Silicon Valley crosswalk buttons apparently hacked to imitate Musk, Zuck voices
123 comments
·April 13, 2025drillsteps5
schwartzworld
What makes you so sure it’s a clone? I see a lot of impressionists doing Elon and some of them are really good.
UberFly
South African accent is the one you're looking for.
dijit
Sorta, he has a blended accent of upper-class south african that has been americanised.
You will be hard pressed to find south africans with his accent.
For specifics of what I mean, the breathy “â” (as in, a posh british person saying bâth) is present, but so is the american hard-R.
He has a lot of stubbed tones in words like “heart” though which is clearly very south african.
Lammy
Souf Êfrican
reubenswartz
And is Seattle, “Jeff Bezos” says the crosswalk is sponsored by Amazon Prime and exhorts you not to tax the rich.
divbzero
At South Lake Union and University District crosswalks earlier this week:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-crosswalk-...
noxa
I love that it played the Bo Burnham "jeff bezos" song - such incredible art.
jimmydoe
this is fun.
it seems most of these crosswalks can be configured via app from https://polara.com/ . So either the authentication was leaked or got physically flashed/hacked?
janalsncm
> SIMPLE WIRELESS PROGRAMMING The iNX is easily programmed using our industry-leading Field Service App, available for iOS® & Android® – no expensive software or proprietary devices required! The app allows technicians to configure system settings and sounds, as well as access actionable data on button counts, flashing cycles, and more.
Security not included!
TheAceOfHearts
The S in IoT stands for Security.
jen729w
At work we used to say that “security puts the ‘no’ in ‘innovation’”.
H/t Baggott if he’s reading. ;-)
mathattack
I thought it stood for a shorter word.
BHSPitMonkey
They said "The app allows technicians to configure system settings and sounds"; They never said the app _doesn't_ allow _non-technicians_ to do the same. What's the big deal?
systemswizard
Probably factory defaults exposed to the world
SoftTalker
Or a mischievous or disgruntled employee did it, or gave the password to someone.
tinix
The manual says the default password is 1234
Natsu
Someone is either guessing the passwords, which may well be the same all over the city given the number of these devices out there, or cities could just be using the default password of 1234. Yes, really:
https://www.polara.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Polara-iN2...
> PASSWORD ISSUES: The iCCU can be connected to thru Wi-Fi. The buttons can be connected to thru Bluetooth. A. Once Wi-Fi is turned on at the iCCU, the Wi-Fi password is DEFAULT1 (ALL CAPS). B. Following power up, each button will say “change password” every 30 seconds, until the default password is changed. There is one shared password for logging into an iCCU and all PBS connected to it. The factory default password is 1234. Using a Field Service app, use 1234 to log into the iCCU or any PBS the first time, and change the password. This changes the password for all PBS and the iCCU. See Section 5.2 in the Manual for details. C. If the password is unknown, a Password Reset requires a call to Polara Tech Support.
JKCalhoun
Hoping it comes to the Flipper Zero.
magixx
I wonder how soon it will be before some company starts renting these out from the city for ad space.
cooper_ganglia
That's actually a genius idea in the worst way possible!
potato3732842
I'll take garbage ads over dystopian "the city implores you to <some thing I probably would have done anyway if left to my own devices>" messages any day.
idle_zealot
Yeah, PSAs are dystopian, ads designed to get me to act against my best interests are the sign of a functioning non-dystopian society.
XorNot
I really do not understand people complaining about PSAs. Like learn some emotional maturity? If you weren't going to do the thing they're asking you not to do, then the message wasn't directed at you and you can go about your day just fine.
jpollock
I've come across several of these that if you press them enough say "Change Password". I'm guessing they've never had their passwords changed from default.
userbinator
Political satire is the best form of satire, but someone should hack them in the other direction too.
binarno_sp
The other direction lacks sense of humor.
userbinator
"Walk into traffic and be unburdened by what has been."
mattigames
"vaccines cause autism" == the other direction actual positions that lack any humour at all because they are the dumbest bunch of them all to even fathom something that could be considered humorous by any working brain and instead only positions are made by the emotional impulses given by saying "fuck the liberals" or "own the liberals" or anything close enough.
Edit: I see that I'm already in the negative numbers with this comment, I fear that entertaining the idea that the right has any positions worth entertaining its the thing that got us into this mess in the first place, and I'm sure you know exactly what "mess" means in this context.
ryandrake
Very nice. Totally harmless prank and it clowns on jerks who deserve a good clowning! Hope the pranksters continue and keep it lowkey so they don’t get caught.
vkou
The targets of this deserve every bit of shade that can be thrown at them, but unfortunately, this fucks with crosswalk accessibility for the visually impaired.
thomassmith65
That's a fair point, but what is surprising is that - unlike 99% of exploits one has heard about, over the years - these hackers:
• had some civic-mindedness - enough to leave in the initial 'wait!' audio
• chose messages that, while falling short of comedy genius, are amusing and above the level of an adolescent
• didn't include any extremist nonsense
Grading on a curve, that's a lot to be thankful for.
