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Comment by ProllyInfamous | Hacker News Reader

Back in 2007, I published the first YouTube bypass of the Master Lock #175 (very common 4-digit code lock), using a paperclip.

After the video reached 1.5M views (over a couple years), the video was eventually demonetized (no official reason given). I suspect there was a similarly-frivolous DMCA / claim, but at that point in my life I didn't have any money (was worth negative) so I just accepted YouTube's ruling.

Eventually shut down the account, not wanting to help thieves bypass one of the most-common utility locks around — but definitely am in a position now where I understand that videos like mine and McNally's force manufacturers to actually improve their locks' securities/mechanisms.

It is lovely now to see that the tolerances on the #175 have been tightened enough that a paperclip no longer defeats the lock (at least non-destructively); but thin high-tensile picks still do the trick (of bypassing the lock) via the exact same mechanism.

Locks keep honest people honest, but to claim Master's products high security is inherently dishonest (e.g. in their advertising). Thievery is about ease of opportunity; if I were stealing from a jobsite with multiple lockboxes, the ones with Master locks would be attacked first (particularly wafer cylinders).

View on HN

Actual thieves don't give a shit to learn lock picking, they can use a fine toothed sawzall or oxy-acetylene torch and defeat any lock just as fast without having to youtube the particular brand.

It is actually surprising just how little brute force many semi-decent padlocks can handle. A decent mallet and some force concentrator and I think good amount of them will fail.

I just need to be able to show the insurance company a police report and obvious tampering. On video, someone using an aluminum shim looks the same as someone using a key, and any evidence would require some decent forensics. Same goes for skilled lockpicking and bump-keying. Ideally, the weakest link should be the door, the hinges, the shackle, etc.

Padlocks can be snapped open by angling two wrenches: https://youtu.be/dBSSA5ot0tA

This even works with bigger padlocks, you just need two really big wrenches and a buddy to help you.

There are diminishing returns. Just look at bike locks. Anything higher than trash tier, and the issue is finding a dedicated bike stand, since anything else will get destroyed by the grinder faster than the lock.

bike theft should be classified as a felony akin to grand theft auto

Instead of declaring all bike thieves felons and imprisoning the 1% of them we manage to catch, we should spend our money on sting operations that catch the 50 or so individuals in each city that steal 80% of the bikes, and reserve the felony treatment for repeat offenders.

Yea, be rather dumb for someone to grab their red Huffy at the park and get a felony charge because they picked up a look alike bike.

I like the bait bike operations some police departments do to catch the shops buying stolen bikes. Addicts steal things they can fence and cutting into the business side means you don’t have to catch nearly as many people, although Facebook is determined to fill some of the gaps.

I helped catch one of these repeat offenders when my bike was stolen. When it was recovered they told me they had a huge warehouse of bikes that nobody would claim, and mentioned 90%-ish of all bikes aren’t recovered and they were having space problems just storing all the unclaimed bikes. First thing we actually need to do is get people to register their bikes before they’re stolen, and then report them missing after.

Funny side note, the cops actually offered to let me setup the sting, make contact with the thief and pose as a buyer. I was sure they’d sternly recommend I do not get involved, so I was very surprised, but it was a busy night when I called and they had no officers immediately available. I did make online contact, but due to delays setting up the meet, the cops ended up handling it without me, and when I went to pick it up they were rightfully very proud of catching the guy and being able to return the bike to me.

You had better luck than me. The San Jose PD only begrudgingly gave me a police report weeks after reporting it (needed it for insurance purposes), and told me a could get a copy of it a month later. I'd have to go to the records dept in person between the hours of 10AM - 2PM (email a copy? Are you crazy?).

So I did that, showed up. No other people there. Person behind the counter told me they were too busy, and I'd have to show up some other (unspecified) day.

So yeah, I'd like to trade PDs with ya.

A bummer, sorry to hear it, that sounds frustrating. The big difference might be that I found my bike for sale in the local classified ads (a couple weeks after it was stolen), and I had the thief’s phone number, before I called the cops. They recognized the phone number. My PD might also do little to nothing if I just report something missing. I do think I got lucky, yes. And I was extra lucky that the thief listed my bike for a completely ridiculous amount of money, more than the original purchase price for a bike that was like 15 years old and not as well maintained as it should have been. His list price meant nobody else jumped on buying it right away. (But I do know now that my chances of recovery go way up if I register a bike.)

I'd bet that if you're stealing a $50-100k bike, it already is.

Hardened chains of sufficient thickness can stand up to an angle grinder pretty well, to the point where thieves will rather steal another bike because angle grinding for that long will attract attention.

Ring locks suck, a lot of them can be defeated with a pair of scissors. Similarly, U-locks suck because they're never as strong as the bike frame. You can just pick up the bike and use the frame as lever and the streetlight pole as fulcrum, twisting the bike around until the locking notches of the U-lock snap.

Occasionally, in The Netherlands professional bike thieves will drive up with a stolen van at night and load up entire bike racks. Not much you can do against that except store your bike inside.

but then it's obvious the locked thing in question had been defiled. To exfiltrate without detection is the real skill

But usually the thing that's locked up can survive even less brute force than the lock -- a storage unit near mine was broken into, and the unit owner (who was there with the police) said the thieves just pried off the storage unit lock, the sheet metal door literally tore and the entire locking mechanism came out.

This was an outdoor unit, the thieves came in over the fence (the barbed wire on the fence didn't slow them), and left the same way. If I had anything valuable, I'd keep it in an indoor unit where at least there's a locked door in the way.

So the whole Breaking Bad cash hoard on pallets thing is not a good idea?

Barbed wire is security theater. It was invented for cattle, and it does a reasonably good job of keeping cattle confined. (It doesn't work well for horses because horses are even more stupid than cattle and horses repeatedly injure themselves on it and the wounds get infected.)

Barbed wire doesn't work for humans, especially humans who have some familiarity with it.

I assume that means humans with adequate tools. If I didn't at least have some wire cutters or a carpet I don't know how I would get through it without grievous injury. (I further assume we're not talking about the serious barbed wire from WWI.)

In this case, they did it with a moving blanket -- just folded it over and tossed it over the barbed wire at the top of the fence, then scaled the fence. It was still laying over the fence then next day.

