emhart's comments

Thanks. I hadn't yet arrived at the greedy lock portion when I posted the above, but I finished the article soon after and absolutely loved it. The other thing worth noting is that while it sounds like there was some regional bias toward Fred Buns at your store, they should have different combinations of dials/letters on some of their locks. Also, also, some should be reconfigurable, which leads me to the challenge:

Optimal combination of dials in the circumstance that the dials can be rearranged.

& Don't sweat dial/tumbler, dial is more specific anyway, tumbler is the generic word.

Combination locks that use letters/characters/non-numeral-glyphs have been around for an astoundingly long time, what's interesting about the word lock, though, is that they start with words, then make the dials.

https://www.google.com/patents/US6621405

The patent goes into detail - and is actually super easy/enjoyable to read - but the goal was to have a letter lock that maximized the number of real words that could be spelled from the available letters provided on the dial rings. So, a wordlist is generated under some parameters (such as word length) and then the rings are generated from that word list.

It's basically exactly what the author is doing, but in reverse.

The goal of the word lock was to increase the available keyspace of real words in a letter lock, thus increasing the security of those users who will buy a letter lock regardless. They do a number of other things right mechanically as well. Whether or not a bike lock is the best medium, I wouldn't say, but wordlock silently improved the security of a specific user base that greatly prefer convenience to security. That's awesome.

I am part way through your trajectory. I was a designer first, fell in love with html/css, eventually gave in and learned js, started to really enjoy that and have now been edging my way to the back end for a while. Now I'm job hunting at the same time and definitely feeling that desert of despair. Was glad to see your post, gives me some hope!

If you have the time, could you elaborate on those rules? I know nothing about that field, but am very curious.

Yeah, southwest of Boston we are getting wrecked. Still coming down hard, hoping it finishes up soon. I'm glad we had the warnings, and I'll be particularly glad if we lose power, which seems pretty likely at this point, since the warning gave me the chance to stock up, charge battery backups, etc.

The ad-lib appears to be included in the provided PDF.

Originally because it was fun and helped pay the bills. More and more recently I code to better understand things I'm thinking about or build small tools that are useful to me.

My inspiration for all of my work is a fear that no one else is going to look at the things I'm looking at, think about the things I'm thinking about or discover the answers I'm trying to find. This is less ego-maniacal than it sounds (I think), there just aren't many people pursuing my particular passion, so I genuinely feel like I need to do everything with it I possibly can before I die.

The rififcoup!

So named for the fabulous film Rififi, in which burglars rented an apartment, then drilled through the ceiling to the floor below. This was a direct reference to the French criminal anarchist Alexandre Marius Jacob who famously carried out just such an attack in the early 20th century. At his trial (for murder, among other things) he uttered one of my favorite quotes. He was asked what had become of him, he had traveled the world as a sailor, he was educated, how had he become a murderous anarchist. To which he replied:

"I have seen the world. It is not beautiful."

Latter idea is mentioned in the post, though...clocking in at ~7500 words I blame absolutely no one for not getting to the end haha

Not a stupid question at all. A dive through the patent record reveals a ton of amazing ideas for locking random objects up. in my conversations with Bob Swartz he has been fond of saying that locks are essentially latches, which is a great way to think of them. Here is a quick rundown of locks that have been patented that cover your examples:

Time Lock for Cigarettes: https://www.google.com/patents/US2681560

Combination lock for Pill Bottles: https://www.google.com/patents/US3405828

Ok, not a sleeve, but a mechanical lock for jacket pockets: https://www.google.com/patents/US1138507

and, of course, briefcases take a lot of locks, including very high security ones: http://bagstogo.com.au/Secura-Case-15cm-Security-Briefcase-w...

And thanks for the kind words!

Yes, it is a very good idea. That's precisely how the Mas Hamilton/Kaba Mas X-series safe locks work. The dial is rotated a few times first, at which point the lock powers on and can be operated, solenoids fired, etc.

However, those safe locks get to control many other aspects of the mechanical makeup of the lock, and rely on well defined and reliable standards of production of the doors they are applied to. Consumer smart locks don't get that advantage, so the amount of power required to throw a bolt won't always be consistent. I don't know what it would take to ensure enough human power is transferred to provide enough force to always overcome a stuck bolt.

Oh, this is awesome! Thanks for the heads up and kind words . I don't, yet, have any thoughts, but 2 of the 3 mentors/teachers I mentioned at the top are Dutch, so I will be hitting them up for their insights. You can find them at:

Barry Wels: https://twitter.com/barrywels Han Fey: http://hanfeylocktechnologies.com/

Mechanical locks will always be more comfortable to me, I'm sure. But I think that has something to do with understanding how it works. I'm a mechanical security guy, I'm able to follow the general field of electromechanical security and have a sense of info/network/app security, but I'll probably never completely know how those things are keeping me safe.

