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A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves

• sidewndr46 3y ago
  isn't this just an absurdly complex re-imagining of the on/off switch? I've spoken to numerous people who either had their vehicle stolen or it was broken into. The ignition cylinder was damaged in the process. Rather than spend money replacing it they just wired in an on/off switch in a random place on the dash. The car got broken into again but was never stolen.
  • constantly 3y ago
    Valets HATE this one weird trick
    • ghaff 3y ago
      I used to have a car that had a kill switch requiring the turn signal to be turned on or some such thing. It was periodically a pain with valets or parking garages where your car might need to be moved. I'd leave a big note but it was ignored about half the time.
      • zerd 3y ago
        A friend had a car that required that you hold a magnet at a very specific spot in the back of the arm rest to be able to start ignition. Don't think he ever tried to valet that.
      • progman32 3y ago
        Had a valet ignore a huge, printed instruction taped over my steering wheel on how not to food my car (leave it running for at least 60 seconds). Sure enough, they flooded it really bad trying to start it over and over. Killed the battery. Never used a valet after that.
    • matsemann 3y ago
      Huh, never considered valet parking to actually be a real thing. Isn't it annoying having to wait for someone to drive your car? I'd almost pay more not to have to do it.
      • drw3 3y ago
        It’s fairly common in the US at hotels and some parking garages, especially in bigger cities. It can be nice if you’re in a hurry or worried about walking alone in a parking garage at night. But yes, it can be annoying, especially because you’re expected to tip them in the US too.
      • elzbardico 3y ago
        Pal, I've seen wallet parking across several countries in the world. Latin American, Western, and Eastern Europe, I just got curious about where you live to never have seen it. And to answer your question: No, valet parking is usually useful because the parking place is far from where you're going (usually a hotel or restaurant). Having the valet saves you the walk from the lot to the place where you're going. It is even more useful when it's raining and you're having a formal dinner. The wait for getting the car back is also pretty short because someone radios a driver already in the parking lot to bring your car in most circumstances.
        • thomastjeffery 3y ago
          I suspect you are parking your wallet in the most tourist-equipped areas of each country you listed. I would bet that within a 5 mile radius of each, you could find 1,000 people who have never used valet parking in their lives.
        • Toutouxc 3y ago
          Not who you’re replying to, but I’m from the Czech Republic, have been driving for 10+ years, live in Prague (the capital), I have never even seen valet parking anywhere. Even the local Hilton hotel doesn’t have it.
        • matsemann 3y ago
          Norway. I guess the less denser cities I've lived (that were somewhat car dependent) it was never an issue just parking right outside. And in the city I now live (Oslo) I would never use a car to get to dinner anyways.
  • nso 3y ago
    I have an old beater. It cost me 2300 USD when I bought it. Last year the ignition cylinder broke. My friend is a mechanic and he told me he could replace the cylinder for 90 USD, or buy him a beer to just install a button. I now jokingly call my car a Tesla since it starts with a button (it also requires the key)
    • mavhc 3y ago
      Tesla cars don't need a button to start
      • _flux 3y ago
        The brake pedal is _almost_ like a button.
    • incahoots 3y ago
      The button was my go-to when I got a new car, I would defeat the lock cylinder without damaging the steering column, and place a button in a obscure spot to start my cars.
    • thatcat 3y ago
      Lol. I soldered in an alligator clip jumper wire for my friend to temporarily bypass the failing ignition switch and he left it like that, says he likes the sparking.
    • bookofjoe 3y ago
      Off topic: My first car was a 1966 white Buick Skylark convertible that I bought for $500 cash in the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles when I was 28 years old. Prior to that I had lived in LA from 1966 on and got around on foot and on my bicycle and city buses. I drove that giant Buick — I mean it was HUGE, both in terms of length and width as well as weight — for about five years, the final 2-3 of which featured a caved-in non-functional driver's side door resulting from having been T-boned by a little old lady who ran a stop sign. No worries: I'd just hop over the side or use the passenger side door. After the crash I never worried about theft. Also, amusingly, when I was on freeways, cars in adjacent lanes would quickly move away.
• obblekk 3y ago
  The receiver which measures the voltage pattern and decides if the rest of the voltage is allowed or not becomes the weak point. Like the encrypted key system used today, this could be buried deep inside the engine, but unclear why this is better than keys today. In addition, if the driver should be able to manually recreate the voltage pattern by actually flicking the lights/wipers, there will be a relatively small number of voltage combinations which could be iterated through an automated device connected directly to the wires very quickly.
  • hulitu 3y ago
    Plus DOS when the battery is exhausted after a couple of "turn lights on off, turn wipers on off".
    • talldatethrow 3y ago
      You could flash headlights probably 500+ times before a healthy battery had even a little trouble starting.
      • Brusco_RF 3y ago
        We're considering the entire battery lifecycle. So the correct way to think about this change is: More energy required to start engine --> Minimum battery health required to start engine increases --> battery lifecycle decreases.
        • talldatethrow 3y ago
          I don't see how this could possibly reduce the battery lifespan. Flashing the lights takes a few watts. The vehicle will then be started and charged and never reach any lower level of discharge where damage would occur. Yes, if you flashed your lights everytime 500+ times and got your battery to a meaningful low voltage where it barely started every time, sure. But not in the use case presented here.
          • 3y ago
• localtoast 3y ago
  As a kid, I watched my father pull a single fuse from the family 4x4's fuse box whenever we left the vehicle unattented for any extended period. Does a practical, lower-tech deterent exist?
  • camhenlin 3y ago
    My buddy has an 89 Prelude that got stolen a couple of times. It basically got driven around and left with an empty tank around town both times and no signs of break in. I think the keys are relatively common for those so maybe the thief has one. Anyways, I installed a switch up under his dash the disconnects the fuel pump +12v wire. It takes just a moment to flick the switch if you know where it is, and afterwards, the engine will crank and crank and crank and sort of sound like it wants to start at first, but never do anything. It would probably take several minutes to find it if you had to look for the switch, especially if it were at night and you were trying to steal the car. Seems like a good lower tech deterrent to me! The car has not been stolen since.