Barbed wire worked well for human soldiers in WWI. It was part of a security system that also included trenches, artillery, machine guns, and active counterattacks, but it was a crucial part.

Barbed wire only slows you down.

Same with most locking mechanisms.

Oh definitely. That just makes it regular security, not security theater. (Again, assuming it's the "good" stuff from the military that you can't bypass quite so casually.)

Barbed wire discourages casual trespassers.

I don't think there's much of a point. If the thief came prepared with tools and is willing to make a lot of noise, there's not a ton that can be done.

Without even exotic tools, what are the odds the door the lock is attached to will withstand a crowbar? Or the same mallet and force concentrator applied to the door/hinges/where the lock attaches?

I learned this as a kid: that big, chunky padlock on our garden shed could be busted open by a 10-year-old with a cricket stump and 3 seconds of pulling.

A portable plasma cutter? What is this, Star Trek? Are there some extremely-high-power-density battery-operated plasma cutters available on Aliexpress that I haven't yet run across? Or maybe I should locate my safe far away from my stove/dryer receptacles?

You're right, I've mixed them up with portable oxy-acetylene torch, unless they're just backing up to the lock in a pick-up.

Damn, I was hoping I was wrong. Going to need some kind of energy weapon to use against the coming robot armies.

Depends on how portable.

A while back I was making a point about the border wall farce--and found everything I would need to do "portable" plasma cutting on said wall on Home Depot's website. Not pick it up type portable, but put it in a wagon type portable. (Generator, not batteries.)

I don't know how anybody can look at those rusty metal pylons and not think their natural habitat is at home on top of a 40 year old white Toyota pickup with a suspension that long ago achieved sainthood. Like if I were looking to attract illegal immigrants, those pylons would be exactly what I would use. But then again isn't this just the standard fascist pattern? Propose a comically self-defeating solution to some problem, and build a tribal identity around aggressively denying the obvious. It's like the social justice preaching to the choir writ large.

A plasma cutter needs a pretty decent supply of compressed air

A 5lb bottle of Nitrogen would do the trick.

Like muffler fluid, the battery powered welder has gone from a joke to reality recently.

Not a plasma cutter, but same power class, and certainly able to heat a padlock shank to melting. https://www.dewalt.com/product/0447800880/esab-renegade-volt...

But people have been welding with batteries for ages. The most primitive welder is a car battery and a couple of wire leads. Tons of videos of it on YouTube.

Yeah, fair enough. Two car batteries in series is even better. Not easy on the batteries, but it will get the jeep out of the bush.

You can also make your own stick electrodes from coathanger wire tightly wrapped in paper.

I couldn't tell you how many pairs of sunglasses you should parallel to protect yourself...

This rig, on the other hand, is something you could pack into just about any plant and fix something with without raising any eyebrows. If you have $5,000 to spend, that is. Super handy for small jobs in hard to access places.

Hearing about it did ruin the "cordless welder" jokes my coworkers used to share.

Reminds me how the Sinclair C5 failed because the inventor couldn't source a 15 mile long power lead.

Shouldn't the sunglasses be in series?

Batteries in series, typical stick welding voltage is ~27v. You might be able to light up on one battery, but you will quickly learn why it's called "stick" welding.

I wouldn't arc weld with any number of pairs of sunglasses, that was firmly tongue-in-cheek; but yes you are right, stacked glasses would be series.

Also, if you try this, before pulling the battery from the non-broken jeep, drive it to the top of a hill so you can bump start it later when the battery is too dead to turn the engine over.

Damn, didn't know that existed but it makes sense with how much power lithium ion can deliver.

I'll have to keep my eye out for the Home Depot buy a battery and get a free tool deal on those.

Matt's Off Road Recovery uses one to stick broken Humvee steering rods back together about once every four or five episodes.

Heh, I'll have to watch for that sale.

4x12AH batteries, that's gonna be over $1200.

I doubt you could charge them faster than the welder can run them down, so you might want three sets and two gang chargers if you want production anything like a plug-in machine.

You can pick up a wholly self-contained plasma cutter in Lidl or Hofer in their "cool tools week" for about £100 these days.

It wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to hook that up to a biggish inverter and 24V worth of deep cycle batteries on a small trolley, maybe a wheelie suitcase.

Always be red-teaming.

It’s much more difficult to tell if someone bypassed the lock if they picked it (and relocked it), as opposed to cutting it off completely

Which is relevant when you're defending against Ocean's 11 or the Mossad, but for the other 99.999% of us, the lock is there to keep a bored teenager or a meth junkie out.

Or, more realistically, to convince an insurer that we've made a token effort to keep them out.

This is exactly the point.

The lock is there to keep the honest people out AND leave a trace that someone came in forcibly when they want to do so.

Which is why stuff like bump keying those stupid flat-keyed American locks is so scary because it requires almost zero skill and leaves very little traces.

Unless an expert takes apart the lock investigating for traces, there's no way to tell it was opened without a key.

What exactly is going on that:

1. You (or someone else) gives enough of a crap to be doing forensics about how a lock was circumvented.

2. You clearly care so much about security to do those forensics, but not enough to, I don't know, install a camera?

Will an insurer, or a cop that you're making a police report to actually physically check if the lock was shimmed?

That is a subset of thieves. There are still plenty of situations where it is beneficial to have a lock that can't be opened in 5 seconds with a paperclip, like a school or gym locker room for example. Nobody is bringing a sawzall into the gym while it's open.

Similarly, I know the lock on my front door is not going to stop anyone who really wants to get inside, but it does stop drunk people or bored kids from wandering in because it's easy.

> Nobody is bringing a sawzall into the gym while it's open.

They are bringing in bolt cutters to locker rooms. The locker metal loop that the lock threads through is easier to cut than the lock. I've first hand seen lockers destroyed to remove the lock. Not while the break in is happening but it's easy piece the crime scene back together to understand their tools.

Manual bolt cutters are almost silent except for the "thunk" when it breaks the metal, and there are even battery operated bolt cutters that are quick and compact.

> I've first hand seen lockers destroyed to remove the lock.

