If you have never seen the original 1985 British film that introduced "Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future", you are in for a serious treat. It is so much better than I ever expected -- and it's only 55 min long. More relevant than ever:
Always a favorite whenever it shows up here. It’s like you know this person was breaking the law but no one was really hurt and it goes unsolved still. It’s a great mystery story of someone messing with a system no one really messes with.
It's amazing that the identity of the signal pirate has never been leaked. Doubly so since there were at least two people involved. Surely the statute of limitations has passed. Perhaps everyone involved passed away before they ever felt comfortable going public with their story.
Long ago I read a (4chan I think?) post from someone claiming that it was very possible he knew the people who did this hack.
He said he wasn't 100% sure, but that there were strong reasons to believe so.
He explained that he used to hang out with 2 brothers, one of which had some mental issues, perhaps autism or something similar, that acted strange at times, and that seemed to have skills with radios and other tech. He also remembers that a girl which is very briefly shown in the hacked video stream looked like the girlfriend of the other brother.
Also recalled that the voices in the stream sounded familiar and I think he even mentions remembering that they had a sheet of metal similar to the one in the video, and that his theory was that the brother with autism was the one with the mask, while the other one rotated the sheet of corrugated metal, while the girlfriend was recording them.
Anyway, I don't remember the exact details and of course I'm not saying the story is true or anything...
But it did have some interesting air of mistery even if it were false. The poster didn't seem like he was trying to lie to anyone, just that he genuinely thought he kew the people responsible for the hack.
And then the story he was telling suddenly portrayed a very cool and odd piece of tech "history", if it were true.
To me, this always sounded a little bit like real-life cyberpunk stuff and every time I remember about Max Headroom I'm reminded of the hack and the story I read by random chance, on a random forum like 4chan, thinking, what if it was real and I was just reading there a post written by someone that knew the Max Headroom hacker...? I wish very hard for that to be real.
Well... I'm rambling here, but I guess that's the magical internet a lot of us feel drawn too?
My theory is that this wasn't the only stupid tech stunt done at that party. Some of the others might still have consequences if known. There's also the possibility that people might've been new to the chemistry involved and never remembered what happened once they rejoined consensus reality.
"the computer-generated appearance was achieved with prosthetic make-up and hand-drawn backgrounds. Preparing the look for filming involved a four-and-a-half-hour session in make-up, which Frewer described as "gruelling" and "not fun""
One of my favourite shows growing up. Hard to believe it was all done 'analog' and no CGI. Adds rawness and charm to the whole thing - Kind of like 'Thunderbirds'.
I lot of broadcast operations have a frequency that isn't in the broadcast band that they use to send their signal to a remote tower. Presumably if you point a stronger transmission at the receiver you can become the dominant signal. Or at least that's what I always thought. I would think you would have needed some inside information or otherwise have worked in the industry at the time to really pull this off? Maybe not, though.
We are close to accidentally creating an attention-democracy where whoever is able to keep the attention of the masses has the most influence over politics. It could be argued that whoever is able to get the most attention is also the most in tune with what people want. Since centralized filtering of news is an important part of the political meta-game of building opinion, perhaps it is not wrong to formalize this process. Enter Max Headroom.
>HELEN THOMAS, UPI White House Reporter, UPI ARCHIVES MAY 7, 1987
>Headrest is shown saying, 'That re-reminds me! Kids! Need rock-solid information on safe sex? Call this number on your screen!' - 202-456-1414, the White House.
I've always been surprised some inspired performance artist hasn't done this to the live sound feed at a big music festival like Bonnaroo or Coachella yet. Audio runs from the stage/band to a sound guy in the middle of the field who controls the mix then from there it goes back across the field to the PA system mounted on stage. The audio cables are literally just big snakes that run right through the crowd where anyone could access them. Highjack a post mixer cable and bob's your uncle.
The only hitch would be that afaik at festivals the pa arrays are passive so you'd need to steal power too so you can power an amplifier and send a powered signal, but if you managed that it'd be even worse than the tv broadcast intrusion because there's no easy way to shut it off, the sound guy has no control because you're after him in the signal chain and nobody onstage is set up to handle something like that. It's not like beyonce is gonna climb the scaffolding and start unplugging speakers when the crab rave starts playing inexplicably.
Two problems with that approach at large scale shows:
1) These days the cabling is run inside a run of barricade bisecting the crowd, so it's in a secure area the entire time
2) Modern PA systems at shows of that size have almost exclusively moved to digital snakes / audio networks, not analog
To realistically pull that off you'd need production access to the event to tap into the audio network and re-route things. That said, given the number of people with appropriate access and the fact that InfoSec isn't a high priority, that actually seems pretty doable.
Once they realized what was going on though, a few breakers flipped would drop power to the amps or speakers (depending on whether using powered or passive arrays) and it would be over (which would happen pretty quickly since the power distro is very well organized and labeled since quick troubleshooting is often necessary).
