Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet • Hacker News Board

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#321

Post by bdcravens » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:43 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #278

bdcravens wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in University, there were a ton of services available to me that I never used, yet I was charged various generic fees.

Sure - this is always a balancing act but given how expensive cars are to own and the students who can’t use them, I would generally favor increasing transit and sidewalks, etc. rather than subsidizing parking since that benefits everyone.

Keep in mind that this university has a fairly limited transit system. (http://www.ou.edu/content/dam/CART/Design/156208-CART%20map%...) The school I went to, also in Oklahoma, had zero transit options.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#322

Post by WWLink » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #305

emptybits wrote: post #183

I spent a decade in the parking technology space. (Co-founder PayByPhone -- don't hate me, I genuinely tried to make things more civilized and convenient, I swear!). Anyways, I miss hearing about hilarious and genius hacks and escalations like this. The brilliance deployed to work around parking regulations is amazing. Not condoning, but here's a (naive?) though experiment if the Barnacle shows up in use again... Par…

Parking technology must be full of fascinating stories. It's pretty much everyman against the faceless administration. I once parked at a smart meter, but it wouldn't take my coins. I put a note on the windshield, went inside for a short bit and came out to a missing note replaced by a parking ticket. I came to realize that the "smart' meter wasn't registering a car in the spot, so it would just eat the coins. I took…

It depends on how ruthless the city is about parking enforcement. AFAIK Some places have laws against parking at broken meters. Then again some places say it's legal.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/parking-tickets-bro...

Edit: The university I went to gave me parking tickets twice. Once because I forgot to hang my permit and once .. I have no idea why, but they ticketed everyone in the lot lol. Both times when I stopped by the office they immediately dropped them. Sometimes parking enforcement can be downright reasonable, so I wouldn't necessarily assume the worst of them.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#323

Post by cortesoft » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

jhloa2 wrote: post #318

cortesoft wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ludicrous that you think administrative salaries are huge factors in the cost of education.

How is is not? Many colleges now have more administration staff than education faculty... I know that at my university they constructed a massive new building to house their growing administrative staff.

Do you have an example of where there are more administrators than educators?

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#324

Post by angry_octet » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 2:01 AM UTC

bredren wrote: post #265

angry_octet wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Quite an accusation, but I'll bite. The alternative to this solution is literally a clipboard and excel that doesn't really work. Allowing parking patrollers to capture photos and coordinates allows secretaries to avoid sometimes violent confrontations and I'm happy about that. As for oppressing poor people, the great majority of people who I've seen get towed thanks to record keeping by EasyALPR are parking at comme…

Several points:

- On the parking side, rich people can pay for parking. Some rich people don't and will get fines, which they can pay. Some poor people will risk getting a ticket so they can not spend that $4. (Someone will respond "just leave earlier and park further away" so let me premptively remind them thar poor people are often, e.g. single parents, working multiple jobs, etc, and don't have the luxury of leaving an hour earlier.) Then that person will get a $200 parking fine and it will be enough to plunge them from scraping by to even riskier practices (not having insurance, bad tires, pay day loans, etc) or even dropping out of university / school.

- Systematic ALPR is extremly effective. Literally everyone infringing will get a ticket if there are enough cars do scanning. Enforcement is often subcontracted out, with an objective criteria of maximising fines.

- Instead of the university administration focusing on priority areas, such as where parking would block exits, it becomes a profit source and they lose sight of what parking is for -- access by staff and students.

- ALPR is often part of an NSA style 'COLLECT ALL' policy. It will record the timestamped location of every vehicle. It is often onsold to data brokers, where it ends up in the hands of car repo services, people stalking their ex-partners, and, indirectly, the government.

- Obviously these things may not concern you, and there are indeed many other engineers who will enable this kind of surveillance. However, I believe there is a market for privacy respecting tech.

- Instead of providing direct ALPR time/location, consider providing just hits where it exceeds the max time period, and deleting scanning logs automatically. Make this part of the value proposition. (Obviously not possible with an SDK product, but consider who the buyers are and the licence terms you provide it under.)

- I dislike illegal parkers, bad drivers and so on as much as the next person, but I won't endorse the beginnings of a Chinese 'social credit' type system.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/ethics-board-one-large...

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#325

Post by dsfyu404ed » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

nickysielicki wrote: post #262

Jamwinner wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative, tire boots, are equally asinine and more likely to damage the car. These seem fractionally better up to the point where they are hacked. Unessarily connected devices are a liability beyond measure, and it floors me that nobody seems to notice.