A neighbor secured his expensive bike with a hefty lock and chain around a tree in our courtyard. Bad guys brought a saw. I still miss that tree.

I'm convinced there is basically no foolproof way to secure a bicycle in public.

I've seen everything from braided steel being cut clean to combination bike locks getting picked (by the attacker actually figuring out the correct combination, not just brute-forcing it apart or wangjangling a paperclip).

They just need to steal 1 good bicycle to more than pay off the cost of their equipment. One stolen bicycle could feed a family for a week. In some place like the Bay Area where $1000 bicycles abound, the economics are just too appealing.

From what I've heard, the way to go about it is to not have a very nice bike, make it identifiable and loud (eg ripped up neon tape and graffiti), and then use both a chain lock as well as a U lock that're both thick enough. Also perhaps throw on extra locks to make other bikes look attractive.

Of course none of these work if the thief is part of a ring that is targeting your bike because it's high value.

> use both a chain lock as well as a U lock that're both thick enough

No, thickness is an irrelevant property to an angle grinder. You're adding something like a second of grinding per kg of material. Makes no sense. The trick is to use grinder-resistant locks. Those extend grinding time to minutes.

Or a tough chain slack enough that it’s hard to press the grinder against.

Even those are variable in quality. Do you have a lock that takes 2 grinding discs to cut through or one that takes 26 grinding discs to cut through?

https://thebestbikelock.com/security/angle-grinder-proof-bik...

I think there might be a common myth that having a tatty looking bike means it won’t get stolen.

Unfortunately I don’t think a lot of bike thefts are opportunistic and the value of the bike isn’t the motivating factor.

I think the most stolen cars are Hyundais and Toyotas (and maybe F-150s, these days).

They are often stolen for parts.

I don’t think bikes are stolen for parts, but commodity bikes are probably a big target.

Surely Hyundais (in the US at least) top the list because of how easy they've been historically to steal?

Sorry there’s a (hopefully) obvious typo in what I wrote.

I 100% agree with you, most bike thefts are opportunistic.

I know that high end bikes do get stripped for parts but I think that’s got to be mostly after they are taken and pretty rare.

There’s been some raids in London where they found scrapyards full of stolen bikes. Most are still whole. Even those stolen to order.

I don't doubt that a bad looking bike isn't the biggest deterent. But it's the combination of factors that's practically helpful.

A tatty bike with 2 (or even 3!) high quality locks is a much lower target than a half decent looking bike with just a single cheap lock.

The more opportunistic the thief, the better your chances of not getting your bike stolen if you have 2 more locks than everyone around you. Heck, I'd argue, due to their unusual nature of being (not) used as a lock, a dozen zip ties might be more effective than a 3rd of 4th lock, simply because no thief is expecting to encounter it. They want a quick getaway, spending 20 seconds per tie * 10 ties is likely much longer than what it's worth for them, especially if your bike isn't that nice.

Sure there is, but you need to understand the variables involved. How expensive is the bike, how safe is he area, how long are you leaving it there for?

At its worst, people get their fancy bikes robbed as they're riding them in big cities like London; at its best, nobody in small villages locks their bikes because they all know each other.

In terms of locks, general advice is to get an angle-grinder resistant U-lock and lock it through the rear frame triangle+wheel+some solid object.

Since a U-lock like that is impossible to defeat with anything that's not a power tool, and you'd need to spend several minutes grinding through it [0] [1], most thieves will not bother. If they cut through whatever the bike is locked to, they still have a bike that's locked to itself.

For extra security you may want to do the same with the front wheel using something like a chain lock. Locking the saddle is also a good idea. Locks with alarms that notify you could be a decent idea too. And/or just get bike insurance.

[0]: https://youtu.be/v_0DB3gBM3Y?t=475

[1]: https://youtu.be/LD32NMCGDF0?t=2440

I have a Brompton and no bike lock for this reason. When I’m on my Brompton it goes where I go.

Actually I do have a “cafe lock”. Its purpose is just to slow someone down enough for me to catch them on foot. I’ve once successfully used the strap on my helmet for the same purpose in Barcelona too.

The illusion of security is really all you have.

In Japan they have bike theft sorted with mandatory registration with the local police force. A sticker on the bike and a corresponding bit of paper in the wallet provides proof of ownership, which may be requested by police at any time.

This costs money to administer but it means that nobody in Japan needs to overly worry about their bicycle being stolen. Huge locks are not needed, nor is GPS tracking or third party registration schemes.

The idea of getting a 'hack bike' that looks undesirable is often touted as a solution to cycle theft in the West. However, thieves just want money, so the 'hack bike' that can be easily sold trumps the hard-to-sell expensive bike if money is needed now, for tonight's high. More money can be tomorrow's problem.

There is a new generation of bike locks which have the shackle wrapped in a composite coating that mostly destroys angle grinder cutting discs and similar cutting tools. This is likely the best current outdoor bike locking approach as it requires thieves to have either 1) lots of spare discs or 2) a torch or 3) picking skills, and very few thieves have any of those.

My school had bolt cutter just sitting in the locker rooms because kids forgot their combinations.

Yeah as long as we don't have unrealistic expectations from our $30 deadbolts and our $5 combo locks it's fine. But people sometimes buy the cheap thing and expect it to perform as well as a really expensive thing.

I suggest watching LPL then to see how often the expensive thing fails just as quickly as the cheap thing.

That's usually with skills that few have the time to acquire. But I also saw on LPL where he tested a cheap Chinese lock, where the "hardened steel" had a visible groove after just a few strokes of a file, and you could use pliers to rip off the plastic cover around the keyhole, after which all the little parts of the lock mechanism came tumbling out...

> like a school or gym locker room for example

We broke into our own lockers the whole time with metal rulers back when I was in school because of forgotten keys or just because it was quicker opening them that way than actually unlocking and relocking them. (And of course the more students did this, the more worn the metal became and made it even easier the next time)

Most people would be absolutely astounded how bold you can get with a safety vest and/or a clipboard, and how passive most people are to an obvious suspicious situation.

I have used a grinder to take off a bike lock (I owned the bike) in broad daylight in Downtown Denver on a main street. A local business even allowed me to use their power outlets. Not one person questioned me or asked me to see proof of ownership. I was fully prepared to have to deal with cops or at least a good samaritan, but nope, plenty of people watched me do the exact thing a bike thief would do and didn't ask any questions.

