There are variations, but generally, an accessible pedestrian street crossing signal sounds something like this:
But for a little while in Redwood City, California, some of them sounded like this:
Or in Palo Alto, like this:
Those are obviously not the real voices of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, but I must say that the fakes are pretty well done.
Right now, you’re probably wondering how those poles came to sound like that. City officials were too, so they investigated. And while those investigations didn’t yield a who, they’re pretty sure they’ve got a why. They don’t seem overly keen to talk about it, but everybody say it with me now…Always change your default passwords to something stronger!
For years, Polara has had a publicly accessible app on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store that allowed city officials to access Polara systems. Within 48 hours of the incident being reported in Silicon Valley, the app was pulled from the stores.
Theoretically, access to the crosswalk buttons requires a four-digit numeric code created by the city. However, many online commenters have pointed out that some cities never change the default password: 1234. Polara later republished the app with additional password security requirements. While a four-digit password allows for 10,000 possible combinations, some cybersecurity experts say it can be cracked instantly.
Polara has since added a lockout feature that limits users to two password attempts and gave cities the ability to disable connectivity altogether.
I’ll admit, this is funny. But I’d like to make a request.
Eventually, I will die. But I’d rather not have it happen preventably and prematurely with Elon fucking Musk as a soundtrack, thank you very much. So even if you know how to do this, please don’t. Those signals serve an important purpose. People’s lives (mine included) literally depend on them functioning properly.