[HN Gopher] Is it stealing to read by the light of your neighbou...
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Is it stealing to read by the light of your neighbour's lamp?
Author : Amorymeltzer
Score : 105 points
Date : 2021-11-20 12:47 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mymisanthropicmusings.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (mymisanthropicmusings.org.uk)
| nvissari wrote:
| What about the oil company? Your pirating light from your
| neighbor and stealing from the hard working people in the oil
| industry. If you want light, burn your own oil! /s
| ademarre wrote:
| One of my neighbors has a bright light on a garage behind their
| house. It shines directly onto my backyard and I see it as light
| pollution. It is a nuisance for sky watching with my telescope.
| denysvitali wrote:
| So he is stealing your darkness...
| version_five wrote:
| Has anyone seriously made the argument that it's ok for employers
| to require but not pay for home internet _because_ you 'd use it
| anyway? It's a cheap move by employers, but being cheap is
| different from being dishonest about why the policy is as it is.
| I haven't seen the latter.
|
| Personally I think who pays for internet is not high on the list
| of most pressing questions for how to adapt to wfh.
|
| Edit: my tech job did not pay for my internet when we went to wfh
| and it didn't bother me. I think the real place companies are
| mistreating employees is for things like low paid customer
| service jobs where they are expecting them to have their own
| connection, because the cost then is more likely to be material
| relative to their comp.
| hammock wrote:
| Our office is "open" but no one goes in and no one is required
| to. I suppose that means they can say we already pay for
| internet, it's at the office?
| robbmorganf wrote:
| Legally, I think there's not a problem with even the strictest
| interpretation of "you need this, but we aren't paying for it".
| In many small business manufacturing settings, the typical
| arrangement is that operators buy their own toolboxes without
| reimbursement (i.e. wrenches, screwdrivers, even endmills).
| Strikes me as a dumb way to scare away potential workers, but
| alas I don't make the rules.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| The flip side of workers taking better care of their own
| tools is that their tools also actually get _used_.
|
| When I worked construction (many years ago) you could always
| spot an inexperienced bullshitter who showed up looking for
| work on the crew by the fact that his tools would be all
| shiny and new.
|
| I guess the pro tip there is that if you don't have much
| experience and want to work construction, take your brand-new
| tools and beat up on them a little bit before going to look
| for work. :-)
| goodside wrote:
| This also applies to wardrobe in nearly every job --
| professional clothing can be arbitrarily expensive. Even
| retail workers usually have buy their own plain clothes in
| the one allowable color.
| pengaru wrote:
| I've worked as a mechanic in the distant past, at a muffler
| and brake chain. The shop-provided tools were the most
| neglected and carelessly handled, often unable to even be
| found (the torque limiting sticks for safely reinstalling lug
| nuts w/impact in particular were _always_ MIA).
|
| It's probably desirable to have the employees put some skin
| in the game for a variety of reasons. Not only will they care
| for their tools more, but they'll use them more
| appropriately, not destructively in the wrong applications.
| What's good for the tools is likely good for the quality of
| work/outcomes.
| robbmorganf wrote:
| I do understand having skin in the game, but at the same
| time it pushes away candidates, particularly during this
| labor shortage[1]. And it has disparate racial impact,
| because oppressed minorities are less likely to have the
| finances to invest in their own tools.
|
| My thought is that any good company should be able to
| create emotional skin in the game (i.e. caring) without
| needing financial skin in the game. If a company isn't
| there, it needs to sell its mission better and link the
| availability of tools to that mission.
|
| [1] if you subscribe to the view that there is no shortage
| but only an unwillingness to pay fair wages (which is
| totally valid if there are no upfront costs to getting a
| job), consider that after months of losing savings to a
| pandemic, candidates may literally not have the cash to buy
| tools needed for a new job, so in this case it is truly a
| shortage of candidates with the ability to get the tools
| pengaru wrote:
| What jobs are you imagining have such difficult/steep
| tool requirements?
|
| My experience was auto-mechanic, and that strikes me as
| exceptionally high in the required tools department. They
| were willing to put up with my being tool-less for like
| two years before replacing me when an old-timer showed up
| looking for work, with a freezer sized toolbox in the bed
| of his truck, and I was clearly not committed to the
| career having still not invested in even a toolbox.
|
| Construction workers and framing carpenters can start out
| with _very_ little. A lot of the work is just labor. Back
| when my dad owned a concrete construction company he
| would bring most of the durable larger tools in
| quantity.. stuff like sledge hammers, pickaxes, shovels,
| those were shared. But the individuals were expected to
| bring a hammer for nailing /disassembling the framing,
| and steel-toe boots for OSHA compliance b.s. If you
| started out without even a hammer you'd just be a grunt
| then buy a hammer a week later, though someone would
| probably loan you one if you were that destitute. I think
| there were more barriers in the area of the union and
| trade school requirements, but not for a laborer AFAIK.
| bobthechef wrote:
| The analogy is problematic.
|
| The neighbor is broadcasting his light out into the neighborhood
| in a "unidirectional" way and as an incidental loss. It is
| leaving his house as a side effect of him lighting his home. It's
| like body heat. When we enter any building, our body heat, meant
| to keep our own bodies at an optimal temperature, escapes and
| fills the room and reduces the cost of heating for the building
| owner (at least when the weather is cold). That body heat is
| generated because we eat, and we must pay for food. So do you
| want to now claim that the building owner is stealing from you?
| You've given your body heat and light away.
|
| Where WiFi is concerned, the usage is two-directional. It's more
| like having the building owner ask you to run on a treadmill when
| in his building or asking the neighbor to turn up the light.
| Stealing WiFi involves incursion into resources belonging to the
| subscriber. Unlike heat and light, those WiFi signals are not the
| thing that we benefit from per se, they're just the medium. And
| eventually, the increase in WiFi consumption will also result in
| increased costs for the subscriber.
| plebianRube wrote:
| Triggers a reminder of another similar thought experiment story I
| read when I was very young. A very poor individual was accused of
| stealing for eating plain rice while smelling the delicious
| smells of a nearby restaurant. In this particular instance the
| restaurant owner was in the position that it was stealing. The
| judge ruled that payment to him would be in the sound of money
| passing from one hand to the other.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| That's a delightful proverb.
|
| If I was the judge, I'd find "in favor" of the restaurateur,
| and the punishment for the pauper would be that they must
| consume one meal per week (provided by the restaurant at no
| cost) to be reminded of what they are missing.
| Flozzin wrote:
| Article feels like a bait and switch. They pose the question, ask
| if WIFI is any different. Never tries to answer the question and
| instead dives in WFH and compensation. Strangely they pose
| questions, but never answer any.
| slx26 wrote:
| While the article's logic is a bit lousy, the site is called
| "my misanthropic musings". Therefore, your expectation of
| questions being followed by answers seems misplaced. I have
| experienced the same myself quite a few times. You just share
| some thoughts or how you felt about something on the internet,
| and people start replying "can you sumarize what are the
| questions here?". It's ok for people to write on the internet
| without writing answers to their questions, or even without
| writing questions at all, just sharing thoughts.
| retrac wrote:
| Slightly tangential from the main point but I'm in a free rider
| position now I actually feel slightly bad about. I've moved into
| a row house and I'm in the middle apartment. My neighbours seem
| to like to live in an indoor sauna. It's now well into winter and
| I haven't had to turn the heat on. I've actually got the windows
| open to keep it around to around the 20 - 21 degrees I prefer.
| Not great but I don't know how I'd contribute without boiling
| alive.
| robbmorganf wrote:
| Why do you feel bad about it? Sounds like you're reducing
| overall CO2 emissions. I understand that you are the "reader"
| in this article, but if you did start heating your own
| apartment then demonstrably everyone would be worse off (except
| your neighbors, who might need marginally less heating)
| glitchc wrote:
| A bit different from wifi. Here you are drawing from excess
| heat that the neighbors are generating. This heat would be
| wasted if you didn't do something with it, so it's perfectly
| okay.
