Posted on 06/05/2022 4:44:47 PM PDT by DoodleBob
He was draggin’ that wagon.
An artist created a virtual traffic jam in Berlin by pulling a wagon with 99 cellphones in it.
Simon Weckert posted a YouTube video with a split screen that showed him pulling a small red wagon through a mostly empty street. It also showed Google Maps had lit the street up red, falsely signifying that the barren thoroughfare was packed with traffic. <0p> “Through this activity, it is possible to turn a green street red which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic,” read the video’s description.
All 99 phones had their location services turned on, meaning they were sending data to Google.
That data didn’t have to travel too far. According to the video, at one point Weckert pulled the wagon across the Ebertbrücke bridge over the Spree river in central Berlin — right past Google’s offices.
A Google spokesperson told ABC News that while the company can distinguish between cars and motorcycles, it hasn’t “quite cracked traveling by the wagon.”
Initially, I wanted to call this silly. But no...I’m going with...kinda clever, interesting and funny.
I have a friend who thinks all of this high tech stuff is so great.
I would love to have someone pull this trick on him.
The more advanced a technology is, the more susceptible it is to primitive attack.
Fascinating. Also might come in handy some day.
Wonderful way to educate the public about how are devices are tools used to control us.
I would think the best programmatic solution to this problem would be to assume that all phones within four feet of each other must be in the same vehicle.
I still think Goolge/Waze has a boss mode.
I.e. someone of enough juice at one of these services causes the super computer to route people OFF the boss’s route.
The roads open up, he gets there faster.
ping
Yes, there’s definitely opportunities to abuse the system or to take advantage of it.
Google can “distinguish between cars and motorcycles.” How the heck is that possible? Maybe they can see crotch rockets and donor cycles splitting lates at 100 mph or zipping back and forth across four lanes of near-standstill traffic. Or maybe they see the guy going from 100 mph to 0 mph in one second.
We’ve got a secondary road one town over that gets LOTS of traffic off the interstate. When Waze shows the interstate is clogged up, they take the road through the small town which drives the residents absolutely nuts.
I’d bet all the residents along that road would take up a collection to buy 500 phones. Each resident could put one or two in their front yard. Waze would show red jammed-up traffic for miles and nobody would try to use that road anymore. At least until they caught on.
Motorcycles vibrate far more, the onboard gyroscopes can detect that. Pretty simple.
The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.
— Scotty, “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock”
So wouldn’t two Greyhound busses full of passengers create a “traffic jam”?
“We’ve got a secondary road one town over that gets LOTS of traffic off the interstate.”
I live on a formally quiet street that get traffic diverted and would love to pull this stunt except most of the common “cut thru’s” now know the area.
so the freedom convoy only needed one truck and a cargo of cell phones to make a difference in and around DC...
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