I made a baseball bat that uses explosives to add a bunch of energy to your swing and hit a baseball really far. It uses the explosive blanks normally used to shoot nails into concrete (e.g. ramset). It worked way better than I expected, didn't have a kick, and turned out to be just a really neat thing to look at while sipping a frosty beverage. I also made a video about it if you're interested: https://youtu.be/Puo6Vgcbxps
I love your videos! Not just because of your incredible command of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and programming.
The thing I think you do so well is you take a statement like a little kid would make- I want to only hit home runs or, I want to sink a basket every time. And then you break down the problem and solve it. It's incredibly inspirational!
My girlfriend's son was struggling in school with math and science and he just didn't see how they could be cool or why they were important or something. I showed in the videos from your channel and it was so incredible where I was like hey look. Here's something that seems like total fantasy or like something like a six-year-old would say, but look with science and engineering you can make it happen.
Anyway, thank you very much Shane for what you do and how are you inspire people
I shouldn't be surprised that you post here. Your channel is amazing and inspiring, and I love that you dive into your failures and dead-ends, and hide little background gags on the monitors. And the pranks and roasts between you and your wife are so much fun to watch - you're a lucky man.
I'm honestly a little jealous that you've managed to carve out a niche where you get to imagine and built insane/cool stuff. A dream come true! Congrats and great channel.
I've gotta say, I appreciated how you spent literally 75% of the video explaining all your safety precautions and how they all helped you avoid death, dismemberment, or disfigurement.
Your productivity absolutely phenomenal. Each video that comes out seems like you make what would take a normal person a good part of a year to produce in a fraction of the time.
I used to be a full time dev / R&D engineer. Now I basically do the same thing on YouTube (youtube.com/stuffmadehere). The difference now is my R&D-ing is directed at early stage prototypes that I think are interesting / instructive, rather than what is best for an actual business, useful, or profitable.
Youtube is interesting because theres a constant source of numeric feedback on how you are doing (views / subscribers / watch time). Seeing these numbers change based on what you do can be incredibly addicting and it's very easy to accidentally connect your personal happiness to those numbers. This is great if they are going up, but if they aren't.... yeah. It's also easy to get into a situation where you lean into "what works" over and over until you find yourself doing stuff that you don't enjoy.
My advice would be to find a way to keep the numbers at arms length and focus on doing stuff that you enjoy. You definitely need the feedback of stats / comments / etc to get better, but you don't wan to check it 10 times a day. Personally when I launch a video I will check a few times to ensure I didn't screw up anything major, see if there is any useful feedback in comments, then I will check maybe the stats every week or two.
Your channel is among the best content on youtube, and I am very jealous you get to do this for a living. Do you have any sort of contingency plan for what happens if youtube/patreon is no longer sustainable as an income source?
Your content is extremely prolific, good work! I think your thumbnails specifically do a great job of selling the content.
Having a focus on numbers can definitely be caustic; at the end of the day it's about the whims of hundreds, thousands, or millions(!) of people, and even the algorithms in charge of leading them about.
If you make good content, you'll be appreciated for that content regardless of what the numbers reflect.
> Seeing these numbers change based on what you do can be incredibly addicting and it's very easy to accidentally connect your personal happiness to those numbers
As someone who doesn't post as often as other YouTubers, do you find it's harder to be mindful of this because of the "stakes" of a single video, or easier because there's more time to disconnect between uploads?
(big fan btw)
I definitely have a sense of only having one shot so I want to make the best video that I can. Though it’s not so much related to the numbers as it is to:
1) I spend a ton of time on the engineering so I don’t want to make a crappy video that doesn’t do it justice
2) the amount of time spent watching these videos is staggering. Like multiple lifetimes of time is spent watching an average video. If I make a junk video, I’ve just wasted an enormous amount of time. Being a good steward of this weighs heavily on me.
> 2) the amount of time spent watching these videos is staggering. Like multiple lifetimes of time is spent watching an average video. If I make a junk video, I’ve just wasted an enormous amount of time. Being a good steward of this weighs heavily on me.
I wish anyone at google cared about this as much as you do.
I love your content, the only channel I've turned the bell on for. I am curious about your approach to explaining coding and machine learning, do you think it's possible to make "coded for 5 days" engaging in the same way physically building the objects is engaging?