| yeetaccount2 wrote:
| Title reminds me of a coworker I had that would rip up and throw
| away a newspaper after he was done reading it so others wouldn't
| get for free what he had paid for.
| silisili wrote:
| Yikes. If there were truly no other reason than that, I'd see
| it as kinda petty.
|
| But perhaps there's something more to the story? There are a
| lot of little reasons that could make it more reasonable. Were
| people fighting over it? Was a person or people walking by his
| desk waiting for him to finish, or worse, asking if he was
| finished? Or digging in his trash can? Or worse, assuming he
| was finished and taking it off his desk? All of these would be
| rather annoying things I could see leading to that.
|
| I remember when I worked in a grocery with a deli, we used to
| give away or heavily heavily discount fried chicken at close
| time. Eventually more and more people started crowding around
| at closing time, clogging the area, arguing who was there
| first, etc. What was a logical nice choice turned into the
| owner saying screw it, throw it all away every night. An
| outsider would say it's wasteful or mean, but seeing it happen
| gave a good context.
|
| Anyhow, in your example, I think it's reasonable anyone
| depending or expecting said paper to chip in. Maybe rotate
| days, offer a buck here or there, buy coffee, whatever. Or ask
| the company to buy a few copies for everyone.
| newsbinator wrote:
| That's a fascinating personality trait. Was it part of a larger
| pattern?
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Yikes. He must have been popular at happy hour. /s
|
| If I worked with him I'd bring in the same paper every day and
| leave it in the common area near his desk.
| miles wrote:
| Was his name Ebenezer by any chance?
| rpmisms wrote:
| That's just silly. If I've used something as much as I'm going
| to, it has no sentimental value to me, and I'm not planning to
| resell it, why would I not give it away?
| kgwxd wrote:
| I probably shouldn't confess this publicly but, I once did not
| wish to incur the expense of a obtaining a book, so I read my
| neighbor's book over their shoulder, using their light.
| daniel-s wrote:
| This is a positive externality something long discussed and
| understood by economists.
|
| https://mises.org/library/what-externality
|
| The author compares the lamp's light to using your neighbour's
| WiFi. It's not the same thing.
|
| When you use your neighbour's WiFi you're consuming a proportion
| of the limited bandwidth available on that connection. The
| neighbour is negatively impacted. You are also interacting with
| his hardware. It's different to collecting a type of energy that
| your neighbour is voluntarily releasing out into the world and
| abandoning.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > When you use your neighbour's WiFi you're consuming a
| proportion of the limited bandwidth available on that
| connection. The neighbour is negatively impacted.
|
| Only if your do so when your neighbour is also using the said
| bandwidth. So by this argument, it would be fine to use your
| neighbour's WiFi at night or when they aren't home, right?
|
| And by the way, if you are on a DSL link in a somewhat rural
| area, chances are high that using _your internet connection_ is
| going to negatively impact your neighbourhood, so it can 't
| really be an argument.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| You are also consuming electric power from the neighbor by
| keeping their wifi non-idle, which means more heat and thus
| load for their climatization when he comes back. Also the
| lifetime of the electrical components involved is therefore
| reduced.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| You're still stealing, as the neighbor is paying for the
| availability of bandwidth, whether they are using it or not.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| If it is, then the neighbour is guilty of light pollution, and
| should be forced to take measures to mitigate their polluting
| activities.
| Jiro wrote:
| Something that surprisingly, almost nobody has said: In order to
| use somebody's wi-fi, you _have_ to do things that affect the
| source of the wi-fi. Wi-fi is inherently a two-way thing; wi-fi
| that only went from your neighbor 's house to you but sent
| nothing back would be useless.
|
| It's true that wi-fi also differs from light in that you're using
| limited bandwidth, but that difference is only even possible
| _because_ wi-fi is a two-way thing, so it 's possible for your
| actions outside the house to cause loss of the bandwith inside
| the house.
|
| As for employers, overhead is something that you should be taking
| into consideration as part of the negotiation for wages. If the
| employer suddenly made you work from home and this increased your
| costs, this is the equivalent to the employer suddenly reducing
| your salary. Whether it's fair is just like whether any other
| reduction in salary is fair. Does the UK have laws about salary
| reductions?
| kevmo314 wrote:
| Is it so hard to acknowledge that stealing and externalities are
| not so black and white?
| AndrewOMartin wrote:
| If I remember one of my undergraduate lectures correctly,
| stealing, at least in the UK requires depriving the owner of the
| use. So in an extreme example if you take your neighbors car to
| drive your pregnant wife to the hospital, but return it before
| they notice, it's not stealing. It might be other things, (I'm
| thinking mainly of consumables and wear) but it's not stealing.
|
| At the time of the lecture the law didn't have an opinion on
| "stealing WiFi", (this was at a time when unsecured WiFi was
| reasonably common) but likely required the owner to be deprived
| of service.
| Jare wrote:
| > depriving the owner of the use
|
| I suspect it is more along the lines of "depriving the owner of
| the ability to use", so as long as the car was away, it was a
| stolen car, because the owner couldn't choose to use it
| themselves, or to lend it to someone, or show it to someone, or
| just brag to someone about how cool it looks in their driveway.
|
| Returning it may impact what happens afterwards, but can't
| change the fact that the car was stolen for a period of time.
| hbarka wrote:
| When I was very young, parents would tell me to turn off the
| bedside lamp for bedtime. Engrossed in a book, I would lean by
| the window to read by the light of the street lamp. I blame this
| now for my nearsightedness.
| mabbo wrote:
| I think the difference between the allegoric neighbour/reader and
| employee/employer is that the employer is paying the employee.
|
| As a remote worker, I signed my contract knowing that I would
| need to have a functioning home office (provide light) to do my
| job. I saw how much I was being paid and decided it was a good
| deal.
|
| The neighbour and reader are both knowing and willing
| participants in the situation. That changes things.
|
| Now, for work contracts that began as in-office and were forced
| into remote, one could say the situation is different. I don't
| agree though. I think that every day one has to look at the
| employment contract they are in and ask themselves if this is a
| fair deal. If the changes don't make it a fair deal, ask for a
| new deal- or turn off the light.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >When organisations talk about remote working reducing their
| costs, it's worth considering which of those costs are just being
| passed onto to the employee, and if that is fair.
|
| WTF.
|
| I'm saving hundreds a month not commuting,as well as about 1.5
| hrs per day. Even assuming a lower rate , like 50$ an hour for my
| time, that's 75$ per day.
|
| I can pick a far cheaper city to live in. Why complain about a
| good thing. It's so nice I'm going to vastly prefer remote
| working going forward. Being remote is worth 50k or so a year to
| me.
|
| When it comes to WiFi, my main concern is someone else doing
| something illegal with it. If I knew it was just some homeless
| guy reading Wikipedia I wouldn't really care.
| bmitc wrote:
| I think they're more talking about energy usage, monitors,
| desks, etc.
|
| At all my in office jobs, I've always had workstations, dual
| 27" monitors, nice chairs, desks, etc. all provided by the
| company. Now I just have a laptop and am supposed to buy
| everything else myself.
|
| Also, the company never paid anything regarding my commute.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Unless you're really weird with money you'll still come out
| ahead.
|
| I imagine if you lived across the street from your office,
| and didn't need to pay for a commute then you'd have a point.
| Commuting, even with public transportation is still at least
| 120$ a month. You then also have the stress of having to run
| to catch the train, of occasionally being late, etc. I guess
| you are correct in that you will have to bear some modest
| upfront cost, but what professional programmer doesn't at
| least have a desk and a chair for their own personal use.
|
| Let's just assume you get a job at Big box Corp. Big box is
| based in San Francisco, when working in the office you'd need
| to obviously pay San Francisco rent. Then they go remote I
| can't imagine any world where giving employees the option to
| move to Alabama or wherever and keep SF salaries wouldn't put
| more money in the employees pocket.
|
| Hell for my next remote job I'm looking to get a 3 monitor
| setup.
