[HN Gopher] The Intelligent Timing Lock
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The Intelligent Timing Lock
Author : edward
Score : 176 points
Date : 2021-04-30 08:45 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| simias wrote:
| I've bought a reinforced travel bag similar to this one:
| https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images2500x2500/pacsafe_...
|
| The original lock is absolutely puny so I decided to learn more
| about padlocks to find a suitable replacement. As far as I can
| tell the short of it is that almost all of these locks are
| trivially unlocked without having to use brute force:
|
| - All mainstream combination locks are trivially decoded with a
| modicum of knowledge. You can teach yourself to do it in 5
| minutes with a youtube video. It's annoying because not having to
| carry a key is definitely nice, but in terms of anti-theft
| measures you might as well put a "plz don't steal" post-it on
| your bag.
|
| - Many small padlocks use a spring loaded mechanism to lock the
| shackle (similar to the one in this post). Mostly for convenience
| as far as I can tell, since it means that you can lock it without
| having to use the key. It turn that means that most of these
| locks can be bumped (like in this post) or shimed.
|
| - Many (but not all) of these lock have a very poorly designed
| core that often allows bypassing the pins entirely (you insert a
| lockpick all the way through the keyway and you can trigger the
| unlocking mechanism at the back without having to actually pick
| anything). Even if that's not an option the vast majority of
| small padlocks out there are not hugely pick-resistant.
|
| Basically a semi-competent locksmith will be able to get them
| open in less than a minute. And of course at this size you don't
| even need any skill if destructive entry is an option, you can
| break them open with two wrenches.
|
| My conclusion is that these small locks are really about keeping
| honest people honest and preventing opportunistic theft, but if
| you want to go beyond that you'll have to take a big leap in size
| and cost.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| I never thought that a luggage lock is a great theft deterrent.
|
| It's useful that your luggage can't just be opened up quickly
| and on the sly. For example when you check a suitcase in by
| baggage handlers [1]
|
| Same goes for hotel room safes. I would certainly not store
| anything very valuable in there. But to lock away a couple
| hundred euros, some equipment and your cards, which you don't
| need to carry on your person it's good enough.
|
| Certainly much better than just having your valuables lying
| around openly.
|
| [1] Sure, a baggage handler with a set of TSA master keys can
| open it very quickly and possibly discreetly. Who has ever
| thought about anything which can go wrong with that
| implementation?
|
| e: clarification
| nucleardog wrote:
| > Same goes for hotel room safes. I would certainly not store
| anything very valuable in there. But to lock away a couple
| hundred euros, some equipment and your cards, which you don't
| need to carry on your person it's good enough.
|
| For stuff like that I usually just try and find a good hiding
| spot.
|
| The hotel safes are trivial to open (most don't even bother
| changing the factory master password...) and that's the first
| place anyone is going to look for stuff to steal.
|
| It's kinda like if the hotel room had an open wicker basket
| with a sign saying "STORE VALUABLES HERE"--you'd probably
| keep them literally anywhere _but_ there.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| From what I've seen on youtube, pretty much every lock you see
| on a day to day basis is trivially bypassed. Unless you buy a
| fancy lock (and even then there is probably a way around it if
| you work hard enough), they act as a deterrent but if someone
| wants to break in or steal something they can whether it is a
| padlock or a door lock.
| docuru wrote:
| Well, they made sells.
| pydry wrote:
| I wonder if they built it without overrides to start with and
| then their lawyers got skittish and told them to put them in.
|
| I can see all sorts of potential for awful behavior with this
| lock (child abuse, etc.) that company counsel would be afraid of.
| astura wrote:
| Shady chinese manufacturers on Alibaba don't have a company
| counsel.
| michaelt wrote:
| In my experience supporting anti-procrastination software, the
| number 1 risk is the user will mess up configuring the time.
|
| You know, aiming to lock for a day but accidentally locking for
| a year and a day.
| notRobot wrote:
| > I can see all sorts of potential for awful behavior with this
| lock (child abuse, etc.) that company counsel would be afraid
| of.
|
| I mean. Anything this lock can do can be done with a regular
| lock too, so I don't see why any lawyers would get skittish
| about that.
|
| Also, I seriously doubt that Chinese companies that produce
| cheap products like these ever consult with lawyers.
| kevincox wrote:
| But a normal lock you can open any time you want when you
| realize that you have made a mistake. This is a notable
| difference in a lot of circumstances because humans often
| make poor decisions, so the ability to correct them is
| important.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Looks like you can open this lock any time you want, too.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Since it says "A new way of self-discipline" on the side, I
| imagine it's marketed for self-bondage and no overrides might
| be fatal.
