this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025
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xkcd

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submitted 4 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

xkcd #3100: Alert Sound

Title text:

With a good battery, the device can easily last for 5 or 10 years, although the walls probably won't.

Transcript:

[A loud sound appears out of nowhere in the upper left part of the panel, around the word are many small lines going away from it and before the word there is a warning emoji. In the lower right corner Cueball is sitting in an office chair at his desk in front of his computer. He is holding his hands to his head and begins by shouting and then talking.]
⚠ Boop!
Cueball: Aaaaa!
Cueball: I heard it again!
Cueball: Where is that coming from!?
[Caption below the panel:]
It turns out living well is only the second best revenge. The best revenge is making a tiny hole in someone's wall and dropping in a battery-powered capsule that, every 6-12 hours, plays the alert sound of a USB device connecting.

Source: https://xkcd.com/3100/

explainxkcd for #3100

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

There is a PCB make it Yourself Project that was very low power and played a cricket sound at random intervals. It lasted Years on a coin cell. Don't use this on mentally unstable people!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Alternatives: Discord DM sound, Microsoft Teams notification sound

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

Grindr notification sound.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

I forget where I heard the idea from, but I remember someone coming up with a similar idea, just way more sinister. Basically you get a bunch of these really cheap, battery operated speakers like they mention in the comic, but you put sounds on them like creepy children laughing or ghostly noises that are juuuuust loud enough to hear. Set them to have very long timers at random intervals, and scatter them inside someone's air vents

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

A cricket sound, on a random interval going up to an hour between.

Edit: FOUND IT! https://lemmy.ca/post/41987749

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

Back when they were cool ThinkGeek would sell the Annoy-o-tron, which just randomly made a loud beep.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

what happened to thinkgeek?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

They were bought and basically no longer exist. Hot Topic was going to buy them but then GameStop came in with a higher offer. For a while they launched ThinkGeek retail stores in shopping malls but eventually shut them all down and now they basically only exist as some tchotchkes in GameStop stores. Even the website just seems to redirect to the main GameStop page now, not their “store” within the GameStop webstore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

They also had one that made creepy sounds. I had one set to a child laughing in the air vents in a creepy hallway with flickering lights in an old church building.

It was awesome.