| bmitc wrote:
| It's not being weird with money. Commuting costs have no
| bearing on the point that I am now paying for things that
| companies pay for if I'm going in to an office. The
| overhead for an employee is typically 100-250% of their
| salary, and this is because it includes costs like
| monitors, desks, equipment, and energy usage. With
| employees working from home, that overhead cost has reduced
| and eliminated in some cases but is not returned to the
| employee. Some places do subsidize work-related costs at
| home.
|
| Not commuting may reduce the cost for the employee but it
| isn't relevant to the specific argument because those costs
| were never seen by the company.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >Those costs were seen by the employees.
|
| Most of that overhead is stuff like healthcare, payroll
| tax, etc. It's going nowhere.
|
| https://smallbusiness.chron.com/overhead-include-
| payroll-607...
|
| You serious don't have a chair and a desk at home
| already?
|
| You can buy a small desk for 100$ and a chair for another
| 100$. A monitor can be had for another 200$.
|
| In addition to this you can now live a drastically
| cheaper life. Moving to a city where rent is 1/3rd as
| much, you don't need a car, etc.
|
| Let's say you get a job for a company that's located in
| Los Angeles. In la a one-bedroom is about $2,500, and you
| need a car which on the low end is going to cost you
| between a $500 to $700.
|
| If they make you come into the office your core monthly
| living expenses, even before nice things like food and
| electricity are about $3200.
|
| However, if they allow you to work remote you can live in
| say Philadelphia, find a nice apartment for around $1,400
| and live car free. A metro pass is like 100$ That's 1700$
| a month back in your pocket.
|
| How can you ask for more, of course you might still
| prefer to live in LA for personal reasons, but then
| you're choosing to live like that.
|
| I know I'm going to enjoy saving an extra $1,700 a month,
| not to mention getting up and hopping on the train even
| if you're in some magical Utopian city where public
| transit is free, is much harder than just logging in.
| martin-adams wrote:
| This reminds me of the 'power over wifi' research[1]. If a wifi
| signal goes through your building and you harness the power from
| it, at the expense of the next building from benefiting from the
| signal, is that stealing?
|
| 1. https://news.mit.edu/2019/converting-wi-fi-signals-
| electrici...
| mountainb wrote:
| I know he thinks this is profound, but it's not. These kinds of
| questions are common law school type puzzles. It depends on the
| jurisdiction. In practical terms it also depends on how
| aggressive the government or a civil plaintiff want to be in
| policing this type of thing.
|
| Often, yes, it is illegal to leech your neighbor's wifi:
| https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/stealing-wi-fi-your-...
|
| Generally also people tend to look for hard and fast
| philosophical answers to questions like this, when in reality the
| dispute is adjudicated in a more even handed and precise way.
| Questions like "was it available and unprotected," "was there a
| sign saying you could use the resource," "did the person using
| the resource have ill intent" all come into play, as would how
| much data you used and for what purpose you used it.
|
| This is pseudo profound overintellectualized gibberish. It
| displays a mind like a Rube Goldberg machine employing the wrong
| tools to try to resolve a simple dilemma. It brings in all these
| irrelevant analogies and premises that just convolute the
| statements without advancing a clear argument.
| Hercuros wrote:
| It's an interesting thought experiment IMO and you can't really
| resolve moral questions by looking at what the law says. After
| all, the law tends to be based on some moral principles, and
| laws can fail or be ineffective/corrupt.
|
| It is quite conceivable that when it comes to working-from-home
| (and having the employer contribute to the costs that you make
| at home), the laws simply aren't in place yet, because we have
| never seen WFH on the scale that we see during the pandemic. So
| it is ultimately silly to try to determine what is reasonable
| based on the currently existing law here.
| mountainb wrote:
| The laws exist already, and even where they don't directly
| address WiFi, they address broad enough situations to be
| applicable to WiFi issues. It's also not really something
| that requires unique and specific laws to address. For it to
| be a useful practical thought experiment it ought to address
| the law as it exists. It's a cut and dry issue as it relates
| to the law. The interesting points might be around what level
| it ought to shift from a civil issue to a criminal one and
| vice versa. The analogy in the original post between a
| broadcasted network signal and excess light is also a bad
| analogy even though technically it's just two types of light
| emitted at different frequencies. It's not analogous because
| of how it's used in the two separate instances.
|
| It's not really that interesting of a philosophical issue
| either; I find the notion that it's a novel issue to be
| baffling. Out of all the many novel issues arising from mass
| WFH this isn't one of them.
| Supermancho wrote:
| This feels like a subtle anti-remote work puff piece to
| test the waters with scare phrases like:
|
| "When organisations talk about remote working reducing
| their costs, it's worth considering which of those costs
| are just being passed onto to the employee, and if that is
| fair."
|
| I don't know a many people who lament WFH, excepting
| educators and middle-managers.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Often, yes, it is illegal to leech your neighbor's wifi"
|
| Yes. Our society has this pathological aversion of people
| having something for "free". I can turn this all upside down.
| By having all this giant infrastructure you are leeching by
| reducing my abilities to roam the Earth and feed myself without
| being someone's servant.
|
| I think the root of it has something to do with the higher ups
| wanting and forcing people to work so that they can profit out
| of it.
|
| But this is also something that allowed us to progress from
| semi monkeys with 20 year lifespan to what we are now.
| dnautics wrote:
| uhm, it's not an allergy to free things that is why it's
| illegal to leech your neighbor's wifi. It's illegal to leech
| your neighbor's wifi because you could do something illegal
| which then gets pinned on your neighbor.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > I think the root of it has something to do with the higher
| ups wanting and forcing people to work so that they can
| profit out of it.
|
| In the same way we think the divine right of monarchy is an
| absurd way to justify feudalism, someday we will think human
| nature is an absurd way of justifying our current system.
| treebog wrote:
| Unfortunately the overintellectualized gibberish here is your
| comment. You have completely missed the point of the post
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Light and WiFi aren't equal, though. The light produced is gated
| by the burning of fuel, thus light is the side-effect of an
| action. Light may be consumed at will by the Reader because there
| is no cost to the Producer in the making of the side-effect.
|
| The gating for WiFi is after the WiFi itself and is bandwidth. If
| no bandwidth is consumed, then it's not theft. But, if bandwidth
| is consumed, then the cost is borne by all parties and anyone who
| is not contributing is stealing from those who are.
| w0mbat wrote:
| This reminds me of the dispute between FAANG companies and big
| ISPs.
|
| The ISPs were saying "You are benefiting from our networks for
| free! Pay us!".
|
| The companies like Netflix were saying "Without our services
| nobody would want broadband. Maybe you should pay us!".
| [deleted]
| Borrible wrote:
| I know it dodges the dilemma, but the neighbour didn't pay for
| the light. He paid for the oil. So it's questionable what was
| stolen and where.
|
| The light seems to have left the property of the neighbour.
|
| You may even call it light pollution, because of its
| environmental impact, which may be of greater importance in the
| long run.
|
| https://www.darksky.org/light-pollution/wildlife/
|
| Imagine the reader has a bee hive, that is disturbed by the light
| and reduces its honey production.
|
| But since the reader approved and even used the situation to its
| own advantage, he also could be considered responsible.
|
| So in the best of all possible worlds both should be charged with
| minor misdemeanor. And punished accordingly with a semester of
| Kantian moral philosophy, held in a Platonic cave without
| lighting.
| Borrible wrote:
| Rethinking the matter again, the punishment seems a bit harsh.
| One should also think about the rehabilitation of the
| delinquents. The punishment should teach them something and
| make them better citizens.
|
| So some light, maybe a little fire behind their backs may be
| allowed.
|
| So they learn a bit about themselves being just a shamefull
| shadow on the wall...
|
| So be it!
|
| Salomon has spoken.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes it is stealing, because light providing companies might go
| bankrupt and this leaves your neighbor without light.
|
| (simply put)
| daniel-s wrote:
| On the point of passing on the cost of maintaining a workplace to
| the employee. I don't see why that would be such a bad thing.
