The laser in the article took 30 seconds to cut a a tiny disc out of a sheet of steel 100 micrometers thick. That isn’t going to change things on the theft front. There are much more effective methods available today.
P.S.: Trying to think of the rare examples that don't qualify, and so far:
1. Direct violent response, e.g. booby-traps.
2. Denial by destroying whatever the attacker wanted, or delaying them enough that time renders it valueless.
3. Denial by making the effort unprofitable, even with no hard time limits.
* Where do you buy a ≤20 euro bike?
* Most people on the street have bikes that look to be at least 200 euros new, from what I can tell.
You get the bike for < 20 Euro and then, presumably, at some point in the future it gets stolen again, but you already got 20 Euros worth of use out of it.
Even in 2011, when I made the mistake of spending £90 for a new bike… well, the pedals came off while riding it due to metal fatigue.
Adjusting for inflation*, I'd expect similar build quality from a bike that "only" cost €200 today.
* hard to do when there is also a currency switch, especially when the exchange rate has changed so much
It would take work to remove it cleanly and/or cost money/time to paint over it.
So it's less attractive.
Ps. You'll still need to take care of your 10 k. Bike ofc.
Ps. 2 : engraving isn't done anymore since bike frames got smaller.
(I do not think so, but this probably would make sense)
People in countries where bicycling is not seen as a personality statement generally ride very cheap city bikes around town. Last time I bought one of those in college it cost about 30eur. Is not like in SF where people ride 3000 dollar bikes to work because omg you’re a cyclist now and this is your whole identity.
There is also a growing segment of people who use $5,000–$15,000 cargo/kid carrier bikes as replacements for their cars, which is cool. But I do worry about theft of those increasing. Right now I rarely hear of it, but it seems likely to increase. Even the motors and batteries in them cost thousands alone.
Didn't Amsterdam try that with 'white bikes' in the 1970s?
No, it definitely does not!
750k bike thefts for 17.7m people. So roughly one per 25 people...
It famously has more bicycles than people!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpVOTEOMRuE
https://www.amazon.com/Kryptonite-Evolution-Integrated-Chain...
Tl;dr if your lock doesn't double-lock (both sides) and have a cut-resistant core, it's only stopping people who can't afford a Ryobi angle grinder
If you live at a lower end apartment complex, you might be shocked at how many doors your key will unlock, if you apply a light turning pressure and thrust the key in and out a few times.
I know I was. But it came in handy when one of my xmas gifts had been delivered to the front office, and I needed to pick it up after hours in order to make a redeye flight the next morning. I just used my own room key to open the office (setting off the alarm!), grabbed the package with my name on it, and closed and relocked the door and was gone before anyone investigated.
I've tried this on higher-end tumblers and I could really feel that it wasn't going to work. It's just about the el-cheapo builder-grade locks (which comprise a shocking percentage of home and apartment locks).
Yeah, I'm currently waiting on parts to replace my door handle. As far as I can tell, the would-be thieves snapped off the handle to make an opening, and used that to cut/snap the rear part of the lock (which normally can't turn because of the lock cylinder) and then substituted in a screwdriver to convince the car that the lock had turned.
Thankfully--and puzzlingly--they were unprepared for the steering-wheel lock and only managed to mangle and bend it (probably with a small bolt-cutter) before they gave up or were spooked off.
'Course, after that they would have still been unable to start the car for other reasons, but it still saved me the cost of fixing a torn-up ignition.
1/10 of a millimeter. Thick foil (perhaps 4x generic Al foil).
1. Can be opened without tools
2. Can be opened with generic tools (e.g. hammer, hacksaw)
3. Can be opened with specialized tools (e.g. lock picks, liquid nitrogen)
Anything more powerful than a low end projector pointer is now classified as a weapon and regulated as such.
This at least keeps these units out of the hands of the general public and those that can't use them responsibly.
It sucks for those of us who used them responsibly just like we did with RC aircraft before drones became an item on a discount shelve. However at least I know that if I go to a large event or even a demo I won't be permanently blinded by some idiot.
I mean it seems like a fine law, but it's a law so now I never have to think about it again seems strange to me. Running stop signs is outlawed but I still look before I cross the street.
Same goes for guns. Someone can aquire one illegally but fines are high and there is no impulsive purchase at the next Kiosk so circulation is low and you aren't going to get "lasered" by 20+ green lasers at some event.
https://www.harborfreight.com/power-tools/grinders/angle-gri...
