[00:01] found it in the free bin at my local thrift shop because, well, it doesn't permanently locked, which means it's basically just a paperweight or as I like to call it, a challenge. I mean, how hard could it be? There are only
[00:14] how hard could it be? There are only four inputs, up, down, left, and right. That's it. If a combination is four moves long, there are only 256 permutations with repetitions. I can try all of those. This is basically a fidget
[00:28] toy with a prize at the end. But then I looked into a combination can be and that's when things got dark. They come with a default factory code that is four moves long. But once you buy it, you can reset the code to whatever you want, up
[00:41] to a maximum of an infinite number of moves. You can set the combination on this lock to be 127 motions long, 127 million if you wanted to because this lock is a mechanical hash function. It can take any input and
[00:58] turn it into a hash that works with its internal mechanism, which happens to be four little wheels. When you slide this button, those four wheels turn different slide the button in. Now, you can slide this button all day and those wheels
[01:12] limitation is how many unique states all four of those wheels can be in together and Michael Huebler calculated the answer. It's 7,501. So, that's all I have to do. Or is it? Blank Registration went even
[01:27] lock never changed it from its factory code, within 6 minutes I should be able to crack it because Blank Registration found collisions, single strings of input that produce internal states equivalent to the states produced by all
[01:40] already tried four codes and it's still locked, but I'm 10% of the way through. And now I'm 20, 30, 40, I'm halfway through, 60, 70, perding-a. It took me
[01:52] less than 5 minutes. Left, left, right, up. This is great because my family has been needing a lock and now that I've cracked this one, I can reset it to whatever I want. So, my next challenge is to find the longest sequence of moves
[02:05] on this lock that has no shorter equivalent because then opening it would be really annoying and honestly, that's what life is about. Finding challenges whose solutions can then be used to make your life challenging again.