Guerrilla Public Service Redux (2017)
99percentinvisible.org
99percentinvisible.org
It's stories like this that can teach us how useless much of the things we think are "secure" are actually not.
I'm always frustrated with the bogus security measure out there that do nothing to stop the criminals and just serve as a hassle to honest people.
Checks are one of those. I have a micr font and a few nice check mockups in Photoshop for "verifying" checking accounts for direct deposit. I'll simply plug in the bank routing number and account number, print it out and write "void" on it. As if that is some kind of security. I also keep some blank checks in case I need to actually print a check. There is nothing special about them except for the number placement (magnetic ink hasn't been a thing for a long while, it's almost all optical now).
Another is a utility bill. I've had several occasions where a utility bill with your name on it is required to verify your location and identity and I either don't yet have the utilities in my name or they are in the name of a roommate. A quick scan, clone brush, and type tool and you've got a utility bill in your name.
I have never had anyone take a second glance at any of this stuff. It always works.
If you were e.g. applying for state welfare while living out of state, a forged bill with an in-state address would not get you caught, but may be crucial for proving ill intent if you get caught by unrelated means.
A lot of security measures add just that much security. It's easy to break, but breaking it removes plausible deniability.
Most home locks wouldn't stop even a person slightly below average strength, bump it with your shoulder a couple times, and you're in. But you can't then claim you got lost, confused, or thought it was your friend's house, or thought you heard someone say "come in". A surprised homeowner will be less hesitant to use available violence, and no court would believe you meant no harm.
I mean me and my neighbours' houses have a big sliding glass door for a back door, one of the neighbours has had it yote in with a brick last year. Not even at night, it was in bright daylight. Probably had a laptop or something in view with nobody around.
It's also stories like this that can show us that people are generally benevolent. Your reaction to this is to call this "forgery" and say the signage is not "secure". Neither of those actually occurred to me here. The only thing I see is a well-intentioned person fixing inadequate signage. It doesn't seem all that less legitimate than signage from the state.
To me, a better argument for increasing "security" of the signage is that occasionally in urban areas I've seen taggers paint over highway signs. That has the potential to confuse drivers, possibly leading to accidents, and it costs the state money to re-paint. But there is no danger in a vigilante making the signage more accurate.
If you don't satisfy codes, the city will undo your work [1].
[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/toronto-man-builds-park-stairs...
There are many things you could do in a car, but the small number of things you are allowed to do makes it manageable to build a mental model of the people around you, even when you can't see their body language. The only 'body language' you have is this static chunk of metal, which is why we mandate indicator lights, their size and their brightness, so you're telegraphing something at least.
- Drivers turning their heads to check side mirrors before changing lanes.
- Swerving slightly when making blind-spot check.
- Front wheel turning before the vehicle turns.
- Drifting side-to-side within lane, signifying the driver
is distracted (or drunk).
- Speed discrepancy signifying the driver is possibly lost and at risk.
of making a sudden turn.
- Tailgating or excessively quick approach, indicative of possibly impulsive behavior.
- Turn signal on when there is no space to change lanes to indicate "soon I need to be in that lane so you'd better move before it becomes an issue"
But it takes a long time to learn this which is part of the challenge of being a 16 year old (or in the case of some people I know, an inattentive 35 year old).
The telegraphing is important enough that some of us flip out when a driver ignores right-of-way trying to 'be nice', or keeps tapping the gas and then not going. It's your turn (or at least it is now!) just go before you get somebody killed.
I take the opposite view. Traffic laws are just the distributed consensus that's dumbed down enough to codify into law. The traffic participants mostly agree what is ok and what isn't but it's so nuanced and complex that we can't legislate it all so we just write imperfect rules for the big stuff like "thou shalt drive on the same side as everyone else" and mostly ignore edge cases like all those situations it's perfectly acceptable do something that isn't within the letter of the law.
AFAIK there's a huge legal distinction between someone (else) forging a whole check, or stealing your duly created check and just forging your signature. For one, if your checks are stolen you have a duty to notify your bank (whereas you can't possibly be aware of a complete forgery). So you might not want to leave extra printouts hanging around.
The security model of checks is complicated. Ultimately the paper document is not really regarded as any kind of authentication, it's usually destroyed fairly early in processing (by the depositor's bank) and replaced by an image. In some cases, less common today, it may later go from image back to a "replacement document" which is a brand new copy of the check produced for convenience when clearing with a bank that doesn't yet support clearing by image. Nothing about the document itself is important to or required for clearing, only the data on it.
Yet it is common for printed checks to contain various anti-counterfeiting features. From first principles this seems a bit confusing.
But checks are not authenticated by their own right. A party who accepts a check is taking on a certain amount of risk, the amount of which depends on the nature of the situation. They are not really "authenticating the check" but actually performing a risk analysis, in which only one of the factors is security features present on the physical document. When you ask to cash a check at a grocery store, they are unlikely to cash it unless it is a payroll check from a nearby company and has expected security features---this is because they are taking on a relatively great risk. But when you deposit a check via ATM, you're often credited the full amount (up to some limit) instantly with virtually no verification besides the ATM trying to parse the number. This is because, as a holder of an ATM card, you have an ongoing relationship with the bank and they feel fairly confident that, if the check is bad, they can recover the value from you in some way.