    • 1024core 3y ago
      > I think the keys are relatively common for those so maybe the thief has one. I have a buddy who had an old Ford in San Francisco. Once in a while he'd get in the car in the morning and notice that it felt .... strange. He couldn't put a finger on it. Then one day he had to get to work a little early and showed up at his car much earlier than normal. He found a guy sleeping in his drivers seat. Needless to say, both were startled and the homeless dude ran off, leaving a big bunch of keys behind in a keychain. Those were "master" keys to get into a whole slew of older vehicles.
    • wongarsu 3y ago
      Some cars also have unused switches on the dashboard (presumably features you didn't pay for) that are perfect for such use cases.
      • jaclaz 3y ago
        I remember (in the late '70's or maybe early '80's) a friend's car where he added (it was not unusual at the time to add "accessories" to cars, like fog lights or rear lights ) a number (four or five) lever switches (connected in serie) that acted like a dip-switch, you had to set them in a given pattern (like up-down-up-up) to be able to start the car.
• soared 3y ago
  Cool idea! Seems like car thieves could probably just carry around another device to hack it, but certainly could be a deterrent. I don’t know much about it but it seems like a key is supposed to be the password for the car, so seemingly the key is where improvements could be made. Like add unique and random differences in the metal on each key and have the key slot read those and only turn on the car if it matches (since I guess the metal bumps are easily bypassed by thieves?) Or couldn’t the bumps on keys just be replaced by.. pretty much anything that is physically secure and not multiple hundreds of years old technology? Credit card chips, magnet strips, 2fa fobs, fingerprint sensors, etc?
  • pc86 3y ago
    > Like add unique and random differences in the metal on each key and have the key slot read those and only turn on the car if it matches So turn a $100 ignition switch assembly into a $3,000 1-of-1 monstrosity? Would you need to replace the entire ignition assembly if you lose your keys, or would you be able to generate a key from the ignition assembly (or VIN or other unique identifier)? Thieves would probably just do that for high end vehicles anyway. > Or couldn’t the bumps on keys just be replaced by.. pretty much anything that is physically secure and not multiple hundreds of years old technology? Isn't this exactly what push-to-start tech is? I'm not sure the percentage of vehicles that have push-to-start at this point but I'd imagine it's well into the majority, and increasing.
  • wongarsu 3y ago
    High security door keys commonly use magnets embedded in the key as an additional security layer. A lot harder to pick by hand, and also doesn't appear in photographs of the key. For car keys manufacturers try to get away from physical keys for years, and for a remote keyfob it's just a cost question. Bidirectional communication allows for good cryptography with challenge-response protocol, but costs more than unidirectional. But then people want to be able to open their car when the battery of their fob is dead ...
  • incahoots 3y ago
    I imagine the purpose is to extend the timer when attempting to steal a vehicle. Ford had their dial pad on their vehicles for the longest time to prevent entry if you were using a non factory key to enter. I always thought that was a neat feature, but heavily under utilized.
• incahoots 3y ago
  The boomer in me suggests that you buy a manual transmission automobile to deter would-be thieves... Regarding the article, I get the idea that essentially this is a stripped down version of using something like a Yubikey to access a workstation (in this case, a car). I chuckled at the idea of doing certain actions within the car to get it to operate. ^ ^ v v < > < > B A Start Start
  • anaganisk 3y ago
    LB LT RB RT left right left right LB LT RB RT left right left right
• johnea 3y ago
  A surprisingly simple way to foil car thieves It's so simple, it can be done "With a new $1.2 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation"... I guess simple doesn't mean what it used to mean...
  • hulitu 3y ago
    > I guess simple doesn't mean what it used to mean... "You should see our new, redesigned, UI/UX" /s
  • ilyt 3y ago
    The amount is comical but there is still some development required to turn DIY hack into actual product.
• draw_down 3y ago
  [dead]
• ZiiS 3y ago
  It looks like if I connect a standard jump-pack to the starter motor it bypasses this new deterrent? Given the 50 years arms race leading to current immobilizers this seems a bit comical.
• Waterluvian 3y ago
  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 and flicked the switch. So understated, I still laugh at the memory.
  • Ancapistani 3y ago
    Super common in simple vehicles used to "run into town" in rural areas. We call them "kill switches". My previous vehicle was a '97 Jeep Wrangler. There were two kill switches installed when I bought it: one down by the driver's seatbelt latch for the fuel pump, and one reachable by inserting your finger into the opening for the 4wd shifter the disabled the starter. Neither was easily visible.
    • technothrasher 3y ago
      Yup, I put an ignition kill switch in my old Triumph Spitfire behind the dashboard when I was living in a not so great part of town. Just had to reach my hand up behind and flick it. I didn't hide it too hard, figuring anybody that tried to drive away in my Triumph and couldn't get it to start would figure it was just being a typical Triumph.
      • firebat45 3y ago
        Cars built with Lucas electrics typically have 3 modes of operation. Off, Dim, and Flicker. Which two of the three end up on your switch is entirely random.
        • mhandley 3y ago
          Oh yes, those of us of a certain age remember well Lucas, Prince of Darkness.
