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Comment by fujigawa | Hacker News Reader

I chuckled at his indignance over how these things are legal and how easily you can buy them. Chinese will sell you anything to make a buck. It's just business. You can go on Amazon right now and buy a high power 1kW FM transmitter, drop shipped, and set up a flamethrower pirate radio station on a rooftop of your choosing. The cherry on top is they are likely super low quality with crazy spurious emissions.

Of course the FCC will probably be up your ass in half an hour if you tried it; the point is the equipment is readily available in a few clicks, no questions asked.

Don't get me started on the instantly-blind-yourself-and-everyone-else lasers you can buy on eBay (they'll sell you matching counterfeit laser goggles too).

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It would be "the Chinese will sell you anything" if they bought it on Alibaba and imported it on their own.

If you buy it on Amazon, it's "the Americans will sell you anything". If Amazon is too lazy to do due diligence on their third-party sellers, the blame should fall on Amazon if the item turns out to be illegal or dangerous.

Amazon chose to make direct fulfilment almost indistinguishable from third-party fulfilment. Don't want to be treated like a regular store? Then don't make your marketplace behave exactly like a regular store for the buyer!

Is it even worth it to pirate on FM these days? People don't really scan the band looking for new stations, I know the aim is often to provide for an underserved audience but anyone can set up a web stream for this purpose now and avoid the complexity of having to work in a clandestine way.

I like listening to pirate radio but it's mostly shortwave and mediumwave via an SDR, more or less anoraks broadcasting to other anoraks. I know FM pirates are still operating in London but I've never heard any in my current city.

Nothing to do with china. Americans will sell these things

How do they find you and how would they know to look for you?

Triangulation by signal strength. Only takes 3 measurements, less if you have a small number of properties. If you're injecting intermittently it gets harder but they'd pinpoint you from other signals in the end with LEA assistance to get the cellphone data. (You did remember to turn it off, right? But how are you getting the sms requests in for play lists?)

I mean numerous US companies sell caffeine powder on Amazon as a supplement for gym and tech bros. A teaspoon of it will kill a grown man.

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