Awesome Stuff: Lock It Up
from the safe-not-sorry dept
This week's awesome stuff is all about security, but not of the "cyber" variety. No, we're taking a look at some brand new takes on good old fashioned locks.Lock Your Mail!
Though technology has drastically changed the role of snail mail in the world, that doesn't mean the latter can't benefit from the former. The wi-fi enabled Smart Mailbox is designed to offer convenient security (it locks and unlocks via smartphone app) and plain old convenience (it can notify you inside when new mail has arrived). And despite American preconceptions about us not even bothering to lock our doors, it's being made in Canada! The project has only just launched, so it remains to be seen if it will come anywhere close to its $50,000 goal.
Lock Your Bike!
Speaking of local locking habits, they seem to swing wildly from place to place. In some cities, locking up a bicycle isn't enough — some enterprising thief will strip it of its precious wheels. If you live in one of those places, you might benefit from the Nutlock system, which builds extra security into the nuts and bolts of the bike, literally:
Some cities, however, are the exact opposite — people don't even need to bother locking their bike to a rack or post, instead sticking with the token gesture of locking the frame to one wheel, because who would steal a bike they can't ride away on? If you're lucky enough to be a cyclist in such a city, the ultra-compact VIER lock might be for you:
Lock Your Locker!
It's back to school season, which I imagine is like Christmas for combination padlock manufacturers. But if the nearly $400,000 (at time of writing) raised by the Bluetooth-activated, smartphone-controlled Noke is any indication, people are getting a little tired of the old standard.
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Filed Under: awesome stuff, locks
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The Noke looked good for a short while.
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Re: The Noke looked good for a short while.
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details
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Stale cache somewhere?
This suggests that my view of the site is stale by over half a day.
Is there anything I can do to view the Techdirt History post for this week right away, or do I just have to wait for whatever the logjam is to clear up on its own?
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Re: Stale cache somewhere?
The only "simple" explanation that could explain those data seems to be human error, to wit, someone simply forgot to post the Look Back article at the normal time today. But techdirt has a reputation for running a tighter ship than that, so I dismiss it as unlikely.
I'm scratching my head though to think of what sort of technical problem could cause a single .shtml file to be served to an end-user as a patchwork mix of different versions spanning most of a day of the file's history...are some of the navigation links dynamically generated by client-side scripts, based on AJAX requests for objects that might be seen from the client end as staler versions than the comment objects, perhaps?
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Re: Re: Stale cache somewhere?
This happens all the time.
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Re: Re: Stale cache somewhere?
Sorry for the confusion!
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Also great physical locks for any rack-mounted electronics
Nobody gets to your stuff without the keys or combinations, and they can be installed over already working equipment and have built-in cable management
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Re: Also great physical locks for any rack-mounted electronics
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Lock my mailbox?
(Apparently no one else needs it either. A week in, it doesn't have a single solitary contribution)
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Re: Lock my mailbox?
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Re: Lock my mailbox?
I'd prefer it got stolen, so I can just get rid of my weekly "move all the mail to to the recycling bin" chore.
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I don't know how security is carried out here so I might be worried for nothing.
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What I would worry about most with the design is how it deals with loss of power.
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Reminds me of those electronic locks they use in hotels that could be easily hacked heh.
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(Not to say that there is no inherent technological flaw in them -- I don't know about that one way or the other)
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