20 daysMine has had these, but only on locked cabinets, for years.
I don’t know if they review 'em tho. Got sick and fucking tired of needing an employee to open the cabinent with the dog treats (most of the time, nobody even comes no matter how long I wait or how many time I press the button for service) so I got my own universal barrel key that opens their cabinets and just take what I need. Sometimes, I even pay for it.
- Psythik@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
That’s a lock pick, not a key.
Also, Walmart doesn’t use physical keys anymore. It’s some sort of wireless thing like NFC.
A ‘universal’ key, IE a key that can be used to open multiple different locks. So yes, a lock pick. What were you expecting?
Not all walmarts are the same, many haven’t ‘upgraded’ to digital locks. Still an interesting tool for the arsenal.
- nogooduser@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
A ‘universal’ key, IE a key that can be used to open multiple different locks. So yes, a lock pick. What were you expecting?
Something like a TSA key that fits the lock in addition to the owner’s key.
A lock pick requires an amount of skill to use and is definitely not a key.
- anomnom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish19 days
There are universal luggage keys because luggage makers make locks that need to be opened by 3rd parties. Barrel locks aren’t designed that way.
Also the TSA has a set of universal keys, there isn’t a single key that works on all luggage.
The TSA have 3-4 specific ‘TSA keys’ (which are easily purchased), and they demand you use a ‘TSA approved’ lock which has an extra keyway explicitly for them to use. If you don’t use one of these locks, they’ll cut yours off during inspection and give it back to you in pieces, with no compensation.
Something like a TSA key that fits the lock in addition to the owner’s key.
‘TSA approved’ locks have a seprate keyway specifically for TSA to open and inspect your bags.
There is something called ‘Master Keying’ (not talking about the master lock company), where you can setup the pins in a lock to open for multiple different keys. Commonly used in places like hotels and motels: one key only opens your door (this is the one given to you at check-in) and another key that opens all the motels locks, given to management/cleaning staff so they can get into each room without needing dozens or hundreds of keys.
This requires each lock to be explicitly setup with the correct pins to accept both keys. Not super common now, but you still find them now and again.
You go to your favorite search engine and enter “universal barrel key.”
This response was always a bit flimsy on social media where the goal is to be social, but it lost all its venom when every search engine was intentionally gutted to drive traffic to llm-based products, and 90% of the internet was turned to slop.
- 20 days
It looks kind of like a screwdriver. Ask The Lockpicking Lawyer.
That’s just a key, presumably a copy of the specific key that your local walmart uses; there’s nothing ‘universal’ about it.
These are some of the cheapest locks you can get and all just use a single tooth to turn the latch.
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.
No such thing as a literal universal key
Ever hear of skeleton keys?
You could just find an associate. From my experience they will help right away
They still gotta find the ONE employee who has the friggin keys.
Thats where you talk to the lady who looks like she is a million years old
- SillyDude@lemmy.zipEnglish20 days
I might put on my goin out overalls and check these things out. Ain’t my fault I’m a true american with pockets full of wet clay. Takes a pressure washer to get that kind out mud out from under my fingernails.
- Archer@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
Let those among us who haven’t accidentally packed our pockets with wet clay cast the first clod
I mean, that Walmart already is going to have had cameras all over the ceiling for a long time.
I’m a little annoyed by a local sandwich shop having their ordering kiosk — which had a camera added — recognize me and start recommending things based on my prior purchases there.
Now when I order at a kiosk, if I see something that looks like a camera, I put my hand over it.
- Snapz@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
Dude… Are you really oblivious to the difference? These are for facial recognition, eye tracking and surveillance pricing through RFID price tags.
- Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish19 days
The only part of that not really possible with ceiling cameras is eye tracking, you don’t need eye-level cameras for the other two.
- Snapz@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
To a point, but if you want it done more efficiently in multiple ways, you get cameras like this.
Seriously though, do you even know what you are arguing for here? What you are defending? Insecure people on the internet, trying to be right for the sake of it, even if it means casually normalizing the next indicator of our fascist takeover.
What are you doing?
- Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish18 days
I’m not defending anything lol, I’m just saying this surveillance doesn’t add a whole lot to the existing surveillance as far as I can tell, which is already pretty bad.
- Bakkoda@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
Find the peanut butter aisle. Then make all the aisles peanut butter aisles.
- stringere@sh.itjust.worksEnglish19 days
Have you ever seen the security room at a Walmart? If you ever thought you weren’t on camera in a Walmart, you were. It’s like a casino.
That particular camera looks like it is in a locking case, usually for hight theft items. The bizarre thing here is why the extra security on Sugar in the Raw and what looks like maybe Stevia.
- DillDough@lemmy.zipEnglish18 days
Not a locked case, it’s a normal shelf…also not a normal camera and not for security.
Do you get it now?
- remotedev@lemmy.caEnglish18 days
Being earnest here, I don’t. What’s the difference between a normal camera and a security camera? If it’s used for surge pricing, absolutely it’s terrible. But if it’s being used for shoplifting like cameras have been used in stores for forever, I’m not grasping the big deal of these ones. Is it just the potential of them using it for bad (which honestly they probably will)? There’s cameras all over aisles, checkout areas already
- DillDough@lemmy.zipEnglish18 days
Notice how there’s more than a lense there? Notice the angle the whole unit is going to be monitoring? It’s not for security, and the biggest concern isn’t even about immoral business practices like surge pricing or even more targeted advertising and coercive “advertising”.
