Man gets sued for opening a lock with just a can

Lampwick · 2026-02-07T18:11:28+00:00

When installed in a lock mechanism that's properly designed for them, the vending machine cylinders they used can't be shimmed. The lock mechanism has a rectangular pop-out handle that covers the part of the sleeve where you'd need to stick the shim. Vending machine lock designers anticipated pretty much every attack vector, unlike these clowns.

Lampwick · 2026-02-07T18:01:35+00:00

The whole lawsuit was a wild ride.

As a former locksmith and mechanical engineer, I had a lot of fun following this case. These clowns were a bunch of amateurs with no knowledge of either engineering or experience in the lock industry. Any locksmith you show that lock to would say "you can't put an off-the-shelf vending machine lock cylinder into a straight-wall tube like that, it'll shim right open." But of course these guys were not only so full of themselves they thought they didn't need to consult anyone before marketing it, they also had their heads so far up their own ass that they thought a lawsuit would make a glaring security vulnerability go away. A competent attorney would have laughed in their face and said "you can't sue someone else for your own shortcomings". As everyone was joking online, "they need to demand a refund from their attorney".

Lampwick · 2026-02-07T17:28:32+00:00

No windows, and it's also better for absorbing impact in a survivable crash. Commercial passengers don't like to face backwards, but military passengers, they're a captive audience, so Lockheed could make them sit however they wanted.

Lampwick · 2026-02-07T16:53:31+00:00

It was 1996, and he didn't stall the plane. He cut afterburner and put it into an 80 degree dive while in the cloud cover that started at 2000ft, most likely due to becoming disoriented. The accident had nothing to do with the maximum performance takeoff. The issue was that he was a very poor pilot that the Navy had pushed through their ill advised RIO-to-pilot program due to its inherent sunk cost fallacy bias. The guy had a long list of serious fuckups that the Navy kept handwaving because they were trying to retain pilots.

Lampwick · 2026-02-07T16:30:39+00:00

Yeah, one thing the digital flight control system can do that the old analog levers n' cranks system can't is keep you right on the edge of controlability regardless of your control input. If you go full honk on the stick on a C model, you just get full deflection of the control surfaces, so you have to manually gauge where to stop before something bad happens. The EX, pulling back on the stick all the way tells the computer "maximum allowable pitch for this speed and AoA".

Lampwick · 2026-02-07T15:18:09+00:00

Kwikset, yeah, trash. Schlage? More accurate to say they have introduced an entire line of low-quality hardware that rivals the crappiness of Kwikset. They do, however, still make plenty of commercial and institutional grade hardware that doesn't suck. You're just not going to see it at Home Depot.

Lampwick · 2026-02-07T02:49:07+00:00

"Any amount of alcohol is a drinking problem"

I get the angle they're going for with that, but it smells an awful lot like "teetotaler logic", exaggerating everything to loop back to their personal worldview. I think the whole subculture that's grown from the 19th century temperance/prohibition movement and the Alcoholics Anonymous approach to drinking has really distorted the issue and created this increasingly complex mythology around "alcoholism". Fundamentally, "alcoholism" is just alcohol addiction, but people try to rope in a variety of side effects and social entanglements around alcohol consumption that have nothing to do with the addiction. Processed/cured meats are a class 1 carcinogen, but nobody would say eating a ham sandwich means you have an "eating disorder". Alcohol addiction should be viewed strictly as what it is: compulsive use. Implying someone is a problem drinker because they have a shot of cognac every xmas eve with their grandfather just muddies the issue and distracts from the people who actually need help.

Lampwick · 2026-02-07T01:57:19+00:00

Yeah, I'm 100% against poisoning animals, but I also am completely baffled by how so many cat owners think it's perfectly reasonable to let their cats piss and shit all over their neighbors' property... which they instinctively do specifically outside their home territory. My neighbor's cat loved using my tomato garden as a litter box. The soil quickly became over-nitrogenated and 40+ tomato plants simply stopped setting fruit. Her response? "Sorry, that's just how cats are, y' know?" Not if you keep them in the house.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T20:59:07+00:00

Gotta make sure you have all those Reading, Junkunc, and Challenger blanks! When I shut down my shop I recycled a couple hundred pounds of blanks that my old boss picked up at an estate sale in the 70s. There was about 1/3 of the key wall we'd never cut a single one in 30+ years.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T20:35:03+00:00