This is a stupid question, but something I’ve always wondered about is how tow trucks disengage the clutch and/or the parking brake... am I to understand that they simply don’t? So if I park my manual transmission car in reverse and with the parking brake on, they’re just going to literally drag my car to their lot or destroy my gearbox? How is this not a bigger issue?

It's really not damaging to drag a car up onto a rollback with a locked parking brake or in park. The systems involved can take it just fine.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#326

Post by angry_octet » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 2:03 AM UTC

petee wrote: post #250

angry_octet wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Park legally then. It's easy, and tons of poor people do it every day. It's just a select noisy few who want to park wherever and blame someone else.

Says the person who has always had enough money and has strong opinions about poverty.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#327

Post by divbzero » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

emptybits wrote: post #183

I spent a decade in the parking technology space. (Co-founder PayByPhone -- don't hate me, I genuinely tried to make things more civilized and convenient, I swear!). Anyways, I miss hearing about hilarious and genius hacks and escalations like this. The brilliance deployed to work around parking regulations is amazing. Not condoning, but here's a (naive?) though experiment if the Barnacle shows up in use again... Par…

> don't hate me

No hate warranted at all! Thank you for your contribution to the world.

You’ve routinely enabled me to park when I didn’t have the change, or avoid standing outside on hot summer days coaxing a semi-functional parking machine to spit out the right ticket.

On one occasion it even helped me pay for my SO’s parking from hundreds of miles away.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#328

Post by angry_octet » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

bredren wrote: post #267

Kalium wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would they go about doing what you suggest, and separating the good of confronting scofflaws from the bad effects of oppressing poor people?

This is higher level than this question, but I actually think the entire individual ownership of vehicles and having them the only viable method for getting to work for many as fundamentally broken. So while I operate this tool that enforces a thing, I don't own a car myself and I honestly can't wait for some autonomous fleet-based future where parking lots are torn up and streets are wider and safer for bicycles and…

Car pooling is a big win. Universities should encourage it. Primary obstacle is probably perceptions of safety.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#329

Post by dsfyu404ed » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 2:06 AM UTC

jimktrains2 wrote: post #277

hanniabu wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue I have is cases like at my school where they basically had entrapment. At the start of every year there'd be like 2-3 months where it's a free for all and students could park wherever. The certainty was nowhere near adequate parking and not everywhere that people parked was readily obvious to be illegal. Some spots had the yellow on the curb worn away 90%, others were things like too close to a corner or hy…

That's not entrapment. Entrapment is the state coercing someone to do something they would not do under normal circumstances. It sounds to me as if these people are illegally parking under normal circumstances. The rules about curbs, hydrants, driveways, &c are well known and common enough between every state that there is no excuse that they weren't aware this was illegal.

>That's not entrapment.

It's still highly unethical, especially when your target population is supposedly already paying tens of thousands for use of the facilities.

Re: Students defeat new 'Barnacle' parking clamp, skip fines and get free internet

#330

Post by dsfyu404ed » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #182

whichquestion wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are low income, and need to get to school but have no other way to go than to drive, what else should you do? It seems like you are suggesting that some people have other choices than driving. There are a lot of colleges with no accessible public transportation infrastructure. Many people don’t have the financial means to do anything else, especially when there isn’t the public transportation infrastructure to…

what does low income have to do with this? driving is expensive . between fuel, vehicle maintenance, parking, and insurance, driving your personal vehicle should not be the "low income" choice. If there's truly no choice other than driving (which isn't really possible, because if driving alone is an option then so is carpooling), your income level has nothing to do with it. If there is a choice, then low income is no…

>what does low income have to do with this? driving is expensive. between fuel, vehicle maintenance, parking, and insurance, driving your personal vehicle should not be the "low income" choice.

At the low end it is not really that expensive.

Initial buy in is like $1500, $1k for the shitbox, $500 for the paperwork you need to legally operate it.

Fuel isn't exactly cheap but it's not a lump sum so if you're poor you can manage.

Maintenance is solved by bringing beer and pizza to someone who does that stuff on the side (for any instance where the upper middle class would shell out hundreds for a licensed professional this is the solution the lower classes usually have). If something really catastrophic happens you get another shitbox and are late on your other bills.

Unless you live somewhere where public transit is both decent quality and cheap and parking routinely costs money then driving is often cheaper than public transit.