> Most people would be absolutely astounded how bold you can get with a safety vest and/or a clipboard, and how passive most people are to an obvious suspicious situation.

I don't think they'd be surprised at all.

What the hell am I supposed to do if I see someone stealing a bike or whatever? Stop them? Hell no, if they have tools then it's a good bet they have weapons. Call the cops? They don't care; recently they don't even pretend to care.

Pretty much all you can do is say, "knock it off" and maybe they stop (they won't).

You have to hope a stubborn, but surprisingly fit, 60+ year old man is nearby to assert himself into the situation and tell the thief to bugger off.

Don't do this and don't let anyone else do this. Intervening in a crime in progress is likely to lead to immediate execution. Even police squads get shot at, and they are armed to the teeth and well trained.

That mentality is precisely what lets criminals gain the power to commit crime with impunity.

In any shithole society in which that's become the attitude, the solution is citizens becoming at least as brutal themselves.

That approach is going to get people killed.

If you're not ready, able and willing to whip out a pistol and instantly put two bullets right between the eyes of each one of those criminals, you're probably better off pulling out your phone and covertly dialing 911... After you have gotten as far away from those people as possible.

> the solution is citizens becoming at least as brutal themselves

Becoming a brutal, violent person capable of ending another human being's life is a long process. It's not a switch that people just flip. Especially civilized people from developed countries where it is likely they will go their entire lives without experiencing violence.

Even if they do manage it, they'll have to pay the price. There are professional soldiers out there who are traumatized by the lives they have taken. Normal citizens will have it that much worse... And that's if they don't screw it up and end up going to prison for excessive use of force which can easily turn self-defense into cold-blooded murder.

> In any shithole society

I'm brazilian. I live in exactly that kind of shithole society. You should see the hilariously violent liveleak videos this country produces. Way too many of them are the result of people trying to fight their way out of a robbery, or intervening in a crime in progress. I remember this particularly cartoonish video where a child is running away from something, pistol in hand, and some guy randomly decides to trip him up. He gets up, shoots the guy dead and resumes his escape as though absolutely nothing had just happened.

This is a country where the population is prone to brutally lynching criminals, by the way. Ironically, the drug traffickers are the most effective at it. They routinely dispense brutal violence against the lesser criminals who hurt their drug trade by scaring off potential customers. It's gotten to the point they have formed parallel governments, complete with laws, tribunals and taxes.

I get it. The sheer audacity of criminals is offensive and the impunity is truly soul crushing. This sense of impunity permeates the life of every brazilian. It feels like there's no justice. I'm just saying that if you aim to fight this impunity, you need a far more sophisticated approach than telling random bystanders to be "fit" and "stubborn". That sort of thing will accomplish nothing but the eventual deaths of well meaning people.

Yes I assumed you were Brazilian, which is where most of the "off duty cop" shooting videos come from - sounds like a Mad Max state. But in other countries, people don't get executed for standing up to crooks.

Of course, if you ever get a Bukele in power all the leftists will be out in force crying about the poor criminal's human rights etc - always a good reminder that these situations are intentionally inflicted from above.

> But in other countries, people don't get executed for standing up to crooks.

That belief will get people killed. A simple web search yields numerous results. For instance:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/home-depot-worker-fatally-shot-ca...

> if you ever get a Bukele in power all the leftists will be out in force crying about the poor criminal's human rights etc

Current president of Brazil literally makes excuses for them. "I'm so tired of watching people die just because they robbed a phone", he says. "It was just to buy some beer", as though crime was an actual legitimate profession. That is the absolute state of this country. Mad Max would be an improvement over this shithole. In the Mad Max universe it's literally kill or be killed but you don't have leftists worshipping the criminals and shitting all over the "fascist" police defending them.

Police is powerless to stop it. If they try, they are tried and imprisoned by the same government that hired them to do it. It is already common knowledge that military police is one of the worst career choices you can make. The country is losing police officers at a rate of thousands per year. Not enough people are signing up for this shit. Meanwhile, drug gangs dominate over a quarter of our territory. The current speculation is that they finance judges and politicians. In other words, it is not only possible but probable that this is a literal narcostate.

At some point, it becomes war. The criminals are sufficiently organized that they should be treated as enemy combatants and gunned down on sight. Trump ordering US ships to nuke drug boats out of existence is the correct course of action. The only problem is the "civilized" people who cry about it instead of thanking him for his service and thanking god they have people willing to commit extreme violence against others in order to protect them from the evils of this world. That is a luxury I would love to have myself. Instead I live in a extremely leftist country where drug traffickers spray paint threats on people's homes, giving them 24 hours to leave on pain of death.

Sadly the power of drug gangs in Latin America and Brazil can be traced as much to the war on drugs itself as the lack of war on drugs.

I do believe your assertion is correct that literal war would probably be better than the status quo, but regulating powerful drugs as basically "sell to adults and it needs to meet some sort of purity standard" would bring the drug trafficking portion of gangs into looking more like Petrobas than Comando Vermelho.

As a doctor I can't support full legalization of drugs. Nobody who's seen up close what opioid addiction does to a person ever could. It's not even a question of allowing people to ruin their own lives. The drugs themselves absolutely cause crime all on their own. Many violent robberies are perpetrated by people whose reward systems are so warped by drugs they'd sell their own mother for their next dose. I had one such person as one of my neighbors for decades.

I'll admit I'm unable to fully calculate the total devastation between the three of

(1) Absolute war against drug traffickers

(2) Full legalization

(3) status quo

I'd rank (3) as the absolute worst. I don't see (1) nor (2) as avoiding crime and infliction upon innocents, though, rather choosing which lesser poison to pick.

I claim (1) is the only possible response. We're already at war, and innocents are already dying.

I claim that the drug gangs have launched a stealthy secession. They have gotten sufficiently organized that they have laws, tribunals, taxes and territory. Is gang territory really brazilian territory? I don't think so. In such areas police is executed on sight, like enemy combatants. The brazilian government is not really there guaranteeing any of your so called rights. So are you really a brazilian citizen if you live in gang territory? Don't think so. These drug gangs have formed a government so barbarous they kill you if you don't pay your taxes.

