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Illegal Engineering

timhunkin.com

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Re: Illegal Engineering

#41

Post by pacaro »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #4
danso wrote: post #2

Great piece (or at least what I skimmed through). However, I think this hypothesis is not well-founded: > I suspect the main reason for the disappearance of the craftsman criminal is simply that there are fewer and fewer people with the practical skills and confidence to even try to break into a safe. Engineering apprenticeships have been decimated, and even the old metalwork shops in schools have gone, replaced by ‘…

For a year or so in college, I worked at night for a security firm. I spent several months working in a bank's operation center, watching the camera feeds from the branches overnight. Anyway, for some reason part of the training for that job mentioned that the average bank robbery at the time grossed only about $1500 (about $4000 now). Plus the robbers would almost certainly be on video and the FBI was automatically…

I think that there may just be easier targets. A few years back I spent a night in jail (don't ask), in the same cell there was a guy who was quite happy to talk about his M.O., he specialized in lifting the floor safes from small strip mall fast food joints (places like Subway). Apparently they don't keep much in them overnight, but because they close long after banks do, it's just easier to keep the till float and evening takings in the floor overnight. He gave a startlingly detailed description (he was in withdrawal and just wanted any distraction) of how quickly and easily he could get into the unit, find the safe, pull it out of the floor and be out of there in just a few minutes. He claimed between $1K and $3K was usually in there... at which point why bother with pulling over a bank.

In his own words he got caught because he was "too successful, I was taking so many drugs I got stupid, the cops pulled me over with safes and paraphernalia in the trunk"

Re: Illegal Engineering

#42

Post by epo »

roryokane wrote: post #22

From the title “Illegal Engineering”, I thought this would be about titling yourself a “Professional Engineer” in Canada and similar countries, where calling yourself that without a professional engineering license is illegal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_eng... I don’t mind reading about safe-cracking, but it’s a little disappointing that the article never talks about when safe-cracking i…

If you insist on everything conforming to your exceedingly narrow interpretation you must find life very difficult. I would stick to reading law books and phone books.

Re: Illegal Engineering

#43

Post by Tyr42 »

pja wrote: post #31
ralph wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He refers to it again later; "Engineering apprenticeships have been decimated, and even the old metalwork shops in schools have gone, replaced by ‘craft, design and technology’, which seems to mainly involve making things of cardboard."

When I was in secondary school twenty+ years ago, we had both: Design & Technology (AutoCad !) and a full metalwork shop with everything except oxyacetylene torches. There's nothing like hands on experience when it comes to making real things. I'd love to know whether all that stuff is still there.

We had hand draw pictures and woodworking. Still fun though.

Re: Illegal Engineering

#44

Post by emmelaich »

excuse-me wrote: post #14
killa_bee wrote: post #10

What is the "DT" mentioned in this article? I have no prior knowledge of that acronym.

Design Technology - it's drawing pretty pictures (sorry `design concepts`) of what you would make if your school still had proper shop class. It is to "metal work" what "information technology" is to programming.

My son has just started doing Industrial Arts at school. A lot of it just seems to be dreadful spouting of design and architecture jargon.

Re: Illegal Engineering

#45

Post by excuse-me »

emmelaich wrote: post #44
excuse-me wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Design Technology - it's drawing pretty pictures (sorry `design concepts`) of what you would make if your school still had proper shop class. It is to "metal work" what "information technology" is to programming.

My son has just started doing Industrial Arts at school. A lot of it just seems to be dreadful spouting of design and architecture jargon.

But what do people want from a wheel? How do they relate to it? What colour should it be?

Re: Illegal Engineering

#46

Post by rdl »

gbog wrote: post #39
rdl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I just feel a particularly high level of responsibility when it comes to securing weapons. In addition to the financial loss, you've got moral and potential legal liability for how they're used. (I think only civil, and a lot of that would be addressed by taking reasonable precautions to secure them, plus reporting theft in a timely manner).

Ahem, and what about not owning one? Edit: Nevermind, don't want to launch this debate. But it is so obvious a solution to me...

At the very least I think anyone responsible will argue that if you shouldn't own a gun (suicidal, unable to keep it secure, just don't want to, etc.), you shouldn't own one.

But the overall debate is probably not going to get decided on hn in any useful way.

Re: Illegal Engineering

#47

Post by hk_kh »

excuse-me wrote: post #14
killa_bee wrote: post #10

What is the "DT" mentioned in this article? I have no prior knowledge of that acronym.

Design Technology - it's drawing pretty pictures (sorry `design concepts`) of what you would make if your school still had proper shop class. It is to "metal work" what "information technology" is to programming.

3d printers to the rescue?

Re: Illegal Engineering

#49

Post by roryokane »

epo wrote: post #42
roryokane wrote: post #22

From the title “Illegal Engineering”, I thought this would be about titling yourself a “Professional Engineer” in Canada and similar countries, where calling yourself that without a professional engineering license is illegal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_eng... I don’t mind reading about safe-cracking, but it’s a little disappointing that the article never talks about when safe-cracking i…

If you insist on everything conforming to your exceedingly narrow interpretation you must find life very difficult. I would stick to reading law books and phone books.

Your reply greatly exaggerated how much I dislike the title. It was rude of you to attribute a straw-man worldview to me and then snidely insult it. Your reply implied that I did something like call for the deletion of the article because of its title, though I had even stated that “I don’t mind reading about safe-cracking”.

Re: Illegal Engineering

#50

Post by Someone »

tsotha wrote: post #24
meddlepal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was really the opposite experience I had when I was a teller in a bank. The amounts were similar but the chance of getting caught was slim. We had a binder of local bank roberies that we updated when the person was caught. It was usually rare for a person to get caught unless they were really dumb about te roberery (told someone such as friend they thought they could trust or their license was recorded) or they…

The FBI says the modern bank robber walks in, gives the teller a note, takes the money and leaves within 90 seconds. He never carries a weapon and gets less than $2k, but if he's reasonably smart he can rob 30-40 banks before being caught. That's terrible pay, when you think about it. You're always on the road, and you spend a couple days on each bank. You might as well sell insurance for a living.

At least some economists agree: http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/economists-demonstrat...

I think robbers know that, too. Bank robbing is old school. Robbing Gas pumps also has gotten too risky to be worth the trouble; they keep way less money around than they used to and they have video recorders everywhere. So, nowadays, your best bet is mom and pop shops, at least that is what I read in the papers :-)

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