Also, have you considered publishing your work in robotics conferences? I feel like grad students might be hesitant to cite a YouTube video whereas there's clearly enough technical contribution for a full publication.
I am a huge fan of you and your wife! How did you handle the transition from working for work and working on your channel? Did you just spend weekends doing personal projects?
I think you could post something intentionally self indulgent, self serving and knowingly terrible to your numbers and we’d all lap it up. You’re one of the few folks I would describe as brilliant.
I've found the opposite of this sentiment to be true, at least in my case as youtube engineer / maker. If you can find a way to monetize your hobby it is:
1. A great motivator to actually finish projects
2. A good way to justify / fund more costly projects
3. A great source of joy if people enjoy what you make
I've been careful to not undermine my key sources of joy in making things (learning, doing hard things, making quality things) by keeping monetization at a lower priority to those things. In my opinion if you can find a way to monetize without undermining what you truly enjoy, you can thread the needle between job / hobby and I'd highly recommend it!
What I find amazing is that one thousandth of an inch is not particularly precise when it comes to machining. You can easily make parts to that accuracy with common mills and lathes.
Also surprisingly (to me) is if you have a pin that goes into a hole that is 1-2 thousandths of an inch larger than the pin, it feels like a sloppy loose fit. If you want the pin to feel like a really nice smooth fit you need more like a couple TEN THOUSANDTHS of an inch clearance.
Yea, I'm always blown away by the old master machinists I've worked with when they talk about getting to "50 millionths" (ie half a tenth of a thou) on manual lathe and measurable with a bench micrometer [1].
Also the auto body guys whose hands are like profilometers [2] and can just feel various surface quality [3]. This is actually where precision originally came from with the 3 plate lap where you're just using fingers and candle soot to create crazy high surface flatness [4].
For the unindoctrinated, this concise Typical Tolerances of Manufacturing Processes reference[1] may be useful towards establishing pragmatic expectations for manual processes.
I have both MechE and CS degrees. The big difference I see is that MechE is one course that builds on top of another on and on. Quite a rigorous progression that is hardcore on math and physics. To self teach MechE you have to work yourself through that progression which is a huge commitment.
OTOH what most people consider “CS” is more like “the ability to program”. You can get competent enough to be dangerous with a few classes and side projects.
Note that isn’t actually being competent at CS - that is quite a lot more work which just isn’t needed in practice for a lot of work that needs done.
I've heard the saying: Any idiot can make a bridge stand up. It takes an engineer to make the bridge barely stand up.
I want a class on making the bridge stand up for idiots (like "let's write this bridge in python, and build it with cob"). I don't care if I spend twice as much on wood and hay and mud or titanium or whatever. I live in the SF Bay Area, so I can't afford the mechanical engineers I can actually hire to design my crappy little bridge, and the ones I can actually hire are incompetent. Also, I don't want to buy more tools.
(To be clear: If you're a MechE in the SF Bay Area and reading this site then I can't afford your time.)
Love that! Reminds me of playing Civilization games. Sending in my catapults to smash the enemy city to pieces! I always tried to time the discovery of mathematics with transitioning my economy to a war footing!
Look around at the scout troops near you; it is possible that a scout is building a trail bridge for their Eagle scout project. Volunteer with the troop and you've got your class.
While I agree with that I think one glaring difference is also the money. To really learn you want to test out different designs and stuff. For MechE, this can cost A LOT. For example to build a complex device that does something interesting the prototype parts can easily costs as much as a capable laptop or more. And the first one probably won't work ...
Still, it's a shame I think that the open source community is so week because there is very advanced software out there, e.g. France has open source SW that was used to design nuclear reactors. But the community is just not there.
Programming might be what people think of with CS, but what separates a coder from someone more like a software engineer is algorithms, data structures, OSes, and networking. Once you get past toy problems, you'll have to work with all of those. That said, I agree that none use particularly hardcore math day-to-day.
I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency. This is because there’s a nonlinear relationship between views & quality. For example a video that is twice as good might be capable of getting 10 times as many views. If that’s true it implies that (within reason) spending more time to make a better video is the best strategy. Intuitively this makes sense: would it be better to make 1 mediocre video every day consistently OR 1 really good video every 1-3 weeks that gets 100x the views.
