Self promotion is no issue when you have high quality content! I started picking locks recently for fun and your guide on YouTube is one of my favourite resources. It's also my go-to whenever trying to show someone in a minute or two the gist of lockpicking.

To find you on Hacker News is a pleasant surprise =] Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the kind words! Really appreciate it and always happy to bump into folks who know my work. My name on here comes from one of my 5 favorite locks, the Emhart interlocking pin system: http://www.lockwiki.com/index.php/Corbin_Emhart

It was invented by Leo Raskevicius, who sadly passed away years ago. In his original patent he actually made provisions for a magnetic version as well. Brilliant guy. Sadly the lock isn't made anymore.

check out picked locks under an electron microscope.

http://pumpingstationone.org/2013/12/lock-picking-and-sem/

you can actually tell which ones were picked.

<3 PS1. In Ollie's seminal "Impressioning" he also used SEM to look at keys as they were impressioning locks.

oohh i'm going to have to dig to find the one on impressioning

I'm not sure if this is what he was talking about, but it seems like this is related:

DEFCON 19: "Key Impressioning" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8QnG5RHyq8

Definitely related, and datagram & I covered the basics the year prior as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-PqzkoQQ7s