My point is that talking about forging checks for payroll direct deposit reasons is kind of the most extreme possible case. The only reason you're asked to present a check is because most companies have had way too many incidents of people providing the wrong routing and account numbers and it turning into a real headache when their paycheck disappears. If you went to the trouble of forging a check in order to set up DD, I suspect it's also very likely that you got the routing and account numbers right, clearly you put some effort into this. So in practice a "forged" check is probably every bit as good for their purposes as a legitimate one.
The principle is true enough though: a check is just an order to pay a certain amount of money from a certain account to a certain person: https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/3/3-104 It doesn’t need to be in the standardized form found in a checkbook.
I heard this Podcast a little while ago. I am a civil engineer and found it amusing. I apply for a job in transportation engineering with a big agency and go through the interview process. I passed the written exam and the second oral interview. Next interview is with heads of the organization. They are asking me good questions and I think they like me and my answers. One of them asks how I keep up with news and latest things happening in civil engineering. I mention podcasts as one of the mediums. Then to keep the conversation lively, I tell them about this story that I heard through 99% invisible. They all laughed and found it amusing. It’s a transportation engineering job talking about a sign on the highway. I know my audience. Haha. And I followed up that podcasts are a great news medium and I wouldn’t have heard this story if I wasn’t listening to them. I like to think they liked me from my qualifications but this story pushed them into picking me.
I ended up declining the offer because I got a better offer somewhere else. I’m just glad to know I have a really good interview story.
That part of the LA Freeway System has always been a mess, with the 5/10/60/101/110 all mashing together in one spot.
While I was looking, I noticed that there is barbed wire around the pole that supports the sign, to prevent people from climbing up. But it's only on the pole that's in the middle of the freeway, not the one that is near the side of the road. Clearly not a lot of thought was put into this sign!
They didn't know where it came from so they just junked it.
For some reason this reminds me of the stories after Manhattan (?) legalized bee-keeping. People started confessing that they'd had clandestine hives for years. My favorite was the guy who made a fake AC unit, installed it on the roof, and bought a stereotypical AC repairman outfit that he wore every time he went to do maintenance work.
"The short answer is that it's a scam for parking illegally in loading zones. The nerdy answer is that it's an ongoing experiment in corporate phenomenology, urban camouflage, and brand development."
This is some 90's sitcom silliness I absolutely love it.
https://www.redbull.com/sg-en/bas-keep-walls-2017-13-01
There's a longer documentary on the project somewhere that I can't seem to find right now, but in it they talk about what it took to set up the last jump (starting around 3:00). If I remember right, they actually closed down part of the road (without permission) in order to set up the ramp and make the attempt.
I think what's changed today is that due to the national debt etc, most of us know that things are going wrong but we're so disenfranchised/disempowered that we feel helpless to do anything about it, even if we wanted to or knew we wanted to. It's not just that we haven't had a raise in 20-40 years, but that our bosses haven't had one, and neither have their bosses. We've reached chronic, systemic ineffectualism.
It changes things when we go from a "how do we stop those guys" perspective to a "how do we start helping society fix things" perspective.
It's pretty good as long as you're expected named exits. California built their highways before federal standards on numbering, so they were exempted from numbering exits until about 2000. In 2000, they decided to add exit numbers when replacing signs, and signs have a planned lifetime of 10 years, so anytime now everything should have exit numbers ;). It's gotten better, but there was a while where all the map software would tell you to take exits by number, but the numbers weren't posted (yet), a mix of better databases and more posted numbers and me moving out of CA means I don't recall seeing that in a while.
Missed an exit one time because Google Maps said "take exit 34C" and the exit number was only posted far down the offramp, after it was too late. Best part was Maps neglecting to say "for highway XXX", pretty much the most important highway for the area, which would have made navigating incredibly easy.
FWIW, the U.S. Highway system predates the U.S. Interstate system, and is still primarily composed of a patchwork of pre-existing state roads, "freeways", etc. At the time the interstate system was created highways weren't limited access--and still aren't necessarily, though most people don't understand or obey the technical distinctions in the terminology, or what type of road they're driving on.
[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroyo_Seco_Parkway. It was designed for 45mph.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/highways_and_motor_vehicles
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway
"Freeway" is the term for the kind of road that has "highway" in its official name. Also "parkway", from the era when there was more landscaping around freeways.
edit: spelling
Maybe it's improved since I moved away (early '00s), but it was terrible when I last lived there.
"He copied the height and thickness of existing interstate shields, copied their exact typeface, and even sprayed his sign with a thin glaze of overspray of gray house paint so that it wouldn’t look too new."
Of course, not everyone should be doing this, but what a brilliant story!
As users of web applications and freeways, I think we tend to overestimate our expertise in designing solutions to the things that annoy us. This story had a happy outcome because the expert user was careful and competent. Thankfully the barrier to entry for submitting patches is relatively high.
It was a promotion for the artist, who wanted to sell four more of them.
