Chirael

Probably charge a lot more and be belligerent/pushy about it.

Like all those old furniture or door locks that I just assumed were lost causes, many locksmiths can actually make keys for them. Not usually a serious need for it but if you were selling an old piece of furniture you might do it. In my case we have a bedroom closet we'd like to lock some stuff away in when we go away and have someone come in to feed the animals.

The ability to make a key for locks which have no key is another, even if those locks don't have removable cores (I'm thinking of mostly padlocks here). That's a really cool thing called impressioning, where the mechanics of the lock (pins pressed down into the keyway by springs) are actually used against it to progressively turn a key blank into a working key.

Master keying is another great example (when multiple, different keys work in a lock and you can have one key that works in multiple locks, such as a small apartment building).

Also a lot of ancillary things around the lock but not the lock itself, for example installing deep screws or replacement anti-kick hinges (door devil or door armor). In theory those are DIY things but in practice you can spend a lot of time trying to get alignment right (especially with a deadbolt going smoothing in/out), but it's something a locksmith does all the time.

I've thought about that a lot recently as I have a double cylinder deadbolt I want to replace our single cylinder one with, since the door has 3 panes of glass that can be easily smashed allowing the single deadbolt to then be easily opened.

Sounds great until you think about a fire situation. I think we're just going to keep an extra key very close by but that solution only works because we don't have kids; I'm not sure I would go with the double cylinder deadbolt if we did.

(And yes I know it's against the building code but I also know people regularly do double cylinders on their own personal homes. You'd never do it in a rental, AirBnB or commercial building of course.)

It's a good point; once you start thinking about it you realize that the locks are only a (small) part of overall security. For example, can someone break a nearby window pane and unlock the door? Can they bust open the door with a strong kick? Are the windows on the second floor (for a house) always locked? A good book on this topic, about how differently thieves think about space and common security features, is "A Burglar's Guide to the City".

I think you handled it well.

Since he acted like a reasonable (rational) person he probably wasn't a scammer, but it's worth mentioning that there are locksmith scammers who take advantage of people in high-need situations to charge them exorbitant amounts for "unpickable" locks that always need to be drilled.

The Reply All podcast covered this a few years ago with "Very Quickly to the Drill" [1]

[1] https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2ho87

If it's a combination padlock, many of them are shimmable or easily bypassable [1]. If you care, it's worth searching for your lock brand and model # on YouTube.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpkf1Zldf0s

I've heard portable/cordless angle grinders are used pretty commonly [1].

I didn't know there was any U.S. state (if that's what you mean by state) that makes it illegal merely to own lockpicks.

You might want to check out the TOOOL state laws page [2], it might be more nuanced than you think. For example you might be OK to own them but not travel with them. Or the burden might be on you to prove lack of intent - but if you only keep them in your own home, that would be easy.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppZW-PppbtI [2] https://toool.us/laws.html

I didn't know tipping was a thing with locksmiths. I hope I haven't been inadvertently rude by only paying what they were asking. Haven't heard of this before.

Some locksmiths really don't like locksport folks. I think there are multiple reasons but the most basic might be that they think it will result in fewer calls.

I have some very basic picking skills and for me, anyway, it's actually given me tremendous respect for the locksmith trade and made me more likely to call them when warranted, because I understand the wider range of things they can do and the skill it takes to do them successfully.

You might want to check out some of Schyler Towne's talks on the history of locks [1] [2]. His enthusiasm is infectious; he's obviously an expert, and obviously loves what he's talking about.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGjkQ7qAyY4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5CrR8-42x4

You could also put it in a lockbox in a somewhat hidden location on the property, such as underneath a deck (on a house). Though a lot of lockboxes aren't that secure; after doing a little research earlier this year, I found that the Kidde wheel ones aren't bad [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLg86_C7rrs (Deviant Ollam)

Yeah, this. If you're lucky enough to have family or a good friend nearby (someone who you could call at 11pm to get it, and who would understand). Just give them a copy of your key. Like insurance, you hope you never need it, but if you do, you'll be glad you did.

A bump key is easily hidden among other keys on a keyring; it's just a key cut to the lowest depths in all positions, otherwise it looks just like any other key. It's a lot less obvious than a set of lock picks.

Bump keys, as others have posted, are very crude and rough on the internals of a lock so I'd say use them sparingly, and never without the lock owner's explicit permission of course. But they do have a place. (And require practice too!)