|
| In the immediate term it may not change much, but over time it
| will lead to increased income for people that work from home.
|
| With less overhead to hire an employee, companies will have more
| resources available to compete against each other for employees
| on the labour market.
| jaclaz wrote:
| As a side question/note, how much does a MB (or a GB) actually
| cost?
|
| I mean, your ISP is giving to you for a monthly fee, an
| "unlimited" amount of GBs, it is the concurrent usage that is
| limited by the bandwidth of your connection.
|
| How many of them do you actually use?
|
| How many of them does your neighbour actually use?
|
| In - say - a 12 flats building there are likely 12 different,
| individual connections, serving who?
|
| At the very most 24-36 people concurrently.
|
| Yet, on your small-medium office, a single connection (with
| comparable cost/bandwidth) serves 10-15 people, possibly more.
|
| So, people in your condo is cumulatively paying some 10x the
| money that an office would.
|
| In a perfect world, there would be a centralized connection,
| wouldn't it?
| wzdd wrote:
| I don't understand the riddle at all. The neighbour "cast light
| out onto the street and in to the windows of the neighbouring
| houses". In a very real and obvious sense, the neighbour's light
| is no longer theirs at that point. Even by the naive definition
| of stealing ("taking something which doesn't belong to you"), the
| Reader is not stealing.
|
| By contrast, Wifi bandwidth, Internet access, electricity, and so
| on, are limited resources which someone has to pay for. If the
| Reader connected their Kindle to their neighbour's power supply
| then they are unambigously stealing electricity. Viewed in this
| way, an employer requiring their employee to consume electricity,
| potentially deprive other users of their home Internet of wifi
| bandwidth, and so on, is quite clearly imposing an extra cost on
| their WFH employees which they are not imposing on their office
| workers.
|
| This doesn't seem ambiguous to me, it's just not become an issue
| yet because the harm is relatively small.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I'd trade the stolen electricity and internet for my stolen
| commute time, gas money, and vehicle wear any time.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| By this logic, your employer should have subjected you to
| something much worse originally, so you'd be happy to pay the
| vehicle wear and tear, gas, and commute time.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Correct. This isn't revealing. Norm conditions were worse
| originally (in factories and other industries) and had
| settled in a less worse condition recently. Now it's less
| worse again and people are happier. Unsurprising.
| jdironman wrote:
| Exactly what I came to say. They pay for a limited resource.
| The download and upload rates. Which is indeed limited in
| availability. With the light its not much different than
| driving around and enjoying looking at others Christmas lights.
| You didn't buy their lights, they bought them, but you derive
| value / joy from them which was their purpose.
| curiousgal wrote:
| > the harm is relatively small
|
| Try working from a Third World country, you connecting to your
| company's bandwidth-hungry VPN means anyone sharing the wifi
| won't be able to do anything.
| bmicraft wrote:
| VPNs don't usually consume any significant bandwidth overhead
| at all which makes me curious as to what service your
| employer is using?
| withinboredom wrote:
| I've heard many WFH setups that record your screen and
| monitor your camera to make sure you're actually working.
| There could be monitoring stuff bundled with the VPN that
| does consume many resources (or IT dept is screen recording
| remotely).
| bamboozled wrote:
| Maybe more simply put, they're using the "wasted" light ?
| foxfluff wrote:
| Exactly. If neighbor doesn't want their light "stolen", then
| they can use a curtain and stop throwing the light onto the
| street. If they don't want rats to "steal" their peanuts,
| they can grab them from the bag without dropping and leaving
| a handful on the road.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| Candle-light is more expensive than bandwidth is today. Also,
| bandwidth is the use over a specified allotment.
|
| Aside from the obvious analog that your neighbors wifi is
| literally a light you cannot see, if they aren't maxing out
| their bandwidth, then it makes similarly no difference that you
| use it.
|
| It's not 10 years ago, the neighborhood using your router for
| Facebook doesn't dent the bandwidth.
|
| So how is it not comparable to stray light?
| foxfluff wrote:
| > if they aren't maxing out their bandwidth, then it makes
| similarly no difference that you use it
|
| That is a big assumption right there. The neighborhood
| streaming 4k cat videos from youtube could make a massive
| dent, and I can easily use all the bandwidth I have for my
| own needs.
|
| That's before we consider the potential consequences of them
| "borrowing" my IP address and all. Of course it's on me to
| keep my network secure so I don't let that happen, but in
| theory they could find the next vulnerability that lets them
| in.
| Jerrrry wrote:
| >if they aren't maxing out their bandwidth
|
| The analogy is only in the contextually relevant case of a
| limited resource and the consumption.
|
| The juxtaposition of individual vs collectivism, and the
| inevitable tragedy of the commons, was the relevance.
|
| Of course, any technical analogy on HN gets pedantically
| deconstructed into atomic trivialness.
|
| Anywho - if you don't broadcast your SSID, or, even less
| dismissively, don't Faraday cage your house, then anyone
| interacting with the electromagnetic field that you
| haphazardly allow to escape the privacy of your residence
| is within their rights to do so.
| libeclipse wrote:
| > anyone interacting with the electromagnetic field that
| you haphazardly allow to escape the privacy of your
| residence is within their rights to do so
|
| You clearly have an insufficient understanding of how
| wireless communication protocols work, in particular the
| 'communication' aspect. Simply detecting the signal would
| not allow you to use the WiFi network. You would have to
| establish a connection with the access point and actively
| and continuously exchange information with it, thereby
| directly using its resources.
|
| This is not the same as coming across a fallen coin in
| the street, or reading by ambient light emitted by
| someone else's candle
| vntok wrote:
| > Anywho - if you don't broadcast your SSID, or, even
| less dismissively, don't Faraday cage your house, then
| anyone interacting with the electromagnetic field that
| you haphazardly allow to escape the privacy of your
| residence is within their rights to do so.
|
| Are you seriously arguing that anyone is allowed to
| tamper with your mobile phone signal as long as you're at
| home and they're outside the walls?
| [deleted]
| imgabe wrote:
| This is very muddled. Reading from the spillover light of your
| neighbor's lamp doesn't deprive them of anything. Using your
| neighbor's wifi might deprive them of bandwidth, or use up their
| data limit if they have one.
|
| The ultimate point they're getting to is a good one though.
| Should companies pay for increased costs borne by employees
| working from home? Of course they should. Whether or not they
| will, will be determined by the labor market and if they need to
| pay extra to attract employees.
|
| Employees get benefits from working from home too. No commute.
| Easier to run errands and spend time with family. Maybe those
| benefits are enough to offset whatever additional costs they
| incur.
| klyrs wrote:
| Indeed, your neighbor's lamplight would be considered pollution
| if you're trying to stargaze. Using their wifi is more like
| using their hose to water your garden.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Is it stealing to stand outside a festival camp/concert area and
| listen to the music for free?
| hackathonguy wrote:
| In Jewish law there is a paradigm called "this one is benefitting
| and this one is not losing". Essentially, the idea is that if
| you're enjoying something belonging to someone else, that doesn't
| constitute stealing as long as they don't stand to lose anything
| owing to your usage.
|
| This applies to lamplight, and interestingly, can be applied to
| piracy as well: if you can honestly say you wouldn't have
| purchased the movie/software/music anyway, downloading it is not
| stealing.
|
| As others have mentioned in the comments, this idea doesn't work
| for wifi: performance is inversely correlated with connected
| devices, making using your neighbor's wifi a case of "this one is
| benefitting and this one is losing".
| onethought wrote:
| But intellectual property isn't a thing then.
| DennisP wrote:
| This also seems like a good analogy for some copyright issues,
| where copies of files are the light, and publishers are the
| electric company complaining about the watts they didn't get to
| sell.
| k__ wrote:
| Isn't the difference in capacity?
|
| A lamp has much more excess capacity of light than a wifi, I
| wouldn't notice my neighbour using it with me.