| Jiocus wrote:
| If lawyers are involved, they are concerned with the fact that
| they ship a 150mWh battery, labelled 200mWh.
|
| This barely being a lock in the first place, though
| Operyl wrote:
| Hey, I've seen this before! Lock Picking Lawyer did a video on it
| with a EMP device haha.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtNkUjQAHqY
| StavrosK wrote:
| That EMP generator looks nifty, does anyone have any
| schematics?
| slicktux wrote:
| ElectroBoom has a video on EMP generator that might give you
| an idea on how to make one
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5M6YKR7wUw
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Buy an electroshock "stun gun". Get some magnet wire. Make a
| coil. Hook the ends of the coil to the output of the
| electroshock device (scrape away the insulation enamel and
| solder it in place.) Ideally you'd heat-shrink those
| connections (slip the heat shrink around the coil wire before
| soldering, slide it into place, shrink it) and cable lace/tie
| to keep the coil formed nicely.
|
| That's about it.
| lstodd wrote:
| No idea on exactly that one, but basically all you need is a
| magnetron from any discarded microwave oven, a horn made from
| some beer can(s), some LV power for the magnetron heater and
| an electroshocker as HV pulse power supply.
|
| And some presense of mind to not point the horn at any EM-
| reflective surfaces.
| karatinversion wrote:
| I love foone's threads, and the tweet format gives them a great
| sequential format.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| That is fascinating, genuinely!
|
| I would've assumed that's the one universally reviled thing in
| the world (awkward stuttery twitter threads, as opposed to just
| an article/blog), but my assumptions are challenged again
| (always a good thing :).
| SquareWheel wrote:
| I've never heard anybody say they like these kinds of threads
| before. Maybe it's better on mobile, but Twitter makes it very
| difficult to browse on desktop.
| miguelmurca wrote:
| Can we just have a sticky on every foone post on HN to tell
| people to stop complaining about it being a Twitter thread?
| Maybe then Foone himself [wouldn't hate being featured on
| Hacker News so much][0]. Not to mention he has a perfectly
| good reason to use Twitter threads (which he explains over
| and over): he has ADHD and it's a way to cope with it.
|
| [0]:
| https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1372945388664066061?s=20
| ydant wrote:
| And unrolled:
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1372945388664066061.html
| wendelscardua wrote:
| *themself
|
| *they have
| miguelmurca wrote:
| my bad, sorry about that. I think it's too late to edit?
| The button's no longer there.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Thank you from another they/them!
| martijnvds wrote:
| How do they show up for you?
|
| For me (on desktop) it looks like a list of tweets, one after
| another, sometimes with a "Load more of this thread" link in
| the middle.
| kevincox wrote:
| For me they show up like that as well. But I still find
| that the format gives a weird stuttering to the
| conversation and adds so much "chrome" noise around the
| actual content.
|
| In general I don't click twitter links on HN because I find
| the format painful for anything but short content. However
| I do make an exception for Foone as they have a lot of
| interesting stuff.
| ydant wrote:
| I love his stream of consciousness threads, but I always
| "unroll" them:
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1387999563382857729.html
|
| I mainly don't want the rest of Twitter added into my
| experience or life, so this helps immensely.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Foone's brain is a fascinating one.
| konha wrote:
| The ,,Emergency Override" (press two buttons for 10 sec) reminds
| me of the iOS ,,Screen Time exceeded" message. Took me like two
| days to develop the habit of instantly hitting the ,,no limit for
| today" button every single time.
| slver wrote:
| I'm a simpler man, I keep hitting "15 more minutes" in an
| infinite loop. I'm also able to snooze my alarm for hours when
| I know I have to attend to something important, but not THAT
| important.
| keiferski wrote:
| Seems like a text-based password (and not a button) would solve
| this problem. Just make it a string of random characters, write
| it on a piece of paper, then keep the paper inside the box.
| tboerstad wrote:
| I had the same experience. When given the option to override,
| the whole experience is ruined for me.
|
| I've often thought of a lock out for investing. "I'll buy this
| stock, and I'm not allowed to sell it for 5 years". A hack is
| to invest in early stage startups, where you'll often not have
| an option of selling early. Anything listed on a stock market
| is the opposite.
|
| From what I can tell, it's possible with scripting Bitcoin, to
| not allow a transaction for X years, but no one seems to offer
| this in an easy to use way
| getlawgdon wrote:
| The lockout for investing is short term capital gains.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Set yourself as a child and let someone else be your "parent".
| Then the blocking will be enforced!
| slver wrote:
| Only my dog knows my parental lock password.
|
| Son of a bitch doesn't let go no matter how many treats I
| feed him.
