Kind of a shitty choice. Like, I'm very much sex positive, but not everyone wants to see porn.
And you might say, "Not everyone wants to see ads!" And totally agree! But like, the people who have to look at this eyesore now have to deal with a different eyesore.
Why not, "This garbage ad remived from your view by hacking group X, you're welcome" and show some pet photos or something? Or like, get clever with it? Run onion or infowars style satire.
Egypt is one of them. There is value in most of the value being in the shock value. Egypt has already done the sorts of things you suggest. It doesn't work. Putting up porn actually makes a lot of sense from a decision matrix perspective here. First of all despite the pretense otherwise Egyptians watch a lot of porn (like most countries). It's sort of a great "in your face" mirror to a country rife with hypocrisy.
It's not like the authorities give much breathing room for more nuanced protest anyway. They're already in for a very unwelcome visit to the slammer if they are caught. Might as well go as transgressive as possible while you still can.
If the goal is to get companies to get their security in order, than showing porn is certainly one of the most effective ways. It'll put political pressure on the company that owns the billboards, for one.
Show a cute picture of Big Bird telling people to eat more pizza, and the company will just reset some passwords. Show a couple of choice scenes from Brazzers and the CEO just got a call from a government minister and suddenly the leaky hardware is getting replaced at breakneck speeds.
Works well too if the goal is just to get people to object to digital billboards.
Yea, it's harmless, and a criticism of digital billboards, and it can't be swept under the rug by the billboard companies as if it didn't happen. Really great stunt!
Contrary to what the religious warriors claim, I can assure you nobody's head is going to explode, nobody is going to get cancer, and nobody is going to suffer psychological damage by briefly riding past these billboards. Truly, let's get serious here.
Porn in the Arab world is probably going to turn already misogynistic men even more down that path. First, perhaps they can try to view women besides their mothers as humans, then we can work forward from there
You have a very heteronormative view of porn. Plenty of Arab women also enjoy porn and the origin of misogyny in Arab society is way older than any kind of modern porn.
Where in my post did I say that Arab women don't enjoy porn?
My point is that many Arab men wont have a single meaningful interaction with a woman outside their family this year. Presenting women as sex objects to those men isn't going to have great effects. Similar to incels and porn.
Generally agree. However, I wonder if their intent was to draw attention to women's rights, or antagonize people regarding women's rights, in those nations. Porn was the wrong choice. Instead of pet photos, they could have shown women in positions of power and not wearing tradional clothes.
I find it far more offensive that you wouldn't even be able to post this headline without self-censoring in the major social media apps for fear of The Algorithm. How far the internet has fallen.
Our daughter is 8. As her father, I’d rather she not be exposed to pornography, and I know my wife would agree with me on that. Of course, she’s sure to somehow be introduced to it eventually, but I hope not until she’s significantly older.
For it to work it has to be unpleasant. In fact, the more unpleasant it is, the more it works. It has to be more unpleasant than making the decision to remove the billboards altogether.
Showing a nice animal or a 'you're welcome' message achieves the goal of removing the ad, but falls short of fixing the root of the problem: the billboard existing. As long as it exists, the temptation and incentive to put ads on it also exists.
> And you might say, "Not everyone wants to see ads!" And totally agree! But like, the people who have to look at this eyesore now have to deal with a different eyesore.
That’s why across the world we should ban blanket advertisements like these. They’re a dumb eyesore.
Porn just exposes what is obviously annoying. But advertisements themselves are a sort of mind-virus you can’t opt out of. I can choose to not buy cable TV. I can’t (reasonably) choose to not walk outside in the public space.
Walk softly and carry a big EMI interference device! I'm waiting for the sci-fi utopia where the AI AR glasses replace all the physical ads with something nicer, ublock: eyes
An outside advertisement display in Finland was defaced recently with a certain well known image from early internet: (warning article includes blurred version of the image)
Hacking in the way presented in the article is vandalism. A door being unlocked isn’t permission to enter. A lock with a flaw doesn’t mean it can be removed.
For the earliest hackers, it was all about puzzles.
