<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>xoa</author><text>The issue of cheating is genuinely valid one, but so is being able to use the hardware with a variety of software. And in this case, are you sure open APIs are actually in conflict? &amp;quot;Open&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t have to mean &amp;quot;forgeable&amp;quot;, wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be possible to have a fully open and documented bike API that also cryptographicly signed output? Software could choose to not care about the signature and just run off the API directly, or to require a signature from a specific set of manufacturer keys, or for that matter both (why not support both casual groups and competitive ones depending on what users want?). Obviously for hardcore competitive types it&amp;#x27;d still come down to the security and gameability of the hardware itself, and even if it was fairly solid it&amp;#x27;d &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; mostly be about discouraging lazy cheaters, since as far as home use goes nothing stops someone from attaching an electric motor or something if they really want to screw with things.&lt;p&gt;But I don&amp;#x27;t think full open APIs any software can use in this case precludes getting as much security as is possible to get out of the software&amp;#x2F;electronics side of things. And full open APIs would be super useful for longevity, variety of use, etc.</text><parent_chain><item><author>soared</author><text>Open apis pretty much ruin honest competition, leaderboards, live races, etc. People already game metrics on their pelotons to get top 10 in races, and I don’t think companies want to deal with that on a larger scale.&lt;p&gt;It’s a great idea, but I don’t think it’s always the right idea.</text></item><item><author>noodlesUK</author><text>It’s a shame that more exercise bikes don’t have open APIs. Zwift is an absolutely awesome way of keeping in shape if you like cycling, but the barrier to entry is that you need to own a bike and a bike trainer that are both pretty expensive. Maker projects like this one always make me happy, because it’s repurposing an old piece of equipment to function just as well as a new one. Next step would be adding smart controls to the resistance ;)</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Unbricking a $2k bike with a $10 Raspberry Pi</title><url>https://ptx2.net/posts/unbricking-a-bike-with-a-raspberry-pi/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>newsclues</author><text>Closed systems are unhackable or cheat proof?&lt;p&gt;I don’t think so</text><parent_chain><item><author>soared</author><text>Open apis pretty much ruin honest competition, leaderboards, live races, etc. People already game metrics on their pelotons to get top 10 in races, and I don’t think companies want to deal with that on a larger scale.&lt;p&gt;It’s a great idea, but I don’t think it’s always the right idea.</text></item><item><author>noodlesUK</author><text>It’s a shame that more exercise bikes don’t have open APIs. Zwift is an absolutely awesome way of keeping in shape if you like cycling, but the barrier to entry is that you need to own a bike and a bike trainer that are both pretty expensive. Maker projects like this one always make me happy, because it’s repurposing an old piece of equipment to function just as well as a new one. Next step would be adding smart controls to the resistance ;)</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Unbricking a $2k bike with a $10 Raspberry Pi</title><url>https://ptx2.net/posts/unbricking-a-bike-with-a-raspberry-pi/</url></story>