Pretty soon they’ll just assign a drone to follow each customer. Well, not EACH customer, that would be weird.
Just the minorities.
Mine 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.
Tell me more about how one procures a universal barrel key.
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.
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.
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.
yes, my friend would also like to have this information
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.
AliExpress or Amazon.
It looks kind of like a screwdriver. Ask The Lockpicking Lawyer.
They literally look like this:
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
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.
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.
Dude… Are you really oblivious to the difference? These are for facial recognition, eye tracking and surveillance pricing through RFID price tags.
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.
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?
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.
Find the peanut butter aisle. Then make all the aisles peanut butter aisles.
Looks like a used gum disposal unit to me
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.
Not a locked case, it’s a normal shelf…also not a normal camera and not for security.
Do you get it now?
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
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”.
This is for dynamic pricing
Walmart shoppers will put up with anything
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.
Many are in food deserts and have no other choice.
The cameras beep at you too
Perfect, draw my attention so I remember to fuck with it
Why?
So that you look and they get a direct shot of your face.
I believe it. How I didn’t think of it is another question. Wow.
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.
I know someone directly involved with this work/these changes and Walmart absolutely shares this stuff with law enforcement basically freely
I suddenly feel the need to grab my largest tipped sharpie and a mask and walk around Walmart for the first time in years
pro-tip: use paint pen.
sharpie comes of with alcohol.
paint comes off with scraping and scratching cheap plastic camera lenses.
What the actual fuck
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.
Thoroughly illegal in the EU. Luckily Walmart doesn’t operate there.
It wasn’t luck. They tried and failed, on account of how many of their normal practices are illegal in the EU.
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.
Sounds like two sides of the same coin.
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
I’m interested, what makes it illegal?
(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.
Not yet, at least. It seems that they operate almost everywhere else though
They actually tried it in the EU but failed hard.
Do we have a “boringdystopia” instance on Lemmy yet?