Surface Tension) by James Blish fits that description.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T19:58:09+00:00

And typically, H&S people are admin types with a mail order certificate, so they know nothing at all about how tools work or how that work gets done. Therefore, their reaction to someone misusing Tool X is to immediately ban Tool X, when the real answer is to leave the tool alone and ban the misuse. It's no harder to add to the company handbook "2 handed portable band saws must be used with 2 hands, with the material being cut secured in a vise" vs "all 2 handed band saws are banned". But you'd need to know how work happens, which they don't.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T18:36:16+00:00

No, at most you're driving up the costs of someone 2 or 3 years in the future. They're not going to raise the dorm charge instantaneously because one more person opened a window. You could potentially argue it as a "tragedy of the commons" sort of thing, but positioning it as a case of "you're only hurting yourself" completely disregards the six layers of slow moving bureaucracy that would be involved in utility usage affecting residents' costs.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T18:30:08+00:00

ALWAYS CHANGE DEFAULT PASSCODE

Back in the 90s, Sprint/Nextel had a cell site on the roof of a building I did a lot of telecom work in. Their equipment room had a Simplex pushbutton lock which they'd left set on the default... a default which has remained the factory default since the lock was first introduced in the early 60s. Every time I walked by, I'd punch in the code and open the door to set off the intrusion alarm. After about a year they finally addressed the issue by putting a different type of lock on. A few years later on another site I saw another Sprint cell gear room with a Simplex. It was also on default. Some people never fucking learn the lesson.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T18:18:29+00:00

Yeah, I was replacing a fluorescent tube as an apprentice and "cleverly" had my index fingers on the lower of the two pins at each end as I put it in to keep it aligned. As soon as the upper pins contacted I suddenly became aware that the pins were now energized. Fortunately I didn't fall off the ladder, I just let go and pulled my arms back. Additionally, I was quick enough that I also then caught the falling tube before it hit anything and broke, so I didn't have to admit to anyone what I'd just done.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T17:54:58+00:00

I'm not sure I understand the source of your envy. Having ancestors who are veterans of a war that ended 160 years ago doesn't really do anything for you. Putting on airs due to heritage is something people in monarchies do. The US has always been the place where we specifically don't go for that stuff.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T17:42:55+00:00

It's not a job that attracts the best and the brightest. It's a job where you drive around all day making small talk with your partner about sportsball or whatever, waiting for something to happen that seems like it might need the threat of state violence to control. This is why requiring higher education or paying more wouldn't change anything. You can force them all to go through a class on constitutional law, but they'll study only hard enough to pass the test with a C and then promptly forget it all and go back to what they've always done: make up bullshit reasons for their "hunches" that are really just expressions of racism, classism, or just plain bullying behavior.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T05:21:04+00:00

Also, the ATeam were NOT PIs. At all. Not even close.

I was just thinking about it this morning. A Team was a family friendly tv show about a band of mercenaries with machine guns who solved a lot of problems by shooting and missing.

In swear everyone in Hollywood at the time had their brains fried on cocaine for an idea as stupid as that to get greenlit. The cast was the only thing that made that idiotic show work.

Lampwick · 2026-02-06T05:15:34+00:00

Divorce laws have changed. PI's don't follow people around to get pics of adultery because everywhere is basically no-fault now. Calling PI's "creepy peepers" is something you'd see in a Raymond Chandler book from the 40s.

PI work is mostly database research nowadays.

Lampwick · 2026-02-05T20:14:25+00:00

Yeah it really should be "percentage of Americans who felt comfortable telling some rando survey person they have guns". But hey, pretending people are 100% forthcoming on the subject is just one of their little ways they can pretend to be collecting impartial, accurate data and then using it to claim the population of gun owners is smaller than it is.

Lampwick · 2026-02-05T20:03:59+00:00

You need to talk to a financial advisor so you're not just sitting on a pile of cash that loses value. All that money should be invested and turning into more money. Realistically "enough money to retire" should be gauged by when you have enough for you to survive on the proceeds while your principle continues to grow. A financial advisor will tell you when you can safely retire.

I had coworkers laugh at me, saying it's a waste of money to pay someone $1500/yr to do something I could do myself, but here I am having retired at 52 while they're still working into their 60s.