        • 3y ago
• rootsudo 3y ago
  1. It's re-inventing a kill switch. 2. It adds tons of uselees innovation to a kill switch. 3. If your car is antique/valuable/interesting, the people stealing it know the starting diagram/circuit and can easily rip it out/bypass it. 4. IF your car is antique/valuable/interesting you wouldn't add this as it can depreciate the car value/make it more ugly. You're not installing this in a brand new BMW M6, or a new Honda Civic, or a E24/1980's BMW M6 or a 1990's Honda EK Civic. Solutionism at it's worse. Ignores the whole idea of what a car is. Ignores the innovation in Transponder tech that has been the standard for a while - only Kita/Hyundai in the USA has been avoiding it because if added BOM. Outside the USA car thefts are not as common and in Domestic Japan/India/Asia a transponder is still pretty rare. But back to the article - seeing this was sponsored by "University of Michigan- " - WTH is going on there? That is Ford/GM. Ford has had PATS technology for the longest time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecuriLock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecuriLock GM has PK, same idea. "Battery Sleuth bypasses both the wireless communication that key fobs depend on and the standardized onboard communication network that’s used in today’s vehicles. Instead, it authenticates drivers by measuring voltage fluctuations in a vehicle’s electrical system. " Worthless, so it knows the cars resting voltage usage (easy enough) and if theres a drain, it means something is connected and that it can lock it up, but the same as a killswitch, it can be removed or bypassed. "Battery Sleuth also has defenses to guard against hacking or physical attacks on the device itself, including a siren that sounds if illegitimate activity is detected and a resistor that shuts down the vehicle’s electrical system if an unauthorized power source is connected to the vehicle. " Very easy to pop hood, pull siren out/disconnect. and lol "resistor" means anything/nothing.
  • incahoots 3y ago
    I'd argue your 3rd point is more based in the reality of movies that involve unique cars (Gone in 60 Seconds, etc). Most unique rides are typically stolen due to owner laziness(leaving keys on top of a tire, keys in the visor, left running, etc.).
    • rootsudo 3y ago
      I disagree - many cars are kept in parking lots - especially in HCOL. Access is basically whenever - if someone sees it there, and not moved often and such they know they can most likely attack it. Stripping an security system is also doable, via the can-bus attacks we see of late, but more personalized can just be to replace the ECU. In many cars this can be done in less than 15 minutes. Car shopping as presented in gone in 60 seconds is somewht common - ask people on any enthusiast forum and you'll see. Miatas in Bay area, stolen for the hard top/car itself. Skylines Honda Civics - just spare parts basically, though if it's a mint enough model I can see people vin swap because 2000's Honda S2000 - mint models reach 30K now, so it's own market. And that's just from what I've kept up* in. Now would someone pull up to someones garage, open that, and drive out? Probably not - but alot of people do drive cars to a parking space for work, or if they live in a condo - have shared/communal parking, and such. And to add an extra layer of paraonia, it is very inexpensive to attach a GPS/Air tag to a car and track it - within a week or two you can see a pattern of where it goes, for how long and what amount of time its standby. The VIN number is also viewable from the windshield, meaning if the thief has any sort of connection - they could even just order a replacement key thats preprogrammed with a base code and potentially just turn up to the car and drive away. But for opportunistic theft, yes - keys left within car/visible and then stolen but there are many different type of thieves for different markets. For unique/"antique" cars or any cars that were in the first three gran turismo - being targeted is a very big thing now in the community.
• gruez 3y ago
  >At the end of the three-year project, the team aims to have a commercially viable prototype that can be scaled up to commercial production, first as a theft deterrent device, and potentially later as a complete vehicle entry and control system that could replace traditional keys and fobs. What's the point of this? Modern cars already have engines that are cryptographically tied to keys[1]. They're not perfect, but is adding a whole new rube goldberg machine into your car really better than fixing the existing system? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immobiliser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immobiliser
  • screamingninja 3y ago
    Exactly. What's even worse is that it takes a huge research grant to come up with this. > With a new $1.2 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation...
    • fnimick 3y ago
      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?
      • barbazoo 3y ago
        > 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.
        • bookofjoe 3y ago
          >Pizza robot truck startup Stellar snags $16.5M from Jay-Z https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/Stellar-pizza-robot-truck-startup-snags-165m-from-jay-z/633303/ 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.
• riffic 3y ago
  drive a manual - it's an inherent anti theft device
  • flangola7 3y ago
    No such thing as a manual EV
    • tmh88j 3y ago
      https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762020/electric-ev-manual-transmission-fake-noise-toyota-lexus https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23762020/electric-ev-manu...
    • riffic 3y ago
      this triviality is not something I concern myself with.
  • yanellena 3y ago
    Not in Europe.
• postmortembees 3y ago
  This is a very engineering solution to a very not-engineering problem. Would this deter thieves? Possibly! Would thieves eventually be able to work around it? Also probably! Would it increase the friction of getting in and driving? Definitely! Today, your house keys are basically useless for security -- getting into your house is trivially easy both destructively and not. But we all use house keys because they feel safer. Ask people to provide biometrics or long passkeys or keycards and eliminate the existing locks? It's a hassle most folks won't tolerate. Likewise, people are comfortable with the walk up, push button, leave nature of fobs. Replacing that with "walk up, scan fingerprint" or "walk up, type in password" is going to tick off a lot of people.
  • HPsquared 3y ago
    Security is always a trade-off. The most effective, and also most costly, way to avoid car theft is to not own a car at all (for example).
    • radiator 3y ago
      How is this the most costly way?
      • gruez 3y ago
        Opportunity cost of the additional travel time[1] that you have to spend because you don't have a car. [1] Yes, I'm aware of european cities where cars aren't necessary or are actually slower than public transit. That's not applicable to most of the US though.
        • postmortembees 3y ago
          I wonder how many instacart/uber orders I would need to have to offset the cost of a car, assuming I can bike to most of my needs. The only reason I have a car is because there are some specialized transportation needs (towing) that I cannot get from my bike. I use my bike for everything from hardware to Costco to groceries to child care to ... lots of stuff.
• jeron 3y ago
  I simply drive a manual - ultimate theft deterrent these days
  • toomim 3y ago
    Not true. My manual civic was stolen 5 times in 5 years. Car thieves learn how to break into various makes and models of cars and hotwire them. They have also figured out this thing called a "clutch".