I’ve heard the argument that YouTube rewards consistency, but I am anything but consistent with my videos [1](every 1-3 months) and I haven’t noticed any negative consequences.
This is absolutely crazy. OP is like asking for acting advice from internet randos. Suddenly, Al Pacino drops in!
stuffmadehere is famous shit. Middle schoolers watch it in the classroom because the science teacher plays this. He has millions of subscribers & each show ( I refuse to call it video. Its a proper show. ) is very professionally done. It's so popular, if you were in India & you were speaking in Hindi, you would legit be on TV. Over there people are glued to content because some guy is explaining centrifugal force in hindi with some string & tincan. Meanwhile, look at your production values! Huge respect. Thanks for everything you do.
As someone who spends a bunch of time paying attention to the YouTube meta, "consistency" is a virtue that's been professed for a long time, but YouTube has been pretty clear that it's not a factor in how recommendations work.
I still think it's decent advice for new YouTubers, because you only get better at a thing by doing it a lot, and over time. The value of consistency isn't in the algorithmic properties, but instead in developing the skills that lead to quality.
It’s also worth noting that the algorithm is not the only meta and posting consistently might be more or less expected depending on your audience, topic and so on.
Absolutely, each audience has different expectations for what "quality" even means. Though I'm not really sure where "the algorithm" (I kinda hate how anthropomorphized it is) doesn't play into even in your scenario. Browse and Search are the two largest ways to grow traffic, and both are algorithmic to different degrees... unless you just mean like, growth is not a goal on YouTube for you, in which case, yeah you can just ignore all of this for sure.
But the language used around this topic is often implying that "the algorithm" will "punish you" if you like, post too often, post too little, post at different times... and I personally believe that that is empirically demonstrated to be not the case, and is also something YouTube (at least lately, I've only been paying close attention for a year or two) has never implied is important. And they've said things that imply that it's totally irrelevant, recommendation wise.
> But the language used around this topic is often implying that "the algorithm" will "punish you" if you like, post too often, post too little, post at different times...
These are all kinda true though?
- If you post too often your notifications get bundled, so now it's "x published two videos" instead of "x published that amazing video",
- if you post too little then people are less likely to recognize your username and thus just not click on it unless the creator really left an impression (this is probably the most dependent on the audience however).
- if you post at differing times you suddenly have to increase your audience significantly as your usual watchers won't be on YouTube at that moment, so you're effectively missing out on the initial upvotes by your fanbase until much later, reducing the chance of the video going into trending.
I mean they're not the only variables and they become pretty much non-issues as the channel grows, but all of these effects can be directly measured in clicks when the audience is still pretty small
I would agree with that. I've been posting consistently every day, at the same time for 8 months and hasn't seen much return.
But my vids are highly automated and pretty niche weather content, so wouldn't expect it to go crazy either.
https://www.youtube.com/@aussiefromspace
I'm pretty happy, as a user that YouTube no longer pushes constancy over quality.
Another value in consistency is that when people are browsing aimlessly, they know when they can check your channel for new content. If I check some channel for new content a few times and there is none (and no indication of any coming), I will simply forget about it. Not intentionally. Someone else who posts predictably will have captured my idle time.
As my sibling says, this may be how some users use youtube, generally these views ("channel page views" is the term used in the analytics) are a small minority of overall views.
In fact, this sort of behavior you're talking about is one of the reasons why "the algorithm" is a thing. If there's something you'd like to watch, but you've forgotten about it, it's YouTube's job to surface it to you, even if you've forgotten. This is one of the reasons why browse is the default view and not your subscribers feed, for example.
> I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency.
I know "The Algorithm" gets a lot of hate, but surfacing quality-over-quantity content is one place where recommendation algorithms excel over pure chronological feeds.
When I switched Twitter to chronological mode, I had to unfollow several people because they posted all day long. The most valuable Tweets I wanted to see were buried in the noise. The algorithmic feed is far from perfect, but it does a good job of highlighting posts I've missed from people I've interacted with previously. It takes some time to see the algorithm with enough likes and interactions, and it won't work if you never click the like button, but it's actually not half bad once it's up and running.
