More stories about locks!

When you are hoping to maximize your travel security, one of the most obvious places to start is with buying a lock. But how secure are luggage locks? The disturbing truth is that luggage locks are terribly insecure.

What does the insecurity of these locks mean for your luggage security? How does that affect the protection of your property? In order to investigate these issues, we will have to venture deep into the terrifying truth about luggage locks.

What security do TSA locks offer your luggage?
TSA locks are not secure. The shackles can be cut by most low-quality diagonal cutting pliers, the lock cylinders can be picked open with very little skill, and the schematics for the master keys have been revealed to the public. If you are using a TSA lock, you are getting the illusion of security.

The biggest benefit to using TSA locks is that the TSA can open your bag without having to 24/7 commercial lock service. This still might not keep your lock from being cut off, as many travelers report having TSA cut locks off regardless of having been TSA approved. But at least there is a chance that your insecure lock will not be broken open.

A TSA approved padlock is the next step up from a zip tie. It provides the same amount of initial security if you are worried about criminal tampering. However, a TSA lock can potentially be taken off and relocked on the bag, where a zip tie cannot be reattached once removed. With a TSA approved lock, after a lawful search, there is a chance that your luggage can maintain its same level of “security”.

1. The TSA Can Remove Any Luggage Lock Without Cause
If you are checking luggage, the TSA reserves the right to open your baggage by the means required to properly carry out the search. In case you have not received a “Notice Of Baggage Inspection” letter in your checked luggage, it reads as follows:

To Protect you and your fellow passengers, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is required by law to inspect all checked baggage. As part of this process, some bags are opened and physically inspected. Your bag was among those selected for physical inspection.

During the inspection, your bag and its contents may have been searched for prohibited items. At the completion of the inspection, the contents were returned to your bag.

If the TSA security officer was unable to open our bag for inspection because it was locked, the officer may have been forced to break the locks on your bag. TSA sincerely regrets having to do this, however TSA is not liable for the damage to your locks resulting from this necessary security precaution.

The note goes on to suggest that the recipient of the inspection notice refer to www.tsa.gov to find “packing tips and suggestions on how to secure your baggage during your next trip…” Is it ironic for a note telling you what you just read to recommend that you use better security next time you fly? It may seem that way, but the spirit in which it is intended is that locks are not security, knowing what is going to get your bag flagged is the security you need for avoiding TSA attention.

2. Every Luggage Lock Can Be Opened
It is true that every lock can be picked, even locks that have not been picked yet can still be opened. Opening methods that travel security professionals use are almost always destructive. There is no lock that exists that can withstand every type destructive entry method given an unlimited amount of time with the lock.

Not even the best padlocks in existence can hold up to the highest level of pressure that can be applied to them. Do not expect that your security can keep out any law enforcement. Even though you may be hoping to avoid criminally minded baggage checkers, they are within their right to open your luggage at all costs.

Though there are documented cases where strong enough security has been enough to have TSA give up on trying to open it. I don’t fully understand the implications of security that has law enforcement give up, but I would not expect to be the exception to the rule that if the opening of your bag a legally sanctioned it will be carried out.

In terms of criminal threats without the full force of the law behind them, your locks can still be opened. However, when it comes to standard criminals you have to consider every aspect of luggage security and not just the security of your luggage locks.

3. No Luggage Lock Can Protect a Zipper
Any luggage lock that is placed to secure a zipper is completely useless. Anyone with a ballpoint pen can puncture the zipper track (aka teeth). This gives anyone access to the contents of your bag in seconds. Once a person has rooted around in your belongings, they can then move the zipper’s pull tab over the open teeth and reseal the bag without any sign of entry.

If you have an anti-puncture zipper, then your zipper is safe, but a lock can never protect the zipper. When you want a lock to matter at all, you have to use luggage that has hasps, not a zipper. Hasps are common on hard shell cases, which are intended to protect the contents of the luggage.