|
| But a wifi has much less capacity than a lamp, and using it for
| work might remove noticable capacity from my wifi.
| krisoft wrote:
| > A lamp has much more excess capacity of light than a wifi, I
| wouldn't notice my neighbour using it with me.
|
| Interesting. I think I would notice the lamp case sooner. Not
| because I would have less light mind you, but because my
| neighbour would be creeping for a prolonged time close to my
| un-curtained window. That would totally freak me out, but i
| wouldn't call it stealing. :)
|
| On the other hand I have so much bandwidth that I wouldn't
| notice an occasional interlooper who is not being jackass about
| it. If they connect and saturate my link with torrent or
| something so much that I start investigating then maybe, but
| other than that I will only find them with a network scan which
| I perform only very rarely.
| aflag wrote:
| Not sure if capacity is the thing here. Using someone else's
| wifi does harm to that person. They will be deprived of
| bandwidth and, if they have a data limit, you may be using that
| up too. With light, what you're getting is just their waste,
| it's similar to go through your neighbor's trash. With wifi, if
| you could use the leaking signal to heat your dinner or
| something like that, then it wouldn't be stealing, that's just
| their waste. However, if you actively connect to their router
| and use their bandwidth, it's a completely different story.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Using a neighbor's WiFi deprives the neighbor of using it at
| the same time, as using it diminishes capacity.
|
| This is not true of light. As the article says, using a
| neighbor's light is "free loading". The article doesn't really
| say whether the author thinks that is stealing or not.
| u10242 wrote:
| The most common example I know of is that if in a garden grows an
| apple tree, where one branch reaches into the neighbor's garden,
| is the neighbor allowed to harvest the apples from that branch?
|
| IANAL, but IIRC German law states that 1) the neighbor is allowed
| to harvest the apples and 2) the neighbor can demand from the
| tree owner to saw that branch off.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| I don't know about the fruit specifically, but I believe that
| in most jurisdictions in the United States you can also demand
| that the neighbor remove the encroaching branch, or remove it
| yourself, if you so choose.
|
| Usually it's better to just be friendly, though. When I used to
| home brew and grew hops along my back fence, my neighbor on the
| other side was also a home brewer. I told him he was welcome to
| any hops that were on his side of the fence. :-)
|
| It probably helped that the fence was old and ugly, and being
| covered with hop vines make it look nice.
| silisili wrote:
| IIRC, in the US, tree law is a lot more complicated (which
| itself is fascinating).
|
| For example, where I lived, it was my responsibility to trim
| my neighbors branches that were growing into and falling into
| my yard. Further, if I chose to cut said branches, I had to
| make sure it wouldn't harm or kill the tree.
| kmm wrote:
| I have the thermostat in my apartment turned to about 19deg,
| which is a bit lower than is usual here, to save money and the
| environment, and I'm still perfectly comfortable at that
| temperature. At some point, after I had rented it for a bit, I
| had to be gone for a few weeks, so I turned the thermostat and
| all the radiators completely off. The outside temperature was
| about 5-10deg, which I what expected to find on my return. Yet
| when I came back, it was still at 19.5deg. I have only rarely had
| to turn on my radiators since, even during Winter.
|
| Of course, the place can't be that well-isolated, and I regularly
| open the windows to let in fresh air, so that energy must be
| coming from somewhere. I assume it's heat leaking in from my
| upstairs, downstairs, left and right neighbors. They probably
| have their thermostats set to a balmy 21-22deg, and the heat flux
| through my walls must be enough to keep the place at around
| 19deg.
|
| I often wonder whether this constitutes stealing. It's not
| exactly parallel to the light of my neighbor's lamp, since due to
| the temperature differential their thermostats are working harder
| than they would be if I heated my place to 22deg. In effect,
| they're all paying for the energy to keep my place at 19deg, and
| I'm presumably paying only a pittance for heat. But on the other
| hand, I have no need for a higher temperature, nor do I want to
| pay or incur the environmental cost for unnecessary heating.
| Nineteen degrees seems like a perfectly reasonable temperature to
| me, and it's their choice (again, I'm assuming, but where else
| can it come from?) to keep it a few degrees hotter.
| ball_of_lint wrote:
| If one of your neighbors left for a long vacation and turned
| their thermostat off, causing your apartment to cool down
| significantly, would you turn your thermostat back on?
|
| IMO, the fair thing to do is to set your thermostat to a
| temperature that you're satisfied with and leave it there. If
| your neighbors want their apartments at 22 degrees that's their
| business and your benefit. You don't have any codified
| responsibility here exactly, but it's still best to follow the
| golden rule.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Sounds like GP still has their thermostat turned to 19 - but
| now they are aware that it almost never results in the heater
| turning on.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Our two previous apartments had the same issue.
|
| Even when it was -30 outside, our apartment was a warm 22-24
| degrees with the radiators completely off.
|
| Our current one is really refreshing, because we can actually
| get the heat under 20 degrees by turning off the radiators.
| Took about a month to get used to the lower indoor temp, but we
| feel and sleep much better now.
| megablast wrote:
| Did you notice a change in bills?
| xico wrote:
| Meanwhile some would argue that your neighbors are contributing
| to the deterioration of the environment for their own comfort,
| thus stealing portions of your health or future, for either you
| or your descendants. Maybe that cancels out the stealing.
| _dain_ wrote:
| that's a pathway to madness and moral blackmail. i will never
| feel guilty about heating my home, and to hell with anyone
| who tries.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's as petty as thinking about "stolen" heat.
| megablast wrote:
| I bet you don't feel guilty about driving everywhere too??
| aflag wrote:
| I think that's a stronger example than the one proposed. But
| the outcome is similar. The neighbors are forcibly giving you
| heat. It just happens that you are ok with 19C. However, if you
| wanted your home to be cooler than that, to be the same as
| outside, you'd then have to pay for an AC to do that because
| your neighbors are making the environment around them hotter. I
| think stealing is not only taking something that's not yours,
| but taking something that's not yours without permission. As
| soon as they start irradiating the heat all over the place,
| they are effectively giving everyone permission to use it. It's
| not like you can somehow easily stop or give them back the
| heat. If they didn't want the heat to escape, then they need to
| invest in better insulation.
| elliekelly wrote:
| My first apartment in Boston was like this. I was on the top
| floor and I'd have to leave the windows open all winter
| because it was so unbearably hot from the heat being cranked
| up in the units below me. I remember nearly sweating to death
| during a major snowstorm because I had closed the windows to
| keep the snow out but keeping the snow out meant I kept all
| of the hot air in!
| galago wrote:
| I currently live in the Boston area in an apt. built in
| 1927. Steam heat. I keep my windows cracked open pretty
| much all Winter because even with the radiator turned off,
| I still get too much heat from all sides. Yes, I do have
| wire mesh screens on my windows.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2020/12/10/945136599/how-spanish-flu-
| pan...
|
| It was actually designed for this, so you could have fresh
| air during a pandemic in the winter :)
| 101008 wrote:
| My God, I think I was crazy. It happened to me in several
| hotels in USA and Europe, I had to leave window open in
| winter because it was unbereable to be in the hotel room,
| even with the heating turned off. Glad I am not the only
| one!
| db48x wrote:
| What you need is some kind of mesh covering for the window
| that lets air through but not larger particles such as ice
| crystals or bugs.
| itronitron wrote:
| One nice thing about winter heat is that it's just too
| dry for many insects to survive long. Obviously this
| depends on the insect, I've noticed that yellow jackets
| die within a day but lady bugs can survive much longer.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Like window screens...?
| tartoran wrote:
| Yes, window screens allow you to keep windows open when
| it's snowing. However, if it's very windy/stormy you'd
| still get a lot of water in and probably shutting a part
| of the window would be necessary.
| theshadowknows wrote:
| Yep my wife and I moved to Connecticut from North
| Carolina. The summers here are very mild compared to what
| we are used to and as such leave the windows open to stay
| cool. But as you mentioned the screens do allow in rain
| if it's raining and windy. Funny I never thought about
| seeing if there's an alternative material for it.
