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Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

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Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#31

Post by greyface- »

zniturah wrote: post #30
elpocko wrote: post #29

This HN post is seven days old but displayed and ranked as if it was posted 9 hours ago, with all timestamps falsified. The déjà vu effect is disconcerting and an absolute mind fuck. Please stop doing this, ffs. The person who thought this would be a good idea is a madman. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Silicon%20Valley%20crosswalk%2...

How is it technically possible?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380

https://news.ycombinator.com/pool (specifically, this post can be found on page 8: https://news.ycombinator.com/pool?next=43673425)

Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#32

Post by ryandrake »

elpocko wrote: post #29

This HN post is seven days old but displayed and ranked as if it was posted 9 hours ago, with all timestamps falsified. The déjà vu effect is disconcerting and an absolute mind fuck. Please stop doing this, ffs. The person who thought this would be a good idea is a madman. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Silicon%20Valley%20crosswalk%2...

Wild! I definitely remember commenting on this last week and sure enough my comment shows below as “8 hours ago” (while I was asleep). What kind of sorcery is going on?

Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#33

Post by denysvitali »

greyface- wrote: post #31
zniturah wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it technically possible?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/pool (specifically, this post can be found on page 8: https://news.ycombinator.com/pool?next=43673425 )

Can confirm. Once dang pinged me directly by email saying that my story was re-upped. The story went again to the frontpage and the date was adapted (IIRC), but the comments were kept:

---

Hi denysvitali,

The submission "PostmarketOS-Powered Kubernetes Cluster" that you posted to Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352075) looks good, but hasn't had much attention so far. We put it in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page some time in the next day or so.

This is a way of giving good HN submissions multiple chances at the front page. If you're curious, you can read about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 and other links there. And if you don't want these emails, sorry! Let us know and we won't do it again.

Thanks for posting good things to HN!

Daniel (moderator)

Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#34

Post by borski »

googlryas wrote: post #24
borski wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hackers didn’t make them hackable. They were already hackable. Your issue is with the city and/or company, not with the “hackers.”

The hackers didn't make them hackable, but they did hack them.

And did not do anything malicious like remove the actual accessibility tones.

My point isn’t that they are some kind of Robin Hood, but that their actions don’t warrant anger, whereas the insecurity of a public system we rely on… should.

Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#35

Post by SoftTalker »

systemswizard wrote: post #3
jimmydoe wrote: post #2

this is fun. it seems most of these crosswalks can be configured via app from https://polara.com/ . So either the authentication was leaked or got physically flashed/hacked?

Probably factory defaults exposed to the world

Or a mischievous or disgruntled employee did it, or gave the password to someone.

Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#36

Post by [deleted] »

scubbo wrote: post #19
lysace wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No harmful impact has been called out.

Not explicitly, but > which disabled people rely on is pretty clear implication. But I'll spell it out for you - people with impairment to senses (primarily vision) rely on this infrastructure to know when it's safe to cross a road.

[deleted]

Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#37

Post by toast0 »

scubbo wrote: post #19
lysace wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No harmful impact has been called out.

Not explicitly, but > which disabled people rely on is pretty clear implication. But I'll spell it out for you - people with impairment to senses (primarily vision) rely on this infrastructure to know when it's safe to cross a road.

These devices will also often indicate their location when you hold the button. That can help a visually impared person confirm that they're oriented correctly. That use case is likely why these are field programmable; factory programming would be sufficient for limited prompts (wait, begin crossing, count down, clicks and whistles, etc) but not for street names.

Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#39

Post by michaelt »

googlryas wrote: post #24
borski wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hackers didn’t make them hackable. They were already hackable. Your issue is with the city and/or company, not with the “hackers.”

The hackers didn't make them hackable, but they did hack them.

Apparently hacking is something the denizens of Hacker News disapprove of these days?

Re: Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices

#40

Post by xoxxala »

delusional wrote: post #21
lupusreal wrote: post #15

If we could not fuck with accessibility devices which disabled people rely on, that'd be great. Thanks.

It sounds like they still make the normal/expected sounds. So kudos to the pranksters for keeping them safe and available for the people in need of accessibility.

Deviant Ollam has a video with clips from the crosswalks. He also mentions the accessibility is not impacted. Worth a watch if you haven’t heard the AI impressions.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=woQEJ_fY8Mw

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