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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

#541

Post by ddingus »

talldatethrow wrote: post #220
master-lincoln wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By making it hard to obtain weapons. The US thinking to me seams to go along the lines of handing out nuclear weapons to everybody so forces are balanced...

What do you do if two criminals break into your house and you don't have a gun?

A few things:

The number one, by far most effective thing you do comes well ahead of those armed, home entry thieves, and that is you make your home scream "GO AWAY!"

Get a dog

Employ great lighting

Put the home alarm stickers on, actual alarm optional, [3]

Clean up.

Etc...

The criminals work on risk reward. You can bias that equation away from favorable meaning the baddies pick another home, not yours.

From there, should you really feel this scenario could happen, maybe consider a gun. But if you do, please get gun education. One bad scenario is to have a gun, and face experienced users. Your chance of getting you, and or family, hurt go way up!

I do mostly identify with the left, but am gun friendly having grown up rural and well educated about guns.

[3] - no joke! Neighbors had done the sticker thing for roughly a decade. That, plus the other suggestions work well.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#542

Post by K0balt »

seemack wrote: post #208
K0balt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, really, good for them. But don’t be talking down on my car. That’s just not cool. That beast is the workhorse of the farm and it gets the job done. None of the windows roll down though and it’s hot as hell inside, so it discourages unnecessary use, saving the planet. It rarely sees pavement but it drags what needs to be dragged and it pulls the utility rigs out after they deliver to us.

1 line barely acknowledging the criticism, 4 lines defending the car whose feelings I can assume have been mortally wounded. The defensiveness around the car is ironic given how casually you threw out your needlessly negative hot-take.

Nah, you can’t hurt pure evil. It just sits there, awaiting its next victim.

I hate that beast, but it’s my beast to hate.

You can’t just talk shit about it from your comfy chair, or sitting on the toilet with no circulation to your feet, or whatever — that’s something you earn.

You earn it with mild first degree burns on your right leg and tinnitus like the rest of us.

If I seem abrasive and unnecessarily combative, it’s probably just the incessant itching of my leg and the trauma from driving that thing.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#543

Post by K0balt »

pmontra wrote: post #316
brk wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is obvious in retrospect because this concept has been around for 30 years. A common killswitch mechanism that I remember being implemented in the early 90's was a system that tied into accessory devices. On my friends car you had to put the key to ACC, then turn the cruise control on and off, and then engage and disengage the parking brake before the car would start. No other obvious lights, buttons, switches, et…

My father disconnected the distributor (correct word?) and took a piece of it with him. Definitely a killswitch. That was in the 70s. Cars got more complicated around 1980.

Yeah, but he did he get a 1.2 million dollar grant? Yeah, I didn’t think so. This guys kid is gonna have a better story.

(/s)

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#544

Post by K0balt »

positron6000 wrote: post #372
brk wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Dropbox made rsync more user friendly and available to people who weren't techies. The concept of a starter interrupter has been around almost as long as the automobile itself. Ways to engage and disengage that interrupter have evolved and advanced over the years. Older folks will remember cars with a keyswitch on the front fender, and then a keypad inside, and then hidden switches like I described in my OP, and…

"i'm not a 'car guy' - where can i get a simple interface for a killswitch that only needs to be installed once and can be controlled from an app?" ^ this is where the value is, which is what the $1.2m is intended to explore.

I can get you like, 10,000 AliExpress links for 1.2 mil, but the paper would probably suck.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#545

Post by vouaobrasil »

neilv wrote: post #120
talldatethrow wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason you have locks is to show intent to keep others out. You can't shoot someone that walks into your home through an open door. You can shoot someone that rams your door to open it.

I imagine some Non-Americans reading this are horrified. But Americans know that this (a pre-shooting checklist) isn't a reason for door locks for every American. And I'd guess it only is for a small minority of Americans.

I'm not American and I'm not horrified...if someone breaks into your house seems quite fine to shoot them if you can.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#546

Post by x3m157 »

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…

I used to drive an old ratty Subaru Impreza which was at one point meant to become a racecar (it never did) so the previous owner had removed the key ignition system. Never had it stolen because in lieu of a key it used an obscure sequence of flipping unlabeled switches in a specific order (power, fuel, ignition, then crank) to get it to start. Security through obscurity!

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#547

Post by COGlory »

gruez wrote: post #509
COGlory wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% of the direct monetary cost of QE is borne by the American people.

And what is the mechanism by which the "direct monetary cost" arises, and is borne by the american people?

Inflation? Devaluation of the dollar? Debt? Current interest rates?

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#548

Post by adhesive_wombat »

EGreg wrote: post #388
kube-system wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that locks would have prevented this?

Certainly kill switches would Every TV show has a self destruct mechanism to prevent a ship from falling into enemy hands and blabla etc

Forget the suspensefully-narrated self destruct sequences, why has the Pentagon not invested in plot armour for every soldier? Make sure the uniforms aren't red and they can only die near series finales.

Re: A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

#550

Post by adhesive_wombat »

kube-system wrote: post #181
EGreg wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, let's intentionally omit locks from equipment that is designed not to fall into enemy hands. Let's not have a kill switch, either. Sure, makes sense for an agency with more money to spend than every corporation in America!

Yes, it does make sense that the DoD is more concerned about their own soldiers' lives than whether or not the Iraqi military has their vehicles stolen from them. These vehicles were already given away, adding some stupid biometric system would increase both the price of the vehicles and the number of lives lost due to failures. Throwing technology at problems is not always a solution. The vehicles typically have bet…

> Throwing technology at problems is not always a solution

It's a fine solution to the very pressing "VCs aren't giving me money" problem. You can't have a blockchain or AI startup, say, without throwing technology at random things!

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