I mean, yeah.
Wal-Mart caters to people who will buy cheaper things no matter what, whether that’s because they’re desperate or disinterested in how that impacts their world.
It’s like saying NASCAR fans like seeing cars go fast; that’s basically the whole point.
- thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish18 days
I believe it. How I didn’t think of it is another question. Wow.
- forkDestroyer@infosec.pubEnglish18 days
I have no clue. I felt like I was stealing something. There was a screen attached to it with lights showing me that I was on camera.
- CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
I know someone directly involved with this work/these changes and Walmart absolutely shares this stuff with law enforcement basically freely
- 20 days
I suddenly feel the need to grab my largest tipped sharpie and a mask and walk around Walmart for the first time in years
- turdburglar@piefed.socialEnglish20 days
pro-tip: use paint pen.
sharpie comes of with alcohol.
paint comes off with scraping and scratching cheap plastic camera lenses.
- friend_of_satan@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
My first thoughts exactly word for word.
The closest store to my house is Walmart, so unfortunately I go there pretty regularly. They just rennovated. I’m going to have to see if they did this.
Sometimes I pick up a shirt and then decide I don’t want it, so I just leave it on any old shelf. I’m not very neat about it, and it might hang over the edge a bit. Oops.
- Nalivai@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
It wasn’t luck. They tried and failed, on account of how many of their normal practices are illegal in the EU.
- HobbitFoot @thelemmy.clubEnglish19 days
Part of it was illegal, part of it was that their way of doing business pushed people away. Suppliers didn’t want to negotiate with Walmart and workers generally weren’t desperate to work there.
- ThunderComplex@lemmy.todayEnglish19 days
I still have rather fond memories of shopping at Walmart in Germany. Tho I was a child and it always was more of an experience than a chore. Then Wexit happened and the world’s gone to shit ever since
- Jiral@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
(likely) face identification and other surveillance of regular customers, if any data at all is created by that and analyzed or stored by anything that is a grave GDPR violation. Surveillance cameras for larger areas can be allowed but only to record for cases of legitimate control, no automated analysis nor data transfer to god knows where.
Personalised pricing is illegal as well in a supermarket. Digital price tags are allowed (and common) but there are clear rules how often prices are allowed to change. I’d have to research it myself but I think not more than once a day.
- thespcicifcocean@lemmy.worldEnglish19 days
Not yet, at least. It seems that they operate almost everywhere else though
- Folstar@lemmus.orgEnglish19 days
It must take a lot of compute to have AI review all those cameras and calculate surge pricing. I wonder where they will find it?
- Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish19 days
The cost of AI to do all this will be higher than any profits they could possibly make, but the managers who came up with this shot already committed and in the end they can just put that cost on the consumers anyway
One man’s cost is another man’s profit.
At some point, Walmart execs sitting on a pile of NVIDIA stock won’t see this as a loss for them. It will just become an excuse to trim spending - on healthcare, on wages, on wholesale costs, on maintenance of their fleets and facilities - everywhere that isn’t AI.
- SinAdjetivos@lemmy.worldEnglish18 days
You vastly underestimate how cheap and prevalent that sort of AI stuff already is. The upfront costs are high, and there’s usually some sort of ongoing support cost, but it’s been much cheaper than people since ~2020 and it’s only been getting more prevalent and miniaturized.
I’d encourage you to peruse https://everseen.com/solutions for some dystopian horrorshow. That is one of the companies that Kroger and Walmart ‘leverage their capabilities from’.
There’s also the b2b quid pro quo investment schemes already mentioned.
And also that retail insurers are one of the major ones helping to ‘drive adoption of these innovative ermergent technologies’ as both the retailers and insurance are constantly trying to
scam each other for profit‘maximize the potential earnings from their synergistic, mutually beneficial, relationship’. For further reading- Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish16 days
You do understand that many of the claims made about what AI can do ate extremely overstated at best?
AI companies have an extreme circular investment scheme going on and for the bilkuins invested with only a fraction of the running cost coming in, even investors are starting to get itchy. I give AI a full 6 more months before the entire bubble (or ponzi scheme even, at this point) pops and will come crashing down, taking enyitr economies with it.
- SinAdjetivos@lemmy.worldEnglish16 days
You do understand that many of the claims made about what AI can do ate extremely overstated at best?
Yes, and that is arguably the bigger problem. They’re very careful to not mention any hard numbers on the actual reliability, but if we give it a very generous 80% accuracy in detecting “customer shrinkage” and assume that the error is split evenly into false positives and false negatives that’s a 10% of every time you go into a store to buy things getting put into the shoplifter database(assuming the facial recognition is 100% accurate, which again: fucking lol). At which point the retailer’s internal reports show an increase in the amount of customer shrinkage.
This creates a vicious feedback loop of increased shoplifting reports, increased demand for shoplifting solutions, increased false data, increased shoplifting reports, etc… This resulted in a lot of store closures back in 21-22 and is a crucial part of that “circular investment scheme” you mention.
Of course the error rate isn’t evenly distributed. It’s heavily concentrated on people that “look like criminals” ie, poor, black, young, hispanic, disabled, etc.
The entire “western” economy is ~90% ponzi scheme. The “AI bubble” is a bit lazier of one than usual but it’s not to play out any different than the “dot com” bubble.