When São Paulo tried to secede last century, war was declared and they were massacred. So why are these gangs tolerated? It's just a completely stupid status quo. This government needs to recognize the gravity of the situation and react accordingly. Instead the government and the gangs are merging into one.

I'm intrigued by your take, and it is quite convincing.

What are the effects you predict would happen if drugs were legalized, therefore eliminating most of the profits of drug traffickers, and simultaneously declaring war on the groups controlling seceded territory?

What's your calculus on the over under of fighting a war against drug-funded vs non-funded drug traffickers? I'm willing to take at face that they are de facto seceded and have already started a war, but I don't see how it can exclude (2) since even if you defeated them there would still be yet the same underlying incentives and the seceding drug traffickers could emerge again.

Legalization depends on the drug. We could certainly afford to be more lax than we are now. We could legalize and control the use of many drugs. Certainly not all. Drugs like fentanyl cannot be allowed to circulate freely. Even if we completely ignore the safety of the individual, the safety of society as a whole is threatened by such drugs.

Legalization will wipe out the drug gang operations due to simple economics. I don't think criminals can compete with actual pharmaceutical laboratories operating in the clear. Drugs would be cheaper and higher quality. In fact I seriously doubt drug gangs would support legalization of drugs. It would destroy their ridiculously high profitability. Their prices would be squeezed. They'd have to compete on quality and price. They wouldn't be able to eliminate the competition, impose cartels and control prices. Drug companies get rich due to patents which are government-granted monopolies, once they expire it's a literal race to the bottom, you actually need regulation in order to protect consumers. Some drugs actually disappear from the market because they are too cheap to be profitable.

Drug gangs are the career path of the favela denizens. Drug operations have lots of "employees" and they pay ridiculously well. Wiping them out via economic or military means will also wipe out all of those "jobs". It will do nothing to solve the underlying problem of a poor and disenfranchised people forgotten by society. They're likely to turn to other forms of crime if society doesn't integrate them, and it probably won't.

The hope is that whatever criminal activity they turn to will not be as profitable as the drug trade. Robbery isn't that big a problem in the grand scheme of things, drug gangs moving billions and billions of dollars absolutely is. All wars come down to money. Make enough money and you can have better equipment than police, militaries. You can raise armies, just like the middle ages. You can hire actual professional soldiers to train your men. Crime that's too profitable is literally a matter of war. Common criminals are a thorn on our side but in the grand scheme of things they are mere nuisances. Well-funded criminals are an existential threat for civilized society.

War on these groups would require enormous political capital. Television networks would probably have to spend years manufacturing consent for it. The fact is left has infiltrated the entire country and they practically worship these "victims of society". Literally days ago we were forced to listen to our president say that drug traffickers are victims of their consumers. I have no idea what it takes to reverse this sort of brainwashing but whatever it is we'll need lots of it.

If by some miracle the military is deployed against the drug gangs, the gangs will be routed. It's happened before and will happen again. Drug gangs do not have the training, the discipline, the sheer organization required to stand up to actual armed forces. Even our pathetic military has managed to prevail against them. It's the politicians who get in the way. There's no point in "pacifying" an area and then retreating from it, thereby allowing the enemy to occupy it again.

Find a way out then man.

Believe me, there are a large number of countries where, if someone was shot for standing up to a crime, it would be national news for months. Not in the Americas, obviously, but they exist.

The drug war is the stupidest thing humans have ever done. It literally fuels the criminals, and even entire criminal states like north Korea. State illegalisaion (mostly the US) of drugs is to put guns right into the hands of gangs and create competing states. Drugs should both be 100% legal - so they cost the same as sugar, gutting the money that empowers the gangs - and simultaneously drug users should be pushed to the edges of society with wide open discrimination.

How did we come to this as a society.

Anarcho-tyranny. In places like Brazil or California, thief is armed at will with ease, person defending themselves instead have to pass licensing and background check which is difficult for poor people or those convicted of BS crimes like possessing a pot plant 20 years ago when they lived in Texas.

Thief only faces lukewarm prospects at prosecution, and moves around from address to address, and stranger-on-stranger homicide conviction rate in places like Chicago well below 50%. Honest citizen has mortgage, child in school ,and a day job, very easy for police to fuck with them if they dare fight back, which makes criminals even more violent and bold as they rely on many of them overwhelming the tiny minority that will fight back.

Yeah I know, but how did we collectively decided to be in this situation? Aliens didn't impose this bs on us, we voted and accepted it somehow.

Lack of violence.

All of civilization exists due to the threat of violence. There's no need to negotiate peacefully when you can just take what you want. It's the violence that makes it happen. Negotiate, because if you don't there's no telling who's gonna be left standing.

If people are breaking locks and stealing property in plain sight right in front of other people, it's because they think society has become so soft they won't do anything about it.

And frankly, the average person won't. They'll probably just stand there shocked at the event unfolding before them. Or they'll try to "stand up" to the criminal, only to end up insulting his masculinity or something, thereby getting themselves killed for the insult. Yes, criminals kill people who disrespect them.

If you're gonna do this, you have to be prepared to use lethal force against another human being. The vast majority of people are not. They're better off calling the cops, whose entire purpose is to be that person.

> If you're gonna do this, you have to be prepared to use lethal force against another human being.

Many people, me included, would gladly do that, if they were allowed to. The problem is that when dust settle, the criminal will remain a criminal with one more record in his file, but the whole legal system will steamroll me if I don't precisely calculate force in split second and apply 3N more than absolute necessary minimum.

Here in Canada there were cases when people defended themselves and ended up in legal kafkaesque hell, imposed by country. Even after acquitted of all charges, they would spend lifetime savings, lose jobs and actually have to rebuilt their lives from almost zero.

We voted for all of this and I don't understand how it happened. Aliens dispersed something so we all became that stupid?

> Many people, me included, would gladly do that, if they were allowed to.

Doubt. Many people certainly think they would. In a real situation, they'd hesitate.

I don't even mean that in a disrespectful way. Taking lives traumatizes professional soldiers. It has enormous psychological costs. If you do it, you will live with it until the end of your days.