    • jeron 3y ago
      in the last 5 years? thieves these days are young kids who have never seen three pedals
      • toomim 3y ago
        From 2015-2020. I started keeping it locked away since 2020. You're obviously wrong about the car thieves, because this happened to my car. Two of the thieves were central american gangsters. They left reggaeton and stolen audio systems in the car. Another guy was an old meth-head, who stole and lived in it for a week by the bay. I found all his drug crap in it afterward.
• 0003 3y ago
  Thus begins the spiral coming back to "physical" security vs abstracted tech. Imagine the sales of a new BMW M5... "Yup this baby has it all. Top of the line security. Worried the thieves will see your finger prints on the keypad no worries. Just manually hit the windshield 3x, run the blinkers so many times. Etc etc. And there she goes..."
• dhruvkalaria 3y ago
  Classic man in the middle attack can be easily dealt with PKI. Why go through such a hassle?
• marcodiego 3y ago
  I was once told that you can buy on of those realistic baby doll and leave it on the back seat.
  • anaganisk 3y ago
    Great way to get your windows broken everyday
• thriftwy 3y ago
  Commercial immobilizers do that, but with much more sophisticated technique than this amateur hour. Mine sits straight near the car CPU and is protected by a metal box.
• mauvehaus 3y ago
  Easier solution: take off one highly visible trim piece from the dashboard or console of your car, and throw a $20 DMM on the passenger seat. A couple random bits of loose wire in various colors for effect, maybe a half roll of electrical tape, and nobody's going to take a second look. Source: nobody has ever stolen any of the cars I've owned while I've been troubleshooting the ongoing electrical problems.
• calvinmorrison 3y ago
  this is 'cool but stupid'. Running a relay into the car to a switch thats protected just moves a analog electrical problem somewhere else, it' still just two wires to jump at the end of the day What you want is what smarter cars have, integration to the ECU. So you put in the wrong key, it does a crypto exchange with the ecu, and the ECU won't crank. Even if you crank it by jumping the solenoid, it won't power the fuel pump, the computer will still say 'I am off' sorry no fuel no timing, nothing.
  • okl 3y ago
    Right, the image shows it connected to the battery pole. Just pop the hood, bridge the contacts. Any proper solution has to be integrated into some essential part that is difficult to access (like the ECU). Maybe they want that thing to talk to the ECU? Otherwise, how is it locking the car?
    • calvinmorrison 3y ago
      a lot of cars have cutoffs switches for all sorts of stuff, like rollover switches, overboost limiters etc... you could tap into any of those to immobilize a car. but you need to tuck that shit up under neath in the dash or wherever the ECU is, and that doesn't solve any issues because it's still just one wire to short out. You need something tucked up underneath you can use wireless transponder so theres nothing obvious preventing it from cranking.
• TheRealPomax 3y ago
  Own a manual?
• unsupp0rted 3y ago
  Couldn't they just make the car blare non-stop alternating sirens for 10 minutes at a time, 4 times an hour for 12 hours, loud enough to get through drywall and double-paned windows, at the slightest perturbation? Although I don't own a car, I'm happy when I hear throughout the day and night that my neighbor's cars are well protected.
  • ilyt 3y ago
    We had that in the 90's and 00's, cars still got stolen
    • SoftTalker 3y ago
      I lived in Chicago at that time, you heard those car alarms constantly and they were just ignored. I still remember the sequence of beeps, whoops, and buzzers of the popular alarms. For the device in TFA, I don't see what prevents a thief from just bypassing the thing with a jumper from the battery + terminal.
      • Eisenstein 3y ago
        Do you remember the the birds which adapted their calls to mimic the alarm noises?
        • bagels 3y ago
          The mocking bird in my backyard knows all the car alarm sounds, it's part of his daily routine.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      I guess it wasn't only me who mentally associated that sound with "uh oh someone's car was hit by a small branch carried by the wind" and/or "a cat walked over the car".
  • breischl 3y ago
    I've come pretty close to keying "FIX YOUR ALARM" into people's doors for this. In the end left them notes about it, which did result in it getting fixed, so I haven't had to actually do it. Someday, though. I still think car alarms are a net negative to society. Thousands of hours of disrupted sleep and it prevents approximately no thefts.
• cjdoc29 3y ago
  I know someone who wired their turn signal / high beam stalk to need to be pulled while turning the ignition key. Back in the early-mid 90s, my dad had a tiny light switch that needed to be toggled before starting the car. It's ridiculous this sort of thing is needed, but it's sort of...fun?
• threeio 3y ago
  Maybe I'm missing something, but in some of my international travels, rental cars had a keypad that had to be entered correctly prior to the key working. No key code entry, no run. Put the keypad in 3 times incorrectly in a row, system blinks rad, you sat for an hour unless you called the rental place for an override key. Voltage fluctuation aside, it seems like the same system.
  • giobox 3y ago
    I haven't seen a separate keypad immobilizer (the kind where you put key in ignition and turn, but engine wont start until a pin is entered into a separate keypad in the cabin) since I last sat in a Peugeot 205 in the early 90s - I'd be shocked to see one on anything made in the last decade that isn't a weird aftermarket accessory. I've never seen this on a rental car in Europe/US in recent memory. The pin pads Ford often fit to doors are not the same thing - those are to provide cabin access without a key at places such as worksites or camping trips etc.
    • threeio 3y ago
      Travel to Israel, its in -every- car.
      • tguvot 3y ago
        required by insurance
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • maratc 3y ago
      In Cyprus, rental cars also have them (of course these are aftermarket).
• kotaKat 3y ago
  The GM EV1 had this solved early on: they didn't use keys at all - just a numeric PIN that you entered on the door and on the center console to start. ;) http://www.kingoftheroad.net/charge_across_america/graphics_for_Charge/photos/0bigdetails/ev1keypadb.jpg http://www.kingoftheroad.net/charge_across_america/graphics_... Slap your PIN in and hit the RUN button and it'd fire right up.
  • dharmab 3y ago
    I believe Ford has a patent on keypad entry. Many of their vehicles have it.
    • monkeywork 3y ago
      I love the keypad on my F150 I seriously wish all vehicles had it.