Ebay is decent. Not as cheap as it used to be, probably due to influx of new locksport folks, but still decent especially if you're looking for basic locks like a Master 3 or Kwikset.

Lots of people swear by Facebook Marketplace but I just hate giving over even more info to FB.

OfferUp can be good, very hit or miss, and Craigslist can be good too - even more hit or miss. I had a CL search running for over 6 months and finally got a worthwhile hit on some local locks yesterday, which was nice.

If you know some property managers, handymen, or property owners, lots of times you can get old locks very cheap or free just by asking.

You might like the "Gringo Warrior" [1] events that have been held at DefCon and (I suspect) other infosec cons as well.

[1] https://deviating.net/lockpicking/gringo/about.html

They also keep a pretty good page with U.S. state laws on lockpicking: https://toool.us/laws.html

A little less pricey but still good are Schlage Primus locks. Deviant Ollam mentioned them in a recent video [1]. Like Lock Picking Lawyer ("LPL" in the locksport community), Deviant has a good mix of security talk and entertaining banter.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwkeSzbsLsU

A privacy podcast I listen to recently said that, for now anyway, it's possible to use a temporary/burner phone to do the initial SMS-based signup, then switch to app-based 2FA on a different phone, and then delete the phone # associated with the temporary/burner phone (as you said).

See "Mozilla project exposes YouTube's recommendation 'bubbles'" https://www.engadget.com/mozilla-youtube-bubble-200045382.ht... (and many others, I'm sure)

Yeah, active Pinboard user as well, coming from del.icio.us a number of years ago. Have 35,549 bookmarks in Pinboard as of right now, will almost certainly be a bit higher by the end of the day. Definitely a personal knowledge repository. I can't tell you how many times I'll be talking to someone and say, "You know, I read an article about that a few months back... let me send you the link" - really useful. I also like when I save a really good link and see that others have linked it too, and then I can explore what else those folks have bookmarked with that same tag; it's a great way to find other high-quality pages. Kind of "social bookmarking" :)

This reminds me of when people said that the DMCA would be used to silence critics, or DRM would be used to prevent people from fixing their own devices. In those other cases, too, the outcome was obvious and predicted, but they went ahead anyway.

We can only hope, pray, and take action[1] to try to prevent the same thing from happening with the government trying to force companies to build backdoors into encryption, a battle we have been fighting for literally decades[2].

[1] https://act.eff.org/action/stop-the-earn-it-bill-before-it-b... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

I too have occasionally lost Apple notes due to what I've imagined must be cloud sync issues.

Whatever the cause, sometimes notes disappear and that is unforgivable.

If I cannot trust that something I store in a note won't ever disappear, unless I explicitly delete it, then I cannot trust the system period, and thus cannot use it.

I can't tell you how many times or how often it's happened. I think I must be on the third or fourth re-creation of my "Restaurants" list in the last couple of years, and that's just the one that comes to mind easiest.

Really disappointing that they couldn't get that right.

The takeaway I got from DNT is: "It doesn't work, and it just makes it easier to fingerprint you." So I used to do it, but now I don't bother and turn/leave it off.

This, incidentally, is why I strongly resist installing apps onto my phone. Because once you let an app run on your phone, you really don't know what it's doing. At least with a browser, it's somewhat sandboxed/limited. I don't have nearly as much confidence that I've correctly twiddled whatever settings I needed to, to limit data sharing for an app, and even if I did, I don't have any confidence the company didn't find some way to get around those settings.

Thanks; that actually makes me want to check it out more. I appreciate the info.

Is Gnucash closer to Quicken or Quickbooks? I wish I had started with Quickbooks even for my personal finances, years ago, but I used Quicken instead :( My impression was that Gnucash was meant as an open source version of Quicken which would be much less attractive as it hides the true double-entry bookkeeping going on underneath.

I’ve listened to every link on this page and they all sound amazing. Nice work on this!

It also becomes a tax on people who are pro-privacy (e.g., running uBlock Origin), since they don’t look like “normal” users and therefore have to solve captchas. All. The. Damned. Time.

One of the best parts about an RSS reader is that it doesn’t report every click back to Advertising Central to update the profile they keep on you.

I used commafeed with various categories and have a mixture of websites and YouTube channels. It was a game-changer for me when I discovered that you can “subscribe” to a YouTube channel’s videos as an RSS feed by pasting the channel URL into a feed reader. All of a sudden YT became usable again.

Virtual assistants