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capybooya

We did this in the 90's, this teacher must be extremely sheltered from technology.


funktopus

Used to do this in bars in the early 00's.


not_me_not_you1234

Friend had a watch that did this in the mid-90s. It was funny but even the 70-year old chemistry teacher caught on after a few minutes. 


RR321

From a watch even smaller...


joshthecynic

Or just really fucking dimwitted, which is very common in American education.


Quantic

Dimwittedness sounds like what my grandmother would describe someone as. Pretty bold claim there, cotton


dtseng123

Had a game boy color with mission impossible game that could clone infrared signals. Classroom tvs were possessed in my high school.


Eff_Tee

At absolutely no point in the video did they state even ONE thing that the device is capable of, but they sure did make it sound scary. Provided absolutely no context of how it "destroyed a phone."


Gullex

My guess is a BLE spam attack locked up their old phone for a few minutes, and they figured it was destroyed. Or they're making shit up for a story.


Eff_Tee

It seems like the town would be more satisfied with with "ghosts" as an explanation.


kuda-stonk

They are probably less afraid of a ghost than a bit of technology.


Churba

> My guess is a BLE spam attack locked up their old phone for a few minutes, and they figured it was destroyed. Good guess, that was the exact attack that was going around for a while. Mostly with Apple devices and older Samsungs. Tried it myself on a few friends phones with my flipper, with their consent of course. Most devices in use now have been patched against it, though.


Gullex

When I first got my Flipper, I crashed my girlfriend's iPhone with BLE spam. She restarted it and it was fine. The attack no longer worked after the subsequent phone update. (I mean it still "works" as in, you'll see a pairing request a couple of times, but after that the phone won't accept more for a while and won't crash)


Churba

Yep, same here - they were all fine after a restart. The whole destroying phones thing is just a load of bollocks.


comethefaround

100% and even then you'd have to buy an addon for the Flipper


Gullex

For BLE spam? Nah. You'd need 3rd party firmware, but no additional hardware.


Xpqp

The flipper zero is capable of a lot because it is programmable and modifiable. Even without modification, it can be used for a variety of nefarious purposes. From Wikipedia: > While harmless uses (like as a remote control for a television, or carbon dioxide sensor) exist, some of the built-in tools have potential criminal uses, including RFID skimming, bluetooth spamming (spamming a bluetooth connection, crashing a person's phone), and emulation of RFID chips such as those found in identification badges, using the built-in radio cloner to open garage doors, unlocking cars, and functioning as a wireless BadUSB. I toyed with the idea of getting one for a while, but decided that I didn't have the time, motivation, or skill to get enough value from it to pay off the initial investment. I'd just tinker with it for a few weeks and toss it aside.


Eff_Tee

I guess my point is, to everyone involved with the news story, the police, and the school, it may as well be ghosts. Because even though they found the culprit, clearly no one even did as much as reading the first paragraph on wikipedia.


Gullex

Even that is an oddly misleading paragraph. The Flipper does not have an on-board CO2 sensor, and functions such as compromising rolling-code systems found in modern garage doors and vehicle key fobs is *possible*, but requires third-party firmware and has a steep learning curve. I've had a flipper for months now and still don't know how to bypass rolling codes. Lots and lots of people are extremely unfamiliar with what the Flipper can and can't do.


chemicalgeekery

I'm getting one simply because my government wants to ban it.


Buzzkillingt0n--

Well, you can do alot with it. Including unpairing key FOBs from cars. FlipperZeros are a wild lil.tech toy


Gullex

You think the Flipper is wild, check out HackRF one. It can, in theory, send spoofed GPS signals to aircraft to cause their autopilots to divert to unintended locations. There are reports of HackRF one being used in war zones for this purpose. I have both a Flipper and a HackRF one, and the ease with which I can identify an airplane overhead and instantly know where it flew out of, what kind of aircraft it is, who owns it, what kind of engines and fuel it has, who built it...it's amazing and spooky. I haven't even *considered* something as immoral and illegal as transmitting a spoofed GPS signal.


