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A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

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Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#141

Post by gruez »

bookofjoe wrote: post #122
barbazoo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember the $445 million self driving pizza oven delivery van? What I find hilarious about our industry is that this could be completely made up ... or not.

>Pizza robot truck startup Stellar snags $16.5M from Jay-Z https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/Stellar-pizza-robot-truc... >Stellar, which was founded by former SpaceX employees in 2019, uses a robot to cook mobile ordered pizzas which are then delivered by the truck driver.

That's nowhere near the $445M claimed though. Crunchbase lists them as having only having raised $25.5M. The $445M if real, must be the valuation.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/steller-pizza

edit: looks I'm looking at the wrong company, see replies for details

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#142

Post by woobar »

oxfordmale wrote: post #82

What about an old fashioned mechanical key? Car manufacturers are directly to blame for the increased theft of cars. It is a win win for them, as it results in higher car sales. If a dood manufacturer would sell doors that can be easily opened, everyone would complain. Far less so with cars.

Do you believe that mechanical keys were a deterrent before the introduction of the immobilizers? And if they were why did they bother with immobilizers, anti-theft alarms, and GPS trackers?

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#143

Post by memetomancer »

K0balt wrote: post #84

1.2 million grant for this? Now I’ve seen grift, but come on. I want to hire their grant writer. Literally a relay in the starter lead. This looks like one of my afternoon projects, and I’m not even joking. I have a 1990s montero diesel and it leaks power, and I often forget to disconnect the terminal. So I bought a relay from AliExpress (same one shown in this photo but one size up) and hooked it up with an esp32 an…

This is a frustrating yet common sort of take. Yes, this is simple, as the article clearly points out. Yes it is obvious in retrospect. But did you do anything with your brilliant work besides bodge your terrible car a few more miles down the road?

There is value to developing the entire system... to ensuring the keypad mechanism is reasonably robust and tamper proof. There is value to understanding the vehicle as a system and reasoning out this defense strategy. There will be value in preliminary productization of something this for mass production, especially as regards the use of that terrible 12v power port and providing the 'fingerprint' in a safe range of voltage fluctuations to avoid catastrophic and probably non-obvious failure modes. There will likely be D.O.T. paperwork, and UL listing.

$1.2 million is probably a bit meager to truly develop something like this.

Yes, you can hobble some crap together on your Montero. Congratulation. Hardly a solid foundation to speak ill of this team doing something genuinely productive.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#144

Post by jrockway »

b112 wrote: post #121
fnimick wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That amount of money is absolutely nothing compared to the waste that goes on in the startup industry. Remember the $445 million self driving pizza oven delivery van?

Wait... so the pizza would be delivered, fresh from the oven?? Is... do you know ... are they taking investors?

Yeah, that startup doesn't sound terrible to me. Like the other comments say, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. If you cook the pizza while you're driving it to the destination, then you change the time 15 minutes cooking + 15 minutes driving to just 15 minutes cooking and driving. Twice as fast.

But of course, you could offer the same latency by having a non-customizable menu and having pizzas ready to go when they're ordered. If it's 6:30PM on a Friday night, odds are someone wants the Pepperoni pizza that just came out of the oven. No fancy hardware required. The pizza is technically less fresh, but are minutes of freshness worth millions in VC? I don't know.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#146

Post by alwaysbeconsing »

buro9 wrote: post #98

The problem with this defense is that it is invisible... the thief will only know about it after they've caused external damage trying to get access to the system. I just use a steering wheel lock, one of those bright yellow chunks of steel that bolts onto the steering wheel: https://www.milenco.com/products/automotive-security/automot... This is visible to the theif and just raised the theft effort from "jump these…

"then use a loud angle grinder in a very enclosed space" They don't need to cut the lockbar:

> What we knew was that the Club is a hardened steel device that attaches to the steering wheel and the brake pedal to prevent steering and/or braking. What we found out was that a pro thief would carry a short piece of a hacksaw blade to cut through the plastic steering wheel in a couple seconds. They were then able to release The Club and use it to apply a huge amount of torque to the steering wheel and break the lock on the steering column (which most cars were already equipped with). The pro thieves actually sought out cars with The Club on them because they didn’t want to carry a long pry bar that was too hard to conceal.

https://freakonomics.com/2010/06/what-car-thieves-think-of-t...

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#147

Post by tadfisher »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #58
Waterluvian wrote: post #14

I knew someone with a shitty pickup truck where he wired a light switch into the fuel pump and hid it under the steering column. The truck would be stolen something like 5 times a year and every time he would find it abandoned a km or so away when the gas in the line ran out. I drove in it once to get lunch and near the beginning the car begins sputtering and he's like, "oh right, you're thirsty" and reached under an…

My car in high school had a similar system. The radiator fan didn't turn on automatically, so my dad wired it directly into the AC controller. (The AC also did not work. It was not a great car.) If you got in the car, and did not specifically turn the AC to the correct setting, the car would overheat about a mile down the road. Luckily for me, I never had a chance to put this into practice, because nobody stole my ca…

Sounds like a recipe for blowing head gaskets!

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#148

Post by barbariangrunge »

Car theft isn't such a big problem in the town I live. The problem is random vandalism. Kids party in the parks all night and at random times go out to spray paint buildings, break off rear view mirrors, smash windows. I haven't been hit yet, but two neighbours have.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#149

Post by fargle »

anonu wrote: post #139
matsemann wrote: post #110

This is a tech solution for a non-tech problem. Why is there an uprising in car thefts? Why do people feel the need to steal someone's expensive property? Deal with those issues first. Or someone will smash a window to steal something valuable no matter what you try.

If you think like that, then no problems should be solved by tech because there are completely viable non-tech solutions: Uber: just hail a taxi Amazon: just visit your local bookshops netflix: Renting DVDs is perfectly fine. Spotify: all the music you need is on AM/FM. Instagram: just meet up with friends in person Zoom: Conduct face-to-face meetings Zillow: Work with a real estate agent Yelp: Ask locals for restaur…

netflix does rent physical DVDs. Ending around next month.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#150

Post by OkayPhysicist »

hutzlibu wrote: post #102
postmortembees wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raking house locks is a) not difficult and b) not expensive. You don't need to be a professional to do that. But also, bricks through windows are equally not difficult and not expensive, though they do leave a bit more evidence. When my neighbors have been burgled, this is the preferred method of entry I've seen.

"But also, bricks through windows are equally not difficult and not expensive, though they do leave a bit more evidence" But that would be loud. You don't want attention when breaking in. (Unless you are a fucked up junkie not caring about anything anymore) But yes, my parents for example are paranoid about always locking the front door 2 times(and get angry if I don't do it when I visit), but have a glass door in th…

> They are illegal to purchase (in most places)

Lockpicks are legal almost everywhere in the US.[0] Even in places where they aren't legal, they're not exactly difficult to obtain, given that a perfectly adequate rake can be made from any key that fits the target lock, and there are only ~3 keyways in common residential use.

[0] https://www.toool.us/lockpicking-laws.php

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