| dataflow wrote:
| > As soon as they start irradiating the heat all over the
| place, they are effectively giving everyone permission to use
| it.
|
| Hmm I wouldn't agree with that. I think the Wikipedia
| definition [1] captures it more accurately: theft is _taking
| someone 's property or services_ without their consent and
| _with the intention to deprive them of it_. In the case of
| heat, you 're neither taking "property" (and "services" would
| be quite a stretch, unless they provide heating as a
| service...) noor are you "depriving" them of their heat, so
| it cannot be theft.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft
| judge2020 wrote:
| This is largely the same problem as piracy. No, you're not
| depriving someone of their property that they can no longer
| use due to your actions, but many people who could very
| well afford to pay for media (of course barring the
| horrible issue with how you're actually given a "license")
| end up depriving the owner of revenue by watching it
| without paying.
| ctdonath wrote:
| You have deprived them of the opportunity & reasons for
| you to purchase it from them, which is their motive for
| creating it.
| jjeaff wrote:
| There is one complexity that you left out, which is that
| they are unknowingly spending more money on heat because of
| the "freeloader" that they share a wall with.
|
| So I wouldn't call it theft. But it seems like a clear case
| of freeloading.
|
| It's like that roommate that never does the dishes because
| they know you will do them when it gets bad enough. Are
| they stealing your time? I suppose not, but they aren't
| doing their part.
| dataflow wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's comparable to that. In this case,
| they would've faced the exact same problem (even worse,
| actually), if their neighbor hadn't been home and hence
| didn't have anything generating heat at all, which the
| neighbor has every right to do, and which would've
| provided zero grounds for them to complain. That's
| drastically different from the dishwashing case where the
| roommate would actually be using _more_ dishes by their
| presence than by their absence, not equal (or less).
| bitcurious wrote:
| > I wouldn't say it's comparable to that. In this case,
| they would've faced the exact same problem (even worse,
| actually), if their neighbor hadn't been home and hence
| didn't have anything generating heat at all, which the
| neighbor has every right to do, and which would've
| provided zero grounds for them to complain.
|
| At my current residence, the building bylaws require that
| all units be heated to 60f during the winter, to prevent
| this exact scenario. So whether it's a right is very
| local.
| dataflow wrote:
| Yeah I'm obviously assuming the resident hasn't already
| entered into a contract or a jurisdiction with specific
| laws mandating them to heat their homes, that'd kind of
| make the question moot.
| jagrsw wrote:
| The countries I used to live in Europe had typically it
| solved, by using some formulas; the assumption was that
| living in condominiums puts additional obligations on
| you; obligatory payments to the renovation funds, paying
| for shared electricity, heat, services etc.
|
| The original problem 'stealing or not' is most likely
| moot. The definition of stealing is conventional, unless
| one believes in some scripture of divine origin detailing
| such things, or subscribes to philosophies like
| utilitarianism (which might be fine, it's just hard to
| argue such things from first principles)
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Actually, they're not. @kmm stated that they prefer their
| apartment at 19 degrees. Since it is 19 degrees already
| as a result of heat radiating from neighboring units,
| even when they have their thermostat set at 19, the heat
| won't come on.
|
| I don't see how you can justify calling @kmm a freeloader
| here. Are they obligated to keep their thermostat higher
| than 19, even though they prefer the temperature of their
| apartment at 19? If so, why would you say they're
| obligated to waste energy? The only way to keep the
| apartment at 19 with the thermostat set higher would be
| to open the window continuously.
| benlivengood wrote:
| > There is one complexity that you left out, which is
| that they are unknowingly spending more money on heat
| because of the "freeloader" that they share a wall with.
|
| They would spend more if they were heating an outside
| wall with an average temperature below 19 degrees. The
| unheated apartment acts as additional insulation. An
| optimal arrangement would be for the hottest apartments
| to be in the core of the building with cooler apartments
| radiating out to the edges. But it makes sense in that
| scenario to price heat into a shared cost that everyone
| bears equally. No one would be happy with temperatures
| below their comfort threshold, and at the equilibrium
| heat flow that satisfies everyone it's worth just about
| the same marginal cost of keeping the temperature that
| way; one might offer slightly lower heating prices on the
| outlying apartments so that residents who had a very low
| comfort slope vs. temperature could pay slightly less for
| heat and be slightly cold, making an apartment free for a
| resident with a steeper comfort slope at a more
| affordable price.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I realised this when I lived in a middle flat. I had the
| heating set to around 20 degrees I think, but it barely ever
| kicked on. The downside was in the summer it got too hot and I
| couldn't cool it well at all. Wasn't great for sleeping.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > I often wonder whether this constitutes stealing.
|
| Yes, of course it does. Their heating bills are all up because
| they have an exposed, and probably poorly insulated, constantly
| cooling wall they have to heat up.
|
| It might not be illegal.
|
| It is also pretty shitty to the neighborhood.
|
| [edit] this struck a nerve, immoral behaviour getting called
| out really annoys people.
| ratww wrote:
| It's not that it struck a nerve, it's just that you're wrong.
|
| If the neighbours want absolutely no heat escaping, they need
| better insulation. Similarly, if grandparent wants less than
| 19degC, he needs better insulation himself, or he needs an
| air conditioner. Everyone stands to lose in this situation,
| but GP just happened to found a sensible balance that works
| for him and saves him money.
|
| And I would be pissed too, but I can't blame them. The issue
| here is clearly lack of insulation.
| nnf wrote:
| What if the renter moved out and the electricity to that
| apartment unit was shut off? The result would still be the
| same (a 19deg unit) but nobody would be benefiting from the
| neighbors' heat, so it couldn't be considered stealing.
| drtz wrote:
| Even more analogous, what if the resident wants the same
| temperature as his neighbors, but just because of the
| position of his unit relative to the others it takes less
| energy to heat. Is that immoral?
| bmitc wrote:
| No way it's stealing. In fact, they are receiving something
| thing they didn't ask for. It just so happens that they're
| okay with the temperature. What if they wanted it cooler?
|
| The construction of the building and their neighbor's energy
| usage are not their problems to fix or be blamed for.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| it just sounds like you found the most hospitable climate for
| yourself, you don't have to feel bad for being a clever
| biological organism that is more efficient than your neighbors
| :)
|
| we're all trying to do the same! it's arguably evolution?
| adventured wrote:
| > I often wonder whether this constitutes stealing.
|
| No, definitely not. You're not responsible for the insulation
| context of the apartment you're renting (as it pertains to eg
| such things as shared or external walls). You're not
| responsible for the apartment design. You're not responsible
| for the materials it is constructed of, nor how thick its walls
| are.
|
| You would have to do something dramatic to the construction of
| the apartment to alter the context you're describing, and
| that's likely not in your legal purview to do, as such it's not
| your responsibility morally or legally.
| em-bee wrote:
| we did that when i was a kid. we had central heating where each
| radiator has some kind of device with material that evaporates
| depending on how hot the radiator is. the heating bill was
| based on how much evaporated. we didn't want to save money or
| the environment, we just liked it a bit cooler. that was
| decades ago and there was no temperature control on the
| thermostat. the only way to get to our desired temperature was
| to turn the heating off.
|
| the result was that measurement devices didn't evaporate at
| all, and the company had us investigated for cheating.
| (apparently some people tried to prevent the evaporation by
| wrapping them in some isolating material.)
| avar wrote:
| Your neighbours are "stealing" from you, even if you run with
| that idea. They're not having to insulate your shared walls as
| much as their outside facing ones.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| In slovenia, we have very complicated formulas to determine the
| cost of heating in multi-apartment buildings, and the costs are
| calculated by the usage of your radiators (we have energy
| counters for heat in every apartment), and you add/subtract the
| some reduced values of your neighbors meter (the ones you share
| your walls with), and the things are averaged out a bit.
|
| Basically, even if you turn all the radiators off in your
| apartment, you still pay around 50% or even more (if you share
| most of the walls) of the average heating bill.
