155 - Getting into crime 🔒🖇️
Not actually crime, , don’t worry. But kinda?
Through the last few years during lockdowns, YouTube has been a close, personal friend of mine. It’s difficult to know how much content I’ve consumed - much more than I’m willing to admit, and if there is a way that I could find out don’t tell me.
I’m sure I’ve linked it before, but there’s a bunch of different channels that have just incredibly relaxing content. The ones I love cover kinda esoteric content, including:
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Korean street food
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Antique restorations
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Long chess tournament videos and recaps
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People making stuff
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Educational math content
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Cooking deep dives
One in particular that I loved watching (and still do) is the LockPickingLawyer. This guy is an absolute expert in locks, and how to break ‘em. It’s the clear opposite of a management consultant who has broad, shallow knowledge - someone who has expert knowledge in a domain and can prove that they’re really good at what they do. For nearly 1500 videos, he’s been breaking and cracking all types of locks - in a variety of different ways.
He breaks everything from tumbler locks, wafer locks, tubular locks, house locks, car locks, gun safes, hotel safes, a LOT of MasterLock locks (I don’t think I’ll be buying any of these if they’re so pickable…), bike locks, and specifically made locks to be ‘unpickable’.
The field is fascinating - this guy is essentially shitting over all of the locks that companies are building and telling the rest of the world how vulnerable they are. It’s probably the right thing to do, so that people can make a more informed choice, but there’s also a wide swathe of people who aren’t watching this particular niche channel (it has like 4M subscribers but still). A lot of cryptography and security industry people are obsessed with making the PERFECT security - such that even if you know how the thing is built / created you can’t crack it.
So after watching these for a while, I decided I might try some practical learning. I thought it would scratch the engineering itch in my brain, as well as be something I could do with my hands while I’m just passively consuming content.
Luckily, LockPickingLawyer decided to release his own brand of tools called Covert Instruments which sells a whole bunch of these things to try out.
The set I got was a beginner’s set - which includes:
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Two single-hook lockpicks
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Two ‘rake’ lockpicks
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Three tensioning tools
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A practice lock
I got the delivery a few weeks ago and even after the first night with them I was able to open a 4-pin set in the practice lock! At the moment, I’m not really sure if I’m doing it right - I don’t have the right touch to know exactly what I’m doing but I’m sure it just comes with practice :D
I joined a lockpicking Discord (which is great for niche communities) and there’s a ‘belt grading’ system - like karate or taekwondo - where you go up a belt every time you open a certain tier of lock. I went over the weekend to get a few locks - and I’ve achieved the first belt - white - by opening 2 padlocks from Bunnings!
Once I got to the next belt though - the difficulty has just jumped quite substantially, so I’m working and working and working on it while I watch TV. It’s a Lockwood padlock, so good job Aussie brands!
As I said last week, I’ll let you know how I go with this - a foray into (not)crime.
PS. If you have any locks you aren’t using any more let me know! I need to practice :)
PPS. Legality-wise since I know this is probably on people’s minds:
In Australia, possession of lock picking equipment is legal. However, it may count toward evidence of intent to commit a crime if otherwise incriminating circumstances warrant reasonable suspicion by police.
Chat soon :)
Let me know if you have any feedback for the newsletter!
✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Rings of Power - the LOTR tv series that I’m hoping will justify the Prime subscription I still have. I’m not an extreme lore lord for LOTR, so I’m enjoying the ride. Very similar to House of the Dragon - it’s a new story, in a well established universe, and only two episodes have come out by the time this comes out…I just hope that the quality continues.
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BBQ-K - a nice, simple KBBQ place in Doncaster East which I went to for Father’s Day. Food was good, meat was nice - everything you need. Service was really good too - always the best when someone else is cooking for you :D
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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DALL-E Outpainting - I honestly should just have an AI art section of this newsletter where I tell you what’s new, because I’m following it so closely. DALL-E Outpainting essentially tries to fill in what is AROUND a particular image prompt; the example from this announcement answers the question ‘what room is the Girl with the Pearl Earring in?’.
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Cursor Effects from the 90’s - a dose of nostalgia :D Remember sparkly cursors?
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Old jokes - no, but like REALLY old. ‘That’s what she said’ has been around since 1973, and even then it was ancient!