(no subject)

[james_davis_nicoll]

While out running errands, I saw something bizarre. It appeared to be a truck (Maybe SUV sized) with a high def flat screen in the back window. I was well back in the bus I was on so I could not see clearly but it seemed to running ads for drivers behind them to watch.

That can't have been what I saw, right? Because that would be incredibly distracting for drivers.

Comments

[armiphlage]

Sadly, those are a thing now. I don't see how they are legal (same with those static billboards showing video ads aimed at highways), because municipal legislation explicitly bans signs visible to drivers that have flashing lights. Perhaps bylaw enforcement doesn't have jurisdiction over moving vehicles, or provincial roadways?

[lilfluff]

Those were prohibited by law here in Arizona but the billboard companies built them anyway. So when folks (including the folks doing astronomy at Kitt Peak) complained the state government promptly stepped in and legalized the electric billboards.

[thewayne]

*SMH*

My wife's an astronomer, and the city directly below the observatory here has a dark sky ordnance. But a church, which is just outside of city limits and in the county decided to put up a nasty lit sign and nothing to be done about it. Fortunately it's almost 5,000' below the telescopes and not a huge problem.

[lilfluff]

I don't remember exactly what (very limited) limitations were put in place, but I recall when I heard about it the guy from Kitt Peak mentioned that what finally got the state legislator for their district to actually pay (a tiny bit) of attention to them was saying, "Kitt Peak is one of the largest observatory complexes in the world and the observatories in Arizona are responsible for roughly a billion dollars a year flowing through the state economy. Do you want whoever runs against you in the next election to run ads about how you helped kill a billion dollars of the state economy?" I *think* it was a limit on the permitted brightness of the billboards, although to what degree that's actually enforced considering I've had my night vision nearly wiped out on more than one occasion by some of those boards...

I visited Kitt Peak twice as a kid, once simply on vacation and once as part of a school club trip, and the panel where I'd heard about this still surprised me with just how much they've got there. There was even one point during the slide show where what looked like a simple electric utility box was shown, which is actually a remote telescope operated by a university in one of the Scandinavian countries. At night if weather conditions are good it opens up to expose what is basically a telescope like someone might set up in their backyard, but computer controlled over the internet. The university apparently has multiple set up around the world such that their astronomy program can potentially do observations 24/7. Someone else apparently looked at that and said, "Huh. You know we can make use of a patch of land in northern Arizona. Why not set up a few dozen boxes like that along with a caretaker shack. Although back about five years ago when I was at that panel it was just in the planning & fundraising stage and I haven't heard anything since.

[thewayne]

Installations like that are increasingly common and very cool.  If you know where to look about a block from my house, you can see a telescope dome.  It used to hold a liquid mirror telescope.  The telescope "mirror" was spun at a surprisingly slow RPM, IIRC only 15 or so, to form a parabola from mercury.  It could basically only point straight up, but was used by the USAF and NASA as part of the orbital debris tracking network.  The site was shut down and the telescope was, if I heard correctly, moved to the Lowell Observatory complex, though I think it has since been moved to Hawaii. The observatory has since been taken over by a former original programmer of Ebay who has installed a remote-control telescope and gives time to schools around the world to do education programs for their students.  I have some photos of it.  This is the operation, sadly they haven't made a post to Facebook in four years and their techblog is a 404: https://www.tzecmaun.org/  Google Maps says the site is closed, not that it was ever open to the public.  I just hope they're not closed/out of business.

My wife's telescope, a 3.5 meter,It's  is funded by a consortium of universities who occasionally drop out and others join, their level of funding buying them time on sky.  Once a researcher was teaching a class in France, using the telescope remotely during the day there, night here, which was pretty cool.  It's not often used real-time like that.  All of the researchers direct the telescope, controlling the instrument, remotely.  It's been operated from every continent except Antarctica, including Russia and China, and even from inside Iran.  My wife and two other members of her team of 4.5 have PhD's in astronomy and/or astrophysics.  Their job is to mount instruments, monitor weather and telescope health, troubleshoot problems, and take over instrument runs if the remote observer has problems or for some reason cannot observe.  If they do observations for a researcher, they generally get their name included on the paper: my wife's name is on over 300 papers, IIRC. :-) Researchers do their observations on the observatory's gear then download all the data to their home university's systems to do their crunching/analysis.  Frequently they have supercomputer clusters of some sort to do their crunching on as the price on those has dropped so radically.

[dewline]

There was a two-sided digital billboard installed at St. Laurent Boulevard directly south of both the shopping mall of the same name as the street and the Queensway interchange here in Ottawa. The north-facing side was shut down about three or four years ago, but I can't be sure about the south-facing side.

[thewayne]

There is a device that you can buy on Ebay or Amazon that looks like a car remote that is, in fact, a universal TV remote that will turn off pretty much any television set ever made.

A TV in the back of a truck showing ads should definitely be illegal and probably is as it's certainly a source of distracted driving.

[theresawright]

That's illegal in my home city, but I think it depends on local bylaws. A few traffic accidents involving these vehicles might motivate your local council to take action.

[armiphlage]

On a somewhat related note, I took a Lyft home from work late one evening; there was a tablet mounted on the seatback in front of me, loudly displaying ads right in my face. Aside from being an intrusion, the reflections from the inside surfaces of the windows would interfere with the driver's view.

[agoodwinsmith]

Those were a thing in Vancouver for a while before I left. It wasn't long before they were totally trashed. I mean, mean drunks are already prone to violence *without* an obnoxious provocation in their face.

[bunsen_h]

This red devil about a meter high appeared between us and the partition separating us from the driver (there wasn't a sign of a solly receiver) and started jabbing at us with a pitchfork. "Get the Hi-Ho Habit!" it shrieked. "Everybody drinks Hi-Ho! Soothing, Habit-Forming. Deelishus! Get High with Hi-Ho!"

-- Podkayne of Mars

[agoodwinsmith]

I saw a new-to-location TV screening ads in a Starbucks line-up yesterday. That makes more safety-sense.

[jessie_c]

Those things make me wish for a portable EMP cannon...

[ffutures]

Or a can of black spray paint

[jessie_c]

Only a can? I'd want one of those backpack sprayers for the stand-off capability. High pressure long-distance paint delivery service...

[bunsen_h]

Paintball gun. Targeting would be a bit of an engineering challenge, assuming that one wouldn't want the driver to have to do it. Ideally, it could also hit illegal advertising signage AKA "street spam".

[ffutures]

I think that the best thing for drivers to do in those circumstances is to make a note of the license number and model etc. of the vehicle. Then if they are ever caught breaking any traffic law they can claim that they were distracted by a truck with a TV screen in the back, and here's the license number and a description, who are obviously the real culprits...

[malada]

Anything to shove more ads in your face.

Truthfully, I'm getting to the age where if I see an ad for a product in an obnoxious place it will make me determined *never* to by said item.

-m

[thewayne]

I avoid gas stations that I know have ads on gas pumps that can't be muted.