Reddit is another platform where quantity over quality prevails. If you click through to the post history of people who get content to the front page, it's basically a firehose of posts using recycled content and slightly altered headlines to as many subreddits as they can get away with. Eventually one of them clicks and rises to the top, but by that point the headline is often so mangled into clickbait that it doesn't accurately reflect the content of the article. Redditors don't really read articles, though, so it doesn't matter. Spam away.
> If you click through to the post history of people who get content to the front page, it's basically a firehose of posts using recycled content and slightly altered headlines to as many subreddits as they can get away with.
I’ve seen this too. It seems like a lot of work and I’m unclear what the reward is. It isn’t like most of that content is pimping some brand of burger or something…
It's nice that Twitter allows you to switch modes. Normally I'm in chronological mode, but I can go to the mobile.twitter.com site on desktop too, and that is in the "Algorithm" mode. So it's pretty easy to just swap and see if I'm feeling in the mood to let the algorithm discover new things for me / catch some interesting replies or likes of people I follow / etc. It'd be interesting to go full power user with more customization and easy swapping, but such features don't tend to last if they ever get implemented in the first place...
> I know "The Algorithm" gets a lot of hate, but surfacing quality-over-quantity content is one place where recommendation algorithms excel over pure chronological feeds.
Do you find great content on youtube via YT's recommendations? I practically never have, everything I like I've stumbled upon on other sites where something is discussed and a channel is mentioned, or from someone who's work I like mention someone else. YT's recommendations have always been garbage for me, so I eventually just hid them completely because it's mostly noise.
I personally have found some excellent content through YT's recommendations. For example, the algorithm introduced me to LockPickingLawyer, Taskmaster, and Jet Lag: The Game.
Your videos are awesome. I've watched every one of them multiple times. I love when you go deep into the technical details of the problems / solutions you run into (especially with your code) -- especially in _integration hell_.
I'm sure not-your-entire audience is interested in these things. Have you ever considered making a second channel where you go into more detail about the details of the technical problems / solutions you run into? The videos could be a lot less well produced, I'm just desperate for the info.
Perhaps it varies by category. I think your "mad-science" niche disproportionally rewards quality because (1) there's a high barrier to entry, (2) each project stands up on its own, and (3) your channel already has a positive loop of subscribers.
You have infinitely more Youtube experience than I do (love your videos, by the way!), but maybe those other categories are in your blindspot, just like they are not in my Youtube suggestions.
I'd expect vloggers, celebrities, podcasters, game streamers, political pundits, etc to benefit more from consistent uploads. More videos = more rolls of the viral dice, and furthermore frequency is required for building up fame, parasocial relationships, or just reliably filling the silence during commute.
"reliably filling the silence during commute" - this has never made sense to me. There are an infinite number of creators I can subscribe to. So I can always have unwatched content available just by subscribing to creators with high signal-to-noise ratio.
Do normal users tend to just subscribe to a smaller number of channels, so they want channels that publish a lot?
Your new videos are a family night event at my house, complete with popcorn. There are so many great ones, but the chainsaw robot is our favorite - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix68oRfI5Gw. That and the "robotically perfect mullet." And we all say "Oh wa cool."
In short, thank you for your awesome videos and take your time to keep the quality so high!
It’s good to see you here! I totally agree with quality there (although not from personal experience) but taking as an example your videos, Idk how you first came up with the idea of the “wife mode” but now your video have gone from something I totally nerd on to something I call my wife to watch with me, which she does with minimal eye rolls and actually enjoyment from her part! Haven’t found that many other maker channels that I share with her (with the obvious exception of Simone Giertz!)
Not a maker channel, but Technology Connections fills a similar niche in our household. Simultaneously in-depth enough for me and accessible and interesting for my wife.
Brother you literally are the definition of quality over quantity. I've never seen anyone else rise so fast in the youtube world as yourself, especially on the back of only a handful of videos. Really incredible work from a truly inspiring engineer. Keep it up.
You post extremely good quality videos. I agree with your arguments. Every time you drop a video, I make sure to watch it. It would not be the case if you posted everyday.
Yeah, and I believe the reason for this behavior is the fact people subscribe if they found a video worthwhile. Then, once they're subscribed, they'll check their feed every once in a while and it will contain recommendations based on which channels they're subscribed to. It then doesn't matter how often you post or when (quantity), it is all about whether the video interests them (quality).