It is also unlikely that you will end up with a bag that has an anti-puncture zipper if you do not go out of your way to purchase one. This feature is not common, in spite of the fact that the method of entry is extremely popular for criminals all over the world.

4. Your Bag Undermines the Security of a Luggage Lock
Security is not the main concern for standard baggage manufactures. Unless the luggage has been designed with security in mind, the lock you place on it is not going to matter much at all. Besides zipper protection, you have to be concerned about more brash criminals that will not care about surreptitiously or even covertly open your bag.

A very common method of entry that criminals will use is to cut your bag. You made need something like a Pelican case. With a light slice from a sharp knife, a thief now has access to everything in your luggage. Unless your bag can resist cutting, having a lock on your bag is not going to truly protect the property inside.

Most likely your bag is always going to be easier to break than an incredibly strong lock. It does not make sense to have an extremely powerful lock if the case it is securing is itself insecure. Be aware of the level of protection provided by the bag before you make any investment in a lock.

5. Built-in Luggage Locks Are Not Secure
Built In Luggage Lock

This is a guiding principle more than a hard and fast rule, but it is important to think about the fact that almost any piece of luggage you buy is not going to have high-security locks. This might be something that the case claims, but you need to know better than to believe the advertising.

Even if the brand of security being used is not notorious for manufacturing subpar locks, it might still be something cheap and ineffective. A lot of times locks on cases and luggage will claim to be high-security, but they are just using a novel lock type. Such lock types that are used as built-in luggage locks include tubular locks, cruciform locks, and disk detainer locks.

If a lock is poorly made, it does not matter what kind of internal components it has. Poorly made locks are not secure. They break easier because of the lower quality metal, and that means they can be broken open easier. Mass production required to place them on luggage also broke house key very simple to the point where most of these locks can be opened with bypasses or improvised keys.

What is the best way to protect luggage?
As you may have learned from the article about protecting your beach bag, the best possible way to protect any luggage is to keep your eyes on it. This is not going to be possible at every point of your trip, especially if you have to check your bags. The important thing is to take advantage of the instances where you can watch over your property.

Your locks need to take as long to open without permission as the average time you will leave them unmonitored. As has already been established, flying in the United States will be the exception to this rule. Law enforcement will have too much time with your luggage, and they will have the authority to open the lock. But for deterring criminals, this type of security assessment is a must.

Final Thoughts
It doesn’t matter if you are in one of the most dangerous countries in the world, or you are sleeping over at a friends house in the next town over, when you have luggage, you will attract the attention of criminals. Luggage locks are not going to do much to protect your bag. You need to consider a lot more than just luggage locks.

PlayStation VR Review

PLAYSTATION VR PS4 always had a tough road ahead of it. Compared to high-end gaming PCs needed to power the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, the PlayStation 4 is under-powered. The fact that Sony was retrofitting its old 2010-released Move controllers and PlayStation Camera to work with PSVR, which were peripherals that weren’t initially designed for VR, also does not bode well for the platform. After going eyes-on with it over the past few days, I must admit that it’s surprisingly impressive in some areas, but it also has some issues.

One area where PSVR could use improvement is with resolution. The visuals unfortunately look a little blurry. The head-mounted display uses a 5.7-inch 1920x1080-resolution stereoscopic 3D screen. This amounts to a 960x1080 resolution per eye. While 1080p is fine on a TV that’s several feet in front of you, it's a whole different story when the display is magnified in front of your eyes. Fortunately, the OLED panel here does offer deep black levels and is able to produce a rich color gamut. At the base of the display is a black rubber material that rests atop your nose and cheeks. This is used to block out light. While there will likely be some light leakage above the bridge of your nose, it's not enough to hurt the experience.




The headset features a roughly 100 degree field-of-view, which makes your peripheral vision sort of tantamount to wearing ski goggles. PSVR also supports a 120Hz refresh rate panel, which allows the headset to render up to 120 frames per second. Just for some perspective, most TVs use a 60Hz refresh rate. Having a high frame rate is essential in VR, because when the frame rate dips too low, it causes an unwanted judder effect, which can contribute to VR nausea.

