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Comment by psobot | Hacker News Reader

Viscount has hilariously bad security. I used to live in a building in Toronto that used Viscount infrared fobs for access control. They were no more secure than TV remotes; no rolling codes, no encryption, nothing. An attacker could easily sit nearby with an IR receiver and collect everyone's fob codes at a distance, allowing access to all floors.

Needless to say, I moved.

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This was 30 years ago, so I'm sure a lot has changed since then. I was a missionary and the way we got into buildings in Toronto to knock on doors was to just pick the last name with the most letters from the directory, buzz them, and when they answered, we would just say "pizza delivery" and 95% of the time they buzzed the door open.

It'd be nice if missionaries weren't such hypocrites. Claiming to be the pizza guy when you're actually selling magic underwear is bearing false witness.

Technically it depends on the interpretation of "עֵ֥ד" and "בְרֵעֲךָ֖" whether that commandment is admonishing against telling any lie, just lies in court when making a legal accusation against another person, or somewhere in between.

Even if we accepted the premise that one book should be the basis of all morality, this one contains within itself contradictions, satire, sarcasm, and a community context we no longer have: with individual quotes I can make anyone look like a hypocrite.

To my mind the more interesting question is, does a singular community condemn a behavior in out-group members that they tolerate or even praise in in-group members?

Leviticus 19:11 bypasses the whole "עֵ֥ד" vs. "בְרֵעֲךָ֖" shenanigans.

New International Version (NIV): "Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another"

King James: "Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie one to another."

New Living Translation (NLT): "Do not steal. Do not deceive or cheat one another"

New Century Version (NCV): "You must not steal. You must not cheat people, and you must not lie to each other"

The Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB): "You must not steal. You must not act deceptively or lie to one another"

Does anyone ever actually get converted by a door knocking missionary?

It's not for the benefit of the potential convertees, it's for the benefit of the ones doing the converting.

Yes. The inevitable rejection is the point. It reinforces the otherness of the outside world, creating more separation from non-believers and stronger connection and devotion to the cult.

Yes. I'm no longer a Mormon, but I baptized around a dozen people on my mission and they were all found from knocking on doors. But this was also thirty years ago, before the internet was a thing for most people.

What’s does the letters in their name have to do with it?

Less likely to speak English in my experience.

I hope you are doing better!

I'm not going to especially defend but you have a way more sophisticated model of how most burglars work than is almost certainly the case.

Exactly. This article should be titled "I figured out a really obtuse way to break into apartment buildings."

A rock will get the job done in a fraction of the time.

It's like all those nobodies on HN who go through all kinds of software gymnastics to secure their phone against imaginary "threat actors," when a mugger is just going to keep twisting their arm behind their back until they enter their PIN.

This is way better than a rock. It raises no suspicion and leaves no trace. Maybe it doesn’t matter for burglary, as you’re probably going to take things anyway, but if you want access anyone knowing you were there this is gold.

In fairness I think that these "locked doors" are to keep the homeless/drug users out or kids starting fires not really burglars.

Randomly press the intercom buttons until someone buzzes you in.

Wait 5 minutes for someone to come in or out (most likely a delivery driver) and tailgate behind them.

A locked building door is the weakest possible form of security. It isn't holding anyone back, whether kids or homeless or whoever else.

In a lot of modern buildings the elevator will not let you up to any floor unless you've been admitted, so the rock won't do you much good unless you also use it to smash the lock on the elevator control panel and override the security there.

They unlocked a lot more power than simply getting into buildings.

> infrared fobs

Wait, what? You have to point a powered device at an IR receiver and press a button like a TV remote? I've never seen a building entry system like that!

Exactly that, yes! IR receivers outside every exterior door to the building, and IR receivers in the elevators to control access on a floor-by-floor basis.

The fobs were visible by an IR camera (including the average smartphone) and could trivially be decoded as a short bit sequence with an IR sensor wired into a microphone jack, as the bit pattern was transmitted at ~audio rates.

That's probably because it's not so good as a building non-entry system.

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