I really don't like seeing this sort of whatifism whenever a story about somebody doing something that is not their day job comes up. It's amazing it's still considered safe to file your own taxes. The dude had the skills and he did the job and did it well. Hand wringing over what-ifs adds nothing to the discussion.
The answer is to do the things that you do safely, not to never do anything.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_urbanism
There's also a guerilla group that fills potholes in Seattle.
I thought about doing something similar, but only as an amusing thought.
Fortunately they fixed the sign a few months later and gave extra indications where you needed to go.
In high school, a teacher told me about an artist who was applying for a job. The application required three pieces of art. The artist included two pieces of art and a note explaining that the third piece was the postage stamp drawn on the front.
There's a location here in Oregon that fails to tell motorists of a major traffic merge coming. If you miss the merge, you exit the freeway. Granted it's not difficult to get back on, but there's no way to know this in advance. Prior to the pandemic - at minimum once a month - there would be a traffic incident here because people don't get any warning this merge is coming up so make drastic changes at the last second.
Here's the location on street view. Notice there's nothing indicating a merge is coming on the far right lane: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3709178,-122.7485804,3a,75y,...
Once you enter the turn to go right, still no indication of an upcoming merge: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3703302,-122.7526115,3a,75y,...
Here's the merge, but notice that it's not until further ahead that you're now being notified the far right lane is an exit lane: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.37444,-122.7554676,3a,75y,13...
Result? A daily traffic nightmare and constant near-death experiences.
EDIT: BTW Google Maps makes it look like you have plenty of time to move from the exit lane and back onto the free-way, but it's an illusion. People are flying at high speeds on the left and you only have several seconds to get into the correct lane.
EDIT: Forgot to mention this funny part. Conversely on the other side of traffic for that same freeway (I-205), they DO make use of adequate signage. Here's one that shows a merge is coming up: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.370089,-122.749564,3a,75y,52...
About two miles down, they notify you well ahead of time that the far right lane will be an exit lane: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.373263,-122.7342592,3a,75y,8...
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4287854,-79.9328641,3a,75y,6...
I only took this ramp a handful of times before I learned to detour several miles to avoid it...
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1032407,-118.1923538,3a,75y,...
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1133129,-118.1766803,3a,75y,...
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1114424,-118.1817898,3a,75y,...
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1070639,-118.1870749,3a,75y,...
etc.
The exit off I-376 coming out from the tunnel is also really annoying -- exit, then left turn over a bridge, then you're back on the highway and need to exit, then pick the correct lane to head into Squirrel Hill, but it seems pretty arbitrary, and you may end up making a weird left turn anyway just to get "into" the neighborhood.
When I first moved to Pgh, the street map reminded me of this Mario Kart 64 level: https://mariokart.fandom.com/wiki/Yoshi_Valley
It was fun but happy to be back on the west coast now :-) Also, glad I've never had to drive in NYC -- that looks tense!
PA has the worst highway merging habits and I blame onramps like this. There's a number of them that are too short or have stop signs like this:
https://pghroads.tumblr.com/post/44161958475/the-stop-sign-o...
Of course this causes problems when dutifully law abiding drivers from out of town follow the law to the letter and cause near misses or rear endings because they are behaving unexpectedly compared to normal traffic but that's not the problem of the people who put the sign there. Ignoring these kinds of edge cases and expecting someone else (often the courts) to sort it out on a case by case bases when it causes problems isn't exactly uncommon in government. It's like their version of an unanswered bug report from 2010 with a bunch of "hey I found this by googling and I have the same issue" comments below it.
It's essentially:
1) Stop 2) Find a gap in traffic 3) Floor it
Not my favorite interchange, either. Not the worst in Portland by far, but definitely awkward at times.
That's true. I could probably come up with a decent list of them.
This one in Portland is similar, and it's on a bridge. Everyone on the right wants to go left, everyone on the left wants to go right and all want to do it above 60MPH with as little space in-between as possible. Scares the shit out of me every time. https://www.google.com/maps/@45.5065751,-122.6714366,3a,60.7...
And if you do need to merge, do so at the merge point, as per http://trafficwaves.org/seatraf.html
Thanks for posting the link. Will look for info on how to fund/vote for this project. As mandelbrotwurst said below, it's a small cost to greatly improve mental and physical health.
While it's laudable that the City considers funding sources for various projects, particularly so given its many budgetary issues, it is flawed to think that the cost benefit analysis in considering whether to invest in a given project is as simple as "will this project pay for itself directly through fees that it generates".
Money is fungible and the City has the ability to issue bonds. It should consider the effects of what it invests in on the overall health of the urban system at large.
We do this for things that are considered "social projects", but not for infrastructure, but this is an arbitrary distinction, and as always, it's all connected!
Note: I don't intend here to argue that any of the what are called "social projects" are worth or not worth their expense , just calling attention to what I see as an odd disconnect in how we determine what is worth funding.
...as a sidenote, your point also only holds if all of these trips are replacing previously vehicular traffic going over the bridge. Also note that you could have alternatively chosen to focus on the decrease in wear and tear on the bridge!