In addition to computers, other common obsessions were lockpicking (mechanical computing), model railroads (electricity + switches + relays), and Chinese food menus (language skills).
these hackers are most likely childless incels, no sane adult person would show such content in public setting where some 5yo can set it from car, and I have zero problem with porn
disclaimer - I enjoy porn almost on daily occasion and I have no problem with nudity, but porn certainly doesn't show natural human behavior which should be shown to little kids who don't know any better
I've always wondered what these electronic billboards run on. Obviously I'm not going to cut one down and bring it home to study nor will I impersonate a customer to get one, so I'll never find out, but it's cool someone did manage to hack one.
It's just a computer running windows + big screen + app in full-screen mode that show the images/videos on a loop and can be controlled from a central server
There are a surprising number of Linux thing running webstuff likely hacked together and shipped. I find a lot of vending machine computers on eBay that boot Ubuntu or whatever and start some sort of webservice thing.
What custom software though? How does it get the data? What is it vulnerable to? What about the backend software, that's also part of the system? It's easy to say "it is hardware running software" but it obviously goes deeper than that.
You wanted speed and connectedness every where. Speed by automating the intelligence, speed of payment transactions, high-speed trains ... Result? The speed of hacking everywhere, speed of $6B vanishing in 20 minutes and speed at which things going wrong.
None of these would happen in places that are not invaded by speed of technology and connectedness. Slow is good, not sometimes, but always. Human life is not compatible with things moving at speed of electricity.
But you gave the controlling power to children. The children with science toys want more and more speed, just for fun and profit. They, unfortunately, control the future of human race.
I’m just pointing out that you chose to omit the one that’s over a thousand times worse and accounts for >99% of the “bad” overall.
Traveling the same distance without rail or air (i.e. on foot, horse, car) is also relatively deadly and the alternative (of living in small communities and not traveling long distances) is also not great for multiple reasons
> What is the exact number when it's no longer acceptable?
You’d have to calculate how many lives speed saves. How many people had an organ delivered just within the safe transplant time? How many people were able to eat because a grain shipment could be diverted after a bad harvest? How many people didn’t contract cholera, because it takes minutes to manufacture pipes?
Technically incorrect. Food and healthcare are food and healthcare. In an apocalypse you have food if you have food and you don't have food if you only have money. To make your statement work we need to introduce additional assumptions.
Easy to say when you’re not, oh idk, waiting on a helicopter to deliver a life-saving organ transplant, or freezing your bones off because you don’t have electric heat.
The trade-offs are worth it and humankind continues to accept those trade-offs. Yea 60+ people died in a train crash. So what? Tens of millions ride high-speed trains on a weekly/monthly basis without any issues. So why would we overreact to anomalies when by and large the technologies we’ve invented are pretty awesome?
I’m no opponent to the “slow life” and I have a lot of critical comments regarding modernity (cars, social media, modernist art) and overpopulation but we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water here.
Kind of a shitty choice. Like, I'm very much sex positive, but not everyone wants to see porn.
And you might say, "Not everyone wants to see ads!" And totally agree! But like, the people who have to look at this eyesore now have to deal with a different eyesore.
Why not, "This garbage ad remived from your view by hacking group X, you're welcome" and show some pet photos or something? Or like, get clever with it? Run onion or infowars style satire.
Some societies need a good turning upside down.
Egypt is one of them. There is value in most of the value being in the shock value. Egypt has already done the sorts of things you suggest. It doesn't work. Putting up porn actually makes a lot of sense from a decision matrix perspective here. First of all despite the pretense otherwise Egyptians watch a lot of porn (like most countries). It's sort of a great "in your face" mirror to a country rife with hypocrisy.
It's not like the authorities give much breathing room for more nuanced protest anyway. They're already in for a very unwelcome visit to the slammer if they are caught. Might as well go as transgressive as possible while you still can.
If the goal is to get companies to get their security in order, than showing porn is certainly one of the most effective ways. It'll put political pressure on the company that owns the billboards, for one.
Show a cute picture of Big Bird telling people to eat more pizza, and the company will just reset some passwords. Show a couple of choice scenes from Brazzers and the CEO just got a call from a government minister and suddenly the leaky hardware is getting replaced at breakneck speeds.
Works well too if the goal is just to get people to object to digital billboards.
Yea, it's harmless, and a criticism of digital billboards, and it can't be swept under the rug by the billboard companies as if it didn't happen. Really great stunt!
Showing porn to kids is harmless? Come on, let's get serious here.