The mistake here is thinking that high quantity / low quality would lead to satisfied customers; not in the long term. When the quality is too low they'll unsub, simple as that.
My problem with YouTube videos in general is they don't cut to the point. They have too much fanfare around the point, stuff which does not interest me. I expect such behavior in advertising, not in content. To me, it lowers the quality of the content because it lowers the signal-to-noise ratio.
This was my first thought as well. However, it’s worth noting that your videos are _exceptionally_ good. I drop everything to watch one when it comes out.
There's also a confounding factor in pushing yourself to do a lot of videos all at once: you may get some good practice in. Are you getting more views after a few months of consistently publishing videos because you are consistently publishing videos, or because you are getting better at making interesting videos?
I don't know if this is true, but I've heard the algorithm has changed over the years - in 2015 during peak Vlog, there wasn't much content on Youtube made by creators targeting (and putting professional-level effort into) the platform, so the algorithm rewarded creators that were creating enough content to really hold a user on Youtube.
Now, there's enough content that the algorithm favors quality more, because YT can more easily keep a user by recommending similar content from a different creator of a higher quality.
.. again, no idea if that's true, but it does feel like it makes sense.
As a consumer of YouTube videos, I couldn't agree with you more.
I think the consistency of popping out videos on the regular is about working the algorithm and grinding out content for views, and with those views: ad dollars. I've seen too many channels just turn into churning really awful, boring, long videos with little in the way of direction in the hopes you'll just mindlessly watch it. But I think the math just works out better (marginally) to pump out low-effort, low-value content more often than for example, what you are creating. And like I said: blame the algorithm.
Wow I see what you mean. I was planning on cutting down to 1 video a week once my channel had grown a bit but I can see from your channel that quality > quantity so I might do that sooner! Thank you.
I wonder if Youtubers are mistaking consistency with quality? They don't realize that their consistent production is causing an increase in their quality (via practice/learning)
Hey there, would you be open to discussing how you became such an amazing maker?
I work with an org that funds and supports a really large community of young makers (mostly young people in their teens, but we also have folks in their mid-twenties and beyond). I'd love to talk to you about how you honed your skills. A lot of them watch your videos and I suspect they would be really interested in reading about how you honed your skills and achieved your currently glorious skillset. (I would be too!)
More and more, Youtube's algorithm seems to surface a mix of newer and older stuff. The "Caipirinha" and "Caramelldansen" meme videos from the late 2000's have reappeared on my recommended's, and Gen Z accounts are commenting on them too.
So I agree that quality is an important factor. While there has to be some weighting to favor the needs of advertisers in play, it's not as strong lately as it has been.
> I’ve found that content quality is much more important than posting consistency
If anyone is giving you any kind of marketing or content distribution advice, and at no point do they mention product-market fit, or content quality, then they are selling you a dream.
Maybe if you are starting is good strategy to have consistency with weekly uploads? And later when you build a small audience, yes, you can apply your strategy of quality over quantity.
Then there's channels like stuffmadehere that consistently produce hit videos, due to their superb quality. It's not luck if you can do it many times over.
Building and maintaining commercial properties is absurdly expensive. A landlord takes on the cost, risk, and time of building and maintaining that property in exchange for businesses not having to deal with that.
The idea that a landlord should invest serious capital to build a business park and then pay people to use it is nonsense. In that arrangement zero business properties would be made. People who wish to start a business would have to foot the bill to purchase or build a space for their business.
Besides initial construction you also have maintenance, acquiring tenants, property management, renovations and improvements, etc.
If a company has the means and desire to do all this themselves, there's nothing stopping them from buying the land themselves instead of renting, but it's generally more efficient for a business to focus on what they are good at and leave the real estate issues to a company that specializes in it.
Sounds to me like they're deciding what to do with the land, and then taking on the risk for whether the developed property is economically viable. They should be taxed for the value of the underlying land, but they are absolutely not useless middlemen.
"Taking on risk for whether the property is economically viable" is a funny way of saying "bought a house that a normal person could have purchased and instead charges them a marked up rent"
The developers do not just eat the cost of building a property, they pass it on in the sale price. So yeah, landlords still end up having to deal with it, on top of the day to day maintenance.
The landlords do not just eat the cost of purchasing and managing a property, they pass it on in the lease. So yeah, tenants still end up having to deal with it, on top of the day to day maintenance.
