This is similar to the feeling I got a few days ago when I finally got to use the shopping cart wheel unlocker that’s been in the back of my mind since watching the Defcon talk about it. Instead of the misconfigured and disabled cart being a giant roadblock in the store I was able to take it and use it normally. Feels good.
That’s strange, trying a few permutations here and I can’t get it to break. But at any rate, here’s the content:
[embedded players for sound files]
About
Play the below sounds through your phone speaker and hold it next to a Gatekeeper Systems wheels to lock/unlock. Check me out on twitter @stoppingcart
How It Works
Most electronic shopping cart wheels listen for a 7.8 kHz signal from an underground wire to know when to lock and unlock. A management remote can send a different signal at 7.8 kHz to the wheel to unlock it. Since 7.8 kHz is in the audio range, you can use the parasitic EMF from your phone’s speaker to “transmit” a similar code by playing a crafted audio file. Link to my original DEFCON 29 Talk
Where the heck y’all live where the power goes out so often?
I’m in the middle of the frozen tundra in Canada, we’re powered entirely by renewable energy, we’ve got snow storms, blizzards, floods and some serious thunder storms and I can’t even recall the last time we lost power for any noticeable amount of time. If anything having to reset the clock on the microwave is the only reason I’d know it went out. There’s talk of moving to a smart grid system because ours is dated, so wtf are you people working with?
I do love me a good flashlight though, I’ve got a couple around the house just in case and one in my bag at all times.
Weeks? That’s fucking insane. A neighbourhood might lose power for a few hours during a major storm up here but I can’t think of the last time it was a day. I was probably a kid, 30 years ago.
I am also in Canada. Our province runs the power grid on coal and sold the utility to a private company that doesn’t bother with the expense of upkeep on infrastructure. They built a sweet skating rink though.
Most of the time power outages are causes by power lines getting taken out by falling branches, cars crashing into utility poles, ice build up, wind. I think it’s great you have renewable energy sources but pretty sure it’s irrelevant.
Depends on the severity of the storm, and where it is. Most of Northern America is equipped for power outages. If a power outage extends over half a day something wacky happened.
Renewables are more evenly distributed, which means power transfer/substations can reroute more easily than when all the power comes from a single point of failure.
Where the heck y’all live where the power goes out so often?
we’re powered entirely by renewable energy
That’s probably why. For example, Hydro One uses old equipment and doesn’t give a fuck about maintaining their aging equipment so it all just breaks catastrophically eventually, especially during bad weather. Transformers blow fairly often in bad weather tbh.
Looking back at the last two years, the causes of power outages lasting long enough to do something about were caused by drivers hitting and damaging power poles, the annual winter ice storm, severe thunderstorms sending trees down on the line, and those idiots who shot out the substation last year.
Power interruptions for a fraction of a second are a weekly to daily occurrence. Lights slightly dim and the stove forgets what time it is and that’s about it.
I have three niblings (2 nephews, 1 niece). Each one is getting a flashlight and a tiny Nitecore whistles when they get to a certain birthday, not sure which age yet. I know their parents would never forgive me if I gave them the whistles now.
The power was off for a little over two days, so we used our flashlights and other lights a lot. It really doesn’t take much money to prepare. A lot of the gooseneck lamps these days use USB, so you can combine a lamp and a power bank to create a task light away from the backup battery.
Yeah, I was probably going to wait until 18 for the whistle. It’s not as loud as a pea whistle, but it’s still annoying. The only reason I would ever give it to them earlier would be because we’re in an area that is under threat of a Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake. But if they’re just going to get it taken away because they can’t control themselves, it’s not going to be much use. For this particular whistle it is hard to produce a nice satisfying screech, though I suppose they might just take that as a challenge.
For the flashlight, I was thinking more like 15 or 16. The only risk there is losing it, but it’s cheap so that’s kind of their call on whether they value it enough to replace it.
Replace a flashlight with a dick\vag in this picture, and you can probably cover half of the most commenting nerds, me included. They visually light up once they feel THAT is coming and shine bright a long time after. That’s just cute.
I used to work next to this guy. If a box came in, I would just cut the packing tape open with a house key from my pocket… unless he saw me looking like I was about to open the box.
Then I needed to wait for him to walk over with his damn leatherman and flip it to just the right thing. Whole ordeal usually added time to the stupid box opening.
This is why I daily carry a Skeletool, no scratching at nail nicks trying to get the right tool out, the blade opens like any other pocket knife, there’s no “which one is it”, it’s one pull for a screwdriver and two pulls for the pliers. Sure the advertised “tool count” is low, it doesn’t open cans, sew leather or steal cable, but I’ve got a knife, screwdriver and pliers on me at all times.
You haven’t lived until some needs a knife to open something on christmas and 5 of the 6 adult males in your family are just standing there holding their pockets knives for you to choose from.
As the result of apower outage that generally make things not working for everyone and can have adverse effects like people dying, who are dependant on electricity for medical systems, heating in winter, and otherwise adverse effects such as increased injuries etc.?
Wishing for a power outage is nuts. If he wants to try out his toys he can just turn off the main circuit breaker and get a small “power outage” for himself. But that would be boring because the neighbours wouldnt be amazed at how he sits in the light, while the rest of the street sits in the dark.
Fair point. Unfortunately the prepper movement seems to have many people who lowkey, or highkey are hopeing for societal collapse, so they can use their preperations to an advantage and gain of power.
As Tar_Alcaran said, most of them are really really right wing.
…and neck deep in 7 conspiracy theories and get-rich-quick schemes of the week.
As Cory Doctorow puts it, "Prepping is a way of playing out a fantasy in which you are elevated to savior status, not an exercise in disaster-mitigation."
The prepper market is absolutely rife with grifts.
Prepperism is a rabbit hole that your uncle falls down that makes Thanksgiving awkward and makes the whole rest of the family worry about them. Not a benign hobby. And certainly not effective disaster preparedness.
There’s of course nothing wrong with having a kerosene heater in your garage or owning a generator in case your power goes out for a few days. But luxury bunkers full of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of MREs bought from Alex Jones’ online store? That’s someone who thinks the government is all disguised extraterrestrials who drink child adrenal fluid to stay young and and inebriated. Except Trump who is prophesized to throw them all in jail.
There isn’t anything inherently wrong with having a properly built bunker with all the food and stuff you need.
I agree there are a lot of right wing nutjobs with more guns than gardening tools, but you’re being pretty uncharitable to a very broad hobby that includes just as many hippies and leftish people ready to help their local communities.
Preparedness is something everyone should have, so that when the store shelves empty at the start of the pandemic, no one is concerned about their lack of toilet paper or feeding their kids.
Run while you can. I like to think I am a normal person. But there are so many high performing flashlights and batteries for certain situations that I now have a set of 7 flashlights. They are part of my everyday carry. I have a laser beam flashlight that can reach a nearby island.
No but seriously, it’s addictive. One moment you’re like “I just need a good flashlight” and the next you’re telling somebody how the flashlight they got from Lowes has terrible tint and CRI compared to your hand-assembled copper and titanium pixel camo Emisar D4v2 with dedomed Nichia 519As you got for like $120 from a Chinese guy named Hank.
I love the small but powerful LED lights that can light up an entire room. Was able to impress a few people in just the right moment with those and always have one with me.
I’ve got one of those fuck-you flashlights from when I first found out about “enthusiast” flashlights a few years ago. It gets bright enough to burn dark colored objects if you concentrate the light on a small part, works like a giant magnifying glass/ sun combo. I need to buy a charger for the battery so I can play around with it again, it was too much fun seeing people’s faces when I made it daylight for an entire street.
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