| spoonjim wrote:
| So if I set my thermometer to a super warm luxury
| temperature, my neighbors have to pay for that?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| Yes and no. Yes, they pay for some of your consumption, but
| if the formula is accurate, they save that (or more)
| because the heat leaking from your appt into theirs means
| they can heat less.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yeah, a bit of that... but they use less of their own heat,
| since you are heating their apartments too.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| It kind of makes sense. If you turn yours really high, your
| neighbor doesn't need to turn theirs as high anymore
| because you will be warming up their apartment
| itronitron wrote:
| If they want to make these more complicated, they could also
| factor in the usage of gpus in each apartment.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| The owners-meetings are already complicated enough,
| especially when someone old is away from home for a month,
| and they get a bill that includes heat, and they complain
| that their radiators were off all the time :) ...then they
| find out that they're paying for their neigbors heat, and
| then they start complaining, about "that neighbor above
| them" who keeps their windows open, even during the winter
| :)
|
| ...former socialist country, so yeah, people complain, and
| want everything to be "fair", as long as "fair" means less
| money for them to pay.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I do the same thing. I practically turn my heat off in the
| winter and all my neighbors warm me.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This kind of reminds me of the cryptocurrency climate change
| hack.
|
| Mining cryptocurrency uses electricity and some electricity
| currently comes from fossil fuels, so that's bad.
|
| In many places the cost of direct heating from fossil fuels
| (fuel oil or natural gas) is less than using electric heaters,
| but electric heat is typically lower carbon because grid power
| is a mix of fossil and non-fossil fuels instead of 100% fossil
| fuels, and this gets better the more of the grid goes to non-
| fossil fuels. So switching to electric heat can lower your
| carbon footprint, but might cost more.
|
| Cryptocurrency mining equipment is effectively an electric
| space heater that generates revenue. So if you heat your home
| in the winter using cryptocurrency mining equipment, you turn a
| profit while lowering your carbon footprint. Or it's carbon
| neutral free money to anyone already using electric heat.
| chrischen wrote:
| I think you have to factor in transmission and conversion
| loss from converting carbon based fuels to electricity and
| powerline loss.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Then on the other side you also have the lower efficiency
| of small home furnaces compared to large combined cycle
| commercial power generation. It's not guaranteed to be less
| -- if your power grid is 100% coal and you're heating with
| natural gas, it very well might not be -- but in many/most
| cases it is. The most obvious winning case being where your
| power grid is predominantly nuclear, hydro and renewables.
|
| If you're in the US they have the breakdown by state here:
|
| https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/state-
| electricity-g...
|
| Washington, Oregon and Vermont are predominantly hydro.
| Illinois, New Hampshire and South Carolina are majority
| nuclear. South Dakota is, surprisingly, >80% hydro and
| wind. Wyoming is, unsurprisingly, 80% coal.
| jaclaz wrote:
| JFYI, there are largish condo's here (Italy) with central
| heating that were recently "converted" to new technology.
|
| Basically on each radiator there is an electronic regulating
| valve (commanded by a thermostat) that logs the usage and that
| can be interrogated via radio frequency, a managing firm them
| calculates how much each apartment has to pay for heating.
|
| Set aside the practical folly the system is from a maintenance
| viewpoint (not working valves, dead batteries, mis-readings and
| what not), after the first winter the main issues came out.
|
| Till then people paid based on the area of each apartment,
| suddenly came out huge differences between - say - a
| central/south/southwest one and an outer/north/northeast one,
| in some cases the latter costed twice or nearly twice the
| former.
| rebuilder wrote:
| All I can think here is : so you have individual heat billing
| in an apartment building? IOW separate electric or gas heaters
| in each apartment?
|
| I'm used to central heating, basically a water-circulating
| radiator setup, where the overall water temperature is set by
| the condo management and thermostats regulate the temperatures
| in each apartment, within the limits of the total heat
| provided. No way to monitor what people have their thermostats
| set to.
|
| And, of course, district heating is a big thing. What I'm
| trying to say here is, it sounds like there are bigger problems
| with the heating in your apartment building than whether or not
| you're stealing heat from your neighbours.
| detaro wrote:
| > _IOW separate electric or gas heaters in each apartment?_
|
| No, it does not mean that. As other comments already
| mentioned, local energy counters on the radiators are a
| thing.
| fy20 wrote:
| I was going to post exactly this :-) I live in a 5 year old
| apartment, and there are two units above and below exactly the
| same layout. We don't turn on our heating until it gets well
| below freezing as the heat from other apartments is more than
| enough. This season the coldest temperature I've seen is 20.5c
| - when it was 0c outside and cloudy for one week.
|
| For vertical neighbours you could say they could have insulated
| the ceilings (when we bought the apartment new it was
| unfinished, just concrete inside), so it was their choice to
| allow heat to escape. But we have underfloor heating, so it's
| not just neighbours vertically but also horizontally, as quite
| a lot of heat transfers via the concrete floors too (this is
| the only way the common areas of the building are heated) - you
| can't insulate that.
|
| In the summer we have AC on, and a lot of our neighbours don't
| have it, so I figure we benefiting them at that time by taking
| away some of their heat.
|
| On a related note, if you have underground parking I'd also
| suggest to choose the lowest floor if you have a choice (as
| long as there is no flood risk). We are on -2 and when it's 35c
| outside our car is parked in a cool 18c, and when it's -25c it
| is 8c.
| Ginden wrote:
| Certain places use more complex methods of counting heat used,
| exactly because you leaving apartment unheated incured
| additional cost on neighbours.
|
| Heat is transfered from their apartments, so they must pay more
| for your comfort.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| But that doesn't seem fair either? GP is perfectly happy at a
| cooler temperature.
|
| If GP actually preferred an even colder temperature (perhaps
| for sleeping or exercising) and had to turn on the air
| conditioner, can they bill their neighbors? GP must pay more
| for their neighbor's comfort.
| gpvos wrote:
| But then the neighbours would both pay them _and_ turn up
| their own heating to keep their own house at their own
| favourite temperature, since the airco is working against
| that.
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Correct, it's potential that they are paying for GP's
| discomfort at times
| db48x wrote:
| Definitely always aim to rent the apartment on the ground
| floor, in the middle of the building.
| darkwater wrote:
| Why ground floor? Heat flows to the top, it's better to have
| someone behind who's heating their own apartment.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Hot air rises; heat doesn't. Heat moves from warm to cold.
| You would way rather have a heated space above your ceiling
| than a non-heated space.
|
| In many buildings, the mechanical systems are in the
| basement and whatever is carrying the heat runs up through
| the lower units. My old apartment in Cambridge was first
| floor and the 2nd and 3rd floor ducts were inside my living
| space and closets. On mild days, I could leave my heat
| entirely off and just the radiation and small leakage from
| their ducts was enough to keep my place comfortable. (The
| furnaces were all atmospheric gas burners with plenty of
| residual heat leaking into the basement as a result, making
| it an inadvertently heated space beneath as well.)
| 7steps2much wrote:
| On the ground your floor is either a basement or well, the
| ground. Whereas on higher floors your floor is another
| apartment and your roof (might) be the actual buildings
| roof.
|
| Heat leaves far more easily if there is air on the other
| side of the wall and(!) you have the benefit of ground
| isolating you on the bottom floor
| vgeek wrote:
| The unit above acts as an insulator, so you have a
| heated/cooled unit above you versus outside temperature.
| The ground itself is a fairly good insulator, too.
| db48x wrote:
| All of those reasons _plus_ there are no stairs!
| cortesoft wrote:
| I loved my 8th floor apartment I used to have. It had an
| amazing balcony with a view of the ocean. I would have had a
| view of a wall if I was on the first floor.
| ectopod wrote:
| My ground floor apartment has thin laminate flooring over low
| quality planks over the freezing void below. This floor is
| very cold in the winter. Noise from above isn't great either.
| Not recommended.
