Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

cnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 367 posts

Re: Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

#291

Post by vonmoltke »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #235
CydeWeys wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fiberglass insulation is used inside exterior walls and makes them better insulating than brick. Major heat/cold losses are through windows, the same kinds of problems you have in brick buildings. Put in a good enough window (and seal the edges tightly) and you will do amazingly well with heat/cold. And Notre Dame is made out of hewn stone blocks, not brick, which is a big difference. Brick isn't stone; it's just bak…

There's plenty of brick built that are pushing 200. If engineering brick there's no reason they shouldn't last another 300+. Very little built since the 60s is likely to reach that age. If humanity is serious about sustainability we have to learn to build to last once again.

Yet there are plenty of wood-framed, and even wood-foundationed, houses in older cities that are already at 100+, and a decent portion of those are pushing 150. The problem with more recent construction is not the material, but the building methods (specifically corner-cutting in mass-produced tract houses).

Re: Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

#292

Post by joncp »

tracer4201 wrote: post #273

I’m in Bellevue, WA. My building uses smart locks. Instead of a cell phone, you have a small fob, a little larger than a quarter that you hold against the lock on the door to unlock it. The door is always locked. On one hand, it’s nice the door is always locked and I don’t need to worry about it. More practically speaking, if you go out the door without the dog, you’re SOL. What I really dislike is they can easily tr…

You could set up a fob-mixer party with your neighbors. If everyone gets together and swaps fobs every once in a while it would make it really hard for the landlord to track any one person.

Re: Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

#293

Post by jermaustin1 »

xamuel wrote: post #246

From Philip K. Dick's "Ubik" (1969): The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when y…

I should put this kind of tech on my office door. If I want to leave, I have to feed it a dollar. An amazing savings plan or just motivation to keep working instead of going to veg out on the couch.

Re: Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

#294

Post by fernandotakai »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #119
michaelt wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's that I've never rented a nice enough place, but all my past landlords have chosen the £10-a-lock non-patent-protected locks over the £100-a-lock high security locks.

My landlord in the US uses cheap locks, he said he throws them away after each lease and puts in new ones. It was lucky for me one day when I forgot my keys, but had my lockpicking kit in my backpack. It took about 5 minutes to rake both the knob and deadbolt and get in.

where i live, it's customary to either re-key your door after you rent a new place or just exchange the whole lock.

as long as you give back two copies of the key by the end of the lease, landlords usually don't care.

Re: Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

#295

Post by btilly »

pjc50 wrote: post #23

The comments seem to be missing the two key aspects: accessibility and surveillance. The smart lock requires you to have a charged, working smartphone that you can use in order to get into your own apartment. One of the claimants is 93 and lacks the manual dexterity to do that. On top of that, smart locks can report when you enter and exit your home to the landlord; and, if under the landlord control, can provide oth…

My memory says that in NY, the landlord cannot enter or authorize someone else to enter without 24 hours notice to the tenant.

This is not widely known, and virtually every rental contract says otherwise. But those terms are unenforceable.

For the record, I learned this from a lawyer living in New York as an example of why many landlords choose not to rent to lawyers.

It turns out that while discriminating on the basis of race and religion is illegal, it is perfectly legal to discriminate on the basis of profession. As a result it can be challenging for lawyers to find a place to live.

Re: Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

#297

Post by fernandotakai »

orthoxerox wrote: post #287
pavel_lishin wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart-locks are a non-option for observant Jews on the sabbath.

Thou shalt not operate a smart lock on the day of the Lord?

afaik orthodox jews cannot operate anything electrical on sabbath (which leads hilarious stuff like sabbath elevators https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator).

Re: Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

#298

Post by DanBC »

fj39dkf wrote: post #105
setquk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this as well after having a couple of snooping landlords. Also it's empowering. One rental I had, prior to the tenancy deposit protection scheme I had a serial con artist landlord. At the end of the tenancy, he billed my entire £600 deposit return to three companies he owned. One for gardening, one for cleaning and one for maintenance. This made it difficult for a claim to be placed upon him. This was without e…

He evicted us because he could rent it out for more money. Something about your comment makes me think there's more to this story.

There are two types of eviction in England: section 8 (non-payment of rent) and section 21 (no blame).

There are strict protections around section 21 during the "fixed term" (normally 6 months to a year), but after that it's pretty easy to get tenants out even if they've done nothing wrong, and it's common to evict tenants, re-paint, then re-let the property at a big markup.

If you're a tenant in England it's probably a good idea to talk to the landlord each year about a small rent increase.

Re: Tenants win right to physical keys over smart locks from landlords

#300

Post by meower »

joncp wrote: post #289
iicc wrote: post #4

Firefox can block muted video from autoplaying: about:config media.autoplay.allow-muted false

CNet lost their javascript privileges on my machine a long time ago. This extension is a godsend: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javas...

You might not even need it if you are already using uBlock Origin. It can disable JavaScript both per-site and globally.
Post reply on HN