| myself248 wrote:
| Some years ago, I was at a coffee shop with free wifi, which
| had become fairly common, but it had a captive portal that
| required a login, which was an innovation at the time. I
| apparently looked pretty nerdy, and the fellow at the next
| table asked if I could help him figure out his login problem,
| since the folks at the counter were at a loss.
|
| Turns out, he was running a piece of web-monitoring software,
| which wouldn't let him access the login page because it
| couldn't get permission from its server, because it couldn't
| reach the server, because he hadn't gotten past the login
| page. Pretty straightforward little Catch-22.
|
| We turned off his wifi for a moment and I ended up MAC-
| spoofing his device to complete the login on his behalf, and
| all was well.
|
| Once he confirmed he was online successfully, I asked more
| about this monitoring software. Was it installed by his
| employer? No, turns out this was a religious thing, to avoid
| "temptation". Monitoring and approval was apparently done by
| another user of the software -- pairs of peers would agree to
| keep an eye on each other's browsing habits, the logic being
| that even just a little more visibility and accountability is
| all it takes to keep oneself on the straight-and-narrow.
|
| What a fascinating little market I never knew existed!
| thanatos519 wrote:
| https://www.thekitchensafe.com/
|
| has no emergency override!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Tarsul wrote:
| I've used this since 1.5 years for sweets (basically
| daily...). So I take out a few sweets and lock it for a few
| hours, so that I don't have to fear that I overeat. It works
| really well and I'm really happy about it. Also, I didn't
| have to change the batteries once (well, you put in 4 AA
| batteries but still nice that it's no energy sink).
| nefitty wrote:
| I've had this for several years. It works. The lack of
| override is a HUGE plus.
|
| From my understanding, if I really want to override I can
| email the company and ask for help, but that hasn't happened
| in the 4-5 years I've had it.
|
| The main uses I found for it are sticking my phone in there
| during pomodoros, and sticking cash in there on weekends that
| I can't afford to spend.
|
| One idea I've had that I haven't implemented is putting a
| password on my computer or phone that someone else generates
| for me. For example, I might have my wife scribble a bunch of
| nonsense letters on a piece of paper, have her input that
| password on the device, then I would throw the piece of paper
| into the lockbox.
| Operyl wrote:
| There actually is no override whatsoever. If you email
| them, they tell you how to break the plastic base without
| accidentally destroying the lid (since the bases are cheap
| to order replacements). Props to them for sticking to that
| mission statement.
| meibo wrote:
| Sleep for Android (a popular sleep tracker/analyzer) allows you
| to "pay in" a small amount of money, like $5-15 per user choice
| via in-app purchases, that is lost as a donation to the
| developers if the set goal wasn't reached and refunded
| otherwise.
|
| I thought that was a pretty clever way to go about it, I know
| people do a lot for $5!
| ludamad wrote:
| Isn't someone who feels the product didn't help their self
| control just going to hit the refund button?
| lstodd wrote:
| I think the point is that there is no refund button.
| viraptor wrote:
| If the app doesn't have a refund button, your card
| provider does. Actually, especially if the app doesn't.
| [deleted]
| valyagolev wrote:
| The most interesting self-control advice I got was to do the
| opposite. (And I tried it and similarly inspired things, with
| variations, on some stuff I need a bit of willpower).
|
| Basically, if you want to stop doing something, force yourself to
| constantly do it - with a deadline. Can't stop scrolling? Force
| yourself to only scroll social media for an hour. If you want to
| quit fast-food, force yourself to only eat fast-food every day
| for two weeks. If you want to stop doing something, force
| yourself to overdo it until you just can't do it anymore. It
| works even to start doing things: if you struggle, e.g., to work
| on personal projects, (and you actually like them and
| sporadically do them), force yourself to not even touch anything
| like them for a few weeks, and you'll be super eager. Forced
| vacations are also inspiring as hell.
|
| Art students get a similar advice: "Every painter has a thousand
| bad paintings inside of them - get them out of yourself as soon
| as possible". Whatever it is you crave and want to stop - just
| have at it, stuff yourself like a pig and you will look to make
| an actual change.
| golergka wrote:
| Doesn't work very well with controlled substances.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Or food, sadly.
| deertick1 wrote:
| Hey kids, don't try this with heroin
| valyagolev wrote:
| oh i'm sure the timed lock would help with that
| lancesells wrote:
| It's provocative but for me personally I think it's terrible
| advice. Out of everything I've read about breaking habits I've
| yet to see this recommended.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Interesting that aliexpress is now the yard to find the weird
| stuff
| TwoBit wrote:
| Indeed: https://m.aliexpress.com/item/1005001926801581.html
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Wait till you see their ads. Start with a generic tag line like
| 'From house to home' or 'Everything for beautiful women'. Then
| put any random thing under it. Like 10 different vendors of the
| same box of 500 screws I just bought.