      • mrguyorama 3y ago
        It used to be that the PIN logic was just a simple rolling buffer and substring(ish) search, such that for a 6 button keypad, an optimized 80ish button sequence would open every single vehicle with those keypads.
• oxfordmale 3y ago
  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.
  • woobar 3y ago
    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?
    • oxfordmale 3y ago
      Car theft rates were lower with mechanical keys. See below UK statistics Keyless cars top the list for most stolen cars across the UK, with around 93% of all stolen vehicles in 2020 being taken without vehicle keys.
      • woobar 3y ago
        This is not statistics. What percentage of the new cars are keyless? Here are stats for UK. Total cars stolen in UK dropped from ~300K to ~100K in the last 20 years. [1] Even though number of cars keep growing [2] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/303551/motor-vehicle-theft-in-england-and-wales/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/303551/motor-vehicle-the... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/299972/average-age-of-cars-on-the-road-in-the-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/299972/average-age-of-ca...
  • Spivak 3y ago
    It wouldn't stop anything. You have a car that has everything it needs to start and go just sitting there. Whether you have a physical key, password, retina scanner, you name it the issue is that the thief has physical access. For physical security they can just short some wires to make the car think it has the key, and for digital systems they gain access to the cleartext internal message bus of the car and tell it to start. The latter is the one that has more promise on making it actually secure because you can make the software required to drive the car and the car physically can't move without it but that comes with a lot of usability and performance trade-offs.
• K0balt 3y ago
  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 and some discrete components. It senses my phones Bluetooth radio and energises the relay if I turn the key on when I’m within a few feet, as well as any other Bluetooth radios I authenticate. I can also just turn on the wipers momentarily and it will latch the relay. If the vehicle is not running, the relay unlatches in 15 minutes. That way I can basically forget that it exists, problem solved. It has been working flawlessly for two years now. The whole thing took me about 3 hours to put on strip board and program, another half hour to enclose and mount it. Give me an hour more in micropython and I could make it require a passcode entered on your phone with a secret wiper switch sequence as a backup. If I threw a five dollar Hall effect current sensor (as shown in their project) it could require a whole dog and pony show of switch activations to unlock it. Adjusting it to different vehicles would be a one- time calibration sequence like I use for my water flow meters. I guess I should have applied for a grant.
  • pohl 3y ago
    Prototyping is a tiny fraction of product development.
  • AnotherGoodName 3y ago
    https://xkcd.com/664/ https://xkcd.com/664/
    • K0balt 3y ago
      Lol. So true.
  • StevenXC 3y ago
    Speaking as someone who's reviewed for NSF before, I'd have expected this grant to also include resources to get the product to market, which I'm assuming you haven't done.
• buro9 3y ago
  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/automotive-security-wheel-locks/high-security-steering-wheel-lock https://www.milenco.com/products/automotive-security/automot... This is visible to the theif and just raised the theft effort from "jump these cables just behind the headlight" to "jump these cables behind the headlight and then use a loud angle grinder in a very enclosed space". I'm in a residential area, this is a strong deterrent and avoids the initial damage being done to the car. PS: Some sports cars kill their CAN when the car is turned off... but we do insist on keyless entry and this is what we get for it.
  • alwaysbeconsing 3y ago
    "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-the-club/ https://freakonomics.com/2010/06/what-car-thieves-think-of-t...
    • hodgesrm 3y ago
      The freakonomics folk must have loved this one. They live for unintended consequences. That phrase occurs as expected in the article.
    • Terr_ 3y ago
      > a short piece of a hacksaw blade to cut through the plastic steering wheel in a couple seconds I'm having trouble visualizing that part, unless it refers to steering-wheels of the past with a lot less material. Wouldn't a piece of hacksaw blade also be much less effective, without the rest of the hacksaw to provide tension?
• matsemann 3y ago
  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.
  • jack_riminton 3y ago
    You want to eliminate all crime before doing anything to prevent crimes? Righto boss I'm off to remove all locks from my house for the cause
    • SoftTalker 3y ago
      People used to use horses for transportation. You can't lock a horse, but there were substantial penalties for stealing a horse. It maybe was a capital crime at some point?
      • jack_riminton 3y ago
        You're right, the technology of horse locks wasn't available so people went to other lengths: branding, guards, registering of horses. In societies where there was the death penalty for such things there was still horse theft.
      • bookofjoe 3y ago
        Short answer: yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_theft
    • matsemann 3y ago
      No, that's not what I said. Don't straw man me. We already do stuff to prevent crimes. The cars have locks, alarms, cryptographic key fobs, tracking, cameras etc. etc. None of that works. Adding a new layer of security is surely not going to help. That's my point. The resources are better put elsewhere.
  • boringg 3y ago
• jrm4 3y ago
  This seems very goofy: But also, what seems very goofy to me is the removal of the requirement of sticking your key in the ignition. It really feels like this older thing, plus the wireless crypto/radio bit they also have, really ought to be sufficient for all of this?
• boringg 3y ago
  Wow - the solution is to overlay a physical keylike component to the system tied to the battery. The whole point of keyless fob was to make it easier. This negates that benefit. Why not just put a key back to start the engine. Whoever is signing off on that grant money doesn't understand product design.
• barbariangrunge 3y ago
  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.
• jameslk 3y ago
  It seems really sluggish to do all this. Just spitballing here, but what if instead we have some sort of key... and it goes into a keyhole... and that starts the car? /s
• teleforce 3y ago
  Most of these car thieves are probably repeated offenders. You need to catch them not only foiling them. The simplest way to catch and prevent these petty thieves is to enable the car's available 360 camera (or install after market solutions) that always monitor its surroundings and backup this data to the cloud (could be real-time connection or intermittently with local-first technology). The camera data should be kept only for several days and rotated as any backup in order to keep the cloud storage affordable for the masses. This simple way should easily catch more than 99% of the car thieves even the most sophisticated ones.