DennisP
Not by much though, since "wait" and the tones still play. I suspect most visually impaired people will enjoy this as much as the rest of us.
ashoeafoot
You can not override the sound feature for the blind
gopher_space
All of these machines loudly shout to begin walking before they tell you which intersection is safe. It’s really weird.
fuzztester
high pitch?
pun intended.
aaron695
[dead]
relistan
[flagged]
borski
The hackers didn’t make them hackable. They were already hackable. Your issue is with the city and/or company, not with the “hackers.”
googlryas
The hackers didn't make them hackable, but they did hack them.
michaelt
Apparently hacking is something the denizens of Hacker News disapprove of these days?
borski
And did not do anything malicious like remove the actual accessibility tones.
My point isn’t that they are some kind of Robin Hood, but that their actions don’t warrant anger, whereas the insecurity of a public system we rely on… should.
null
streetmeat
Yeah except the tones and walk messages still play, it just doesn't spam wait over and over at a red. Do you think because it's playing a satirical message blind people will ignore the tones and just start running into traffic?
dboreham
Seems like: yes because the hacked message could say "cross quick right now".
googlryas
Why does it spam wait over and over? Have you considered that there's a reason?
yellowapple
I don't think it even does spam "wait" over and over; I've never heard that in my life. With every such crosswalk I've encountered (in multiple cities across the US) it only says "wait" for each time you press the button.
renewiltord
Why don't you explain the reason and then after you've done that, I can inform you that they don't actually do that. I always mash them to DJ up a Wait-Wa-wa-wa-wai-wai-wait-wa-wa-wa-wait. But I always enjoy it when a Hacker News user provides reasons for why something is a certain way only to find that it's not actually that way.
elpocko
This HN post is seven days old but displayed and ranked as if it was posted 9 hours ago, with all timestamps falsified. The déjà vu effect is disconcerting and an absolute mind fuck. Please stop doing this, ffs. The person who thought this would be a good idea is a madman.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Silicon%20Valley%20crosswalk%2...
ryandrake
Wild! I definitely remember commenting on this last week and sure enough my comment shows below as “8 hours ago” (while I was asleep). What kind of sorcery is going on?
yellowapple
HN has a "second chance queue" for posts that the powers-that-be believe could've/should've gotten more attention but didn't. Happened to one of my posts once, which was confusing as all hell at first but made sense once I learned about it.
KORraN
But this should not change the time when the thing (comment, link) has been posted, should it?
datavirtue
Feature in search of a problem
zniturah
How is it technically possible?
greyface-
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380
https://news.ycombinator.com/pool (specifically, this post can be found on page 8: https://news.ycombinator.com/pool?next=43673425)
denysvitali
Can confirm. Once dang pinged me directly by email saying that my story was re-upped. The story went again to the frontpage and the date was adapted (IIRC), but the comments were kept:
---
Hi denysvitali,
The submission "PostmarketOS-Powered Kubernetes Cluster" that you posted to Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352075) looks good, but hasn't had much attention so far. We put it in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page some time in the next day or so.
This is a way of giving good HN submissions multiple chances at the front page. If you're curious, you can read about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 and other links there. And if you don't want these emails, sorry! Let us know and we won't do it again.
Thanks for posting good things to HN!
Daniel (moderator)
lupusreal
If we could not fuck with accessibility devices which disabled people rely on, that'd be great. Thanks.
delusional
It sounds like they still make the normal/expected sounds. So kudos to the pranksters for keeping them safe and available for the people in need of accessibility.
xoxxala
Deviant Ollam has a video with clips from the crosswalks. He also mentions the accessibility is not impacted. Worth a watch if you haven’t heard the AI impressions.
yuhong
That being said at least in one case “The pedestrian push buttons have been deactivated and crosswalks are currently operating on a timer”.
hedora
Isn’t needlessly disabling the safety device on the authorities though?
SV road signs are constantly covered in graffiti. They don’t just take them down until a replacement arrives.
googlryas
The expected sounds are mark Zuckerberg talking about AI for 20 seconds?
No, no kudos to anyone who fucks with safety devices to make some point of theirs.
yellowapple
The expected sound is the "WAIT!" voice, which you can clearly still hear. Anything in addition to that is of zero detriment to the accessibility of the system.
badgersnake
Don’t be such a killjoy. It still makes sounds.
lysace
Were you severely inconvenienced by this hack? If so, how?
scubbo
One does not have to be harmed by an action to be able to call out that it would have harmful impact.
ffsm8
As far as the messages I heard, they still announce whatever they should - just with zucks voice and sarcasticly and extra text. But I haven't listened to everything, maybe they did significantly impact someone's life.
I'd prefer to hear an actual example over broad outrage tho
lysace
No harmful impact has been called out.
Absolutely random thought semi-related to the topic.
This is one of the better voice clones of Musk but it's still really bad because he never lost his whatever accent, and every voice clone I've heard (mostly the ones on fake Starship launch videos) speaks with perfect American accent.
Something to think about I guess :)