emhart's comments

Is there an upper limit to the number of characters this will analyze? I've gotten into arguments here & on reddit that, while civil, are certainly more vitriolic than what the script found. All I can think is that longer diatribes are ignored?

From HN: "I've researched the "why" and a couple years ago had the opportunity to discuss some of the broader ideas in the history & anthropology of locks. It was actually titled "Why do you lock your door?" -emhart

From reddit: "Very glad you dropped in. Nice to have someone with first hand experience offer this up, thanks." -schuylertowne

From twitter: "Here is the US patent filing for that taiwanese lock, so you can see the illustrations: https://t.co/K7F3aY6RTD" -shoebox

It has been fantastic watching Darius' myriad experiments over the past few years. His work always has a great mixture of whimsy and serious experimentation.

Author actually followed up with Woz's reply to that & the author's own experiments to make it happen:

http://www.willegal.net/blog/?p=6023&cpage=1#comment-4850

Started using Brackets a couple months ago as I'm on a contract that requires me to work on a client's hardware rather than my own. Killer feature for me has been the inline CSS editing from html. Particularly as I'm stuck using a single monitor atm, this is nice as it lets me keep my css generally hidden instead of concurrently displayed as I often do in other editors.

Dig it. The "Export to twitter list" functionality in particular. Being able to not only sift through everything, but curate for the future is exactly what I want. Good stuff.

Been the proud owner of comebackwithawarrant.com for years, but never really done anything with it.

Hah, that's an absolutely fair point. I agree completely that this is news and certainly don't appreciate it being disregarded out of hand. We are, perhaps, in some sort of heated agreement at the end of the day :)

I've researched the "why" and a couple years ago had the opportunity to discuss some of the broader ideas in the history & anthropology of locks. It was actually titled "Why do you lock your door?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjacHSTd48

The concept of physical locks as a lone defense is a very new idea in the long history of mechanical security.

A: He implies it was previously impossible in the article with this line:

"As a result, all anyone needs to open many locks previously considered “unbumpable” ..."

B: He asked someone to tell him how it could have been bumped prior to this application.

C: I described, in my scenario, the purchase of a 1 Euro blank from someone who runs the machine, which is actually /less/ than the Shapeways scenario, which is otherwise the same - you don't purchase the equipment, you purchase the product the equipment makes.

You literally asked someone to describe how they would have bumped it previously and I gave you a reasonable answer that included a scenario in which you haven't purchased the machine, but instead purchased a blank cut by the machine for LESS than what Shapeways are charging for your key.

Not to mention that you seem to be ignoring the second paragraph entirely.

And, honestly, this seems like a silly argument to be having. I actually think the boys did great work on this, and I really appreciate that you mention the possibility of forensic evidence (in the practice of which Germany is a leader) left by these keys. I just think that some people commenting on this thread are a bit frustrated by some of the hyperbole, and your insistence that there is no hyperbole is continuing to derail whatever point you are attempting to make.

Well, except for this line:

"As a result, all anyone needs to open many locks previously considered “unbumpable” ..."

You are implying that this has made the impossible, possible. I think that may be valarauca's point of contention.

EZ Entrie machines[0], first of all, as they've been around for a decade or so and are purpose built to mill one-off high security blanks out of brass, so they're significantly more effective than their plastic counterparts. They are admittedly expensive, but when I briefly had access to one the gentleman running it was cutting me fresh blanks for a Euro a piece. They also have rather jaunty bows with smiley faces inscribed in them.

Additionally, people have been bumping things with just about anything that can fit into a keyway, it doesn't particularly matter if it conforms to the exact shape of the key, so long as it can still interact with the pins directly. So, bent sheet metal with teeth cut into them, flexible grocery loyalty cards, etc. have all been used by folks in the locksport community to bump locks they didn't have proper blanks for. I can't deny the SK6 (and many Ikon locks, they are vicious) didn't have a particularly murderous keyway, but the possibility of carrying out a percussive attack wasn't nil.

[0] http://www.qtactical.com/easy-entrie-key-machine/

Do you remember when this was? Multiple rows of pins have been around for ... well, since 1848 at least, but in modern locks, Kaba & Sargent (later bought by Kaba) have been using multiple rows for many decades.

