16 ms·

The Max Headroom Incident

377 points by sec400 5y ago

Tho85 5y ago
This always reminds me of the 2007 incident on Czech TV, where someone hijacked a weather panorama broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea4eft_3p-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea4eft_3p-I IIRC the panorama cam was connected to the Internet and had been hacked, so no microwave magic there. Good execution nonetheless...
- laulis 5y ago
  It was not connected to the internet, they actually went to the place, and I believe they have switched out the coax cable which was coming from the camera with their own input. There was a mini-montage back in the day of them pulling this off. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCNHJrQzB1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCNHJrQzB1g
- flenserboy 5y ago
  The music...the camera bounce...the fuzz at the end. Marvelous work.
- junon 5y ago
  Wow the editing for that time was really well done. Looks almost completely real.
- lqet 5y ago
  Brilliant.
dangle1 5y ago
It's always fascinating seeing the internet catalog and consolidate knowledge, especially regarding events that occurred pre-internet. Back when these events happened, a blurb appeared on TV news and in papers, but there was no easy way to get the big picture as the investigations evolved.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  I love that the Internet allows closure on pre-Internet mysteries that might not have been practically solvable before. I recently managed to track down some people online and between us we solved a late 90s mystery that would have been very annoying to solve back then and had bugged me for over 20 years. Closure is such a beautiful thing.
  - _blu 5y ago
    what mystery? was it about time travel?
- mattl 5y ago
  This wasn't pre-Internet though. This happened in 1987. EDIT: "the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983" -- people who know more about this than you.
  - post-it 5y ago
    Sure, but pre-"everyone is online always". Even things that happened in 2005, at the start of Reddit and Digg and well into the reign of MySpace, weren't summarized and consolidated as efficiently as they are today.
    - mattl 5y ago
      Sure. But we don't describe pre-smartphone as pre-telephone.
      - steviedotboston 5y ago
        yeah i dont see whats so hard about speaking accurately.
        notreallyserio 5y ago
        This is funnier than it should be.
h2odragon 5y ago
The assumption that the content of the video had something do do with why it was broadcast may not be reasonable. Someone wanting to play the technical prank might well find some of the most random shit available to broadcast, hoping (perhaps mistakenly) that the point would be clear anyway. I think its also possible that the the technically equipped people who did this were perhaps not thinking as clearly as usual that evening. Intoxicants may have been involved. There were some gifted organic chemists working out in the suburbs then.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > Intoxicants may have been involved. "May have" seems weak. Nothing about the second intrusion screams sobriety.
  - flatiron 5y ago
    i believe there were cuts in the video so it was prerecorded. cuts that apparently were so clean it was another piece of evidence they had some access to some professional equipment as consumer grade equipment of the time wasn't up to the task
    - PostThisTooFast 5y ago
      That's not true. Numerous home video recorders by that time had flying erase heads that could make clean cuts.
    - h2odragon 5y ago
      It could have been put together in one of several schools in the area from consumer grade sources.
      - laurent92 5y ago
        At that time, printers already printed yellow dots with the serial ID. I’m most surprised VHS wasn’t watermarked. It could have helped a lot in terrorist investigations (ransom videos). I’m always afraid when I hear someone copypasting Apple memos. Obviously they must have watermark, if not text glyphs (rn = m, and further UTF-8 incantations), at least subtly different phrasing depending on which department, or person, views it.
MrRadar 5y ago
A few years ago I saw this documentary on the incident, including technical details on how the video was produced and examining and then debunking a number of theories about the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgbci2Zf7ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgbci2Zf7ms
smithza 5y ago
Notice: The latter portion of the video is NSFW.
beaner 5y ago
Of all the conspiracy theories out there, this one, to me, has the highest coverage-to-interestingness ratio. It just seems like a teen hacked an AV system and did a goofy presentation. I'm surprised that type of thing isn't more common, and I'm befuddled as to why this one gets so much attention.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  No, this would've been quite a bit more difficult than "hacked an AV system". Hijacking small town public access channels was fairly easy. Taking over the feed for two different stations in Chicago is a whole different level. The basic hack is the same, but "just scale it up" isn't trivial in this case.
  - fortran77 5y ago
    If you were pretty close to the receiving end on the microwave link, it wouldn't be that hard to overpower the signal from the studio.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Yeah and it doesn't have to work great or long before it burns out. People used chained TV reception amplifiers to broadcast pirate TV :)
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  >I'm surprised that type of thing isn't more common I'd guess that interfering with a digital TV signal today is considerably harder than an old analogue TV signal.
  - mark-r 5y ago
    At some point in the chain it's probably still analog, but the question is where's the switch? I think the compression scheme is very dependent on comparing adjacent frames, so you couldn't have compression until the point where all inputs come together.
seibelj 5y ago
Classic Reddit post on a theory of who did it https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_know_who_was_behind_the_max_headroom/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_kno... An update said it was disproven but still an interesting read
0des 5y ago
For anyone wondering, I recently re-watched the Max Headroom series & movie, and it still holds. I recommend you check it out, even if you hadn't seen it before.
- nabla9 5y ago
  I watched the series and movie again few years back and I concur. Amazing cypherpunk scifi. It has aquired some 80s patina that makes it only better.
- joezydeco 5y ago
  The movie is an excellent piece of early cyberpunk. They were doing the "operator get me out of here" two decades before The Matrix. The British TV interview show is meh. The American/ABC remake even more meh.