| db48x wrote:
| Heh, ok. I guess if your apartment is built over a freezing
| void, then the "ground floor" might be a drawback.
| emerged wrote:
| Sounds great if you love to hear neighbors through the
| ceiling and walls.
| db48x wrote:
| I do occasionally hear my neighbors. Sometimes a loud movie
| from next door, or a party, but rarely bothersome. Plumbing
| noises are much more common.
|
| Oddly, I don't recall ever hearing a vacuum cleaner...
| Ekaros wrote:
| Depends where you live. Here the apartments outside bathroom
| floor heating are usually collectively heated and paid... So
| actually not using the heat is subsidising others...
|
| So heavily depends on where you live, what type of heating is
| used and if heating is billed per use.
| davideous wrote:
| The heat flux through the walls depends on the temperature of
| your apartment and your neighbor's apartments -- not on if your
| thermostat is on or off. So even if you leave your thermostat
| on at 19deg you still benefit. And you have no obligation to
| turn your thermostat up.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| Do you suppose that if someone's hot apartment heats a
| neighbor, that likewise someone's cold apartment cools a
| neighbor?
|
| The neighbors have to spend more energy to maintain the
| temperature of their apartment because of this person not
| heating their own.
|
| I could see an argument for theft.
| emeraldd wrote:
| This reminds me of a story I read growing up. I can't find the
| reference now, though I'm pretty sure I read it in an old copy of
| "1000 and 1 Arabian Nights".
|
| The way it went, there was a poor man who lived above a
| restaurant who subsisted primarily on rice. He discovered that by
| eating by his open window, the smells drifting up from the food
| cooking below would add flavor to his meager meals. When the
| restaurant owner discovered this, he became angry and demanded
| payment from the poor man who naturally refused. The restaurant
| owner pulled the poor man before a local magistrate demanding
| that the magistrate force the man to pay. After thinking for a
| while, the magistrate asked if the poor man had any money, which
| he did. The magistrate then directs the poor man to jingle the
| money and said that the payment for the smell of the restaurant
| owner's food was the sound of money.
|
| I can't retell it nearly as well as the original, which is
| probably online somewhere but not anywhere I know about ... :(
| cainxinth wrote:
| There's an old episode of the Simpsons (can't remember which),
| but something is wrong and Moe's Tavern is suddenly filled with
| noxious fumes. Barney inhales it and starts getting loopy, and
| Moe says something to effect of: "Hey, hey, I'm gonna have to
| start charging if you guys are getting high off this stuff!"
| anchpop wrote:
| That's a funny story. I do think that the restaurant owner
| should be compensated in some way. His good smells are
| providing value to the community (a positive externality) and I
| think he deserves something in exchange for that.
|
| Kind of like how when you get vaccinated you provide value to
| your community by reducing the chance that you'll become a
| disease vector. So getting the vaccine improves the health of
| everyone around you. If we didn't subsidize vaccines, fewer
| people would get them, and we'd all be worse off.
|
| Similarly, the restaurant's existence improves the quality of
| all the food around them. With a subsidy, more restaurants will
| be started and everyone will be better off.
| baskethead wrote:
| Then, the restaurant should compensate anyone who doesn't
| like the smell.
|
| Or the restaurant should be fined for letting it's smell
| escape the confines of its kitchen.
| lostcolony wrote:
| In that case you also probably think that everyone on HN who
| reads your post owes you compensation for your opinion on
| this matter, even though it was unasked for, you provided it
| for -your- own benefit, no terms were set and agreed to, and
| this isn't a context that normally is paid for.
|
| In short, no.
| vanboxel wrote:
| That story sounds exactly like Ooka Tadasuke.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Coka_Tadasuke#Famous_case...
| elliekelly wrote:
| The Stolen Smell: https://vimeo.com/229846100
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This is a strange analogy to introduce this dilemma, the light
| spilling into the neighbour's reading room costs the lamp owner
| nothing.
|
| If I use my neighbour's WIFI, I degrade their usage and may force
| them to pay additional money to upgrade to a higher bandwidth or
| an uncapped plan.
| [deleted]
| jfax wrote:
| There are already laws about this:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rights-to-light
| andreareina wrote:
| Nope. Requiring your neighbor to read and therefore light their
| lamp is a different story though.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The comparison to Wi-Fi is a bit strained, though.
|
| Lamp light escaping out of the window does not hurt the
| neighbor at all. He isn't any better or worse off if the
| escaped rays of light serve someone else for reading or just
| inconvenience the local cats in heat.
|
| If I hook to someone else's Wi-Fi, I am degrading his
| bandwidth. Depending on what I download/upload, possibly
| significantly so. And if I am unscrupulous enough to spread
| illegal content (such as child porn) over his Wi-Fi, I am
| setting him up for an unexpected rendezvous with SWAT.
|
| That said, the article probably wants to conclude that
| employers should pay for utilities such as Internet connection
| when their employees work from home. I wholeheartedly agree,
| though a certain ceiling on the total cost should be in order
| (there is no need why a random accountant would need a 1 Gbps
| connection paid wholly by their employer).
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| If my neighbor had a QoS config which meant my use did not
| degrade their bandwidth, then it would be ok?
| andreareina wrote:
| The relationship of the opening story to the whole rest of
| the article is strained, tbh.
| generalizations wrote:
| The neighbor is producing more than they require; the only light
| the neighbor requires from their lamp is what falls on their
| page. The rest is (intentionally or not) scattered abroad to the
| environment, where it is as much theirs as the leaves on the
| plant in their window which are blown down the street.
|
| It's not stealing, because it's not taking, because it is
| possessed by no one.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| g5095 wrote:
| No it's gleaning.
| driggs wrote:
| Ignoring the false equivalence of wasted candle light to stolen
| WiFi bandwidth, as has already been pointed out...
|
| It's an unspoken(?) assumption that one can't apply for a remote
| job unless one has access to internet. Doesn't matter whether
| it's yours, stolen from a neighbor, or sipped from a coffee shop,
| so long as it's reliable and of sufficient bandwidth. That's the
| remote work deal.
|
| Having the privilege to work remotely for a non-remote job
| requires the same deal, an your employer seems even less
| responsible for providing bandwidth in the latter case.
| boramalper wrote:
| I don't have much to add to the discussion here, but I was
| expecting this to be an allegory about "piracy". In fact, as
| others have noted, using your neighbour's Wi-Fi consumes a
| portion of their bandwidth whereas file-sharing is as close as it
| gets to free-riding your neighbour's lamp.
| analog31 wrote:
| In my view, things like ownership and property are not absolutes,
| but are an evolved set of ad hoc rules and customs. They're
| maintained because they mostly work, except in some cases when
| imposed by a person in power. Discovery of a loophole, or
| development of a new technology, might render the old customs
| obsolete and require new ones to be developed.
|
| A lot of "ownership" and pricing systems are attempts to govern
| the distribution and conservation of public goods and
| externalities. Charging money for heat or electricity are ways to
| encourage conservation of things that are ultimately subsidized.
|
| Using someone's wi-fi is an interesting case. If I noticed that
| my neighbor had a water leak, I wouldn't water my lawn with it.
| I'd tell them about the leak. Likewise, unsecured wi-fi exposes
| them to a risk of nefarious access to their network, and I'd tell
| them about it.
| scotty79 wrote:
| If your light shines on your neighbor and he uses it to read and
| you asked him if he wants to participate in the costs of
| maintaining the light, but he doesn't want to, is it moral to
| cover the light so it doesn't shine on your neighbor if you have
| no other reason for doing that?
| Gigachad wrote:
| Sure, because the point is not to deprive them of light, but to
| collect payment for it. Is it moral for media companies to
| paywall content when it could be distributed for free?
|
| The lamp is a trivial example but you can apply this to many
| things.
| scotty79 wrote:
| But they will not pay for it. They don't want to pay for it.
| They have no intention in paying for it.
|
| Why is it moral then? When you deprive someone of something
| that costs you nothing and this someone will not buy it from
| you under no circumstances because he's not able or willing?
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