Contrary to what the religious warriors claim, I can assure you nobody's head is going to explode, nobody is going to get cancer, and nobody is going to suffer psychological damage by briefly riding past these billboards. Truly, let's get serious here.
Yes, I’m being serious, which is why I think showing porn to kids, even if it’s a few seconds, is really bad.
Under no circumstances is it ok to show porn in a public setting. I say this as someone who very much enjoys porn.
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Porn in the Arab world is probably going to turn already misogynistic men even more down that path. First, perhaps they can try to view women besides their mothers as humans, then we can work forward from there
Are a few clips or screenshots shown on billboards going to influence people to that extent?
I'm responding to OP who is saying exposing randos in Egypt to porn is a good thing and will turn their society upside down
You have a very heteronormative view of porn. Plenty of Arab women also enjoy porn and the origin of misogyny in Arab society is way older than any kind of modern porn.
Where in my post did I say that Arab women don't enjoy porn?
My point is that many Arab men wont have a single meaningful interaction with a woman outside their family this year. Presenting women as sex objects to those men isn't going to have great effects. Similar to incels and porn.
Generally agree. However, I wonder if their intent was to draw attention to women's rights, or antagonize people regarding women's rights, in those nations. Porn was the wrong choice. Instead of pet photos, they could have shown women in positions of power and not wearing tradional clothes.
This has to be either activists or trolls and my bet is on trolls. Aiming to cause the most damage for lols.
This is hilarious and harmless. Who cares?
I find it far more offensive that you wouldn't even be able to post this headline without self-censoring in the major social media apps for fear of The Algorithm. How far the internet has fallen.
It’s objectively not harmless, and clearly lots of people care.
Subjectively, yes. Not sure about objectively.
> This is hilarious and harmless. Who cares?
Our daughter is 8. As her father, I’d rather she not be exposed to pornography, and I know my wife would agree with me on that. Of course, she’s sure to somehow be introduced to it eventually, but I hope not until she’s significantly older.
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I guess this is done simply to grab as much of people's attention as possible. And I mean all groups of people:
– for observers on the road, make them more likely to film this and share on social media;
– for news agencies, make them allocate as much coverage as possible for this incident;
– for regular readers, simply to more likely grab theirs attention.
It's all about consent, isn't it, we don't consent to advertising in every public space and yet we can't get away from it.
For it to work it has to be unpleasant. In fact, the more unpleasant it is, the more it works. It has to be more unpleasant than making the decision to remove the billboards altogether.
Showing a nice animal or a 'you're welcome' message achieves the goal of removing the ad, but falls short of fixing the root of the problem: the billboard existing. As long as it exists, the temptation and incentive to put ads on it also exists.
> And you might say, "Not everyone wants to see ads!" And totally agree! But like, the people who have to look at this eyesore now have to deal with a different eyesore.
That’s why across the world we should ban blanket advertisements like these. They’re a dumb eyesore.
Porn just exposes what is obviously annoying. But advertisements themselves are a sort of mind-virus you can’t opt out of. I can choose to not buy cable TV. I can’t (reasonably) choose to not walk outside in the public space.
Walk softly and carry a big EMI interference device! I'm waiting for the sci-fi utopia where the AI AR glasses replace all the physical ads with something nicer, ublock: eyes
An outside advertisement display in Finland was defaced recently with a certain well known image from early internet: (warning article includes blurred version of the image)
https://yle.fi/a/74-20134714
My mind went straight to goatse and yes, it was goatse.
Really? My mind went straight to Tom of Finland and was disappointed. Least it’s not Tubgirl.
> According to Olkkonen, the light board has been broken into. It is not a hacking incident.
> – It was clear what had been done. The media player's cord had been ripped out and its own content had been played.
To me, it's more an act of vandalism than hacking.
Hacking in the way presented in the article is vandalism. A door being unlocked isn’t permission to enter. A lock with a flaw doesn’t mean it can be removed.
For the earliest hackers, it was all about puzzles.
In addition to computers, other common obsessions were lockpicking (mechanical computing), model railroads (electricity + switches + relays), and Chinese food menus (language skills).
I don’t think I would ever stop laughing if I was driving down the highway at night and saw hello.jpg shining brightly from an LED billboard.
How uncreative.
Nothing against porn, but given a platform that's what you pick to blast into the world?
Hackers gotta hack.
