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Comment by sebular | Hacker News Reader

Not my BMW, it's 25 years old and the driver's side door doesn't unlock even if you use a key :P

All jokes aside (although it's true about my car), it just seems like a fundamental truth that digitally-secured systems always provide convenience at the cost of, well, security.

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In the "Win" column for digitally-secured systems, the electronic immobilizer basically eliminated auto theft. The cars that are still stolen in significant numbers are the last model-years to not have immobilizers.

Car door locks are immaterial anyway, since any thief is just going to break a window. The immobilizer matters, certainly, but even an immobilizer vulnerable to sophisticated attackers is doing two orders of magnitude better than purely mechanical security.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/upshot/heres-why-stealing-...

This article reminds me that I thought old busted stuff were less likely to be stolen. That's why I was pretty confident my very low grade, rusty, ugly single-pedal [1] bike would be safe for a day. Some guys proved me wrong, ripped my far too weak cable locks and did whatever they wanted with what was valuable of that bike (5$ for the metal frame ? the rest was plastic).

[1] wear made left pedal unscrew itself over time, I couldn't ride single legged anymore so I took the failing pedal, the seat and went to my appointment.

Sorry to hear that. Reminds me of a "best of craiglist" post where a "free washing machine" was left untouched for weeks.. but as soon as a price went on it, it was stolen that evening.

Harsh reality : cable locks below 4cm diameters are useless (only useful for young kids I guess). Even fat 2kg cable lock are useless, anyone can rob a bike in a street, the bolder the easier.

I'm still waiting for a cheap bike gps 'self powered' tagger so I can use a bike again.

I've always wanted to build a spring loaded 30cm titanium spike that would shoot from the seat pole through the seat if not disarmed. Obviously completely illegal, but a satisfying mental exercise.

"this bike is a pipe bomb"

https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3277/3011586006_42403e0788.j...

It was a folkie punk band ;) With that promotional sticker. I had one, but didn't put it on my bike.

Nice alarm system that consists of a sticker.

Maybe. Except for the "brought in for questioning by police, bike impounded, paying for a lawyer, etc" parts :(

I must say, however, that after my new (expensive, and lovingly customized and maintained) bike was stolen, I did fantasize about remote-controlled explosives. But then I just filed an insurance claim, and replaced it ;)

In most first world countries that sticker would just get your bike taken by the police instead of a thief.

When I was in college, like many struggling students, I didn't have much money, my means of transportation was a 3 speed Stermy-Archer 3 speed bike that had the best security system ever, I never locked it. It had something wrong with the 3 speed and if you stood up on the pedals it would slip and the rider would end up with their taint on the center bar, ouch. It was fine if you were not in a hurry and took your time. There were a number of times when I came out of class and would find it laying on the ground about 30 feet from where I had parked it.

You must have had a nice grin seeing that. I also read reverse psychology tricks on biking boards such as not locking the bike, which convey a sense that the owner is not far / in sight and scare most robbers. Requires balls.

OK, one more of my dopey stories.. I live on the shores of Lake Washington and some years back (when I was a lot younger) I was into wind surfing and I had a pretty nice rig. I was moving to a new place and I had long since drifted away from the hobby of wind surfing to I list my board and rig to sell, but I didn't get any responses so for a fun experiment I carried it across the street and rigged it up and just left it there and went back to my place and sat back to see how long before someone would steal it. It was there for a day and a half and a nice young man called and said he wanted to buy it. He seemed nice so I told him where it was and that he could just go get it and it would be his for free (he could barely believe it). About 30 minutes later I saw a young guy packing it up and taking it away. I felt kinda good about it I guess, hoping he would have fun with it. A few hours later he called sounding very anxious and apparently his parents did not believe the story. So I told them to come by, which they did. His father insisted that they pay me something for it, I relented and told them I would give the money to charity. Sometimes something like that happens, and it just renews your faith in people.

Just like people reading comments 13 days ago on buried threads. Very very nice story.

The classic reason for that fault in an old 3-speed SA is minor misadjustment of the gear change cable. The gear lever basically pulls a chain further and further out of the hub, going from 3 at minimum pull to 2 to 1. Unfortunately there's a "neutral" between 3 and 2, so the cable needs to be carefully adjusted so that the 3/2/1 positions of the lever give you all three gears and avoid the neutral section. This design defect was apparently rectified in later versions of the 3-speed hub at some point after SA were bought by Sun Race.

Still, I wouldn't personally ever stand up to pedal on an SA 3-speed unless I personally owned it and knew its maintenance condition...

Reason number 259 why I love HN, invariable there is someone who knows the technical reason behind something like this. I love it :)

Or do what the Japanese do: every bike has a serial number etched into the frame and is registered to you (similar to a car). If your bike is ever stolen, the police can trivially find it by the serial number and return it.

In Sweden we use our personal number etched into the frame but the thiefs just files it away and sells it as second hand.

I believe every modern bike has a unique frame number stamped. If the police recovered a known-stolen bike it could be returned. However, buyers and bike shops don't make a habit of running frame numbers past the theft database, so it's mostly useless.

Nobody in Japan owns a file?

No one will buy a bike without a number.

This is another example of something that works great in Japan and wouldn't work at all elsewhere. In other countries (esp. anywhere in the Americas), this would never work, because there's no shortage of someone willing to buy something that may be stolen.

Well, in Germany such concepts seem to be very successful, too.