  - technothrasher 5y ago
    I remember really enjoying the (American dramatic) TV show when I was a kid. I recently re-watched it, and I pretty much agree with this assessment. The original movie was dated but still enjoyable for what it was. The follow on series falls apart pretty quickly into uninteresting drivel.
    - mindcrime 5y ago
      Huh. Interesting. I re-watched the American series a couple of years ago and thought it held up incredibly well. "Different strokes" and all that, I guess.
      - technothrasher 5y ago
        I'm glad to hear it, actually. I do have a great fondness for Max Headroom, probably because I was so young when he first showed up and he hit all my "nerd" buttons. I was sad to see I couldn't even finish all the episodes of the show when I tried.
  - 5y ago
trackofalljades 5y ago
obligatory podcast episode: https://www.omnibusproject.com/216 https://www.omnibusproject.com/216
leephillips 5y ago
I was interested in finding out how the intrusion was accomplished, but the article devotes only a few words to explaining that, in a sentence that makes no grammatical sense. What does it mean to place a dish antenna “between the transmitter tower”?
- h2odragon 5y ago
  The TV stations used a big transmitter up on the Sears tower for their real signal. That got fed by a little microwave dish antenna pointed out to a relay "in the city". So if you could get an angle on the dish with a transmitter of sufficient power, you could feed your own signal into whatever channel. "Hauling equipment up to the roof without getting caught" and "having haul-able equipment" are the technical challenges. IIRC they used a ~900Mhz system for that and even today I would have to spend some money to put a video signal out in that range, and another chunk to do it at any power. In 1987 someone had to creatively borrow some very high priced kit to do that.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Thanks for the details! (But would you need to haul equipment up to the roof? Couldn’t you insert your transmitter anywhere in the line of sight?)
    - h2odragon 5y ago
      Yeah, I just assume "roof" cuz that's where antennas will be. That kind of thing is as close to "tight beam" as can be managed with antennas, usually; and that can be quite small.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      Not an expert, but some lines of sight stretch from the top of one building to the top of another. Chicago doesn't have any mountains nearby, so those lines would just extend out into space and never touch the ground.
    - mark-r 5y ago
criddell 5y ago
Is there a statute of limitations for a crime like this? I'd love to find out who did it, how they did it, and why they did it and have no interest in seeing anybody punished for something so harmless that happened a long time ago... Same goes for other famous unsolved crimes like the D.B. Cooper case.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Wikipedia says 5 years. It's really hard to believe there's anything on the books that would cover signal hijacking and has a statute of limitations longer than 34 years. IANAL. A more likely explanation for the lack of attribution is that the pranksters grew up and are more than a little embarrassed about their adolescent exploits. I know that I would probably not fess up to some of the nonsense I got up to phreaking/hacking in junior high and high school despite the statue of limitations passing long, long ago. Could also be that they revel in the mystery.
  - OnlineGladiator 5y ago
    > A more likely explanation for the lack of attribution is that the pranksters grew up and are more than a little embarrassed about their adolescent exploits. Why would you be embarrassed of being awesome? > Could also be that they revel in the mystery. This makes more sense.
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      > Why would you be embarrassed of being awesome? There are still many professions where illegally broadcasting your ass being slapped by a flyswatter to the city of Chicago would be enough to cause real professional issues. Even if it was 30 years ago.
      - usrusr 5y ago
        In a movie, this would be the point where we strike out every suspect who doesn't have a career inside the FCC.
codetrotter 5y ago
Haven’t heard about this before but it reminds me of a scene from the 1995 movie “Hackers”. Scene in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdha_OV5saI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdha_OV5saI IMDb page for said movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ I wonder if the scene in Hackers was inspired by the real world hacks that the OP article talks about.
- Kye 5y ago
  They reference at least one setting up the backstory of the main character, so it's likely.
- doublerabbit 5y ago
  OT: I've never noticed that before, but top right on Zero's monitor there's small prompt of "Message from beast on dev/tty1". Has that always been there? May have to rewatch my VHS copy. Hack the planet.
- bryans 5y ago
  Hackers is still one of my favorite movies. Forgetting the Hollywood exaggerations, that is pretty much how the culture was in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. It was entirely nerdy, a little punk, there were a lot of arcades and pizza deliveries and dumpsters involved, and there were some incredibly douchey self-described villains suffering from megalomania. The wild west hacker days were pretty amazing, and that movie portrays all of the insanity pretty well, if cheesily. Edit: Got caught up in the nostalgia and forgot to mention that the hacking moments, however cheesy, are all based on real hacks. The TV station take over, Kevin Mitnick's social engineering, John Draper's (Captain Crunch) phone phreaking and others. Not to say that those people are the originators of those methods, just the most infamous ones at the time the movie was made.
  - kaycebasques 5y ago
    Not really the same vibe as what you're describing but I need to go back and watch Enemy Of The State. Another one that seems similar to the vibe you describe is Sneakers. Hell, even Wayne's World is kinda the same vibe (in terms of their TV show).
LaserDiscMan 5y ago
A compilation of news reports at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBOhFGmbSIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBOhFGmbSIs "Captain Midnight" jammed HBO for almost 5 minutes in 86: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_signal_intrusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_sig...
- fortran77 5y ago
  IN fact, this article also talks about Captain Midnight.
sec400 5y ago
34th yr anniversary of it yesterday
cronix 5y ago
Hey, you can't talk about Max Headroom without talking about The Art of Noise. The Art of Noise (with Max Headroom) - Paranomia (1986): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU
- narrator 5y ago
  Since we are bringing up Max Headroom, I would like to put a word in for Blipverts. These were part of the fictional subject matter of the first Max Headroom TV Show. They were advertisements that make old people watching them explode. Bryce, the engineer behind these adverts, uses the wonderful line, "I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it." This was amazingly prescient back in the 80s given where we are now in adtech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk
  - joezydeco 5y ago
    All the networks were obsessed with real-time audience metrics, which is even more prescient.
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    > "I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it." "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.[1] [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
paulpauper 5y ago
“I would like to inform anybody involved in this kinda thing, that there’s a maximum penalty of $100,000, one year in jail, or both,” Phil Bradford, an FCC spokesman, told a reporter the following day. does anyone ever pay maximum penalty for these cases?
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yes when they want to make an example of you it does happen. I don't think it would have happened for this though.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Tragically, Aaron Swartz.
MR4D 5y ago
Why is it that Max Headroom, now 35 years old, has more realistic eyes than most video games today? I'm looking at you, Madden 21.
- JeremyReimer 5y ago
  The original Max Headroom was played by Matt Frewer in heavy makeup. So his eyes are Matt Frewer's eyes.
- pram 5y ago
  It’s a guy in makeup lol
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
Anything new here from the hundred other posts? Some previous discussions: 2 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 6 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 4 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  It's almost like we running out of stuff to talk about?
- gregorymichael 5y ago
  New thing here may be the community members reading it.
  - kaycebasques 5y ago
    Definitely my first time seeing it and it was just the kind of mischief I needed!
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      Mine too. Once every 2 years is not bad. Some stuff gets reposted daily and that gets annoying if you watch new.
midasuni 5y ago
If you know what to do you can certainly hijack many TV broadcasts even today, and thanks to destaffing and automation they won’t be noticed or blocked for a long time.
HoppedUpMenace 5y ago
I only see one version of this video on youtube, the first incident. I swear years ago when this was posted here, there was a different version I saw with more stuff going on and the audio was much more clear than the first. Am I missing something or is there more than one Max Headroom signal hijack video out there?
- pram 5y ago
  I’ve seen this discussed for like 20 years and that is the only version I’ve ever seen fwiw
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hereforphone 5y ago
Couple of comments: - This is posted and discussed frequently - This was a pretty impressive feat of engineering - The most unusual thing is that this remained secret. Because there were a few people involved and three+ can't keep a secret. They don't even have a reason to anymore. I've often wondered whether this group of folks died shortly after this.
- danachow 5y ago
  I admit my memory may be spotty - but was there any reason to believe this could not easily have been pulled off by 2 people - ie a married couple? Sure relationships break up but I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave.
  - a1pulley 5y ago
    > I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave. Is that possible?
    - storyinmemo 5y ago
      "I don't know how yous done it, but I know yous done it!"
    - Angostura 5y ago
      Yes - the commenter murdered their spouse.
      - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
        With the fly swatter, naturally.
    - Retr0id 5y ago
      One can infer that a secret exists, without knowing its contents.
    - disillusioned 5y ago
sergiotapia 5y ago
Someone on Reddit had a lot of insider knowledge about the max headroom incident and he claimed he was 90% sure he knew who they were. Two brothers if I recall - let me try to find it. Edit: Seems over the years he determined it was not them! Still an interesting read. https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_know_who_was_behind_the_max_headroom/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_kno...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
robryk 5y ago
Similar incident: in 1985, political opposition in People's Republic of Poland "hijacked" TV by broadcasting in sync with the actual TV signal. This allowed them to superimpose things on top of the image (within some range around their transmitter), which they used to broadcast political messages. Differences: not complete replacement, but superposition; "attacked" signal was the final signal to consumers; the hackers were caught (by standard police methods). Some details: https://hackaday.com/2016/07/05/retrotechtacular-how-solidarity-hacked-polish-tv/ https://hackaday.com/2016/07/05/retrotechtacular-how-solidar...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pomian 5y ago
  That was brilliant! Great that they made the write up on hackaday, for posterity.
kaycebasques 5y ago
I've always wondered what the original character's name was, and now I finally know: Max Headroom! I remember being very creeped out by it when I was a kid in the 90s. It's one of those things that lots of other shows referenced but I never thought to go find the source.
kaycebasques 5y ago
Has anyone tried re-working the audio to cancel out whatever filters/distortions they used?
guerrilla 5y ago
Funny coincidence, I just started watching Broadcast Signal Intrusion[1] 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11151336/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11151336/
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Cool story! I didn't know this happened. I don't think we ever had such break ins in national TV in the Netherlands. I know some of my friends in the 80s were able to "hack" into the cable network in my town, basically they just broadcast into the terrestrial receiver at the cable station after the real transmitter went down. In those days broadcast transmitters still switched off when programming was finished. Because the air was clear then there was very little power needed and thus little chance of getting caught. I used to speak to them on the legal 27mc CB because I was too chicken and they'd speak back to me in glorious stereo FM. Full duplex of course. It was fun! Many pirate "radio" stations too. I don't think the cable company ever bothered to catch them as it all happened after hours but eventually they added time locks so the uplinks just went down after programming. Still they were lazy so often it was possible to catch an unused uplink or an incorrect timer for years. What helped was that not many people actually used cable for radio. So it wasn't complained about much. Eventually the internet happened and people just lost interest...