Landlords aren't in the property business. They're in the liquidity business.
I know it sounds weird but that's their function in society, they are one of the many "business lubricant" sellers that allow modern society to work.
A liquidity provider is someone who makes transactions easier. The insurance company will insure you against risk does this. The lender who provides loans does this. The landlord who rents property does this.
You can run an economy without them, but things will cost more and take longer to happen.
liquidity matters to commodity markets that transact often. the flipside of liquidity is instability.
treating real estate as a commodity, not as an intimate necessity of everyday life, helps no one except speculators and rent seekers, at the expense of everyone else doing productive work.
Examine the alternative. Should small businesses purchase the space all out, from developers or brokers? If this is so much more efficient, why don't they do so?
Similarly, you could ask the same of residential renters. What would happen if we simply banned all new rental contracts. Would access improve or diminish?
Interesting design. I made a lock a couple years ago that is quite similar in principle (though this design is different and has a couple nice improvements).
The interaction of engineering and "use" by the Lock Picking Lawyer (https://youtu.be/Ecy1FBdCRbQ) was fascinating - "use" here really meaning "exploiting". It's a problem many here are aware of, either by over-engineering things intended for use by non-engineers, or designing things to be used by customers when the designer isn't intimately familiar with the use. In this case it was sort of somewhere in between.
I'm currently an operator of heavy machinery in a factory making tools for the wafer industry, although my main career is in software development. I'm actively working with the tools and software used to get a better understanding of the disconnect between engineering and operations. It's been a great way to consider how to improve tools in ways that aren't just "better" from a software/engineering standpoint.
Also, holy cow. I've watched all of your videos multiple times. You are truly an inspiration. Thank you, and apologies for the fanboying.
Def want to see Enclave's under Lock Picking Lawyer! If you make a "unpickable lock" you'd def want to send it to LPL, that's like the ultimate proof of how easy/hard it is to pick. The fact that there's no video, with how approachable LPL is and accepts random locks in his PO box, can only be seen as a red flag.
Check out another prominent lock sporter, Lock Noob. He has a recent video where he examines the lock and agrees it’ll be hard to pick.
Unpickable locks aren’t that unique or rare in the community but they tend to be too complex to make it to market at a reasonable price or with the ability to withstand years of wear and tear and still work.
> The fact that there's no video, with how approachable LPL is and accepts random locks in his PO box, can only be seen as a red flag.
He says he's going to make a small number of prototypes and send them to the locksport community. It's not a "red flag", it's just very early in his design cycle.
I definitely remember seeing a design similar to this one not many weeks ago on LPL. I am looking for it now. The video on the landing page shows these little discs which can provide a false set, and a secondary mechanism that opens only when all the pins have a correct set. I am not an expert just watch a lot of LPL so don't take my word for it when I say this is the same design, this may be a completely novel design, but I'm looking for the video, it can't have been long ago...
Edit: ok, it wasn't on LPL, or a similar design at all, it was this lock and it was on Lock Noob, I found this was in my viewing history and it was just recently published, it must be the video I remember:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNHFyc1oMwU (I see this was also linked down thread)
It looks like a very good design! I'd like to see it in front of Lock Picking Lawyer too
Not only that but he manufactures and sells lock picking equipment and consults on physical security. There's nothing part time about LPL's lock picking any more.
Well, we don't know what his main job is, only that he lives in Washington DC. I would assume because of his location that he works for the US government, and that this is the reason he does not want his face on video.
whether he does it as a side job isn't really relevant, but I do think that there's a bit of a cult of personality going on here.
he's clearly a good lockpick, but even in a thread that isn't about him, he's somehow dominating conversation and gathering plaudits. I completely agree that being famous doesn't make you the ultimate arbiter of anything
Didn't know HN had so many lock experts and lawyers frequenting the site. Dozens of comments have already detected an IP violation, half the thread is recommending ways the lock can be tested or people it needs to be sent to for confirmation of the unpickable claim...
As someone who doesn't know anything about lockpicking, I feel like part of a weird minority here. What do I know but I'd assumed one would take it to a convention or competition where the best lockpickers in the world meet, not a youtuber. Something like this: https://www.wired.com/2014/12/international-competition-mast...
