I think I’ve mentioned occasionally that various devices, mostly cellular modems, just use the Hayes or AT command set. Recently I obtained a GPS tracking device (made by Queclink) that is, interestingly, fully configured via the Hayes command set. It’s an example of a somewhat newer trend of converging the functionality of IoT devices into the modem baseband. But what is this Hayes command set anyway?
The Hayes command set is a fascinating piece of technology that’s been hanging around for far longer than most likely even its creators thought it would.
It had another major limitation: The limitations of an acoustic interface made it unsuitable for speeds over 300 bps. Cathode Ray Dude has a good video that touches on that topic called AT&T’s ’60s Modem That Won’t Die.
The The strange afterlife of the Hayes smartmodem section of ESR’s “Things Every Hacker Once Knew” goes into a bit more detail on that:
That latter one basically talks about how AT-prefixed strings like “ATDT” embody a local-side version of what Oona Räisänen broke down in The sound of the dialup, pictured
This is every paranoid fantasy and serialised spy fiction rolled up in one paragraph. If there is a “cannot be switched off” backchannel baked into the protocols someone will be using it!
I think the commodification of GPS tracking devices underpins the need for human rights and privacy legislation. Equality legislation and social policy led policing are also other areas of interest. Most people are by and large fine but you have to protect against the few who are not.
I agree with the latter paragraph, but I’d want clarification on the former for two reasons:
1. It’s always been possible to just surreptitiously add a little box to someone’s vehicle with a second cellular modem in it (possibly a magnet-backed box you reach under and stick in place), so it’s not like it’s a zero-to-full change.
2. If the “eCall” is just “AT#EMRGD” without a voice channel, then it’s less useful for skullduggery because it’s likely to have the same “Can only call 911 or the local equivalent” restriction.
True but they haven’t been commoditised or popularised so much. It’s now so any drongo with bad intentions is having ideas planted in their skull. I think it will be the usual types who use these things for bad purposes. This is really the realm of criminologists and NGO’s. Corporate espionage, thugs, and stalkers/wife beaters will be very high on the list!
Abuse of these devices may be relatively high for a while like upskirting and hidden cameras but the odds of these types of abuse continuing grow less and less as women simply won’t put up with it. Policy movement can be slow but there is some long overdue momentum not just with things like this but in general terms where public policy impacts women’s lives. There are still wrong headed types and dinosaurs around I refuse to work with but there are also men attuned to this as well as more professional women and well organised women’s groups so much more effective early policy intervention.
Most serious exploits will be state level. They own the protocols before they are published and have favoured access to networks. Not a big deal in most countries with effective human rights and supporting law. Security services tend not to be openly involved in political or social affairs but where something may trend which causes either institutional problems or social problems they can be involved. This will usually be extremists but even in the UK security services may be involved with something as trivial as hardening smart meters and modems. There will likely be some IoT/GPS regulation of some form although this may take the form of policy or guidance which will be felt more at a policing and court and consumer standards level.
Then there are serial numbers, fingerprinting, and network monitoring as well as payment tracing and other things so anyone being evil with these things may not be as clever as they think.
So yes ultimately yes like you conclude these devices may not be hugely useful for nefarious purposes.
I don’t disagree with any of what you’re saying. I just think that singling out eCall is probably a red herring.
State actors don’t need eCall to spy on you and it probably doesn’t increase the ability of non-state actors to do so.
Heck, if I weren’t a coward struggling to climb out of a pit of “I never knew ‘executive dysfunction’ was a thing”, I’d be out there campaigning for change. (As-is, given my cowardice and propensity for stressing out, my biggest problem with relating to women is not being able to understand how you avoid going catatonic when, as a straight white male, I’m “playing it on easy mode” and jumping at shadows anyway.)
Fair comment. I often find context is lacking with narrow technical topics so write most of this background material on autopilot!
Corporate dysfunction and mixed gender environments do have their problems. Most of the governance measures are in place in the UK even if not fully observed and with some very odd goings on with the current fruitloop government. The world map of these things can be between good to very sketchy.
Ignoring the fruitloops for one moment some people do a good job. The current Highway Code has been updated to change priority with the most vulnerable at the top to the least vulnerable at the bottom. This effects things such as right of way and the amount of space given to overtaking and how to manage mixed environments. While the UK pioneered a number of road safety initiatives it has lagged behind some European countries in some areas. Mixed traffic areas have been hugely problematic. I think this tweak will help improve things a lot. The working environment and even governance isn’t too different in principle.
I’m not going to give relationship advice or free therapy but do acknowledge men’s health and wellbeing is an often overlooked area. That’s not just physical but mental health too. In fact yesterday Curious Droid on Youtube put out a video on his serious healthcare issue. He’s intelligent enough to know it matters and has taken a leadership role on this to bring this kind of topic into the conversation. It’s not a problem which will ever effect me for obvious reasons but it’s something men need to talk about. Women tend to be in more tune with our bodies and have fewer problems going to the doctor about things. Yes, legacy medical sexism is a thing but this is slowly changing. There’s peer reviewed papers and studies, and reports on all this.
This comment has stretched the topic right up to snapping point but it’s all part and parcel of the background narrative.