Poor head-tracking can also lead to VR motion sickness; luckily, that isn’t a problem here. PSVR has nine positional-tracking LEDs on the HMD and features 18 milliseconds of latency, which is low enough to prevent nausea in most people.

The headset itself may look bulky, but it feels really light. Weighing 1.3 pounds, I was surprised to hear that it’s actually heavier than the 1.2-pound Vive, which feels much more uncomfortable to me. It helps that the weight of PSVR is balanced from the front to the back. It can be a little confusing to put on at first, but you simply pull on the backstrap, put it on your head like a baseball cap, and then slide the front display onto your face until it rests against your cheeks. It's got plenty of room for those who wear glasses, too, and it's overall ergonomics makes you wonder why all HMDs don't use this design. It’s something that I felt comfortable using hours on end at a time. It is worth noting that like other VR headsets, the display here does have a sweet spot where things look sharper. It can often take a second or two to adjust for this.

Sex Addiction Can Be A Devastating Disorder

Sex addiction treatment NYC can be a devastating disorder to deal with since it affects every facet of someone's life. The repercussions of Sex addiction treatment NY disrupt the addict's social, emotional, physical, legal and financial life.

1. How Gender Addiction Affects an Individual Socially
Sex addiction therapy dependence impairs the addict from everybody around him since the addiction becomes the primary focus of lifestyle, developing fantastic many social problems consequently. Obviously, if the person was in a social relationship, that relationship will be in chaos. Feelings of isolation, abandonment, inadequacy, guilt, humiliation, and anger all will be present at some point or another during the addiction and recovery procedure. Other relationships will endure too, including those with family, friends, and co-workers. The addict will have isolated himself from everyone, the focus on the Sex addiction therapy NYC and obsessive behaviors escalates and the person isolates and moves deeper in the relationship with the behaviors. Changing that routine of habits takes time and it is going to also take a lot of effort and time to help restore those neglected and sometimes broken relationships. Nonetheless, a social existence is very important for any healthy human being and also the addict will need a strong social support system to assist in his recovery.

2. How Gender Addiction Affects a Person Emotionally

Sex addiction NYC have a vast range of troubling emotions. Stress, anger, frustration, anxiety, shame, guilt and fear of discovery are all common emotions for addicts to undergo the full procedure, from addiction to recovery.

So as to achieve successful recovery, the addict will have to have the ability to address their psychological problems efficiently. Shame and guilt are among the most common emotions with sex addiction treatment addicts because they are struggling with an addiction that contradicts their moral and religious beliefs. Just as they would like to be "normal" their true beliefs say differently, this induces such strong shame and guilt and keeps the addict in the spiral of addiction.

In addition, boredom, despair, and fatigue can envelop from the addict enduring a prolonged struggle with their dependence. In extreme cases, these psychological struggles may result in suicide.

Warning Signs Roof Repair

Shingle and sheathing deterioration. Deterioration of these shingles, or even worse the sheathing of a commercial roofing NYC, can be caused by a range of factors; among which is cited previously. Mold and algae can eat away at the organic base of shingles causing them to decay. If this problem goes on undetected and reaches the sheathing panels then it may be too late since the sheathing is that the relation between the shingles and the rafters of the roofing companies NYC. If this connection is weak then it gets your New York roofer even more vulnerable to reduction during potentially high winds during storms may eventually undermine the integrity of your roofing company NYC. If your New York  appears to be sagging in regions it could be an indicator of a far larger problem known as roofing contractor NYC rot which could cause the possible collapse of your roofers New York. By having a roofing specialist inspect your roof you could be preventing additional repair costs to not just your roofing contractors NYC but to the inside of your dwelling.