Doesn't actually prevent bumping, though! Additionally, the "angle between the rows" is interesting in thinking what exactly he might have said. Sargent, again, with the Keso introduced the idea of somewhat variable spacing of the pins in the Keso.

Additionally, if we're talking angles, there was the Medeco Biaxial (often confused for the original Medeco lock) which introduced the idea of "fore", "center" and "aft" positioning of the cuts in the key/position of the chiseled tips of the pins.

The former, Sargent, can still be readily bumped as even though you won't always know if a pin will be present, you know every possible location of the pins and can adjust accordingly. With Medeco, it's significantly harder, though they caused themselves problems with a heavily restricted code book so that the mere visual observation of the first two pins in the lock could give you a very good idea of the positing of the other elements and allow you to make a few possible bump keys to attack them. They've since fixed that problem.

Two very different problems, though both are locks. In the case of a car you don't always get to choose the security of the community it lives in. Its portability, price and effective lifespan dictate different standards of security.

In the US the average length of car ownership is at an all time high of 6 years. You can reasonably expect the locks to outlive your interest in the vehicle. Whereas (and this is all quick googling to get to a point, so anyone feel free to correct my figures) the average ownership of a home is 20 years. Now, while locks can certainly survive that long, it's a good idea to replace them once in a while.

Additionally, in the rental market where turnover is significantly higher, there are often laws that require the regular changing of the locks from tenant to tenant.

And - another factor - insurance standards related to security on cars are much more robust than insurance related to security on buildings. You can occasionally find a break for having a second lock, or deadbolt, etc. but your returns on insurance breaks diminish completely as you invest in higher end physical security.

All of this is to say - door locks are a commoditized after-market product that are influenced by geography. They are made to be replaced/maintained by the user and there will always be a thriving budget marketplace for them. Your car locks, on the other hand, are never meant to be worked on by the user, are rarely replaced and have almost no competitive after-market.

Hope that helps lay out some of the differences between the two.

(and I could go on. Lot of other stuff around OEM, cost of production, ability to sell on security, etc. etc.)

That app/service has existed for years, first Shloosl (now keysduplicated), then KeyMe and I believe the proprietors frequent HN, so I expect you may see them pop up to offer an informed opinion on this article.

https://keysduplicated.com/ https://www.key.me/

Jos Weyers has repeatedly brought plain sense to hyperbolic reporting. His statement at the end is bang on:

“The sky isn’t falling, but the world changes and now people can make stuff,” says Weyers. “Lock manufacturers know how to make a lock bump-resistant. And they had better.”

Always very pleased to see his name pop up when this sort of thing makes news, as he never seems to offer a quote that can be used to stoke unreasonable fear.

Most of my life we've had an outsized problem with heroin and other opiates in Vermont. Recently this has developed into an odd symbiotic relationship with New York State, where Heroin is exchanged for guns across the border.

I recently left the state, but only a year ago I was living in Saint Albans when a warrant sweep rounded up dozens of my neighbors, including one who had been moving thousands of grams of heroin monthly.

Throughout 2013 there were ongoing sweeps in 3 major counties, all focused on narcotics only. Dozens were arrested each time. We're a small state with a terrible economy. As glad as I am that Shumlin is taking this step (and he's made it clear for a while now that he's happy to ignore the political consequences of this action) this has been a very long time coming. I remember first hearing about the heroin problem in my state 20 years ago, when I was in middle school and there was a report of someone overdosing in a park adjacent to a summit on combating opiate addiction.

Vice did a good story on all of this last year: http://www.vice.com/read/the-brown-mountain-state

I'm a historian? Maybe? I've taken to calling myself a security anthropologist lately. I study the history of security, talk about it, write about it, think about it endlessly.

I love this community. I've had amazing conversations in the comments and taken a few of those to email or twitter as well. I know that I would eventually see most of what I read here elsewhere, but this is the only place on the internet where I read the comments.

Going from movie to comic, how did you feel about the difference in ending?

I was frustrated by that specific change in the film, as in the comic it is building and building and building and then absolutely shocking at the end.