Every car has a serial number in several places, in theory it should be trivial to find a stolen one, yet plenty of cars are stolen each yer. Clearly this does not solve the problem.

It solves the problem in Japan. Japan just isn't like other countries; they have citizens who actually care about their society and don't want to be seen as leeches on it.

It's no wonder they don't want to import a bunch of foreigners. I can just imagine how their society would be completely ruined if they allowed millions of Americans to move in. Bike theft would be the least of their problems.

The question is - would japan have a bike theft problem without bike registration scheme? I suspect not, for the reasons you mentioned. In which case, the registration numbers are more of a curiosity than anything.

My own country(Poland) had mandatory bike registration 30 years ago(during communist rule) and no, it didn't stop bike theft.

If you can read German: https://fahrradjaeger.de/

old busted stuff is likely to be stolen if there's a healthy grey aftermarket for said old busted stuff parts.

the cheaper the stuff, the healthier the aftermarket, if it's a mass produced item. people who buy cheap stuff want to buy even cheaper stuff parts when the stuff breaks.

I underplayed how busted it was. Slick tires, rusty rims. 1995 cheap model of a cheap brand. Simplest Shimano gear shifting mechanism, obsolete thumb push. Plastic brake handles. Blue, pink, fluo yellow frame paint. Gah, I loved that shitty bike to pieces, I nearly died on it so many times T_T;

"shitty and old" is now "vintage" to the right crowd. someone who owns a crooked bike shop is probably stripping and repainting old cheap frames and marketing them to young hipsters.

Really, I considered this one to have no charm, no vintage, nothing. Really cheap 90s crap from the low end of the generic bike shelves at your mall.

It's worth noting that non-digitally-secured cars (pre chip-in-the-key tech) provided very little security themselves. Slim jims, hotwiring...

The wireless bit does seem like a big regression over non-wired digital security, though.

Speaking from experience (locksmith), you cannot download the skills required to use a slim jim. Well, you kinda can, being that there are books/catalogs that show you where the lock's internal mechanism is, but being able to manipulate it requires more than simply pressing "exploit car radio".

I never had much problem breaking into my old 80s Toyota truck with a clothes hanger back when I was a new driver who would occasionally lock himself out of his car, but valid point - I know 90s cars especially made it a lot harder.

Window smashing is still an option, though!

You also can't download antennas, SDR hardware or a partner to run the other side of the wireless theft operation.

My critique was regarding tools vs skills.

Not only this but many cars of the same make had very little variation in their keys meaning that on a dealer lot or even a very busy mall there was a chance you could unlock or start; rarely both; a car other than your own.

Personally I had seen this twice in action. First was back in the early nineties I could unlock my friends Escort GT with my key and he could unlock my EXP. Neither could start it. Now my Aunt and Uncle had a Ford Windstar and Mercury Sable. The Sable key could start the Windstar but not unlock it. My Aunt found this out the hard way after a trip to the store where she could not get back in the car.

Now my BMW motorcycle uses a keyless ignition but you have to stand so close that I am not sure how well the hack will work. As in close I mean nearly rubbing up to it and only from the left side, from the right if they key is in the pocket away from the bike it won't recognize. There is an emergency key which is an little plastic type that has no power of its own, you can start the bike provided you find that magical point near the dash it actually works; by that I mean it took me and the dealer five minutes to get it to work

As I recall, we discovered back in the day that my dads ford key would lock almost any ford he came across, but not unlock them.

To be fair that practically seems like a nonissue compared to the inverse.

Cool. What's it like having a 25 year old car? Why'd you choose to stick with it as opposed to getting something newer?

Not the OP, but having owned a 30 year old car up until recently, I can list a few things I loved about it:

1. It operated on mechanics that I could see and touch and fix with a wrench, as opposed to opaque black box computers. I did not need a code reader to diagnose problems.

2. Thanks to point #1, I had the confidence in the knowledge that it was maintained correctly, the parts were good and soundly installed, that every bolt was tightened to the right torque specification, because I did quite a bit of it myself, and could visually inspect any work that someone else did.

3. Points #1 and #2 let me learn a hell of a lot about car maintenance and how everything works than you can with today's computers-with-wheels.

4. It was built years before every manufacturer decided to make their cars look like identical bars of soap, so it had a distinctive '80s look that you don't see much of anymore.

Sadly, the state of California decided that the car had to meet emissions standards that were far stricter than anything the original manufacturer ever dreamed of, so it eventually became impossible to smog. I had to sell it to someone outside the state and I'm currently driving a boring bar of soap.

Maybe you could have tuned the carbs super lean (temporarily to pass emission) and installed a catalytic. Might have worked

My car is about 20 years old. In my country it's far more normal to buy a cheap car outright (say 2.5k USD) rather than get a lease or a loan for a new car (say 25k USD).

There's nothing wrong with it, i'm not sure why i'd want a newer one.

Hi from cross the Tasman! My daily driver is a 1988 Mazda 323 hatchback. It cost me $900 and had just had the autotrans reconditioned and a new radiator before I bought it. I recently put new front break pads in and will do the rear breaks shortly.

For my own personal, and endless, amusement: I paid more for my phone than I did my car.

Crash protection, that's why. A new car will let you walk away from a crash that your 20-year-old car will maim or kill you in. Crash protection is that much better now.

I've had two - Mazda Miata, fine, no real problems, cheap to run. Ferrari 308GTS looked cool but endless breakdowns, bills, rust.

Tnis is not a far comparison. Very few modern cars can hold a candle to an E30 :)

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