Missing, buckled, cracked or curled shingles. All of these signals are often indications that they could be close to the end of the useful life. Due in part to period and protracted exposure to the different elements mother nature might throw at them, the shingles in your own sadly will not last forever. In fact, the useful life of your typical asphalt/fiberglass shingle is 20-25 years depending on where you live in the country and the quality of the shingle maker among other factors. Over time the granules that add color to and protect the shingle material from UV rays begin to fall off exposing the material to the elements. Over time this vulnerability causes the shingles to crack or curl upwards at the edges. Sometimes this cracking can finally lead to shingles breaking into bits and flying off the New York roofer or buckling during storms using very significant winds.

Blistering and/or peeling of outside paint. This is one of the simplest warning signs to spot. But all too often this hint goes on ignored or attributed to something other than what is most likely causing the problem. This blistering or peeling of outside paint is usually the result of excessive moisture or high humidity because of bad ventilation, especially in the loft. Inadequate ventilation results in hot air being trapped and built up from the attic. This excess heat can not only cook or in essence make the New York roofing shingles but it additionally causes bubbling, blistering and peeling of the outside paint around the gables and eaves and even the siding. Having properly working attic fans as well as bathroom exhausts are very important to avoiding this issue in your house and when it comes to your NYC roofing contractors.

Pay Stub explained

An company has got the inclination to problem income regarding his workers straight in the accounts of his company ensemble. Nevertheless, today the situation is significantly diffent as current day workers may request company to produce realpay stubs of any sort. There are lots of factors to request the company to create a pay-slip. Among the major causes is the fact that workers wish to maintain an archive of the total amount they gained regular or on regular foundation and also to ensure that their company is spending the right quantity they deserve according to the providers they provide. The 2nd most significant cause to truly have the create pay stubs at hand would be to determine the quantity of taxes subtracted from their payment per month. Issues have to be outlined on real pay stubs: This depends a great deal about the regulations which exist in a particular physical area however it is essential that several necessary information must certainly be contained in check stubs. These details contains the sum total quantity of hours worked from the workers at work after which the amount is split between your normal function hours and also the additional time hrs create a pay stub.

An area is allocated towards the pay-slip where in actuality the company places the major quantity for every worker to get a specific pay interval. Additional useful info to incorporate in the pay-slip may be the complete quantity of breaks produced from the workeris cost. These breaks include tax breaks or every other breaks created before real check stubs or after-tax. Areas will also be allocated for completing taxes at condition, government and neighborhood amounts. Areas will also be made for cultural protection and health care breaks. Methods for getting a theme regarding create pay stub: Regarding producing an ideal pay-slip for that workers pay stub generator, you will find types of technique accessible. Technologies and development has managed to get feasible via a easy research on web.

You will find sufficient sites accessible that provide themes for producing pay-slips regarding workers. The themes will vary from one another to be able to appeal through the different requirements of the company. An easy action will be obtained from the company to obtain use of the paystub generator by that one site. He or she must sign-up via a free accounts to that particular site. It'll be motivated to enter annually that the company desires to determine the cost and enter their state wherever hisORher company is situated. Following this, company will have the ability to determine the quantity of breaks by entering worker is major check stub, allocation along with other quantity must be subtracted.

How to Make a Lucrative Business Exit From 5 Entrepreneurs Who've Done It

Imagine devising a winning business idea that you develop into a fully fledged enterprise.

Your business is profitable, and it's everything you ever wished or hoped it would be. But now it's time to move on. You're ready to make your exit because you want to explore new ideas and new ventures. Or maybe you just want to take a well-deserved vacation.

If you're looking to sell your website, however, and you don't have an exit plan in place, the process could prove more challenging than you are inclined to think. If you don't know how you're going to sell your business yet, don't fret. Here are five entrepreneurs that were willing to share their secrets to a successful online business exit.

Don't Regret Selling Your Internet Business

Selling an online business is a huge step. Your company represents years of hard work, so it makes sense to guard it closely as your prize asset. Because when it comes time to sell it, you need to be absolutely sure you know what you are doing, since there are a lot of factors you need to consider before you sell.
Here are three common regrets sellers have after selling their online businesses.