Terry_Roll 5y ago
As a number of TV's have an OTA update facility using terrestrial broadcasts, its possible to not only use this as an attack vector into people's home & office networks using HDMI, but you could also pull off a local max headroom stunt on individuals if you were so motivated and had suitable SDR equipment.
dang 5y ago
Past related threads: Max Headroom Signal Hijacking (2020) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25923243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25923243 - Jan 2021 (1 comment) Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 - Nov 2019 (54 comments) Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18167508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18167508 - Oct 2018 (1 comment) The Cold Case of the Max Headroom Signal Intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663 - April 2018 (53 comments) The Max Headroom TV Hack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 - July 2015 (81 comments) 27 Years Later the Max Headroom Hackers Still Remain a Mystery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889388 - Jan 2015 (1 comment) The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6824715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6824715 - Nov 2013 (11 comments) The 1987 Max Headroom Pirating Incident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1207937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1207937 - March 2010 (5 comments)
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Thanks. But its also the first time I noticed it. So, I guess that from my pov, its great.
  - dang 5y ago
    Sure, reposts are fine after a year or so (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). The purpose of listing links like that is just to point to other possibly-interesting discussions on the topic.
anigbrowl 5y ago
They were also able to pinpoint a location where the video might have been shot. Based on the background of the videos, agents from the FCC determined it was most likely the roll-down door of a warehouse and tracked it to a district that had warehouses with doors like it. Truly incredible detective work, the kind of insight that is limited to adults of normal intelligence and observational ability. I guess when you don't have any ideas you need to fill up the silence somehow.
- phist_mcgee 5y ago
  Im sure you could have solved it much faster than those detectives!
DonHopkins 5y ago
The Art of Noise with Max Headroom - Paranoimia (Official Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU Coca-Cola Max Headroom | Max Headroom Coke commercials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUMX6y2glJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUMX6y2glJ8 Max Headroom on Sesame Street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KlfcpUfQCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KlfcpUfQCk The Headroom Collection on Letterman, 1986-1990 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd2DztHiSiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd2DztHiSiY Terry Wogan interviews Max Headroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8jOBe5E5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8jOBe5E5A On Max Headroom: The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsDrXc94NGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsDrXc94NGU Back To The Future - Cafe 80`s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAEU-Lf60LA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAEU-Lf60LA Altered Carbon Carnage: Who is Carnage? Who is Matt Frewer who plays Carnage? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4aM0SiNiB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4aM0SiNiB8 Star Trek the Next Generation: A Matter Of Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgqP5E0Mjxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgqP5E0Mjxs Matt Frewer Interview: Doctor Doctor, Max Headroom, Altered Carbon: Carnage, Orphan Black, Eureka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85tZhiO8Zo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85tZhiO8Zo
natded 5y ago
I give you one better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
- liketochill 5y ago
  There is nothing better about that? destruction of property causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage is not hacking. Destroying stuff with guns is not hacking. - electrical engineer that has to organize shutdowns to replace insulators on transmission lines that are damaged from people shooting them
- detaro 5y ago
  In what way is that "better"? People can go shoot things, big whoop.
  - natded 5y ago
    A mystery incident of course.
    - detaro 5y ago
      Hm, I feel like that there is no challenge to "how did they do that" hurts in that regard.
- mike_d 5y ago
  I think you mean in the sense of unsolved mysteries? The Metcalf attack was most likely done by CWA union employees, who were in a labor dispute with AT&T at the time. Two fiber vaults had AT&T fibers cut, and the Metcalf station was the primary source of power for the SNJSCA02 central office. Two years later DHS indicated during an energy conference they had not identified the exact attacker but believed it was an insider. https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-grid/ https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-gri...
eggy 5y ago
Hacking was different then. I attended a few 2600 meetings in the Citigroup Center building in NYC back in the late 80s/early 90s, and HOPE in 1994. Sad to see they are pushing for the vaccine to attend without mention of natural immunity, or lack of long-term studies coupled with yet another $40 to $60bn of booster sales for big pharma. but hey, times change. Yesterday's subversive group has been incorporated into the pablum purveyors. Kind of ironic for the group to tow the line without question. I had already done analog red boxing with a microcassette player/recorder and a homemade pickup coil at payphones in the early/mid 80s. I was working on video tape encryption and satellites where I could then too. No real internet, just BBSs. I loved ECHO founded by Stacy Horn in NYC after coming off of GEnie BBS. I miss those days! I liked the US TV show for what it's worth. Very cool for the time and a bit subversive compared to the drivel on TV now.