I'm not speaking out against guns and self-defense either. Better to be traumatized than dead. Weapons are a requirement for basic human dignity. Just pointing out the fact that it's not that simple.

> Here in Canada there were cases when people defended themselves and ended up in legal kafkaesque hell, imposed by country.

My country is the same. The absurdities produced by the "justice" system are maddening.

I remember one case where a person had his house burglarized dozens of times. The "justice" system didn't do shit about it. He got so fed up he booby trapped his own home and killed the criminal when he tried to victimize him again. Suddenly police, prosecutors and judges found the will to act and vigorously condemned him for cold blooded murder. It's the kind of thing that makes me wish a meteor would strike this country and reset it back to the stone age.

As for why it happens... I've thought about it for way too long and I don't have a definitive answer for you. I think it's because people want to prevent the abyss from gazing into them as they combat the darkness. My conclusion is that we should have some very dark people of our own, pointed right at the abyss, perpetually staring it down into submission.

I fought in the Syrian Civil War (with the YPG) and the effects on the ISIS enemy has not bothered me a single day of my life. This is over a decade ago and I've never lost a single second of sleep over it. In fact I often dream about going back and fucking them over even more, as it was one of the happiest moments of my life, even though like 10%+ of the people I was with ended up dead.

The tracer rounds flying at the enemy at night, absolutely exquisite, brings a joy like the 4th of July.

Civilization depends on people like you in order to continue existing. It's definitely not a universal trait.

Your characterization of Brazil leads me to believe that "people like me" would be better off just living in the favela and joining a gang, as at least then you could have some chance to defend yourself and the government would not be able to enforce their anarcho-tyranny. Which sucks, but leaves me wondering if they're even acting irrationally.

I suspect, somewhere in brazil, there is a group of people that have adopted the practices of the drug traffickers of soft secession, but actually do it for a righteous cause, and are getting away with it, as long as they are not too noisy about it. They have learned the tactics work, and rather than trying a seemingly futile effort to steer the government in their favor they ultimately likely came to the same conclusions as the drug traffickers as to how to gain control of their community and perhaps even their own lives.

Sad part is... You probably would be better off joining a gang. We'd all probably be better off. They just keep winning. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to just give up and become a criminal myself instead of insisting on this upstanding-citizen-in-corrupt-shithole life. My father didn't raise me to be a criminal and sometimes I curse that fact.

Rio de Janeiro is in a state akin to civil war literally right now. Apparently the drug gangs have discovered drones. They're using drones to drop grenades on top of each other and on top of police. Nearly a hundred dead as of right now.

Check out this war zone:

https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/nacional/sudeste/rj/operacao-no...

I don't even know what to say anymore. I'm just... Tired.

I have nothing useful to add, but just wanted to say that I appreciated your insight through all your comments in this thread. Best of luck to you!

Sure, don't get yourself hurt, but also don't live in irrational fear. Intervening in a crime in progress has never led to my execution, so it seems that likely is the wrong assessment of chance.

I have stopped bike thieves, car break-ins, and harassment in multiple cities in North America. I have stopped a racist situation escalating into an attack on a subway in Rotterdam, and stopped a pickpocket in Barcelona. I have shooed away people clearly up to no good in Central and South America. Certainly there was the possibility of violence, but the worst of it in reality was criminals cussing at me as they retreated.

If you don't feel comfortable with direct confrontation, something as simple as yelling "I already called the cops" has worked, or you know, actually calling the cops is an option.

I'm well aware that there are parts of the world where intervening will get you into trouble (and have been in situations where I have held back), but I also believe pretty strongly that doing the right thing is a virtuous feedback loop, and the risks do not outweigh the benefits.

I don't want to live in a world where good people won't do the right thing out of fear. So I choose not to live in that world by being a good person that does the right thing.

> I'm well aware that there are parts of the world where intervening will get you into trouble (and have been in situations where I have held back)

You clearly have more street smarts than the average person. The average person doesn't know when to hold back. They will say and do dumb things, and they will be killed.

There are examples right there in your comment.

> the worst of it in reality was criminals cussing at me as they retreated

You allowed them to leave even though they were insulting you, thereby avoiding violence.

Plenty of people out there who would do the opposite of what you did: they'd go out of their way to insult and humiliate the criminals as they were leaving. "Teach them a lesson", as they say. This can easily escalate the situation into lethal force.

If you insult a man in front of his peers, tell him he's a pussy right in front of his friends, you almost leave him no choice but to come back and escalate just to prove you wrong. It seems obvious but there's plenty of people out there who have died over disrespect.

> something as simple as yelling "I already called the cops"

You were smart enough to back up your threat before confronting the criminals.

Plenty of people out there who threaten the criminal with the 911 call itself. "Stop or I'll call the cops". Not only is it a direct challenge to the criminal, it also provides them with the solution to their problem: kill the guy and he won't call the cops.

It all seems obvious when we're academically discussing this stuff here but in a rapidly escalating, potentially violent situation where emotions and adrenaline are running high, people will do and say all kinds of stupid shit. And they are going to die for it.

Used liquid nitrogen to freeze and break a lock off my bike once. The one person who saw us was like "Whatcha doing? Cool, can I watch?"

I used to rent a storage unit. I lost the key to it, and went to the manager. He came back to the unit with a small battery powered grinder. Cut the padlock's loop through in a few seconds.

Most locks are only good if the attacker doesn't have any tools.

For surprise of tool used the saw vs safe are the best:

https://youtu.be/2guvwQvElA8

The main thing locks do is make it noisy to get in.

Unless they have an inductive heater.

Battery for stealth.

https://youtu.be/VTIWcK14tQE?si=uNNbgWgASpAcgStB

To be fair to Sentry Safe, this product is designed to be resistant to fire. A better name for this product would be ‘fire resistant box’ instead of ‘fire safe’ but that’s what they call it for marketing reasons.

A hardened metal safe designed to be resistant to cutting can still be cut through, just not in seconds with a screamer saw (trade name for a metal cutting circular saw)

If you want truly secure, encase your metal box in concrete like John Wick. Access is difficult but security is high :)

> encase your metal box in concrete

FYI, most safes already have a decently thick concrete layer — that’s most of why safes are heavy! (Or, I guess you could say, adding a concrete layer is cheaper than making the steel thicker.)

