posted by
takyon
on Tuesday July 28 2015, @04:50AM
from the hackable-signage-in-direct-sunlight dept.
from the hackable-signage-in-direct-sunlight dept.
New Sydney road signs use low-power 'E-Ink' technology and can be remotely updated:
The NSW Government has tapped the same technology you use to read books on your Kindle to create low-energy street signs that can be remotely altered.
The electronic paper road signs, which have been installed across Sydney, are the result of a partnership between Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) and Slovenian technology firm Visionect.
[...] An RMS spokesperson told The Register that 15 of the new signs 'were successfully trialled in the management of traffic on George Street in the Sydney CBD and a second rollout has since been completed in the Moore Park area.'
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Sydney's World-First "E-Paper" Street Signs
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Nollij on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:17AM
Perfect! It was just too hard to manually change road signs [jalopnik.com] to warn drivers about Zombies [blogspot.com], Nazi Zombies [kinja-img.com], and Raptors [kinja-img.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday July 28 2015, @06:32PM
Actually, the manufacturers of those signs in your first link seem to have planned for hackers to use it. From the linked text:
This of course can only refer to running away after unauthorized setting of the text. It cannot refer to the text itself, since you don't run text, you display it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Nollij on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:24AM
If these signs can be updated quickly and easily, this could create serious legal issues. What's to keep them from changing a speed limit sign at a moment's notice? Aside from corruption and ex post factor concerns, this could be used to set different speed limits, lane restrictions, etc under different conditions. While this is already possible with traffic lights, we expect them to come with a higher burden of proof than a (supposedly) static sign.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:29AM
I don't think the signs have any pretense of being static. Click TFA and see the picture.
The mere presence of one of these signs puts you on notice that stuff might change.
Still, parking hour changes could generate a lot of revenue in tickets.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:30AM
So, the cat and mouse chase continues.
You'll install a dash cam, I suppose. I personally don't think most street signs need a very expensive upgrade, but a few decades from now there will likely be a damned CPU in almost everything... a hacker's paradise.
The geek shall inherit the Earth.
(Score: 1) by ledow on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:06AM
If it came to court, they'd have to provide some proof or log of what was showing at what times.
If they don't, it would get thrown out very quickly.
The question is, would anyone go to the extent to falsify such logs - with the kickback and the consequences from that - just to sting you for parking on a line? The answer's probably no.
In the same way that variable speed limit signs across the UK have speed cameras that adjust to the speed limit accordingly (with a grace period on a change, I assume), if you challenge it, they would have to prove that you were guilty, not you proving that you were innocent. It's very likely that there's a bit of software somewhere that stores every change and what triggered it and at what time and unless it was very close to a change boundary, you'd be hard-pressed to challenge it.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:32AM
Sorry, for traffic tickets, you get to prove you are innocent. You have to show the automated system decoded the wrong license plate, or somehow prove you weren't speeding, or whatever.
Judges for these tickets assume you are guilty.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ledow on Tuesday July 28 2015, @09:15AM
Not in my country.
You are sent a photo of your car parked in a place, with a timestamp. That's proof enough to ticket you.
Your avenues are then to prove you didn't do that (i.e. the photo is somehow incorrect) or that you had a good excuse for doing so that excuses you within the law.
The days of "your word against mine" are long gone, with digital cameras in every traffic warden's pocket, and automated cameras throughout capturing your plate, your offence (running red-light, using a bus-only or car-sharing lane, speeding, etc.) and enough categorical evidence that they can convict immediately because they have a picture of the offence being committed.
Pretty much the only "get-out" clause is that you had a valid reason for knowingly breaking that law (emergencies, etc.). Because, how else are you going to wheedle your way out of categorical evidence of the offence being committed? You can't even use the "it wasn't me driving" get-out any more, because so many people mis-used it that it's now an offence for a car-owner NOT to identify the driver (unless they say it was stolen, in which case the driver is in deeper shit, or the owner committing fraud too).
If you get to court, the court must have considered there to be enough evidence to initiate the court action or it wouldn't have allowed it. That the evidence may be incorrect, misconstrued, not the full picture is a possibility that allows you your day in court. But any modern civilisation is still run by "innocent until proven guilty" - the only difference is that there's enough evidence nowadays to prove you guilty before you step into a courtroom and your only way out is to prove that evidence incorrect or that you have a good reason for doing whatever it depicts. And, again, in any modern civilisation, you are allowed to see all the evidence against you and challenge it at any point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2015, @02:54AM
> Not in my country.
Man I fucking hate narcissists like you who say something like that which only has meaning to yourself.
What fucking country are you talking about?
In the USA, what you wrote is all sophistry. That's because in the USA only the most extreme traffic/parking tickets are criminal and only criminal cases are required to meet the standard of "guilty until proven innocent beyond a reasonable doubt." Civil cases do not need to meet that standard, just a "preponderance of evidence."
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:31AM
Mate, you never ever saw a variable speed limit indicator [wikipedia.org] in your life?
Bulb based, LED based, whatever... no? Really?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:28AM
the signs are solar powered but that power can easily be drained if the radio is constantly receiving bad information. so DoS attacks aside, how secure do you think these signs are?
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Tuesday July 28 2015, @05:58AM
From TFA: "easily readable in bright light, and a light in the new road signs is automatically switched on when it gets dark. The signs are solar-powered, but only require electricity for brief windows, when the signs are wirelessly updated by RMS staff."
The first and the second sentence seem to contradict each other. In any case, wouldn't it be possible to apply retroreflective sheeting (similar to regular street signs) on top of the e-paper? Or is the distance between the surface and the e-paper white layer too big for that?
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by hankwang on Tuesday July 28 2015, @07:10AM
Reply to self: it seems that retroreflective sheeting is not a transparent film that you stick onto a painted surface to make it retroreflective. Rather, the film has its own color; either the traffic sign consists of different layers of sheeting cut to shape, transparent ink is printed on top, or black opaque lettering is applied on top.
Still, retroteflective e-paper could have a market, if you figure out how to do it. Self-illuminating displays are hard to get right, i.e. bright enough and with enough contrast under all ambient light conditions. I know roadside and above-road LED displays that are dazzlingly bright in the dark. My phone rarely gets the auto-brightness right either, despite a user-defined lux/brightness curve.
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @08:56AM
Really, what's new about this, other than the e-paper buzzword? We have road signs that change already in the UK, just look at the motorways and main trunk roads especially around the London area. Sure it's not e-paper, but the signs can change to give warnings about planned works or any accidents in the area and expect delays. (Or the default don't drive whilst tired message I usually see.) Some stretches of roads even have overhead signs per lane with no central reservation, to indicate which direction the traffic should flow in that lane to change capacity in each direction, or not to use that lane, or speed restrictions for a particular lane etc.
I'm pretty sure these are all updated remotely, I don't expect engineers to be driving up to each and every one when something needs to change due to point-in-time road conditions.