377 points by sec400 5y ago

This always reminds me of the 2007 incident on Czech TV, where someone hijacked a weather panorama broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea4eft_3p-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea4eft_3p-I IIRC the panorama cam was connected to the Internet and had been hacked, so no microwave magic there. Good execution nonetheless...

laulis 5y ago
It was not connected to the internet, they actually went to the place, and I believe they have switched out the coax cable which was coming from the camera with their own input. There was a mini-montage back in the day of them pulling this off. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCNHJrQzB1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCNHJrQzB1g
flenserboy 5y ago
The music...the camera bounce...the fuzz at the end. Marvelous work.
junon 5y ago
Wow the editing for that time was really well done. Looks almost completely real.
lqet 5y ago
Brilliant.

dangle1 5y ago

It's always fascinating seeing the internet catalog and consolidate knowledge, especially regarding events that occurred pre-internet. Back when these events happened, a blurb appeared on TV news and in papers, but there was no easy way to get the big picture as the investigations evolved.

kingcharles 5y ago
I love that the Internet allows closure on pre-Internet mysteries that might not have been practically solvable before. I recently managed to track down some people online and between us we solved a late 90s mystery that would have been very annoying to solve back then and had bugged me for over 20 years. Closure is such a beautiful thing.
- _blu 5y ago
  what mystery? was it about time travel?
mattl 5y ago
This wasn't pre-Internet though. This happened in 1987. EDIT: "the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983" -- people who know more about this than you.
- post-it 5y ago
  Sure, but pre-"everyone is online always". Even things that happened in 2005, at the start of Reddit and Digg and well into the reign of MySpace, weren't summarized and consolidated as efficiently as they are today.
  - mattl 5y ago
    Sure. But we don't describe pre-smartphone as pre-telephone.
    - steviedotboston 5y ago
      yeah i dont see whats so hard about speaking accurately.
      - notreallyserio 5y ago
        This is funnier than it should be.

h2odragon 5y ago

The assumption that the content of the video had something do do with why it was broadcast may not be reasonable. Someone wanting to play the technical prank might well find some of the most random shit available to broadcast, hoping (perhaps mistakenly) that the point would be clear anyway. I think its also possible that the the technically equipped people who did this were perhaps not thinking as clearly as usual that evening. Intoxicants may have been involved. There were some gifted organic chemists working out in the suburbs then.

throwawaygh 5y ago
> Intoxicants may have been involved. "May have" seems weak. Nothing about the second intrusion screams sobriety.
- flatiron 5y ago
  i believe there were cuts in the video so it was prerecorded. cuts that apparently were so clean it was another piece of evidence they had some access to some professional equipment as consumer grade equipment of the time wasn't up to the task
  - PostThisTooFast 5y ago
    That's not true. Numerous home video recorders by that time had flying erase heads that could make clean cuts.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    It could have been put together in one of several schools in the area from consumer grade sources.
    - laurent92 5y ago
      At that time, printers already printed yellow dots with the serial ID. I’m most surprised VHS wasn’t watermarked. It could have helped a lot in terrorist investigations (ransom videos). I’m always afraid when I hear someone copypasting Apple memos. Obviously they must have watermark, if not text glyphs (rn = m, and further UTF-8 incantations), at least subtly different phrasing depending on which department, or person, views it.

MrRadar 5y ago

A few years ago I saw this documentary on the incident, including technical details on how the video was produced and examining and then debunking a number of theories about the incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgbci2Zf7ms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgbci2Zf7ms

smithza 5y ago

Notice: The latter portion of the video is NSFW.

beaner 5y ago

Of all the conspiracy theories out there, this one, to me, has the highest coverage-to-interestingness ratio. It just seems like a teen hacked an AV system and did a goofy presentation. I'm surprised that type of thing isn't more common, and I'm befuddled as to why this one gets so much attention.

throwawaygh 5y ago
No, this would've been quite a bit more difficult than "hacked an AV system". Hijacking small town public access channels was fairly easy. Taking over the feed for two different stations in Chicago is a whole different level. The basic hack is the same, but "just scale it up" isn't trivial in this case.
- fortran77 5y ago
  If you were pretty close to the receiving end on the microwave link, it wouldn't be that hard to overpower the signal from the studio.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Yeah and it doesn't have to work great or long before it burns out. People used chained TV reception amplifiers to broadcast pirate TV :)
BoxOfRain 5y ago
>I'm surprised that type of thing isn't more common I'd guess that interfering with a digital TV signal today is considerably harder than an old analogue TV signal.
- mark-r 5y ago
  At some point in the chain it's probably still analog, but the question is where's the switch? I think the compression scheme is very dependent on comparing adjacent frames, so you couldn't have compression until the point where all inputs come together.

seibelj 5y ago

Classic Reddit post on a theory of who did it https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_know_who_was_behind_the_max_headroom/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_kno... An update said it was disproven but still an interesting read

0des 5y ago

For anyone wondering, I recently re-watched the Max Headroom series & movie, and it still holds. I recommend you check it out, even if you hadn't seen it before.

