Maximum amplitude" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d '\n'; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Midline amplitude" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d '\n'; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Rough *frequency" | cut -d ":" -f 2; done and got this: http://i.imgur.com/oD6ZKIg.png?1 http://i.imgur.com/oD6ZKIg.png?1 Interesting things: When my neighbor walks in his apartment above mine, it creates a amp peak with low frequency. I have no idea what are those approx. one hour long periodic variations in the frequency, maybe my computer's fan or me snoring. Anyway, pretty useless...

elteto 14y ago
I look at that command line and feel amazed at what you can do with a command prompt. These are the two things that strike me as incredible: * You didn't write a single line of code (well technically you did write one), nor researched about sound APIs or any kind of sound analysis algorithms or theory. * You used several tools that just seamlessly shared their inputs and outputs and each one worked as supposed. Granted, you need to know some bash and figure out how every utility works and the right command line switches to use, but still, pretty impressive.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  This is the advantage of living at the command prompt. If you're mostly working through GUI (or CUI) interfaces that hide those details it can be somewhat convenient in the short run but you trap yourself: the effort needed when you want to do something complex that requires that knowledge is now suddenly much greater, because first you need to learn how to talk to each of the components of that pipeline before fitting them all together. I'll still need to check a man-page or two for less familiar functionality or a less familiar utility, but that's much better than checking five (the number of commands in the above pipeline that are passed at least one switch) and that's assuming you know which commands you'll want to be using in the first place.
  - Camillo 14y ago

DanBC 14y ago

The children are four and five. Who is monitoring them while they are playing video games? It's reasonably easy to calm children down when you need to, you just need to learn some techniques. These techniques would probably require someone to be in the room for them to work, but once you've succeeded in calming down the over-boisterous behaviour they'd be okay. And, of course, children enjoy being boisterous, so I hope they get opportunities to let off steam in a more appropriate setting. Soft play rooms[1] are good, as are parks and gardens and some games in the home. The adult could investigate various parenting courses. "Webster Stratton" is an example of a respected course. [1] In the UK you might have a Sure Start centre near you with a soft play room for hire. These are lovely because you will be in the room with your child alone, and you can really enjoy the experience. There are also commercial providers such as Play Barn which will be full of screaming, crying, poorly supervised children and stressed harried parents. This is, for some people, a hellish experience.

glass- 14y ago

Children make too much noise. Children don't get to use the computer for a week. Eventually children will learn and stop making too much noise. This is a parenting problem, not a technical one.

maeon3 14y ago
When you use this manipulation to get your way to your kids, the kid watches you, and you find yourself the lab rat of a psychological manipulator far more capable then yourself. And the kid uses tricks you never heard of to shape your behaviour. Which causes a feedback loop of who can trick the other into doing what they want better. Then you end up with a dysfunctional family. Funny joke, but there are serious child education problems in this joke. It's like laughing at a baby seal getting kicked around by teenagers. It's hilarious to people who are emotionally present-oriented. yolo, if it feels good, then it's good.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  >When you use this manipulation to get your way to your kids, the kid watches you, and you find yourself the lab rat of a psychological manipulator far more capable then yourself. And the kid uses tricks you never heard of to shape your behaviour. Which causes a feedback loop of who can trick the other into doing what they want better. It's not a manipulation or a trick. It's a "reward system". You get X only if you do Y. Period. It has worked wonders for ages. Still does in most parts of the world. The US has a messed up system that ends with annoying, over-self-indulged, entitled children and adults.
  - Cushman 14y ago
    > The US has a messed up system that ends with annoying, over-self-indulged, entitled children and adults. [citation needed]
    - pretoriusB 14y ago
      Citation is needed in novel and unexpected statements and conclusions. ("Extraordinary claims", etc). Well known facts should need no citation upon an audience of educated adults. Still, here's a secondary corroboration for you: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204740904577196931457473816.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020474090457719...

gregpilling 14y ago

I have noisy kids. Three of them. They make lots of noise when playing games, when watching TV, and right now are making lots and lots of noise (at 7.33am on a Saturday morning) by playing in a cardboard box that holds a bathtub (we are remodeling a bathroom, it goes in Monday). Kids are noisy. I have dealt with it by installing a solid door at the end of the hallway. No scripting required. Occasionally I tell them to quiet down if they get out of hand. Kids are noisy, that is just part of the experience.

shortlived 14y ago
Greg speaks the truth. Let kids be kids. Stop acting like an old lady.
- gruseom 14y ago
  Many "old ladies" are experts in letting kids be kids. They're the ones with the most experience, after all.
  - shortlived 14y ago
    Sorry to the old ladies on hn. I should have used the word crotchety. This is a hot topic for my wife and I as our immediate family is not happy when are kids are noisy, even in our own house. They have a valid argument in places outside of the home, but let us be, in our home. They equate noise with illmanners.
CodeMage 14y ago
I have dealt with it by installing a solid door at the end of the hallway. Read the comments on SuperUser. He's a single dad. Being unable to hear what your 4 year old kids are up to is a bad idea when there's no one else to monitor them.
- angersock 14y ago
  My parents suggested that it was when we had gone quiet that they started to worry. My recollections of childhood seem to confirm this heuristic.

pretoriusB 14y ago

Beat them when they yell?

gyardley 14y ago

Good lord, just discipline your children. Set clear rules, make sure they understand those rules, and follow through with enforcing those rules.