|
| Another time I bought an antistatic rubber mat for electronics.
| Ali express ads have only 1 reaction for the keyword rubber, so
| for 6 months I got ads for all kinds of rubber ... things..
| for, you know ... hobbies...
| [deleted]
| foobar33333 wrote:
| Another person who thinks twitter is a long form blogging format
| [deleted]
| stevewodil wrote:
| Another person who comments about twitter not being ideal for
| long form blogging
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| [?]
| shawnz wrote:
| Foone isn't "just another long form Twitter blogger", he is one
| of the originators of this style and one of its most prolific
| users.
| wendelscardua wrote:
| *they
| shawnz wrote:
| My mistake
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Yes. Foone tweet storms can be irritating to read but if you
| come in on the middle of one it can be fun to read it and keep
| refreshing until Foone posts another tweet.
| dang wrote:
| " _Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Judge not lest ye be judged; I have come to understand this to
| say that the practice of judgement - the perception of people
| and the world through the lens of judgement, the production of
| judgemental thoughts - it can turn on a person so that we will
| then tend to assume that we are being judged. And that it
| matters.
|
| Conversely, we can also produce the correct statement that we
| are witnessing twitter being used as a long form blogging
| format.
|
| I can also produce a judgement of myself: Maybe I'm seeing your
| comment through the lens of misunderstanding. And maybe I am
| just yet another person who thinks this is a conversation and
| that around it a society may be witnessed.
|
| Rather like the object presented which is presented along with
| the sequence of letters "lock". It opens up and we see its
| inner nature: Not a lock.
| jessriedel wrote:
| foone is a national treasure. That he uses twitter this way
| should make us reconsider our initial negative opinion of that
| style.
| wendelscardua wrote:
| s/he/they/
| michaelbrooks wrote:
| I feel like most of the best Twitter users use long form
| threads. I've only just started following these kind of
| accounts but the information they add to the platform has been
| incredible.
| _Microft wrote:
| They got ADHD [0 and following tweets] and say that tweeting
| works for them but composing a blog post kills their
| concentration. So it is either Twitter or nothing at all. In
| that case I definitely prefer Twitter because Foone's stuff is
| always very interesting [1].
|
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20081056
|
| [0] https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1066547670477488128
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=twitter.com/foone
| slver wrote:
| New startup idea: make something like Medium, where people
| can live-edit their blog posts one sentence at a time, and
| people can watch the process and write comments.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Most of my blog posts are like that, usually a conversation
| with myself rubber ducking for the myself writing the post.
| basicplus2 wrote:
| or buy and old Bank Vault Time Lock
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_lock
|
| https://gaslampantiques.com/shop/historic-bank-vault-time-lo...
| superasn wrote:
| Aliexpress is just a treasure trove for ordering so many
| different kind of useful and often useless novelty items.
|
| Unfortunately my country has now forever banned it and now I have
| to pay anywhere from 10 to 20 times for these same chinese items
| on Amazon and other sites (which I believe are still shipped
| through china but through a proxy country just so the shipping
| label doesn't say china).
| sen wrote:
| AliExpress helped me cut my addiction to buying random crap off
| them, by banning any account that used a VPN and putting you
| permanently behind a captcha trap even if you later turn the
| VPN off. I guess I should thank them but I do miss those 2am
| purchases of lighty uppy stuff I don't need.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Which country, may I ask?
| superasn wrote:
| India, over security concerns and maybe to teach China a
| lesson over recent border disputes (1).
|
| I am not in favor or against it personally since I don't
| understand economics or politics, but god do i miss ordering
| random stuff from this website for few bucks.
|
| (1) https://indianexpress.com/article/india/china-apps-
| banned-in...
| bluecatswim wrote:
| Isn't that just the app being banned? The website works for
| me.
| superasn wrote:
| No it will refuse to accept payments and even if you
| somehow pay for it, it will forever be stuck at customs.
|
| The trick some sellers are doing is routing packages via
| Kenya etc so it doesn't look it's coming from China.
| bluecatswim wrote:
| Dang, that sucks. Thanks for the response.
| reaperducer wrote:
| These were a thing back in the 70's. Except it was mechanical
| instead of "self developed chip."
|
| The 70's version probably worked better because with the
| incessant ticking off the timer, you'd put it in the garage or a
| shed or somewhere else inconvenient.
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(page generated 2021-04-30 23:01 UTC)