Most do, only the Haven explicitly positions themselves as anti-key, but Yale offers a keyless experience and it is possible to go completely keyless with both Lockitron and August as well.

Yeah, sorry to fall short of actual physical testing. There are some awesome researchers champing at the bit to get their hands on a collection of these locks, so expect blog posts, conference presentations and papers to start trickling out over the next year or so.

Personally, I'm very interested in your experience of living sans key. Do you live with anyone else? Was there any discussion or extended thought process before making the switch? Do you have an idea of what your ideal lock would be/do?

So it is potentially as cut and dry as you suggest, but I'm going to dig into the anthropology of security a bit here and posit that in certain pockets of the world we are entering a post-lock age. Where, as Paul Gerhardt said, locks are about choosing who you let in.

To do this idea justice I should give you a thousands words on the great lock controversy of 1851, but suffice it to say that there was a watershed moment in the 19th century when England, and by extension Europe & the colonies, learned that the idea of perfect security was dead. While technological innovation temporarily boomed, it ultimately fell into a century-long decline. This was punctuated by the criminalization of the exploration of security, and a bunch of other bad stuff.

In general, we saw a decline of technological methods of ensuring security and a dramatic increase in political methods of ensuring security. Whether or not this worked, in the past decade in the US we have developed pockets of this country that, despite reasonably high population density, could completely eschew locks without much worry. Locks have become as much a symbol of social order as a mechanical construct.

OK, all of that said - for those people who are enjoying this level of safety and security, locks take on a different idea. Keys often seem burdensome, and when trying to sell new products to this market, you can't rely on scare tactics anymore. Instead we see a big shift toward convenience (this is mirrored in the early 19th century, by the way) and now, the addition of social features, which shouldn't be misunderstood to mean twitter, facebook, etc. But the ability to share keys easily, to security semi-private spaces in easy, convenient ways.

As a whole, we aren't living in a post-lock world, but there is a vibrant market of people who are living in something close. To them the lock needs to do more than act as a bulwark to roving malice.

EDIT: For the record, I didn't downvote you, and I'm a little bummed to see that others did. I think you brought something up that a LOT of people think, and I don't think it's invalid. It also provided me the opportunity to inject some nuance, so I was glad you commented!

I'm glad you referenced that article with your concerns, I'm actually quoted it in, but I think it was a bit of a shallow examination of a very deep topic.

I have my sole passion on the line when it comes to the decline of purely mechanical locks. My heart is brass and pumps grease. I love locks. That said - folks who can't imagine a time when the majority of door locks are electromechanical might wind up on the wrong side of history.

One of the constant refrains when I first found locks was that electronic locks could never be used in remote places where access to power might be a problem. Then I learned about the Kaba Mas X-series of user-powered safe locks. To the drop-it-in-water concern, many people are already using phones that are fully submersible and all of those people can use their phones to open several of the locks in this article. Not to mention waterproof electronic fobs.

There are a ton of pitfalls, the worst of which I touch on in the section on Yale's Real Living lock. The electronic lock manufacturers need to look to the history of mechanical security engineering before they reintroduce long-since-solved flaws. However, these systems are becoming robust and consumer ready. There are amazing electromechanical locks meant to be used exclusively on shipping containers, holding up to some of the worst weather conditions you can subject your hardware to. The market may not be mature just yet, but it is deep into puberty and whatever comes next will convince many more skeptics.

In the meanwhile, you can find me in a library, reading 19th century engineering texts, pretending the world I love isn't changing just as I learned to love it...

from the link, and their all caps treatment preserved:

ON JANUARY 27, 2014, THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK ENTERED A STIPULATION AND ORDER FOR INTERLOCUTORY SALE OF BITCOINS WHEREIN THE UNITED STATES AND ROSS WILLIAM ULBRICHT AGREED THAT THE UNITED STATES MAY SELL ANY PORTION OR ALL OF THE COMPUTER HARDWARE BITCOINS ON A DATE OR DATES IN A MANNER TO BE DETERMINED BY THE GOVERNMENT.

So, it sounds like he clearly agreed to something, as he is mentioned by name here.

Heh, if you want to go absolutely bonkers you could go with a lockitron/august/Haven on the interior, multi-point locking system in the door, an Abloy Protec 2 or EVVA MCS for your primary lock, and a Drumm Geminy Shield over that. (the Drumm shield is a lock to protect your lock.)

Remarkably, you could probably make it all happen for just north of 1k, or less if you are willing to do much of the labor yourself. Of course you'll have to wait for your smart lock to arrive, but you can rely on the mechanical locks in the meanwhile.

And any mechanical security enthusiast you invite over will be absolutely floored by your setup.