nabla9 5y ago
I watched the series and movie again few years back and I concur. Amazing cypherpunk scifi. It has aquired some 80s patina that makes it only better.
joezydeco 5y ago
The movie is an excellent piece of early cyberpunk. They were doing the "operator get me out of here" two decades before The Matrix. The British TV interview show is meh. The American/ABC remake even more meh.
- technothrasher 5y ago
  I remember really enjoying the (American dramatic) TV show when I was a kid. I recently re-watched it, and I pretty much agree with this assessment. The original movie was dated but still enjoyable for what it was. The follow on series falls apart pretty quickly into uninteresting drivel.
  - mindcrime 5y ago
    Huh. Interesting. I re-watched the American series a couple of years ago and thought it held up incredibly well. "Different strokes" and all that, I guess.
    - technothrasher 5y ago
      I'm glad to hear it, actually. I do have a great fondness for Max Headroom, probably because I was so young when he first showed up and he hit all my "nerd" buttons. I was sad to see I couldn't even finish all the episodes of the show when I tried.
- 5y ago

trackofalljades 5y ago

obligatory podcast episode: https://www.omnibusproject.com/216 https://www.omnibusproject.com/216

leephillips 5y ago

I was interested in finding out how the intrusion was accomplished, but the article devotes only a few words to explaining that, in a sentence that makes no grammatical sense. What does it mean to place a dish antenna “between the transmitter tower”?

h2odragon 5y ago
The TV stations used a big transmitter up on the Sears tower for their real signal. That got fed by a little microwave dish antenna pointed out to a relay "in the city". So if you could get an angle on the dish with a transmitter of sufficient power, you could feed your own signal into whatever channel. "Hauling equipment up to the roof without getting caught" and "having haul-able equipment" are the technical challenges. IIRC they used a ~900Mhz system for that and even today I would have to spend some money to put a video signal out in that range, and another chunk to do it at any power. In 1987 someone had to creatively borrow some very high priced kit to do that.
- leephillips 5y ago
  Thanks for the details! (But would you need to haul equipment up to the roof? Couldn’t you insert your transmitter anywhere in the line of sight?)
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    Yeah, I just assume "roof" cuz that's where antennas will be. That kind of thing is as close to "tight beam" as can be managed with antennas, usually; and that can be quite small.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Not an expert, but some lines of sight stretch from the top of one building to the top of another. Chicago doesn't have any mountains nearby, so those lines would just extend out into space and never touch the ground.
  - mark-r 5y ago

criddell 5y ago

Is there a statute of limitations for a crime like this? I'd love to find out who did it, how they did it, and why they did it and have no interest in seeing anybody punished for something so harmless that happened a long time ago... Same goes for other famous unsolved crimes like the D.B. Cooper case.

throwawaygh 5y ago
Wikipedia says 5 years. It's really hard to believe there's anything on the books that would cover signal hijacking and has a statute of limitations longer than 34 years. IANAL. A more likely explanation for the lack of attribution is that the pranksters grew up and are more than a little embarrassed about their adolescent exploits. I know that I would probably not fess up to some of the nonsense I got up to phreaking/hacking in junior high and high school despite the statue of limitations passing long, long ago. Could also be that they revel in the mystery.
- OnlineGladiator 5y ago
  > A more likely explanation for the lack of attribution is that the pranksters grew up and are more than a little embarrassed about their adolescent exploits. Why would you be embarrassed of being awesome? > Could also be that they revel in the mystery. This makes more sense.
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > Why would you be embarrassed of being awesome? There are still many professions where illegally broadcasting your ass being slapped by a flyswatter to the city of Chicago would be enough to cause real professional issues. Even if it was 30 years ago.
    - usrusr 5y ago
      In a movie, this would be the point where we strike out every suspect who doesn't have a career inside the FCC.

codetrotter 5y ago

Haven’t heard about this before but it reminds me of a scene from the 1995 movie “Hackers”. Scene in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdha_OV5saI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdha_OV5saI IMDb page for said movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/ I wonder if the scene in Hackers was inspired by the real world hacks that the OP article talks about.

Kye 5y ago
They reference at least one setting up the backstory of the main character, so it's likely.
doublerabbit 5y ago
OT: I've never noticed that before, but top right on Zero's monitor there's small prompt of "Message from beast on dev/tty1". Has that always been there? May have to rewatch my VHS copy. Hack the planet.
bryans 5y ago
Hackers is still one of my favorite movies. Forgetting the Hollywood exaggerations, that is pretty much how the culture was in the late 80s and throughout the 90s. It was entirely nerdy, a little punk, there were a lot of arcades and pizza deliveries and dumpsters involved, and there were some incredibly douchey self-described villains suffering from megalomania. The wild west hacker days were pretty amazing, and that movie portrays all of the insanity pretty well, if cheesily. Edit: Got caught up in the nostalgia and forgot to mention that the hacking moments, however cheesy, are all based on real hacks. The TV station take over, Kevin Mitnick's social engineering, John Draper's (Captain Crunch) phone phreaking and others. Not to say that those people are the originators of those methods, just the most infamous ones at the time the movie was made.
- kaycebasques 5y ago
  Not really the same vibe as what you're describing but I need to go back and watch Enemy Of The State. Another one that seems similar to the vibe you describe is Sneakers. Hell, even Wayne's World is kinda the same vibe (in terms of their TV show).