• jedberg 3y ago
  The main problem here is that manufacturers aren't incentivized to make great security systems for their cars. There isn't a ton of press about cars getting stolen like there is about data privacy. Imagine if the folks who built FaceID, TouchID, and Secure Enclave were tasked with building car security. Cars are a lot more expensive than phones and laptops, it would be worth the $50 or $100 in extra hardware to secure them. And as an added bonus, you wouldn't even need a key anymore because you could start your car with your face. :)
• kibwen 3y ago
  As shown in Max Max: Fury Road (1:35): https://youtu.be/gpeqFXT_amU?t=95 https://youtu.be/gpeqFXT_amU?t=95
• tonymet 3y ago
  this is a case where they should have run the idea by an ex car thief. How is this any better than a hidden killswitch under the glove box or behind the gas pedal? Once the attacker knows they can just short the circuit.
  • kodt 3y ago
    Also this does nothing to hinder armed carjacking where the car is already running. These are way up since 2020.
    • tonymet 3y ago
      i've seen some unsettling videos of attackers approaching vehicles when the auto-door-unlock activates.
• whatever1 3y ago
  It does not help. These days the most frequent theft I see is related to wheels theft, catalyst theft and broken windows.
• binarymax 3y ago
  How about working car alarms?! Two of my family members were hit in the same week (back window smashed) and the alarm never made a sound. Luckily both of their cars weren’t susceptible to the common attack…so the damage was minimal.
• TheDudeMan 3y ago
  Maybe we should insist that production key fobs are secure. It is only pure laziness and incompetence that has resulted in them not being secure. The tech is not difficult.
• bagels 3y ago
  They invented a less reliable immobilizer?
• onetimeuse92304 3y ago
  Whatever is posted online, thieves will soon learn and figure out how to circumvent. What you want is to be original. You just need to think like a thief. What thieves don't like? Surprises. Just do something surprising that will make the thieve think it is just too risky to try and they will go for an easier alternative.
• mulmen 3y ago
  Just take your battery out and carry it with you.
• HumblyTossed 3y ago
  Great, so a Konami Code for cars. SMH.
• nlawalker 3y ago
  What's the value of the underlying implementation here? Is it just the ability to retrofit? From a user perspective, this is "you need to physically be in the car and scan your thumbprint or type on a keypad to start it"; it seems like there are lots of simpler ways that such functionality be built into a car by the manufacturer that are just as secure, it's just that there's no demand for it.
• Kerrick 3y ago
  My grandfather invented, marketed, and maybe patented a device on this premise before he died decades ago. I still have one in its retail packaging in my curio cabinet. IIRC the first iteration he made used a keypad to enter the code, and the second used the blinkers. https://web.archive.org/web/20010206124335/http://www.kapinnovations.com/path.html https://web.archive.org/web/20010206124335/http://www.kapinn...
  • alexchamberlain 3y ago
    So they've spent $1.2million to develop a pre-patented device?
    • nomel 3y ago
      This is low tech, available since the late 80's. It's a bit ludicrous to think it wasn't invented, and reinvented, many times within the last 43 years.
  • DavidPeiffer 3y ago
    Does the timer restart with each ignition start? I'm imagining a thief who is aware of the system diligently putting the car into neutral and turning the car off and on every 40 seconds during their getaway.
• cdchn 3y ago
  A million drivers of Hyundais that the manufacturer cheaped out on immobilizers in the US would be interested in this as a finished product.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• Brusco_RF 3y ago
  Couldn't a thief just observe the car's wipers/headlights/blinkers to obtain the secret combination that unlocks the starter ?
• gloryless 3y ago
  Sounds like a simple layer that can be retrofitted easily, but "there's nothing to hack" is absurd. The truth is that car security is bad, and any killswitch at all is something they don't come with standard.
• waihtis 3y ago
  tl,dr: 2FA for cars
• codedokode 3y ago
  This must be April 1st article.
• nnurmanov 3y ago
  What if thieves steal cars for their parts? They can tow car and beat such security systems:)
• myself248 3y ago
  The problem with security by obscurity is that as soon as it's widely used, the crooks learn to bypass it. It's literally a relay in the starter wire, all you gotta do is hotwire the starter and you're back to the status quo. A whole lot of people have these on their own cars, any DIYer can do it in an hour or two. I may or may not have one on mine. But the "security" comes from there being no standard location for any of the components.
  • drdaeman 3y ago
    Looking at the prototype photo, it seems trivial to open the hood and remove the whole thing in a minute or so. Unless the plan is to have it somewhere way down there, and not simply sitting on top of the positive terminal. The video says "alarms sound the when authenticator is removed", but that's a gimmick. They should be entirely disconnecting the whole negative terminal (duh), not just the wire to the device, leaving the whole car without power until the positive terminal is freed. And if anyone bothers to ask what the thief is doing, they have a 100% plausible reply "got a parasitic drain, so I've put a cheap relay and now this crap is failing on me".
• dboreham 3y ago
  This seems to be the automotive version of port knocking, but deployed in an environment where the attacker has the equivalent of physical access to your server.
• shadowtree 3y ago
  Way better would be a system of sliding metal panels to cover the windows when parked. Most break ins here in SF just smash and grab your shit. Give me a way to protect the inside of the car. Plus the fact that neither SFPD nor Oakland deploy decoy cars to actually go after the thieves - what a total failure of basic policing this area is. Can I get a 10mil grant to propose that!?
  • boobsbr 3y ago
    You want the Tom Jane Punisher's car?
• ecf 3y ago
  I’ll let you in on a secret that would deter care thieves. Adequately punish the ones police happen to catch. It’ll create a reinforcing cycle. Police are more interested in pursuing these cases because it’s worth it for their time, and thieves will be dissuaded from car theft because there might actually be consequences if caught compared to the current slap on the wrist.
• sleepybrett 3y ago
  Is the whole security around this burying the relay bypass so far inside the car that no thief would be able to easily bypass this by just bridging the relay?