HollyB,
Do you have any suggestions for things I should read/watch? I have an idea for a game I’d like to build some day, and the more learning materials I have, the better. (Sort of in the SimCity/Cities/Transport Tycoon sphere, by hyper-focused on the minutae of road network design and how it affects the people who use it, such as what kinds of interchanges, special-purpose lanes, and bylaws to use.)
Thanks. I’ll give that a watch.
I wouldn’t expect either and I never intended to present it as a relationship problem… more as a special case of the same “I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to feel that I understand it properly” that normally applies to voluntary things like fishing, knitting, or speedrunning games, rather than being forced on half the species by society.
The rest, I feel confident will be less of a problem to relate to if I put in enough effort. (At the moment, I’m still trying to stamp out my life-long problem with impulsiveness so I can reliably apply a “stop, think, assume they know something you don’t, ask for clarification” philosophy to stuff I’m emotionally connected to. I have a bit of a problem with that in real-time communication, where I can’t just sit and let my emotions settle before acting.)
…I was actually reminded of that bit by finally getting around to watching Cathode Ray Dude’s new video “What’s My New Favorite Thing?” where goes into detail on why he doesn’t want to hear solutions beginning with “Just…”.
From what I’ve heard, my problem (detrimental side-effects of being on the region of the autism spectrum that used to be called Asperger’s syndrome) isn’t so much a male/female thing as a “people like me tend to resist admitting that we’re not neurotypical, and also tend to present the impression of being more competent than we actually are when people are deciding if we need assistance of some kind”.
(Though, unarguably, women on the spectrum tend to be much better than men at pretending to be neurotypical to fit in. That gendered difference in masking ability led to decades of belief that “Asperger’s syndrome” was uniquely male, mistakes like the theory of the hyper-masculine brain, and now suspicion that a large swath of women diagnosed with various emotional hypersensitivity conditions might actually be autistic.)
No idea as I was more into the architectural aspects of game engines and action/adventure designs. I would say though that people aren’t into simulators.
If you have a spark of an idea I’d suggest keep it as small in scope as possible to stop things getting out of hand. A good artistic style and relatable characters and atmosphere goes a long way. I personally would prioritise that over multiple domains of multilayered rules. You can always add deeper stuff later.
I’m not looking for suggestions on the game side. I’m looking for things like The STROAD or the part of Steve Mould’s The Spring Paradox about Braess’s paradox.
Fascinating bits of transport planning knowledge that I can build into the game for people to discover as they play.
I already have a project I’m picking away at that’s more in that vein.
For the eventual road network one:
1. I’m not into simulators in the “flight simulator” sense, but I’m one of those people who grew up hooked on Maxis games of all sorts and relatively recently had to quit OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe) cold-turkey for finding it too addictive.
2. The original spark of inspiration was, years ago, when my Young Drivers of Canada course introduced me to the wide variety of interchanges, on/off-ramp designs, and other traffic-flow instruments. Being able to select those and see their effects, rather than just letting the game magic something up when you intersect two roads, is the core of the idea. Sort of like what draws a lot of people to model train sets.
The important thing is to have something which works and finish it.
True, but the real-world depth is what captivated me about this concept. Without that, it’s not going to grip me strongly enough for me to care to finish it.
It’s like with prose fiction. What I love most is that feeling that the author really did the research on something I don’t know but found fascinating, and then worked it into something that’s enjoyable to play/read.
I don’t want a novel set of LEGO bricks. I want a game where I can explore the emergent behaviour of the system… and for that to feel satisfyingly meaningful, it has to be tied to at least some real-world research.
Otherwise, I’d just sit down and fork abstreet right now to start building what I want on top of its engine. (NOTE: I had this idea years before abstreet. It just looks like a useful point to start to avoid reinventing wheels.)
People’s minds can fill in the blanks and bring a sophistication to a game experience which is only hinted at by the design/story/mechanisms.
I know what you mean about well researched fiction. Bear in mind what I said earlier is true here too. 90%+ of the backstory and research never makes it into a game or novel. The trick isn’t what you put in it’s what you leave out. You pare it down to the minimum needed to support the story.
I don’t personally think you will create a game the public will buy as those don’t seem to be your goals. Your best option is to use an existing engine. I do worry you are swapping one obsession for another.
The engine you mention fulfills a certain need. If you’re doing a game for other people you have to make it speak to them. That’s why you need direction, and story and visual creativity, and ruthless editing. This doesn’t seem to be your interest. Good luck but I can’t help you with that.
*chuckle* I’ve had to tell that to friends multiple times when discussing my story ideas with them, because it seems I enjoy learning about what I’m going to write at least as much as writing it, if not more.
(That or “I doubt this’ll make it into the story. I just want to be confident that what I do put in is internally consistent.”)
No worries. For the road network game, I want the interactions to be simple and definitely more “game” than “simulation”… I just want there to be a lot of interesting things to discover in how the simulated people react to what you choose to build and things like Braess’s paradox are perfect for that. Easy to implement and obvious in hindsight, but non-obvious coming into it.