Sure. Not saying he's bad at lockpicking. The point is more are you an expert yourself or how do you know he's THE guy to talk to? For reference, what are the main lock picking competitions in the world and which ones has he won? Can you name them?
When I looked it up out of interest, he isn't mentioned as the world expert in actual lockpicking forums. I found a couple of other names but in any way, it makes more sense to have it tested by a group of experts than just a single person. One person may fail, but if an entire convention full of the best lockpickers can't pick your lock, that's a much better indication the lock really is unpickable.
I can't be bothered to use YT anymore with all the ads. They're basically interactive, on-demand, corporate TV monetizing other people's content and nothing more. The world needs a co-op video sharing app and a microblogging app.
The only "ads" you get will be the ones the video uploaders encode directly into the video itself. Plus you can watch using whatever playback software works best on your system, instead of the rather feature free JS player youtube provides.
This is the only way to enjoy youtube without a premium account, and even with a premium account it's still far better to use a proper player like mpv.
But it seems likely to me that YouTube will eventually start embedding the ads more inextricably into the video streams while downloaded. Especially as more people use tools like youtube-dl/yt-dlp to circumvent ads.
They'd have to vary the ad timing to get past sponsorblock, and generating a video for each viewer to do targeting. I can't imagine Google going back to content-based ads after all this time.
Using privacy front-ends makes the experience much more tolerable and completely eliminates ads. Then you can directly support your favorite creators via patreon, etc. There's invidious [0] and piped [1], with the major differentiator being that invidious doesn't require JS and piped having sponsorblock built in.
I think one problem here is that the more complicated you make a locking mechanism, the more you suffer by increasing the attack surface with other potential flaws or just the lock being physically weaker (i.e. smashable).
Kinda like how the most advanced cryptography is usually broken because someone made an error in the complexity of implementing it.
The other problem with increased complexity is that the more intricate your mechanism is, the more prone to failure due to wear or contamination it becomes. A security measure is only as good as it can remain usable. As a locksmith for working in the industry for 25 years, I've seen a lot of high security designs come and go, and the stuff that sticks is the stuff that's simple and reliable. The fundamental fact of locks and security is that people just don't pick locks much. The vast overwhelming majority of unauthorized accesses are via an acquired key or via bypass attacks on other aspects of the locking hardware than the keyed cylinder.
To put it bluntly, all these fancy pick-proof designs people are coming up with have zero real world utility and are just toys for locksport enthusiasts to play with.
EDIT: and really, I'd say all the patent discussion is moot. A patent is only useful if there's a market for your product. This product has design shortcomings that render it a non-starter for most applications, i.e. no master keying capacity, which makes it useless in any institutional setting, and a design necessity of using critical precision parts that won't handle outdoor exposure well, and a physical size that makes it incompatible with even the largest north american cylinder format. This is a product without a profitable customer base.
Yes, and with more complexity comes more ways to fail to operate properly. I foolishly almost locked myself of my condo. I had a Medeco high security cylinder on the door and the condo was on the 22 floor so it was pretty secure.
Foolishly, I had used the sturdy Medeco key to cut through some packing tape on a package. The gummy adhesive left over on the key wasn’t that noticeable and would probably not interfered with the operation of ordinary pin tumbler locks, but high security cylinders are usually made to tighter tolerances making picking more difficult. In Medeco cylinders the pins have two degrees of motion (up and down and rotation on their long axis). The sticky key likely gummed up the operation of one or more pins so that I couldn’t unlock the door.
A trip to the hardware store for some spray cleaner/lubricant finally got me inside, but for a while I was afraid that the lock would have to be drilled out (difficult because of specially hardened elements designed to thwart drilling).
I don't see any fundamental reason why this design could not be master keyed (although it would be more of a pain than with traditional lock designs).
The key spools have a narrow section at the correct position. I see no reason why they could not have multiple narrow sections. The inconvenience is that you would need to stock 10 additional spool types to allow for 2 position opening. (or 6 if key spools are symmetric), and more if you ever need three valid positions for a pin. (These numbers get worse if the system is extended to more than the 5 positions of the prototype).
I'm not sure this is actually all that much more complex, or having more critical precision parts than some of ASSA ABLOY's offerings (like Medeco). The pin-stacks being too tall for standard US cylinder sizes though does seem to be a rather substantial problem.