• hunson_abadeer 3y ago
  There's a lot of people remarking about this not being novel or the grant being too high, but I'd make two other critiques. First, what happens if the electrical characteristics of your vehicle change in some way? New vs old battery? Busted headlight? Phone plugged into an outlet? Diesel air intake heater grid kicking in on a cold day? What if you need to jumpstart your vehicle? It just seems so finicky in the real world. Second, what's the point of using this analog signaling system to begin with? I don't see the supposed simplicity of it. Both the transmitter and the receiver are more complex than would be needed for digital. The other argument is that it is somehow more "hacker-proof", but using analog signals doesn't make it so. You can have a similar scheme operating on the CAN bus with no added risk. In fact, I bet there are devices on the CAN bus that can both measure and modulate battery drain, so the isolation may be illusory. Ultimately, it's not about not having the technology. It's just that your average customer favors convenience features over having a fortress on wheels. Plus, the returns on sophisticated defenses are diminishing, given that a car can always be loaded onto a tow truck, the hood can be popped open, or the whole thing can be stripped for parts with a Sawzall (as catalytic converter thieves tend to do).
  • function_seven 3y ago
    This is a two part system. There's the relay under the hood, and a keypad plugged into the cigarette lighter port. When you put the correct code in, the device will induce the voltage fluctuations that tell the under-hood relay to close. I think the whole "flip on wipers, flash high-beams twice, turn on map light" thing is a fallback for when you don't have the keypad or don't want it to always be plugged in. If the voltage variances for those actions changes, I suppose you can retrain it with the keypad plugged in. And the point of that analog signalling is to make installation easy. You just plug the keypad into the lighter port. It handles the rest.
    • hunson_abadeer 3y ago
      Right, but that voltage modulation scheme can be distorted by the changing electrical characteristics of your car. Again, imagine a diesel heater kicking in, or windshield wipers, or some other variable load (phone charging)... you can have a clever fault-tolerant modulation scheme, but probably not if you want to also support "blink headlights" as a backup input method? Beyond that, I don't see the "simplicity" argument for analog. You're already messing with the vehicle's wiring. CAN bus is easily accessible from the passenger compartment. Or, running an extra data wire takes 10 minutes. Short-range RF can be easily secured in this application too. Plus, on many newer cars, USB charging ports are displacing 12 V outlets, so it's not even all that future-proof. It's not that I'm desperate to dislike this design, but I'm struggling to see the qualitative improvement over a billion aftermarket designs that most people just kinda don't use...
• sschueller 3y ago
  In the US the simplest solution is to just buy a stick shift car.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• samtho 3y ago
  This will always be a cat and mouse game: as cars become more complicated and have more security features, there are just more points of failure. A toolmaker for thieves or locksmiths will get a new car and automate the exploitation of a vulnerability. Some new lamps are fully computer controlled with pins for 12v, GND, CAN-H, and CAN-L instead of just a switched leg and a common. If I can get access to the inside of the housing, it’s game over anyway. A sufficiently motivated actor will steal your car if then want to. The immobilizer is kind of a joke when you can, with an Arduino and access to the CAN bus, just dump the memory of your immo controller or instrument cluster and find your pin, then use that to pair a new key you had cut to a vin.
  • akira2501 3y ago
    If your car can be repossessed, it can be stolen, and the set of tools in a repo mans arsenal for moving vehicles is much larger than most people might expect. If I can get my hands on your vehicle, I can take it.
• austin-cheney 3y ago
  My ultimate anti-theft device: standard transmission.
• jeffreygoesto 3y ago
  Colleague had a Mini Cooper in the 80es where the Choke could be pulled but pushing it back did nothing. There was one traffic light that was always red (for the street with no priority) where the owner went around and pushed the lever back. The car was stolen once and found with the carb flooded after a mile or so.
• blastro 3y ago
  Security by obscurity in automotive?
• whinenot 3y ago
  Simple? Not if Furiosa is programming the start sequence.[0] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq5rQlfEcjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq5rQlfEcjY
• GeorgeTirebiter 3y ago
  My buddy uses a big-ass knife switch on the battery + terminal, under the hood. Since you have to open the car to 'pop' the hood, the only way to steal it is to get inside somehow (slim jim, smash the window, etc), pop the hood, pop the hood safety, know which black plastic box has the knife switch, open that, close the switch, close the hood, hotwire the ignition, and, finally... drive away. Too much trouble. some other victim car will be chosen by the typical car thief.
  • post_break 3y ago
    That works on older cars, on newer cars they will run like shit if they are constantly killed. The ecu likes to learn things, the transmission ecu, the radio, all your settings. A knife switch on the fuel pump or starter would be better.
• justinlloyd 3y ago
  Paraphrasing: "And you would have to turn the windshield wipers on and off, switch the radio off, flash the headlights and our clever device will then permit the car to start." Yeah, that kinda sounds like my Caterham 7 back in the 1990s during wet weather.
• anjc 3y ago
  It's interesting to read how many comments here underestimate the sophistication and expertise of mechanics and car thieves, and, all of the poor suggestions to overcome theft. This despite the userbase being technical. I wonder if there's a mechanics forum somewhere in which posters are confidently proposing Caesar ciphers and so on.
• fdasfdmfdm 3y ago
  [dead]
• Havoc 3y ago
  Another DIY solution I've seen is magnet activated switch in a place in the panels & magnet on keychain. Short of tearing the car apart you're gonna have to know where to hold the magnet.
• jshprentz 3y ago
  Another way: the Batmobile's Anti-Theft Activator [1] from the 1966-1968 Batman TV series. [1] https://batlabels.tumblr.com/post/158029360040/anti-theft-activator-start-button https://batlabels.tumblr.com/post/158029360040/anti-theft-ac...
• koliber 3y ago
  In Israel, all the rental cars we rented had a keypad and you had to enter a 4 digit pin to start it. That sounds simple. This sound a bit more complicated.