I'm actually surprised this doesn't happen with wireless microphones more often. While the industry is slowly moving towards digital transmitters, many broadway shows still use old body pack analog transmitters on their actors. Since these shows are stationary they are likely using the same frequencies for each transmitter every night.
I can't imagine it would be too hard to figure out some of these frequencies and transmit over them into the PA. There is a pilot tone but I don't think it'd be difficult to spoof.
I used to work in a shop that rented out audio equipment to broadway shows.
[+] [-] dr_dshiv|6 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/aZY-yQYVf38
[+] [-] hazeii|6 years ago|reply
Janie Crane: "An off switch?"
Metrocop: "She'll get years for that."
[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_%28TV_series%29#T...
[+] [-] pacomerh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prvc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubyfan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tylersmith|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saganus|6 years ago|reply
He said he wasn't 100% sure, but that there were strong reasons to believe so.
He explained that he used to hang out with 2 brothers, one of which had some mental issues, perhaps autism or something similar, that acted strange at times, and that seemed to have skills with radios and other tech. He also remembers that a girl which is very briefly shown in the hacked video stream looked like the girlfriend of the other brother.
Also recalled that the voices in the stream sounded familiar and I think he even mentions remembering that they had a sheet of metal similar to the one in the video, and that his theory was that the brother with autism was the one with the mask, while the other one rotated the sheet of corrugated metal, while the girlfriend was recording them.
Anyway, I don't remember the exact details and of course I'm not saying the story is true or anything...
But it did have some interesting air of mistery even if it were false. The poster didn't seem like he was trying to lie to anyone, just that he genuinely thought he kew the people responsible for the hack.
And then the story he was telling suddenly portrayed a very cool and odd piece of tech "history", if it were true.
To me, this always sounded a little bit like real-life cyberpunk stuff and every time I remember about Max Headroom I'm reminded of the hack and the story I read by random chance, on a random forum like 4chan, thinking, what if it was real and I was just reading there a post written by someone that knew the Max Headroom hacker...? I wish very hard for that to be real.
Well... I'm rambling here, but I guess that's the magical internet a lot of us feel drawn too?
[+] [-] h2odragon|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acqq|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(character)
The original was not done with computers:
"the computer-generated appearance was achieved with prosthetic make-up and hand-drawn backgrounds. Preparing the look for filming involved a four-and-a-half-hour session in make-up, which Frewer described as "gruelling" and "not fun""
But it looked like magic at that time.
Also:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pgay3n/headroom-hacker
[+] [-] cyberferret|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038
[+] [-] agildehaus|6 years ago|reply
The Wikipedia article seems to indicate even the engineers never figured it out.
[+] [-] th0ma5|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fit2rule|6 years ago|reply
The dystopian future predicted in this series is well and truly upon us - a case of fiction predicting future truths.
We need Max Headroom to guide us out of the disaster of the modern Internet. Alas, we have Zuckerberg instead ..
[+] [-] ganzuul|6 years ago|reply
We are close to accidentally creating an attention-democracy where whoever is able to keep the attention of the masses has the most influence over politics. It could be argued that whoever is able to get the most attention is also the most in tune with what people want. Since centralized filtering of news is an important part of the political meta-game of building opinion, perhaps it is not wrong to formalize this process. Enter Max Headroom.
[+] [-] DonHopkins|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Headrest
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/05/07/Ron-Headrests-reveng...
>HELEN THOMAS, UPI White House Reporter, UPI ARCHIVES MAY 7, 1987
>Headrest is shown saying, 'That re-reminds me! Kids! Need rock-solid information on safe sex? Call this number on your screen!' - 202-456-1414, the White House.
[+] [-] xouse|6 years ago|reply
The only hitch would be that afaik at festivals the pa arrays are passive so you'd need to steal power too so you can power an amplifier and send a powered signal, but if you managed that it'd be even worse than the tv broadcast intrusion because there's no easy way to shut it off, the sound guy has no control because you're after him in the signal chain and nobody onstage is set up to handle something like that. It's not like beyonce is gonna climb the scaffolding and start unplugging speakers when the crab rave starts playing inexplicably.
[+] [-] alexlmiller|6 years ago|reply
1) These days the cabling is run inside a run of barricade bisecting the crowd, so it's in a secure area the entire time
2) Modern PA systems at shows of that size have almost exclusively moved to digital snakes / audio networks, not analog
To realistically pull that off you'd need production access to the event to tap into the audio network and re-route things. That said, given the number of people with appropriate access and the fact that InfoSec isn't a high priority, that actually seems pretty doable.
Once they realized what was going on though, a few breakers flipped would drop power to the amps or speakers (depending on whether using powered or passive arrays) and it would be over (which would happen pretty quickly since the power distro is very well organized and labeled since quick troubleshooting is often necessary).
[+] [-] larkfofty|6 years ago|reply
I can't imagine it would be too hard to figure out some of these frequencies and transmit over them into the PA. There is a pilot tone but I don't think it'd be difficult to spoof.
I used to work in a shop that rented out audio equipment to broadway shows.
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] grafelic|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxhedrome|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] lloydatkinson|6 years ago|reply