Comment on Local Walmart just installed cameras in the aisles…

• Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Each of the little pins you see in the ring of that lock are equivalent to the pins in a typical pin-tumbler lock you’d find on a front door. The corresponding round cutouts in the edge of the key barrel set how far each one is pushed down when you insert the key.

  Yes, there’s just one little tooth that rotates the lock, but only after each of those pins are pushed down to the correct depth. These are almost always really cheap locks, so you’ve only got to be kind of close tbh, but you do still have to be close.

  You’ve just got a copy of walmarts keys. (Or a near enough approximation) nothing ‘universal’ about it. I don’t think you explicitly tried to get ‘walmarts keys’, but got lucky enough with whatever random key you bought that it happens to work.

  There’s no such thing as a literal ‘universal key’. There’s commonly used keys (like what a large international retailer might buy and use in bulk…), and there’s lock picking tools.

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  • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    No such thing as a literal universal key

    Skeleton keys?

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    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Yes, they’re only relevant to purely warded locks which are largely nolonger used in the modern world (exceptions always exist, the world isnt black/white).

      In the world of pin-tumbler or tubular locks - what we’ve been talking about - the closest equivalent would be a comb pick/key, which is a bypass tool (or lock pick) that only effects poorly designed locks with compressed pin stacls shorter than the chamers their in. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these for a tubular lock, but they may exist.

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      • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Master Lock makes a series of warded locks that are often used outdoors, because they’ll function when left in a forest to get rained on and nested in. You’ll probably find warded keys like this one on a park ranger’s keyring:

        Image

        Take that key, grind the bumps off everywhere but the tip, and it’ll open every lock with that keyway.

        As for tubular locks, the pick looks like this:

        Image

        It’s not difficult to use, you jam it in the lock and jick it around until the lock opens. What’s happening is you’re setting sliding elements on the tool to the pin heights in the lock. Once the lock opens, the business end of the tool now closely resembles the key. The tool can be read to make/buy a proper key for that lock, or you can tighten the collar to lock it down and now the tool functions as a key.

        Or you buy the right key, which is what OP did. It’s not like the cases in Wal-Mart are all keyed different; the corporation probably orders keys and locks in lots of tens of thousands so I bet there is one tubular key that’ll get you into most if not all Wal-Mart cabinets; maybe the guns and ammunition are stored behind a different key, MAYBE. Actually glance into that kind of thing and you’ll find out just how useless locks are. There’s a key known as the CH751. Almost every RV or camper’s exterior baggage doors are locked with a CH751. So are arcade cabinets, gumball machines, voting booths…just about anywhere someone is going to put a bullshit little mass produced lock cylinder it’ll probably be a CH751, if they don’t replace it with an equally bullshit tubular lock.

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      • in_my_honest_opinion@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        No, there are bump keys, not for barrel cylinders though

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