But they also have a rubber or foam (often styrofoam in cheaper safes) layer, to “smooth out” the force from a sledgehammer, jackhammer, or just dropping the thing out the window.

And a layer of compressible wet(!) sand, to spread out the point stress from a hammer and chisel, impact gun, gunshot, or small explosive configured for concussive force. (The goal here is essentially to replicate the behavior of a bulletproof vest.)

Plus, they often contain a layer to bind and foul and dull (or even break) the teeth of drill bits and reciprocating/chain/band saws. This can be any number of things — low-melting-point plastics, recycled broken glass, etc — but look up “proteus” for a fun read.

If the safe’s designer is clever, just a few materials can serve several of these functions at once. But more is always better. Which is why good safes (and vaults) are so dang thick. It’s not to solve one problem really well; it’s to mitigate N problems acceptably well, for a frighteningly large value of N.

It's fun looking at the machinery of old fashioned bank vaults. Very impressive.

so... if i were a suitably evil billionaire, would i be able to shop for a safe protected by a layer of compressed mustard gas, that is released upon attempted breaching?

This would be a Booby Trap and is illegal, so it's not worth it for that chance of going to prison no matter the value in the safe, if you are a billionaire. It would be hard to find someone willing to help you.

That's too bad - life would be better if we had a few fewer criminals around.

Is it still a booby trap if the safe displays a prominent warning, "CAUTION: EMITS DEADLY GAS WHEN DAMAGED"?

Depends on your lawyer.

The law is someone less picky about armed guards, though, so you may just want to pay some thugs to watch your safe.

Gandalf - “But men are better than gates, and no gate will endure against our Enemy if men desert it.”

So carefully applied thermite to defeat all of them at once? Probably not directly down to drip into the valuables, but some tangent application.

Even not dripping directly on to the goods, there's not a lot of stuff that you would be interested in getting out of a safe, but you will still be interested in even after being exposed to thermite. The list is basically "precious metals" and not much more, though that is admittedly a valid entry on the list.

In an analog to the somewhat frequent observation on HN that if you don't care whether the code is correct I can make it run arbitrarily quickly, if you don't care if the contents of the safe survive there's a lot of high-energy ways to blast it to smithereens. This is generally not considered a problem to be solved with a safe, though. If you want to prevent "being blasted to smithereens" that you'll need a completely different approach.

Is it perhaps called after the movie Screemers ? Some of the combat robots had circular saws, but they used to to cut through people instead of locks.

Aha, a legitimate use for those things!

Saw the same, except it was bolt cutters.

I bought a giant pair of bolt cutters a while back for a use case other than bolt cutting (shark fishing; cut the big hook instead of putting your hand near the mouth).

I never caught any big sharks like I thought, but now my wife runs a restaurant and occasionally employees just don't show up to work and leave things in their lockers. Once in a while it's clear it's to be annoying (locking supplies in their locker).

Never met a padlock or combination lock I couldn't shear through easily. Totally has paid for itself.

Now, for a similar price, you can buy a hydraulic cutter powered by a hand pump. They also come with replaceable jaws so you dont wreck your cutters when attacking a hard lock.

https://www.amazon.com/Lothee-Hydraulic-Cutting-Portable-Han...

And there are powered models too. The 3-foot snippers are long out of date for thieves.

Oh this is about double what I paid. But good to know!

I remember the faghetbouditt of Kryptonite that broke the blades of that exact hydraulic cutter.

Generally speaking, the hasps on employee locks aren't big enough to hold anything truly sturdy... I doubt even the most resistant lock you could put on a typical locker hasp would hold up to the giant 3 foot bolt cutters.

There's quite a few, many hardened locks will bend or mar bolt cutters... we're not taking bolt cutters off of the rigs because they're relatively small but a K12 and a pair of pliers is way more reliable.

To be fair, a lot of people don't have tools.

Just found out my unit was robbed. The thieves ignored the lock and just destroyed the unit's latch which the padlock secured.

There went Uncanny X-Men 94 through 300.

A car jack across the door frame at latch height works to.

That's exactly what I've seen too, either a grinder or just a crow bar.

> Most locks are only good if the attacker doesn't have any tools.

The Louvre security staff similarly just learned this lesson.

With these locks you do not even need a grinder, just some really small tools that fits in your pocket, for example a "rake".

See https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm9K6rby98W8JigLoZOh6FQ (LockPickingLawyer).

Entirely depends on what manner of thief we are talking about here, what they're going after, how important it is to them, and how much they care about the owner knowing the lock was tampered with.

This is why I don't like such black-and-white opinions... I think the answer is rarely so simple.

I think it's largely a class or educational divide. I come from a very hick, redneck, working class area. People use black-and-white statements and course language with the understanding that corner cases will exist anyway. My use of this type of language common in more middle America is something I find the more silicon valley or tech centered HN constantly finds issue with.

It's common in more upper-crust / educated circles to shit on people that use more course, black and white language. I believe it has more to do with cultural divide than misunderstanding that rare/corner cases exist.

In another recent exchange on HN, I was damned for using the word 'never.' They didn't even explain why, just said they wouldn't believe people that used it. I was using it in the redneck sense "you'll never get that girl" as in it's extremely unlikely to the point it's hardly worth even considering, rather than the nerded out version that it means the chance is literally precisely 0.

no, and I don't see how you could possibly deduce that from my statement

I'm saying that some people don't understand that some cultural uses of black-and-white English indicate practical precision rather than absolute theoretical precision.

It's not cultural.

FWIW I come from a non working class background ( but am not American ). My friends and I routinely debate in such a manner, and don’t see any problem with this. If confronted with a stranger we might be a bit more cautious ( basically we’ll state the rules of the conversation) but that’s about it. If needed, we’ll sometimes be a bit more accurate.

I understand your statements as you mean them - I default to giving you the benefit of the doubt, and automatically assume that black and white statements are shortcuts. Only, and only if you seem to not understand nuance then I will adjust my stance, but I usually assume you do!