CodeMage 14y ago
You left out the most important step: make sure kids understand the reason for those rules (other than "because I say so"). Speaking from my experience with my parents, yours is a great recipe for having your kids think you're an asshole when they're older.
- gyardley 14y ago
  I don't think my parents are assholes. Sure, I did when I was a teenager, but that's because I was egocentric and had poor impulse control - in short, a teenager. Thank god my parents were doing their job instead of trying to be my buddy.
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    Because explaining a reason to teenagers (who despite having a lot of bluster, are usually fairly bright) is somehow asking too much. You use terms like "because I said so" with a 2 year old who literally can't understand why you shouldn't play in the street. Don't insult other people's intelligence, much less your kid's. There's no excuse for that.
    - abstractbill 14y ago
      Agreed, but... Funnily enough, my 2 year old understands exactly why she shouldn't play in the street; Every time we go for a walk around the block and a car passes us, she tells us all "look out for that car, it might hit us!". And then again, I know plenty of other 2 year olds who can barely talk, let alone say something like that. And then I know 2 year olds who have dexterity and body awareness that makes my daughter look like she's walking around with a blindfold and her arms tied together. If being a parent has taught me anything, it's that kids are just incredibly different from each other. Oh, that, and that nothing good can ever come of a parenting thread on Hacker News ;) So many strongly held opinions from such small samples (often zero!).

mosselman 14y ago

Have fun automating something that will prevent them from smoking or something, since you haven't taught them to listen to you, but to the computer by then.

Tichy 14y ago
Hooking up a smoke detector to the XBox should do the trick :-)

SoftwareMaven 14y ago

I'm don't have enough information to know whether I like the attempt to silence his kids. It would be easy to see kids that age getting out to control to the point that damage to the computer occurs and noise is almost always the first step towards that. But holy crap! Half of this place seems like they want to be raising robots, not individuals who all have their own needs and will need to be taught and treated differently. Worse, I have a strong feeling most of them haven't talked to a kid in years, much less ever raised one. And these people are not just giving advice, but being highly judgmental. Saying the father is wrong. I raise four kids with my wife. Two kids as a single dad would be twice as hard at least. Go walk a mile and see how your "build a robot" methodology works for your kid. (Sorry about the rant. I take fatherhood and other people judging it very seriously. I came from an abusive household, and that is the only kind of environment I would openly judge a father for. This is not abusive, even if it offends somebody's sense of logic.)

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
I forgot to mention, all parenting aspects aside, this is a really cool hack. I love seeing what can be accomplished with just scripts, pipes, and the occasional file.
Cushman 14y ago
Hear, hear. The way people second-guess everyday parenting decisions is annoying, but the way people here are reacting to this one is mind boggling. This is a clear and obvious win all around: Dad's happy, the kids are happy, and all because Linux saved the day. Let's ship it and go home, folks.
hackoder 14y ago
Thank you for that voice of reason. You make two very good points here and in your other post. 1) Kids are different. There is a whole spectrum of right and wrong decisions depending on what your kid is like. Would anyone suggest that the same methods would work with a kid who is stubborn and one who is easy going? 2) These decisions depend on a kid's age. A 2-5 year old is not logical or rational, and can do outrageous things just to see how you would react. Don't deceive them, let them be kids, yadda yadda are almost funny to read. Like you said, walk a mile in the parents' shoes. Anyway, getting back to the original post, I do see an issue with this approach (to parenting, not the technical solutions): I'd rather solve the bigger problem of the kids not listening to what the parent is saying rather than fixing this single instance. On the other hand, it is easy for kids to get rowdy without realizing it and this method seems to fix that particular issue well.

markokocic 14y ago

What's up with those submission title editing lately? There was nothing wrong with the original one, and the new one is so "inspring" that I wouldn't even click there unless for checking is this yet another title edit.

bjhoops1 14y ago

This makes me so happy. I've got my first on the way in about a month. I'll have to bookmark this for future use...

kakuri 14y ago

SNR is way too low in this discussion thanks to non-parents posting. Peace out.

protomyth 14y ago

4 and 5 year olds make lots of noise. When they are not making noise and being extremely quiet, they are doing something they shouldn't. Why would you want to screw up this parenting warning mechanism?