We did the same thing back in the 80's.
The scenario was usually "Oh, wow! We got access! What do we do before someone notices in the next ten minutes?!"
Political people want to make statements. Hackers just want their hacks to be noticed.
Yeah I sorta get it, but like idk put something like "End child hunger" on it or something...
these hackers are most likely childless incels, no sane adult person would show such content in public setting where some 5yo can set it from car, and I have zero problem with porn
disclaimer - I enjoy porn almost on daily occasion and I have no problem with nudity, but porn certainly doesn't show natural human behavior which should be shown to little kids who don't know any better
I've always wondered what these electronic billboards run on. Obviously I'm not going to cut one down and bring it home to study nor will I impersonate a customer to get one, so I'll never find out, but it's cool someone did manage to hack one.
It's just a computer running windows + big screen + app in full-screen mode that show the images/videos on a loop and can be controlled from a central server
Some version of Windows + custom software
There are a surprising number of Linux thing running webstuff likely hacked together and shipped. I find a lot of vending machine computers on eBay that boot Ubuntu or whatever and start some sort of webservice thing.
What custom software though? How does it get the data? What is it vulnerable to? What about the backend software, that's also part of the system? It's easy to say "it is hardware running software" but it obviously goes deeper than that.
Hopes, dreams and FM.
finally!
Good job! I despise advertising billboards.
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What do you mean by the use of the triple parentheses?
electromagnetic wavefront of course
One man’s hacker is another man’s sexual freedom fighter.
I wonder how this goes over in conservative countries like Egypt. Is it a scandal of some sort with ample pearl clutching or is it mostly a non-event?
You wanted speed and connectedness every where. Speed by automating the intelligence, speed of payment transactions, high-speed trains ... Result? The speed of hacking everywhere, speed of $6B vanishing in 20 minutes and speed at which things going wrong.
None of these would happen in places that are not invaded by speed of technology and connectedness. Slow is good, not sometimes, but always. Human life is not compatible with things moving at speed of electricity.
But you gave the controlling power to children. The children with science toys want more and more speed, just for fun and profit. They, unfortunately, control the future of human race.
To be fair, both high speed trains and planes are very safe forms of transportation, with deaths numbering in less than 1000 per year.
Currently the yearly global death toll for cars is at 1.16 million and climbing
with deaths numbering in less than 1000 per year.
Well, that's OK, then.
What is the exact number when it's no longer acceptable? Is is 1,001? 10,001?
Exactly how many deaths are perfectly fine in the name of progress? How many people are we allowed to kill for the sake of convenience?
Currently the yearly global death toll for cars is at 1.16 million and climbing
No need to compare. Both can be bad at the same time.
I’m just pointing out that you chose to omit the one that’s over a thousand times worse and accounts for >99% of the “bad” overall.
Traveling the same distance without rail or air (i.e. on foot, horse, car) is also relatively deadly and the alternative (of living in small communities and not traveling long distances) is also not great for multiple reasons
> What is the exact number when it's no longer acceptable?
You’d have to calculate how many lives speed saves. How many people had an organ delivered just within the safe transplant time? How many people were able to eat because a grain shipment could be diverted after a bad harvest? How many people didn’t contract cholera, because it takes minutes to manufacture pipes?
That speed and connectedness increases GDP by vastly more though.
That speed and connectedness increases GDP by vastly more though.
Translation: Money is more important than human lives.
Got it.
Money makes it possible for people to afford food and healthcare
Technically incorrect. Food and healthcare are food and healthcare. In an apocalypse you have food if you have food and you don't have food if you only have money. To make your statement work we need to introduce additional assumptions.
Slow is good, not sometimes, but always.
Ask any cowboy. The fastest way to move a cow is slow.
Easy to say when you’re not, oh idk, waiting on a helicopter to deliver a life-saving organ transplant, or freezing your bones off because you don’t have electric heat.
The trade-offs are worth it and humankind continues to accept those trade-offs. Yea 60+ people died in a train crash. So what? Tens of millions ride high-speed trains on a weekly/monthly basis without any issues. So why would we overreact to anomalies when by and large the technologies we’ve invented are pretty awesome?
I’m no opponent to the “slow life” and I have a lot of critical comments regarding modernity (cars, social media, modernist art) and overpopulation but we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water here.