I think the problem can be described as assuming good faith in the argument - that is, that you're talking with someone who you are presuming is attempting to communicate, not just "win" the conversation.

The difference becomes clear very quickly - if there's a genuine misunderstanding, someone will clarify and move on; if someone is trying to rules lawyer the conversation, it won't.

Exaggeration is not 'hick, redneck, working class.'

People from "hick, redneck, working class" areas don't say "hick, redneck, working class".

They might say "hick" if they're from rural northern New England, the upper midwest, rural Canada, or Cascadia, usually with self-deprecating facetiousness. Most of these people are smart enough to do whatever they want in life, but just choose to live by their standard of normalcy and just like their friendly small towns best.

If they are from the lower midwest or south, they will sure as hell just say "redneck", and most take it as a compliment even though many of them deep down are just compensating because they don't have any other options.

But nobody calls themselves "working class". Not in the rust belt, not in the rural midwest, and not in the south. That's more of a politician's word, and a condescending slur from the white collar crowd that usually ends in a broken jaw.

I don't think that's what it is.

> Low-intelligence people are masters of black-and-white thinking. It's also part of a psychological defense mechanism called "splitting."

> They only seem to think in terms of opposites, ignoring the grey areas in between. Reality is too complex to be interpreted only in opposites.

> As a result, they tend to simplify everything. While simplification is useful sometimes, not everything can, or should be, simplified. Knowing what does and doesn’t require simplification signals high intelligence.

The problem is when you speak in absolutes while simultaneously "not meaning it" that way, is that this is not conveyed to the people you are speaking to, so we can only assume that you did mean it, and now we think you're being unreasonably generalizing.

And I think it's pretty hard to have a useful conversation if we cannot use agreed upon terms to convey what we mean. If you know that not everyone will understand your intention by saying it that way, then why do it?

A battery powered angle grinder with a zip wheel is the best lock picking tool out there. Hell, a cordless Dremel with a zip wheel might do it.

Yes. I once saw a guy open a bike U-lock using a car scissor jack and he was done in about 20 seconds and the bike was gone. Nowadays there are very good battery powered grinders that can take a cutoff wheel and no padlock is going to resist that.

But there are a handful of new U-locks that are quite difficult to cut using angle grinders.

most thieves don't even go that far. they find stuff that isn't locked or they kick in the door.

No one is doing that in a nice residential neighborhood

That's when people can get away with it in broad daylight :) Because everyone thinks like you.

Get a used pickup, get some vinyl letters at home Depot, put something like "a+ home services" on the side, and you can probably break into a few dozen suburban homes without anyone reporting you

Walk around in a hi-viz jacket, and you can pretty much be ignored by everyone except specialized security.

>except specialized security

That's when you add a clipboard and/or hardhat to increase odds.

I also have a few tools from CI so I don't know what that makes me

It depends on where you live. I guess it's not uncommon to hear about someone entering a building "as the delivery guy" just to try to pick a lock and see which one opens.

If you make too much noise people will get suspicious and might call the police.

Actual thieves are most interested in low effort/fast methods of bypassing locks. Master single pin picking to LPL's level and the thief might as well just turn locksmithing into a career instead of stealing. Low effort attacks like shimming, raking, bumping though might be worth a thief's time to learn.

Some are still resisting this kind of attacks. The hiplok D1000 has a thick rubber like abrasive coating that makes it super hard to cut through the metal with power tools

I had one of these for my e-bike in Oakland. The thieves used an angle grinder to cut through the bike stand instead

The solution in the east bay seems to be “don’t use a valuable bike”

That's why I have a dirty bike with a motorbike's chain wrapped around the wheels and stand. So they would have to cut through the wheel too.

These jobsite storage boxes [0] are typically too heavy to steal (and can also be anchor-bolted), and the locks are highly-recessed within an enclosure... practically the only exposure is the keyway... and then there's thousands of dollars of tools inside.

Worth it for smarter crooks. I'm a former IBEW electrician, and I've seen both stranger and more-miraculous occurrences — but I've seen it all.

[0] https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/H-10011/Tool-Storage/Kn...

Oh man, reminds me of one project where theives rolled up with a truck, hotwired a forklift and loaded up 3 of these boxes.

The National Guard Depot at Ocean Docks?

Nah just an unremarkable subdivision development in middle america.

I trained a few years as an IBEW electrician in large government data centers, but have done decades of residential side work (mostly 500k-2M suburbia):

The stuff you actually witnessed on both types of jobsites often isn't believable. But I've seen [your comment] many times, in the middle of nowhere, with trailcams rolling and tweekers not giving AF, smiling as they roll away with your belongings...

----

We caught a burglar once in our wire warehouse... huffing our marking paint, but on his way to scoring a five-figure copper haul. As foreman, I had to pull a few of my electricians off of the young man (~20~white~highAF) — I sent my guys to their jobsites, keeping myself and two larger others to detain the guy until the police arrived: arrested. Drawn out court proceedings 5x. Dismissed =( "Adjudicated"

That little twerp ended up having already become a career criminal, at just two decades on this earth. He needed good guys like mine to beat his ass a few times, like his family never did the favor of helping him learn.

Next time my guys will not be calling the police, with blessings.

Issues with master locks are hardly new- back in the 1980s, I downloaded a file from a BBS explaining how to open a combo lock (basically by pulling on the shackle while turning, and a few other tricks.

It's still online: https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/anarchy_and_privacy_contro...

Oh my god, I remember doing this technique on my lock, I remember doing this in the early BBS days, I remember learning this from a short text file. I'm 80% sure it was this file!

Thanks for unlocking this memory for me!

>if I were stealing from a jobsite with multiple lockboxes, the ones with Master locks would be attacked first (particularly wafer cylinders).

If you were stealing from a job site you'd just bring bolt cutters.

You have not ever been on a large enough jobsite, then.

It is impossible to attack the shackle, due to the recessed nature of the locking mechanisms. A torch might work... blasting out the keyway.

But on IBEW jobsites each lockbox contains around $10,000 of tools, within; most thefts are from other on-site trades, and lock-picking means you can blame it on the electricians since there's no signs of forced entry (I'm sure some of the apprentices do steal, particularly the lowly-compensated first semester "greenies").

But the electricians are still paying for it.

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