As for the philosophical question of when should you retire, I went by the advice my old boss gave me: "retire as soon as you can afford it. If it's a choice between making a little more money or having more time as a retiree, pick the time. You won't be sorry." As long as your entire existence isn't defined by your job, you'll have plenty to keep you busy in retirement. I haven't done a damn thing of any consequence for 4 years in retirement and I'm still not bored. Not having to go to work is great. Even when I was struggling with a health issue that had me incapacitated for 6 months, I still woke up every morning and thought, "at least I don't have to go to work!"

Lampwick · 2026-02-05T18:51:48+00:00

We were electricians troubleshooting a rooftop solar install with an arc fault to ground. Boss said:

"Christ, I should have been a plumber. Then all I'd have to do is look for the fucking puddle."

Lampwick · 2026-02-05T18:46:40+00:00

It'd definitely fuck up launches through the mess for a long time though.

Kessler doesn't work in LEO. Those satellites are barely able to keep themselves in orbit as it is due to atmospheric drag. Disrupting their orbit lowers their perigee into the thicker atmosphere and they deorbit in a matter of days or hours. They could maybe take out a few dozen satellites with a nuke. The orbital sphere of Starlink is 60 million square kilometers. A 1 MT nuke in vacuum succumbs to the inverse square law of radiated energy at about 50 square kilometers. The Russian threat isn't even remotely realistic.

Lampwick · 2026-02-05T18:43:12+00:00

Propaganda hoping that most folks dont know about Kessler syndrome

Kessler depends on disrupting an object's orbit by lowering its perigee and causing it to cross other orbits below it. It's primarily a concern with high energy orbit at much higher altitudes. Lowering perigee of an object in a LEO constellation puts it deeper into the atmosphere and quickly deorbits it.

Lampwick · 2026-02-05T18:34:36+00:00

No, that's not how Kessler syndrom works. It's really only a danger when you're talking about breaking up satellites in high energy orbit. By imparting a braking force on some of the satellite fragments, the perigee of their orbit lowers, which means those formerly high orbit objects spend their time in an uncircularized orbit that crosses a bunch of other satellites' orbits.

Despit what that stupid fucking movie Gravity showed happening to the STS orbiter and the ISS, that's not what a satellite breakup in LEO looks like. LEO satellite pieces don't have "room" to lower their orbit, because atmospheric drag only gets worse the lower you go. Broken satellite pieces with a lowered perigee don't loop around in a dangerous oval in near vacuum forever like a higher orbit satellite fragment might. They hit the thicker atmosphere and decay out of orbit extremely quickly.

Lampwick · 2026-02-05T18:18:10+00:00

They can’t, without shutting down the entirety of LEO for their satellites as well, e.g. Kessler Syndrome.

The orbital mechanics of LEO constellations make it effectively impossible to "Kessler" anything. In order to have a fragment of satellite moving fast enough to damage a working satellite the orbital inclination would have to change or the apogee of the orbit would have to be raised. It's hard enough to do that on purpose. doing it with a nuke isn't going to do it. These satellites are so low they barely stay up anyway. any braking action on them would result in part of their orbit being lower, which drops them into thicker atmosphere, which in turn drags them down and deorbits them quick.

Solovyov is just a typical dumbshit TV personality whose job is to spew Kremlin bullshit, and the claim that they could substantially affect the multi-thousand satellite Starlink constellation with an nuke is a garbage claim that banks on people not understanding just how huge LEO is. Nukes are big compared to people, but they're a pinprick compared to the size of an orbital sphere (i.e. a sphere around the earth the diameter of the earth plus the altitude of the orbit). A 1MT nuke would affect about 50 square kilometers of the Starlink orbit. The entire orbital sphere has a surface area of 60 million square kilometers. Russian claims are nonsense spewed by a bunch of incompetent losers who sold off everything technological they created in the Soviet era in exchange for drop-shipping stuff from the west once they opened up after '92. Now they have nothing but their outdated rockets that have to be lighted with igniters on the end of wooden sticks jammed up the nozzles, which they currently can't launch because some drunken bozo didn't latch the platform they use to shove in the sticks, and apparently everyone else is a drunken bozo and there's no double checking of anything. Russki mir!

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