LaserDiscMan 5y ago

A compilation of news reports at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBOhFGmbSIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBOhFGmbSIs "Captain Midnight" jammed HBO for almost 5 minutes in 86: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_signal_intrusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Midnight_broadcast_sig...

fortran77 5y ago
IN fact, this article also talks about Captain Midnight.

sec400 5y ago

34th yr anniversary of it yesterday

cronix 5y ago

Hey, you can't talk about Max Headroom without talking about The Art of Noise. The Art of Noise (with Max Headroom) - Paranomia (1986): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU

narrator 5y ago
Since we are bringing up Max Headroom, I would like to put a word in for Blipverts. These were part of the fictional subject matter of the first Max Headroom TV Show. They were advertisements that make old people watching them explode. Bryce, the engineer behind these adverts, uses the wonderful line, "I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it." This was amazingly prescient back in the 80s given where we are now in adtech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekg45ub8bsk
- joezydeco 5y ago
  All the networks were obsessed with real-time audience metrics, which is even more prescient.
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  > "I only invent the bomb, I don't drop it." "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.[1] [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
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paulpauper 5y ago

“I would like to inform anybody involved in this kinda thing, that there’s a maximum penalty of $100,000, one year in jail, or both,” Phil Bradford, an FCC spokesman, told a reporter the following day. does anyone ever pay maximum penalty for these cases?

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yes when they want to make an example of you it does happen. I don't think it would have happened for this though.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Tragically, Aaron Swartz.

MR4D 5y ago

Why is it that Max Headroom, now 35 years old, has more realistic eyes than most video games today? I'm looking at you, Madden 21.

JeremyReimer 5y ago
The original Max Headroom was played by Matt Frewer in heavy makeup. So his eyes are Matt Frewer's eyes.
pram 5y ago
It’s a guy in makeup lol

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

Anything new here from the hundred other posts? Some previous discussions: 2 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 6 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 4 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663

hellbannedguy 5y ago
It's almost like we running out of stuff to talk about?
gregorymichael 5y ago
New thing here may be the community members reading it.
- kaycebasques 5y ago
  Definitely my first time seeing it and it was just the kind of mischief I needed!
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Mine too. Once every 2 years is not bad. Some stuff gets reposted daily and that gets annoying if you watch new.

midasuni 5y ago

If you know what to do you can certainly hijack many TV broadcasts even today, and thanks to destaffing and automation they won’t be noticed or blocked for a long time.

HoppedUpMenace 5y ago

I only see one version of this video on youtube, the first incident. I swear years ago when this was posted here, there was a different version I saw with more stuff going on and the audio was much more clear than the first. Am I missing something or is there more than one Max Headroom signal hijack video out there?

pram 5y ago
I’ve seen this discussed for like 20 years and that is the only version I’ve ever seen fwiw

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hereforphone 5y ago

Couple of comments: - This is posted and discussed frequently - This was a pretty impressive feat of engineering - The most unusual thing is that this remained secret. Because there were a few people involved and three+ can't keep a secret. They don't even have a reason to anymore. I've often wondered whether this group of folks died shortly after this.

danachow 5y ago
I admit my memory may be spotty - but was there any reason to believe this could not easily have been pulled off by 2 people - ie a married couple? Sure relationships break up but I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave.
- a1pulley 5y ago
  > I’ve seen plenty of secrets go to a married pair’s grave. Is that possible?
  - storyinmemo 5y ago
    "I don't know how yous done it, but I know yous done it!"
  - Angostura 5y ago
    Yes - the commenter murdered their spouse.
    - hn_go_brrrrr 5y ago
      With the fly swatter, naturally.
  - Retr0id 5y ago
    One can infer that a secret exists, without knowing its contents.
  - disillusioned 5y ago

sergiotapia 5y ago

Someone on Reddit had a lot of insider knowledge about the max headroom incident and he claimed he was 90% sure he knew who they were. Two brothers if I recall - let me try to find it. Edit: Seems over the years he determined it was not them! Still an interesting read. https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_know_who_was_behind_the_max_headroom/ https://old.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/eeb6e/i_believe_i_kno...

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robryk 5y ago

Similar incident: in 1985, political opposition in People's Republic of Poland "hijacked" TV by broadcasting in sync with the actual TV signal. This allowed them to superimpose things on top of the image (within some range around their transmitter), which they used to broadcast political messages. Differences: not complete replacement, but superposition; "attacked" signal was the final signal to consumers; the hackers were caught (by standard police methods). Some details: https://hackaday.com/2016/07/05/retrotechtacular-how-solidarity-hacked-polish-tv/ https://hackaday.com/2016/07/05/retrotechtacular-how-solidar...

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pomian 5y ago
That was brilliant! Great that they made the write up on hackaday, for posterity.

kaycebasques 5y ago

I've always wondered what the original character's name was, and now I finally know: Max Headroom! I remember being very creeped out by it when I was a kid in the 90s. It's one of those things that lots of other shows referenced but I never thought to go find the source.

kaycebasques 5y ago

Has anyone tried re-working the audio to cancel out whatever filters/distortions they used?

guerrilla 5y ago

Funny coincidence, I just started watching Broadcast Signal Intrusion[1] 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11151336/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11151336/

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Cool story! I didn't know this happened. I don't think we ever had such break ins in national TV in the Netherlands. I know some of my friends in the 80s were able to "hack" into the cable network in my town, basically they just broadcast into the terrestrial receiver at the cable station after the real transmitter went down. In those days broadcast transmitters still switched off when programming was finished. Because the air was clear then there was very little power needed and thus little chance of getting caught. I used to speak to them on the legal 27mc CB because I was too chicken and they'd speak back to me in glorious stereo FM. Full duplex of course. It was fun! Many pirate "radio" stations too. I don't think the cable company ever bothered to catch them as it all happened after hours but eventually they added time locks so the uplinks just went down after programming. Still they were lazy so often it was possible to catch an unused uplink or an incorrect timer for years. What helped was that not many people actually used cable for radio. So it wasn't complained about much. Eventually the internet happened and people just lost interest...

