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?
> SIMPLE WIRELESS PROGRAMMING
The iNX is easily programmed using our industry-leading
Field Service App, available for iOS® & Android® – no
expensive software or proprietary devices required! The app allows technicians to configure system settings and
sounds, as well as access actionable data on button counts, flashing cycles, and more.
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.
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?
HN has a "second chance queue" for posts that the powers-that-be believe could've/should've gotten more attention but didn't. Happened to one of my posts once, which was confusing as all hell at first but made sense once I learned about it.
Not really. Interesting posts can get buried easily just because they were posted at a bad time and people don't delve that far into the second or further pages. It's been going for almost 9 years now. I think it's a good idea.
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.
Very nice. Totally harmless prank and it clowns on jerks who deserve a good clowning! Hope the pranksters continue and keep it lowkey so they don’t get caught.
The targets of this deserve every bit of shade that can be thrown at them, but unfortunately, this fucks with crosswalk accessibility for the visually impaired.
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.
The expected sound is the "WAIT!" voice, which you can clearly still hear. Anything in addition to that is of zero detriment to the accessibility of the system.
As far as the messages I heard, they still announce whatever they should - just with zucks voice and sarcasticly and extra text. But I haven't listened to everything, maybe they did significantly impact someone's life.
I'd prefer to hear an actual example over broad outrage tho
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.
And is Seattle, “Jeff Bezos” says the crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime and exhorts you not to tax the rich.
At South Lake Union and University District crosswalks earlier this week:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-crosswalk-...
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?
> SIMPLE WIRELESS PROGRAMMING The iNX is easily programmed using our industry-leading Field Service App, available for iOS® & Android® – no expensive software or proprietary devices required! The app allows technicians to configure system settings and sounds, as well as access actionable data on button counts, flashing cycles, and more.
Security not included!
The S in IoT stands for Security.
I thought it stood for a shorter word.
https://www.reddit.com/r/theinternetofshit/
Probably factory defaults exposed to the world
Or a mischievous or disgruntled employee did it, or gave the password to someone.
The manual says the default password is 1234
I wonder how soon it will be before some company starts renting these out from the city for ad space.
That's actually a genius idea in the worst way possible!
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?
HN has a "second chance queue" for posts that the powers-that-be believe could've/should've gotten more attention but didn't. Happened to one of my posts once, which was confusing as all hell at first but made sense once I learned about it.
But this should not change the time when the thing (comment, link) has been posted, should it?
Feature in search of a problem
Not really. Interesting posts can get buried easily just because they were posted at a bad time and people don't delve that far into the second or further pages. It's been going for almost 9 years now. I think it's a good idea.
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)
Very nice. Totally harmless prank and it clowns on jerks who deserve a good clowning! Hope the pranksters continue and keep it lowkey so they don’t get caught.
The targets of this deserve every bit of shade that can be thrown at them, but unfortunately, this fucks with crosswalk accessibility for the visually impaired.
Not by much though, since "wait" and the tones still play. I suspect most visually impaired people will enjoy this as much as the rest of us.
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
The expected sounds are mark Zuckerberg talking about AI for 20 seconds?
No, no kudos to anyone who fucks with safety devices to make some point of theirs.
The expected sound is the "WAIT!" voice, which you can clearly still hear. Anything in addition to that is of zero detriment to the accessibility of the system.
And you know this how? Because your gut tells you?
Don’t be such a killjoy. It still makes sounds.
Were you severely inconvenienced by this hack? If so, how?
One does not have to be harmed by an action to be able to call out that it would have harmful impact.
As far as the messages I heard, they still announce whatever they should - just with zucks voice and sarcasticly and extra text. But I haven't listened to everything, maybe they did significantly impact someone's life.
I'd prefer to hear an actual example over broad outrage tho
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.