• kyrofa 3y ago
  Essentially port knocking for cars.
• randcraw 3y ago
  But on modern cars, cigarette lighters are disabled when the ignition is turned off. So you can't use any device powered by the lighter to start the car.
• rpcope1 3y ago
  GM seemed to have had this right in the late 80s and early 90s with VATS: my Camaro had a resistor integrated into the key, and if the ECM sensed the wrong resistance, it wouldn't start or run the ignition. I think there were a large number of possible values, and it would lock you out for a while if it detected a couple of failed attempts. It also seemed pretty good at preventing theft, and can't possibly be more complicated or expensive than the silly fobs everything comes with.
• jheriko 3y ago
  surprisingly simple to circumvent from the sounds of it too...
• swores 3y ago
  > In a field test study on eight vehicles published in July 2022, the researchers showed that a prototype of Battery Sleuth was more than 99.9% effective at detecting and preventing illegitimate activity without interfering with normal vehicle operation Would anyone be able & kind enough to explain what sort of testing could go from a sample of eight vehicles to a result of "more than 99.9%"? Does that mean they tested 1000 ways of hacking (or 125 ways on each of 8 cars) and found 0 of them were successful? Or...
• dfox 3y ago
  After my first car was stolen I went out to design and build an immobilizer system based on these PIC16F84 AlphaCard “smartcards”. Along the way I realized that what matters most is that it is obvious that there is something obscure like that and the real security does not matter. So I ended up with very consciously placed smartcard reader, complete with two blinking LEDs and 12wire rainbow flat IDC cable coming from that. In reality only thing that it did was that the card-present switch activated an relay that was wired in series with fuel pump relay coil. It didn't get stolen and I ended up shoving my drivers license into the slot, which for various onlookers made the “security system” look even more like some kind of high-end technology. Edit: the original idea was that there would be some kind of reader unit that converts the ISO 7816-ish protocol to RS485 and the actual cryptographic challenge-response verification will happen in a unit buried deep inside the engine bay. Well, as long as it is one-off obscure hack, you don't really need any of that.
• SoylentOrange 3y ago
  Q: if this is the equivalent of a password, what’s the mechanism for resetting the password? For example, you are selling a used car. Or you have many cars each of which you don’t use too frequently. Or you have a tractor that you use seasonally. In those cases, it’s totally reasonable that you would have forgotten the password. How do you reset it if it’s wired into the power line?
• excalibur 3y ago
  Getting strong flux capacitor vibes from this
• gcanyon 3y ago
  if/when this becomes common, what prevents thieves from carrying/providing their own positive cable to bypass the authenticator?
• phendrenad2 3y ago
  I'm surprised no one has resorted to chemical warfare. Add a can of skunk spray under the driver's seat, wired up with a motor to spray it if someone else tries to drive off in your car. Have an audible beep a few times before it goes off, to remind YOU to hit the secret switch to disable it. Car thieves will continue on their merry way, wondering what that beeping is. Of course, you'd probably be sued by the car thief, who wouldn't spend a minute of jail time because city governments don't want to do their job, so probably not actually a good idea... (Maybe instead of skunk spray, you could turn the radio up full blast, playing some CIA-approved heavy metal music?)
  • callalex 3y ago
    Even if the thief abandoned my car after that, I still lose pretty badly in your described scenario.
• joe_the_user 3y ago
  I think chip-keys are extremely common now - my twenty year old Infiniti has one. Car theft rates have been declining for thirty years [1]. I think thieves focus on either the remaining old cars or very specialized efforts for new cars. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-vehicle-theft-rate-in-the-us-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-ve...
  • fragmede 3y ago
    They were first designed (and patented) in 1919. More importantly is that they're now required on all new cars sold in the US according to Standard No. 114; Theft protection and rollaway prevention, though I'm not totally clear on when that got passed. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.114 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.114
• karmakaze 3y ago
  > They might perform some combination of flicking the windshield wipers, turn signal or headlights on and off, or locking and unlocking the doors. I'm just imagining having this technology become ubiquitous, then using it without knowledge of how it works. We end up with magic incantations that a general population does without reason. People already do so many things on their computers etc because that's how they learned it the first time--whether or not the specifics of their actions are relevant.
• betimsl 3y ago
  $1.2 million down the drain.
• callalex 3y ago
  This is a perfect example of why research grants have so much red tape and approval. Apparently the process can still fail horribly, and over a million dollars can be wasted building something that was invented by a farmer in their barn in the 70’s.
• anotherevan 3y ago
  Sounds a bit like port knocking.
• zoratu 3y ago
  In the late 70s my father had a Simca with part of the ignition key lodged in the ignition lock cylinder. Getting the replacement key from France was going to take ages, so he rigged it up so that you had to flip a toggle switch he'd installed on the dashboard and honk the horn in order for it to start. It was the opposite of a kill switch.
• thsksbd 3y ago
  Im pretty sure 90s Hertz rentals in Italy had something like this. It was terrible, unreliable and once left us stranded. Whats not clear to me is if this blocks the starter (high current) or is a bit smarter by blocking a lower current component (like injector pump, or the ignition).
• toss1 3y ago
  Simpler: Use a manual transmission. I had a car that in the previous century (Saab 900Turbo 5spd) was visiting in NYC and found it broken into, scratches around the ignition (also in a weird place in the center floor), but not stolen; clearly they had no clue about operating the gears. These days I read multiple articles about would-be thieves foiled by manual trans. It is merely security by obscurity, but it is nevertheless effective. Nobody that doesn't already know how to drive a manual thans is going to figure it out in the 60 second window, and very few people already know.
• randombits0 3y ago
  Not surprising. Not simple.
• ironcurtain 3y ago
  [dead]
• sharts 3y ago
  I would prefer flamethrowers under the doors and/or phosegene gas through the ventilation system.
• fennecfoxy 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • dang 3y ago
    Ok, but can you please make your substantive points thoughtfully, without name calling, fulmination, or putdowns? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.