That’s why I was asking if you’d run across any interesting resources on UK and EU road safety and planning. I live in North America and most of the resources I run across tend to relate to the state of things on this side of the pond.
No. I’d intend to open-source it. I’m very much a “blue ocean strategy” kind of guy and there are already too many games competing to be bought and too few polished-feeling open-source games.
Besides, it’s just not really much fun to try to get people to exchange something scarce (money) for something non-scarce (copies of a bit pattern) instead of something else scarce (X amount of my time per X amount of money). It’s a real drag on the enjoyment for something I do to unwind.
Well, the biggest thing I’d want to do is a complete graphical rework and a re-envisioning of what the player’s goals are… probably to a more SimCity 2000/SimCity 3000/Transport Tycoon-esque isometric perspective, since I have fond memories of those. My main interest in abstreet is that it’s a functioning world model I could experiment with incrementally adapting to be more like what I’m envisioning.
Either way, the game project I’m currently picking away at is coming from entirely the opposite direction. I ran across the the public domain Cavernas tileset by Adam Saltsman and was gripped with the urge to do something with it.
So far, what I’m aiming to prototype and experiment with is a competitive multiplayer “collect the treasures and then get to the exit” race game with a much faster pace than something like Lode Runner, hazards that move in fixed patterns you can anticipate rather than roaming freely, and a variety of characters whose different abilities require different traversals of each level. (eg. the ninja can wall jump up shafts, the knight can bash through rubble piles, etc.)
Of course, me being me, I’m researching graph theory to find the most efficient ways to automatically lint a level for traversability flaws.
(I’ve also roughly doubled the number of tiles Cavernas came with and animated a bunch of them. In the spirit in which I received them, I’ll probably release my expanded tileset into the public domain once I’ve got a release of the game.)
UK and European road planning and safety is way better than US standards. I can’t think of any good sources. It’s just you pick up as you go along. Signage is just one example. Roundabouts is another. Road cambering and speed management are things too. Department of Transport, Department of Environment, local councils, and universities are where you would need to look.
Almost all the commercial value of a game isn’t really in the sourcecode. It’s in the design expertise and in-house expertise and creative content. I’m not too bugged about money but you have to stay disciplined. Money can help or hinder that depending on your point of view.
You need to pick one project and go with it.
Yeah, I guessed as much, given the U.S. attitude toward roundabouts. The problem is, I’m not sure if things are significantly better here in Ontario, Canada. We’re the most Americanized member of the British Commonwealth by far.
(As Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie said in their parody song, The War of 1812, “they ran so fast they forgot to take their culture”.)
I know Technology Connections’s “Perhaps the weakest link in the US electrical system” applies to Canada too (extension cords and many un-switched power strips lack fuses or circuit breakers), and the YouTube comments on Andrew Lam’s “How Road Barriers Stopped Killing Drivers” point out that the cheaper wire crash barriers are more common in North America because there are fewer motorcyclists to decapitate, but I don’t know specific U.S. vs. Canada stats on how many of those get installed in either country.
…and that’s not even taking into account jurisdictional differences. It was only by pure accident that I learned that the age of majority varies in Canada, with British Columbia, the territories, and some of the maritime provinces setting it at 19 rather than 18.
Thanks. It may not sound like much, but that makes the research prospects a bit less imposing.
There’s a bit of a twist to it on my end. I do this sort of programming in my leisure time, as a way to unwind, as an alternative to reading novels or playing games. While I do need to make sure I don’t have too many projects at once, picking just one makes it feel too much like “just another obligation”.
With three or four I can wander back and forth between (usually all non-game utilities), it allows me to choose whichever feels like it’ll be most relaxing to work on at that moment. With just one, I’m forced to spend less time programming and more time reading or gaming in order to get the de-stressing effect I’m going for.
(e.g. Yesterday, I’d been working on my security-related hobby project for several days solid and it was starting to feel like a chore, so I switched over to working on the specialized fuzzer-like utility I’m writing to identify which bits in a data file a given utility’s “check for corruption” feature is blind to.)
Oh, I forgot to clarify: The road network game is a distant future project.
I’m just keeping the research for it simmering on the back burner. I do that with a lot of different ideas since, sometimes, I’m too tired to be in the mood for any leisure coding but I can still find myself in the mood for leisure non-fiction reading or YouTubing.
The British plug is God’s own plug. American plugs and sockets are deathtraps. Never never step on a British plug. You will regret that worse than stepping on Lego. But yes all extension leads must have fuses.
I’m glad I no longer code. I just watch makeup and clothes and therapy videos now. Cooking, gardening, and just about anything pleasant will do me.
*chuckle* Tom Scott expressed an almost identical sentiment in “British Plugs Are Better Than All Other Plugs, And Here’s Why”
At least we’re slowly starting to roll out the protective shutters on the sockets, and Ohm’s Law makes it a *little* less dangerous at 120v. I do wish they’d mandate sleeved pins though. That shouldn’t be too expensive, compared to requiring fuses and whole-house GFCI/RCD protection.
To each their own. Computers and reading were the first things I fixated on as a little kid on the autism spectrum, and I’d probably change career paths before I allowed life to sap the pleasure from doing either in a hobby capacity.