I assume that most people know that this is more of a hobby thing (and a cool one), but I also forget that not everyone has demolished a house with a handheld reciprocating saw.
I remember being annoyed by the end of that video with the backplate. swighton had already thought of that and machined for a backplate but it was just left out so the LPL could crack into it.
In any case, this guys design I think is a significant improvement over swighton's. swighton made it so that the key triggered the locking mechanism as you pressed it in, this guy made it so that you had to turn the key to test the locking mechanism, as well as adding a multipin stack.
You absolutely should sue them with prior art or something if they patent it. You had an amazing fairly well distributed YouTube video with this design anyway.
> Interestingly, videos don't seem to count? It must be a written description?
Wondering the same myself. Googeling for this issue turns up this power-point [1] which seems to imply on page 6 that "electronic publications, on-line databases, websites, or Internet publications" are also considered as "printed documents". But this is just a power-point so who knows which standard gets applied in practice.
I get the impression that the "printed document" language got written before digital documents and the internet were a thing.
I am not a laywer, don't know a thing about the topic, this is not legal advice etc.
The power point says "Public Use or On Sale" counts. That could be interesting, given that the lock was given to a member of the public, the Lock Picking Lawyer, for a public picking. A convenient case of having a lawyer when you need one!
The examiner is definitely allowed to consider videos but it might not be easy to submit. Video subtitles/transcript, thumbnails, and comments would definitely count though. I would just print to PDF the YouTube video with the transcript sidebar, that should be enough info for the examiners to reject any overly broad claims.
Yeah I immediately thought of your work when I saw this. The key insight is the same, even if the implementation is different. Everything you do is fascinating by the way!
Although I've seen pretty much all of your videos, I'm ashamed to say I couldn't remember your name, so I googled "Andrew Magill" expecting your face to pop up.
I loved the way the puzzle was presented in that video and loved the partial solution. It has been consuming idle brain cycles eversince.
First we should proudly make the key flat as security by obscurity is not done. We should solve the problem for real and it has to be easy to manufacture.
The real idea: put a tube around the cylinder. after rotating the cylinder by 45 deg it drags the tube along.
you have a pin in the tube with small discs on the key side. The inner cylinder can rotate freely for 45 degrees at which point it drags the tube along IF the pin is in the correct position thereby testing the correctness of the key used therein all pins simultaneously.
different keys can be had by changing the number of discs. No machining required.
Just want to say I absolutely love your channel and it's been a huge source of motivation to work on my own hardware projects in the past, I eagerly await your next video!
This could be worth fighting for. If another maker uses your work to build and share an improved lock, as you did, this guy could try suing them for that, as though the basis for their work was his, ruining the spirit of openness and stunting any resulting improvement in lock design.
It might be a struggle to prove prior art but you might have enough sway to be able to find a pro-bono lawyer, and/or publicly pressure or embarrass him into compromising. Patreon would almost certainly help with costs too.
Seriously, you have a tremendous amount of credibility in maker/engineering communities, among others. Thank you very much for doing what you do.
As others have already said, you’re a huge inspiration.
I was trying to find interviews that you’ve done to learn more about how you came To know so much, but it looks like you’ve never really done any interviews. Any reason why?
You can use a third party pre-issuance submission to ensure that the parent examiner considers your work as prior art during the application process. There’s no fee to file the first three documents you want to the examiner to consider. This will ensure he doesn’t get a patent which could be construed to block you from building your lock design.
For those that did not watch it. The lock was left to be pickable on purpose. The improvements were purposely left out so LPL could pick the lock for entertainment purposes.
You can inexpensively (~$10) check if your calipers have been whacked out of calibration as frequently as you want with a gauge block or other calibration standard. If they have, you can also calibrate using the same block.
I feel like calling these photos "taken by a chicken" is fairly misleading. The photos are taken automatically when a chicken wanders in front of a motion detector.
To test the claim with a similar example, let's say I run a red light which triggers a red light cam to take a picture of me and my car. I don't think I can claim that I took that photo, or that it is a selfie.
no, let's support this line of thought. argue in court that the state has violated both the 4th amendment and copyright on your red light selfie. this could be incredible. next up, surveillance images and news media of political demonstrations
