• erffrfez (unregistered)

    the first one listed here, about the sensitivities seems perfectly fine as it is. No "errored" here at all IMHO.

    1. If you get too many times that it triggers "here is movement", then make it less sensitive to what counts as movement.
    2. If you get too many times that it says "here is a humanoid", then make it more sensitive about what it declares is 'kinda human shape'.
  • (nodebb)

    How do you write code to generate a year of -4712?

  • NobodySpecific (unregistered)

    I agree with erffrfez. If you have for example a building's movement sensor that is way too aggressive in its detection you will need to tone it down to only pick what are actual movements, not mere wind fluctuations or every cricket that jumps around.

    Heck, in heist movies you see bad guys relying on this reasoning all the time: just trick the guards into thinking the sensor has misconfigured itself and is constantly sending false alarms, and let them turn off the alarm for you.

  • Jonathan (unregistered) in reply to mynameishidden

    I'm sure it's in some way related to the most WTF date format in the world: MM/DD/YYYY.

  • TS (unregistered) in reply to mynameishidden

    As TFA says, "they store dates as days since the beginning of the current Julian period"; as WP explains, "0 is assigned to the day starting at noon Universal Time on Monday, January 1, 4713 BC" or -4712 CE.

  • (nodebb) in reply to erffrfez

    I agree with you, the first one does not seem to be a WTF because they are sensitivities for two different aspects of motion detection:

    The first is for the sensitivity of motion detection, and the way I read it is:

    If there are too many bogus motion detection events, reduce the sensitivity - for example, if a squirrel or shrew triggers the motion detector.

    The second is for the sensitivity threshold for the detection of human-like shapes, and the way I read it is:

    If a deer triggers the "humanoid motion" event, increase the sensitivity of detecting human-like shapes. If a normal human burglar fails to trigger the "humanoid motion" event, you likely have it set to the "The Hulk" sensitivity, so reduce it so it'll detect regular humans.

    Ergo, no WTF here.

  • t (unregistered) in reply to The Beast in Black

    Maybe not a WTF, but you can also read it the other way around.

    If the detection is too eager to detect humans, it might flag things as humans that aren't humans, you'd decrease the sensitivity of it.

  • dusoft (unregistered)

    Maybe not the problem with "sensitivity" settings per se, but definitely a UX/usability problem. At least two programmers commented here that think everything is as it should be instead of talking about how that interface is confusing (it indeed is).

  • ricecake (unregistered) in reply to dusoft

    Maybe they should use "specificity" for the Humanoid Detection setting (ref: "sensitivity and specificity" as used in the medical field). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity

  • ThosRTanner (github)

    On the subject of increasing the sensitivity of one sensor if you get too many false alarms and decreasing the sensitivity of the other - which is by itself confusing, except to the people who wrote it. (Which in my experience has always been a major problem with UIs designed by the people who implement the code. I have no idea why, but programmers tend to design UIs to match the implementation, not to match what the user requires) err - anyway - wtf is a "false alarm push"? Does something come from your phone and shove you against the wall?

  • (nodebb)

    Exactly. The error is not in the sliders. The error is in using the term "sensitivity" inappropriately. And especially using it i opposite sense nearby each other.

  • (nodebb)

    Knowing Google, maybe "2 years left" refers to how long it will be before it kills off Google Home.

  • Tim R (unregistered)

    I'm the OP for the motion detector sensitivity picture. Looking at it again I definitely see what you're getting at, so I'll try fiddling with the controls and see what happens. I did notice that the bottom one has the message in "warning" style whereas the top one doesn't, and I'm not sure if that has any significance. Either way I would still argue the UI is a WTF - I can't imagine any more than a tiny percentage of users will understand it.

  • (nodebb)

    Loved the last one: That's some serious video compression! Technically, it depends on the lighting. ... So true.

  • (nodebb) in reply to NobodySpecific

    Heck, in heist movies you see bad guys relying on this reasoning all the time: just trick the guards into thinking the sensor has misconfigured itself and is constantly sending false alarms, and let them turn off the alarm for you.

    I would have said that in most heist movies, the guards are working for the "bad guys"...

  • Graculus (unregistered)

    Used to work on security systems and the motion detection is fine.

Leave a comment on “Hypersensitive”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article