Terry_Roll 5y ago

As a number of TV's have an OTA update facility using terrestrial broadcasts, its possible to not only use this as an attack vector into people's home & office networks using HDMI, but you could also pull off a local max headroom stunt on individuals if you were so motivated and had suitable SDR equipment.

dang 5y ago

Past related threads: Max Headroom Signal Hijacking (2020) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25923243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25923243 - Jan 2021 (1 comment) Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21611551 - Nov 2019 (54 comments) Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18167508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18167508 - Oct 2018 (1 comment) The Cold Case of the Max Headroom Signal Intrusion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16816663 - April 2018 (53 comments) The Max Headroom TV Hack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9845038 - July 2015 (81 comments) 27 Years Later the Max Headroom Hackers Still Remain a Mystery - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889388 - Jan 2015 (1 comment) The Mystery of the Creepiest Television Hack - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6824715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6824715 - Nov 2013 (11 comments) The 1987 Max Headroom Pirating Incident - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1207937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1207937 - March 2010 (5 comments)

jonnycomputer 5y ago
Thanks. But its also the first time I noticed it. So, I guess that from my pov, its great.
- dang 5y ago
  Sure, reposts are fine after a year or so (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). The purpose of listing links like that is just to point to other possibly-interesting discussions on the topic.

anigbrowl 5y ago

They were also able to pinpoint a location where the video might have been shot. Based on the background of the videos, agents from the FCC determined it was most likely the roll-down door of a warehouse and tracked it to a district that had warehouses with doors like it. Truly incredible detective work, the kind of insight that is limited to adults of normal intelligence and observational ability. I guess when you don't have any ideas you need to fill up the silence somehow.

phist_mcgee 5y ago
Im sure you could have solved it much faster than those detectives!

DonHopkins 5y ago

The Art of Noise with Max Headroom - Paranoimia (Official Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU Coca-Cola Max Headroom | Max Headroom Coke commercials https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUMX6y2glJ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUMX6y2glJ8 Max Headroom on Sesame Street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KlfcpUfQCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KlfcpUfQCk The Headroom Collection on Letterman, 1986-1990 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd2DztHiSiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd2DztHiSiY Terry Wogan interviews Max Headroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8jOBe5E5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8jOBe5E5A On Max Headroom: The Most Misunderstood Joke on TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsDrXc94NGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsDrXc94NGU Back To The Future - Cafe 80`s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAEU-Lf60LA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAEU-Lf60LA Altered Carbon Carnage: Who is Carnage? Who is Matt Frewer who plays Carnage? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4aM0SiNiB8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4aM0SiNiB8 Star Trek the Next Generation: A Matter Of Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgqP5E0Mjxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgqP5E0Mjxs Matt Frewer Interview: Doctor Doctor, Max Headroom, Altered Carbon: Carnage, Orphan Black, Eureka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85tZhiO8Zo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v85tZhiO8Zo

natded 5y ago

I give you one better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

liketochill 5y ago
There is nothing better about that? destruction of property causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage is not hacking. Destroying stuff with guns is not hacking. - electrical engineer that has to organize shutdowns to replace insulators on transmission lines that are damaged from people shooting them
detaro 5y ago
In what way is that "better"? People can go shoot things, big whoop.
- natded 5y ago
  A mystery incident of course.
  - detaro 5y ago
    Hm, I feel like that there is no challenge to "how did they do that" hurts in that regard.
mike_d 5y ago
I think you mean in the sense of unsolved mysteries? The Metcalf attack was most likely done by CWA union employees, who were in a labor dispute with AT&T at the time. Two fiber vaults had AT&T fibers cut, and the Metcalf station was the primary source of power for the SNJSCA02 central office. Two years later DHS indicated during an energy conference they had not identified the exact attacker but believed it was an insider. https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-grid/ https://money.cnn.com/2015/10/16/technology/sniper-power-gri...

eggy 5y ago

Hacking was different then. I attended a few 2600 meetings in the Citigroup Center building in NYC back in the late 80s/early 90s, and HOPE in 1994. Sad to see they are pushing for the vaccine to attend without mention of natural immunity, or lack of long-term studies coupled with yet another $40 to $60bn of booster sales for big pharma. but hey, times change. Yesterday's subversive group has been incorporated into the pablum purveyors. Kind of ironic for the group to tow the line without question. I had already done analog red boxing with a microcassette player/recorder and a homemade pickup coil at payphones in the early/mid 80s. I was working on video tape encryption and satellites where I could then too. No real internet, just BBSs. I loved ECHO founded by Stacy Horn in NYC after coming off of GEnie BBS. I miss those days! I liked the US TV show for what it's worth. Very cool for the time and a bit subversive compared to the drivel on TV now.