(Cost plus a $30-$80 battery, of course, but after you pick your color, you've already got batteries). Your locks are far more protected by the social contract that would compel a stranger to stop someone who was cutting a bike lock with an angle grinder, and would cause a thief to fear arrest, prosecution, and jail time, than by actual physical security.
If you want a laser, you can already get a 100W CO2 laser tube for $500:
https://www.amazon.com/Cloudray-W2-Dia-80mm-Engraver/dp/B08G...
It won't do a great job of cutting steel - it will engrave it, but to cut steel you'd need O2 assist gas and a lot more power. It will trivially cut ABS, foam, fabric, wood veneer/thin plywood, cardstock, etc. if attached to a pair of mirrors on an XY stage such as might be borrowed/scaled up from a 3D printer. And, of course, it will trivially scar corneas with the invisible danger of its 10,600 nm laser light. Good news, though - ordinary polycarbonate safety glasses are opaque to the extreme IR light.
Laser safety is serious business, but highly-collimated, tightly-focused laser light is not likely to be produced by a cheap, portable laser. The above tube produces a 100W beam with a diameter of about 8mm. I wouldn't put my eyeball in the path, but a safety shutter can sit in the beam indefinitely and merely get warm. You melt steel by focusing a this 8mm beam down to a infinitesimally tiny spot, and beyond the focal length of your optics it diffuses to something no more dangerous than the source 8mm beam, and beyond that it's no more dangerous than an average lightbulb - albeit one that you have no aversion response/blink reflex to. I always wear my goggles near our cutting lasers, but I know lots of guys who have worked around 20W-20,000W CO2 lasers their entire lives and they're pretty cavalier with regards to laser safety.
Finally, a welding mask is a neutral-density filter, suitable for the (very approximately) black-body radiation produced by a welder, and is much less effective than laser safety goggles at blocking high-intensity light of a very specific color. Depending on the sensor, an auto-darkening mask might not even trigger when exposed to a laser! You'd want a set of 940nm laser safety goggles for this, which is far more exotic and dangerous than a 10um CO2 laser.
That being said, it's all a function of how much light enters your eye. You can look up the exposure limits of the human retina for different frequencies of light to get an idea how little is actually required to damage your eye. The target or sensor should be sensitive enough to react to that much incident light. Just putting something behind the glasses and have it not get cut is definitely not enough to indicate no eye damage.
Laser light is different: a laser is effectively a point light source, and it will focus inside the eye to a single point with enough brightness to cause a burn. It can cause a permanent blind spot, and damage may happen faster and be less noticeable at first.
but laser light, like staring into the sun, will destroy the delicate structure of your retina, and it doesn't grow back.
More powerful tools are a good thing.
I know! these are the same people who took mostly harmless Jarts off the market!
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/31176/how-one-dad-got-la...
1. Spending your life in a nuclear bunker and only interacting via the internet — including pure VR and/or remote controlled robot bodies.
2. Let your government poke around everywhere to make sure nobody is making (or importing) their own nukes, regardless of what anyone says about the 2nd amendment.
In this example, crossfire would require someone to walk into an airsoft combat area without any eye protection and for someone in that game to not realise and shoot them anyway. In the face.
Stray BB bullets don't go very far. They're not rifled, and they have fairly low muzzle energy compared to real weapons — I've shot myself with one at zero range, and even on bare skin it stings rather than penetrates.
But I guess this is inevitable, so we'll just have to devise better solutions than the simple locks which in their working principles have not changed in the past 100+ years.
Great market opportunity around the corner I suppose.
For plasma and oxy-fuel cutting, the hot gases coming out the nozzle acts as the mass that blows it off. Air carbon arc gouging uses regular compressed air to push the molten material away. I imagine industrial laser cuttings dealing with anything larger then a few millimetres thick would use compressed air as well.
I doubt a smaller more efficient laser is going to change that reality.
Cutting through a chain is going to take much much longer. There are already quicker methods to cut or break bike chains and disable locks.
Also cutting with a laser requires very precise alignment with respect to distance. You won’t be free handing this. You’d need to mount it on a device capable of precisely adjusting the distance as you cut deeper into the metal.
Plus it’s relatively easy to engineer laser resistant materials.
VR-headset will be better, because it can attune brightness and contrast so you can see even at dusk.