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Tinfoil Hat House

An anonymous reader writes "A family in Sacromento has covered the side of their house with aluminum to keep the radiowaves from their neighbors at bay. The city has given them one week to remove the life saving shielding or face charges."

8 of 896 comments (clear)

  1. I'm not a Californian by Lord+Kano · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How can they be brought up on Misdemeanor charges for this?

    It's stupid. It's ugly. But why in the fuck is it illegal?

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    1. Re:I'm not a Californian by harmanjd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      From the article it looks like the building codes prohibit it. Maybe they should look at getting sheet metal siding - as long as its installed correctly and doesn't violate any of the neighborhood covenants they'd probably be ok.

    2. Re:I'm not a Californian by jonwil · · Score: 4, Interesting

      With more and more people putting in things like Home Theater Rooms (where having natural light comming in is actually undesirable), how come polititians and regulators wont change the building codes to allow you to have rooms without natural light?

  2. Wow... by Supernoma · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Bet that works great to keep the heat out of the house too...

    Maybe they could use that as a reason to keep it?

    --
    I'll Find You Peer, If It's The Last Thing I Do!!!!
  3. Legit reasons. by B5_geek · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All they have to do is install it under the siding of the house, and it is legit, code-worthy, and kinda cool.

    IANAL but I bet this treatment violates neighbourhood 'quality' standards.

    One thing to remember, pot-houses do this to minimise the heat signature.

    --
    "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
  4. Aluminum Siding? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why not just re-do the house in aluminum siding? Then they can keep their crazy ideas and have a decent looking house.

    Put in some Low-E glass windows with a metal reflective layer and a metal roof and they should be good to go - until someone tunnels under their house, of course.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  5. Re:weird but illegal by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Remember...you're looking for a rational solution to a whackjob problem.

    Yep, this is the a classic case of trying to fight irrationality with logic. The classic example is the apocryphal story of the med student working in a psych ward trying to cure a delusional man with reason. The man was under the delusion that he was dead.
    "So you're dead," says the med student.
    "Yes indeed," says the man, "I've been dead for nearly ten years."
    "OK then, do dead people bleed?" the med student asks.
    "Don't be absurd," replies the man, "of course dead people don't bleed."
    So the med student grabs the man's hand, and jabs the mans thumb with a pin, which then begins to bleed.
    "Well what do you know!" exclaims the man, staring in wide-eyed amazement at the drop of blood welling up on his thumb, "Dead people do bleed!"

    --
    If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  6. Hearing music on my phone! by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Some years ago, I started hearing music on my phone, even when no call was in progress.

    Of course, I just waited for station identification and found out which AM station I was getting. It turned out that the 50KW AM station nearby away had one of their three towers collapse in the 1989 California earthquake. Until they replaced it, their output pattern was distorted. I was in a really strong lobe.

    Adding a small bypass cap across the phone line helped the problem. But it took more filtering to completely cure it. I had to have the telco guys add some filtering on their side of the demark. And, years later, when I got DSL, that had to come out. Huge hassle. Three telco visits with test gear to get DSL working properly.