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The Max Headroom Incident

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Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#121

Post by laurent92 »

h2odragon wrote: post #114
flatiron wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i believe there were cuts in the video so it was prerecorded. cuts that apparently were so clean it was another piece of evidence they had some access to some professional equipment as consumer grade equipment of the time wasn't up to the task

It could have been put together in one of several schools in the area from consumer grade sources.

At that time, printers already printed yellow dots with the serial ID. I’m most surprised VHS wasn’t watermarked. It could have helped a lot in terrorist investigations (ransom videos).

I’m always afraid when I hear someone copypasting Apple memos. Obviously they must have watermark, if not text glyphs (rn = m, and further UTF-8 incantations), at least subtly different phrasing depending on which department, or person, views it.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#122

Post by laurent92 »

asdff wrote: post #47
dangle1 wrote: post #2

It's always fascinating seeing the internet catalog and consolidate knowledge, especially regarding events that occurred pre-internet. Back when these events happened, a blurb appeared on TV news and in papers, but there was no easy way to get the big picture as the investigations evolved.

People actually used to save stories that were interesting or cut them out of the paper, or go to the library and read a book on the subject. Fastforward to today, with the world at their fingertips, and who even saves anything anymore? It's all transient information on the web today. That interactive nyt article you might have bookmarked a few years ago has probably link rotted by now. If it wasn't for wikipedia cat…

A lot of people save clips nowadays. Especially since the ideology wars are visible in every phrasing, people keep it “as proof” and upload compilations to Youtube. It would be interesting to see if this behavior stopped if Youtube didn’t allow to “broadcast yourself” anymore. I’m sure Tiktok would take over but it is much more ephemeral.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#123

Post by storyinmemo »

a1pulley wrote: post #119
danachow wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit my memory may be spotty - but was there any reason to believe this could not easily have been pulled off by 2 people - ie a married couple? Sure relationships break up but I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave.

> I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave. Is that possible?

"I don't know how yous done it, but I know yous done it!"

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#124

Post by dymk »

laurent92 wrote: post #121
h2odragon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could have been put together in one of several schools in the area from consumer grade sources.

At that time, printers already printed yellow dots with the serial ID. I’m most surprised VHS wasn’t watermarked. It could have helped a lot in terrorist investigations (ransom videos). I’m always afraid when I hear someone copypasting Apple memos. Obviously they must have watermark, if not text glyphs (rn = m, and further UTF-8 incantations), at least subtly different phrasing depending on which department, or perso…

Facebook has caught leakers in the past, by modifying the whitespace in internal memos shown to employees

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#126

Post by pram »

HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #101

I only see one version of this video on youtube, the first incident. I swear years ago when this was posted here, there was a different version I saw with more stuff going on and the audio was much more clear than the first. Am I missing something or is there more than one Max Headroom signal hijack video out there?

I’ve seen this discussed for like 20 years and that is the only version I’ve ever seen fwiw

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#127

Post by mark-r »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #39
beaner wrote: post #6

Of all the conspiracy theories out there, this one, to me, has the highest coverage-to-interestingness ratio. It just seems like a teen hacked an AV system and did a goofy presentation. I'm surprised that type of thing isn't more common, and I'm befuddled as to why this one gets so much attention.

>I'm surprised that type of thing isn't more common I'd guess that interfering with a digital TV signal today is considerably harder than an old analogue TV signal.

At some point in the chain it's probably still analog, but the question is where's the switch? I think the compression scheme is very dependent on comparing adjacent frames, so you couldn't have compression until the point where all inputs come together.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#128

Post by Angostura »

a1pulley wrote: post #119
danachow wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit my memory may be spotty - but was there any reason to believe this could not easily have been pulled off by 2 people - ie a married couple? Sure relationships break up but I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave.

> I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave. Is that possible?

Yes - the commenter murdered their spouse.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#129

Post by sillysaurusx »

dymk wrote: post #124
laurent92 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that time, printers already printed yellow dots with the serial ID. I’m most surprised VHS wasn’t watermarked. It could have helped a lot in terrorist investigations (ransom videos). I’m always afraid when I hear someone copypasting Apple memos. Obviously they must have watermark, if not text glyphs (rn = m, and further UTF-8 incantations), at least subtly different phrasing depending on which department, or perso…

Facebook has caught leakers in the past, by modifying the whitespace in internal memos shown to employees

Hmm. "Command-A shift-J in macvim if you ever need to leak a memo" is now a piece of advice. How strange.

Re: The Max Headroom Incident

#130

Post by fortran77 »

LaserDiscMan wrote: post #19

A compilation of news reports at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBOhFGmbSIs "Captain Midnight" jammed HBO for almost 5 minutes in 86: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_sig...

IN fact, this article also talks about Captain Midnight.
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