covering the week's top tech dorks like
Linux bias artist Simon wacker noticed
something unusual at a made a
demonstration in Berlin
Google Maps showed that there was a
massive traffic jam even though there
were zero cars on the road soon enough
wicked realized that it was the mass of
people or more specifically their
smartphones that had inadvertently
tricked Google into seeing gridlock on
an empty street and then he decided to
do it himself where Kurt says quote the
question was if it might be possible to
generate something like this in a much
simpler way I don't need the people I
just need their smart phones end quote
so he borrowed phones from friends and
rental companies until he had acquired
99 devices which he piled into a little
red wagon the plan was simple over the
course of a day a worker would walk up
and down a given Street mostly at random
towing his smart phone packed wagon
behind him the effect wasn't
instantaneous it took Google Maps about
an hour to catch up but eventually
inevitably wiper had said that his wagon
would create a huge long red line in the
app indicating that a traffic had slowed
to a crawl even though there wasn't too
any traffic at all he had effectively
tricked the system into thinking a
series of large buses was crawling back
and forth Google said in a statement
quote traffic data in Google Maps is
refreshed continuously at thanks to
information from a variety of sources
including aggregated and anonymized the
data from people who have location
services turned on and contributions
from the Google Maps community end quote
they note that while it had figured out
how to distinguish between cars and
motorcycles it does not yet have any way
to filter for a wecord setup wecord says
quote what I'm really interested in
generally is the connection between
technology and society and the impact of
technology how it shapes us end quote
the hack is getting attention not only
because it's fun but also serves as a
necessary reminder that the systems
people take for granted involve inputs
and outputs and that they themselves are
sometimes both
it shows how simple it is to be it's how
simple it is to fool a product in which
people place a tremendous amount of
trust how this interesting there's a lot
of fun but I love how the artist has
found the spin to say hey maybe we're
trusting the technology a little too
much that out so much so that anyone
looking at their app or using their GPS
that's powered by Google services yes is
avoiding those areas based on his little
experiment right so when when I had
first heard this story I thought to
myself okay so four people are in a car
like if you're carpooling and you're
stuck in a slow section of the highway
is it gonna show up way busier on the
highway than it actually is it's yeah I
I personally use Waze which is owned by
Google it it's yeah it's I think it's
the exact same well no there's some
enhanced features that Google Maps
doesn't he'll differently yeah but what
I like about Waze is is that it is user
input unlike a lot of Google Maps that
is drawn by anonymous unit user data and
things happening in the backend so ways
builds off Google Maps but then you can
add your individual components into it
but I have at times I had a phone call
or text or something come in where it's
like I need to respond to this so I'll
pull over on the side of the road do the
thing that I need to do and all sudden I
get an alert on my phone we're detecting
a slowdown oh you know are you in
traffic how heavy is the traffic and I'm
like pulled over and so I'll say no and
move on this is this is odd
Jeff is not texting while driving no if
this is out of character for you but
what what I could have done is gone
yes heavy traffic sure traffic's flowing
beside me but so I mean if there is that
user element so I've never fully trusted
the information
see on those services because I know
that there is that user input data right
actually today on my way to the studio I
always use Google Maps I even though I
know how to get here I always use it I
like I like to be told what to do but
Google told me to take the highway and I
looked at the highway and I thought ah
that's a dead stop and Google was pretty
mad at me like they kept trying to
direct me back to the highway but I was
like I am taking the main road was it
just that one spot and then I was fine
after I don't know yeah there's one spot
on the highway right now okay so this
this opens up something though
interesting about and I know we need to
move to the next story but about
proximity how specific is location-based
services on the phone cuz like my kids
play pokemon go yeah so when they're at
home if they move from one side of the
living room to the next their character
moves with them yeah but when I'm
sitting in the car I'm getting a bigger
blip on the map and so I don't know if
it can update it as quick to my precise
location it's probably lulling you into
a false sense of like anonymity it knows
exactly where you it know exactly where
your park so then Google have not built
something into the programming that it
watches for the collection of devices
and it goes there are 99 within this box
that's not actual I think they will
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