Want to Win a Bike Race? Hack Your Rival's Wireless Shifters | Hacker News Reader

Want to Win a Bike Race? Hack Your Rival's Wireless Shifters

wired.com

19 pointsmtlebe14 comments

In my opinion, this is partially the fault of big tech and the internet, because the internet has raised the stakes again for winning. Yes, people have always cheated, but the media exposure and social media exposure for winning makes cheating even more lucrative. In my mind, near-instantaneous transmission of information for the world to see is a seriously bad thing.

So how much is gained by wireless shifting?

How much what?

Wireless (and generally electronic) shifters are likely heavier on account of the battery. In theory they require less maintenance as they don’t have the breakage-prone cables. Shifts are quicker and require less force to activate, and also more precise because they don’t depend on the finicky adjustment screws. And they enable tricks like automatically shifting the front chainring to march your choice in the rear cassette (don’t pair the small front chainring with a small rear speed!), automatically choosing preset combinations, and so on.

Most racing bicycles are right up against the limit of the minimum weight allowed. Sometimes they even add ballast weights to stay over the limit, and fit them as low as possible as lower weight = better cornering performance due to moving the bike's center of gravity down/fore/aft.

Tiny aerodynamic gains from lack of cabling. But also allows more flexibility (sometimes literally, as anisotropic properties can be engineered into the layup) in the design of the composite material frames, as you don't need to worry about leaving room for smooth cable runs and the stress risers caused by holes/ports used to route them internally.

"researchers used a $1500 USRP software-defined radio"

A small SDR setup can be made for just a few dollars and requires very little knowledge - as it has for the past 20 years... and works on many common devices, garages, cars, electrical and medical equipment and so on.

Making an article every time someone tries this on another device is always a bit funny.

Opening paragraph is weird. Tacks on the road is not a dirty cheating trick but vandalism, potentially basque regional 'terrorism'. And motors has only been found use once (1) used by a junior rider, its a non-issue and everyone saying its not are spreading fud. If anything cycling is one of the sports with the least cheating. Even doping is minuscule now compared to most other sports.

This is gear shifter hack also not going to be an issue. If you wanted to ruing your rivals, you'll just pass them a bottle with trace amounts of growth hormones and their career is over. That doesn't happen, again showing that illegally cheating to destroy your opponents is super rare in cycling.

In the end its much easier to get a helper to crash out your rival than sitting ready hack him in the final sprint and hoping its just down to him and your own rider. Or just hack the whole sprint field and hope it wont get investigated I guess.

> cheating to destroy your opponents is super rare in cycling

If that's actually true, cycling has a long way to go to align its reputation with respect to cheating with the reality. My view as an outsider to cycling is much closer to "cheating is absolutely rampant" than "cheating is super rare".

this particular type of cheating is extremely rare

the kind of cheating that involves doping is rampant, because along with running, cycling is one of the sport where technique is the most dwarfed by pure physical abilities

How do you know doping is rare?

Amazing statement given that cycling is responsible for one of the biggest doping scandals ever (the biggest in some sense), across all sports.

It is also responsible for the most sophisticated and stringent anti doping controls of all time. Riders are now frequently blood tested multiple times per day during a race.

At this point, doping is far more widespread in most other sports than it is in cycling - it's just not tested for nearly as much

I was a cyclist and my brother is now a professional. It's rare. There was a time when it was rampant and accepted. Then a time when it was not accepted but prevalent as the controls lagged severely behind the methods (Lance Armstrong). As controls have developed and the risk of detection has grown, it has become much more rare.

This is a "trust me bro" reply though, there are constant developments in research chemicals that aren't easily detected. I know a top-20 boxer who thinks doping is common it's just harder to detect now.

Perhaps at lower levels, but at the highest levels it seems impossible to prove the negative.

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