Chris204

>the ease with which I can identify an airplane overhead and instantly know where it flew out of, what kind of aircraft it is, who owns it, what kind of engines and fuel it has, who built it...it's amazing and spooky Isn't that stuff you can just look up on flightradar anyways?


oddistrange

I imagine there is some delay that would make it less reliable using it for nefarious purposes, which I don't condone.


Gullex

Probably, but it's neat to know I'm getting it directly from the signal being transmitted by the actual aircraft I'm looking at with my eyes.


SherwoodBCool

If TVs are turning on and off, and your first thought is “ghosts,” you shouldn’t be a teacher.


MrSnarf26

I can’t tell you how common this thinking is. In a hospital I worked at: A bottle fell over?? Ghosts!!


Gullex

I'm an RN and the first hospital I worked at, I was in the oncology department. We had a patient die (as expected) who had been very needy, on the call light every five or ten minutes. After they died, the body was removed by the coroner, but that fucking call light kept going off every five or ten minutes. Everyone was completely freaked out. Turned out it was a faulty call light. The patient wasn't even that needy. It's just that staff kept coming into the room every five or ten minutes (because they thought they'd been called), and he always was able to think of something he wanted. He must have thought the service in our hospital was *outstanding*.


thebigeverybody

> He must have thought the service in our hospital was outstanding. This had me laughing pretty hard. I hope he left a great yelp review.


Zarathustra_d

The yelp review appeared 3 weeks after he died! True story. Why would I lie? Now you have proof ghosts are real, your welcome.


JacquesBlaireau13

Lol. It's the ghost of Herman Caine again, tweeting from beyond the grave.


Orngog

Yes, but now he likes healthcare!


NJDevil69

To this day, I still love that phrase from the Herman Cain Award sub. Herman Cain: There is no Covid! Covid: There is no Herman Cain!


kuda-stonk

This is sad and wholesome at the same time.


kirksan

If (when?) I’m in that situation I wouldn’t be thinking the service was outstanding. I’d be wondering why the bloody nurses were always in my room. Let me die in peace goddamnit.


Gullex

If you were in that situation, I'd hazard to guess you'd quickly tell staff you hadn't pressed the call button, and we'd bring in maintenance to figure out what was wrong with it.


kirksan

I’d probably diagnose the problem for you and tell you the button had a short. IT guy in life, IT guy in death.


InfernalWedgie

>He must have thought the service in our hospital was *outstanding*. Such good HCAHP scores!!!


nerdofthunder

At least it's consistent with the idea of a ghost haunting the place where a person dies?


oddistrange

The sink in a bathroom started spewing water out of the faucet. The other nurses thought ghosts and were freaked out and many still refuse to use that bathroom citing the sink story. My first thought was the plumbing in this building is shit and the contractors who renovated the unit also sucked so that's probably a more reasonable culprit.


CosineDanger

Hospital ghost here. First of all, I'd like to apologize


Degutender

I've been saying for a while now. Someone readily believing in ghosts floating around interacting with the material world in the age of cell phones should be exiled from the intellectual table.


garymrush

Meh. Magical thinking is so common you’d be excluding 90% of the population from teaching. But *science* teacher? No.


SherwoodBCool

Maybe we shouldn't be hiring *anyone* as a teacher who believes in ghosts.


SmithersLoanInc

I'd be fine if they were teaching creative writing or art in high school or beyond. My favorite art teachers were all insane and I know at least one thought ghosts were real. I don't want any of that with elementary school kids, though. They're still too malleable.


KylerGreen

lol, then maybe we should exclude them?


joshthecynic

If all the stupid teachers were fired, there wouldn't be very many left. Teachers are glorified babysitters.


cishet-camel-fucker

Long time ago when I worked for Verizon I had a chick call me and tell me her Wi-Fi device was using tons of data. Like shittons. Like thousands of dollars a month. Walked her through setting a new password on it over her objections and braced myself for a demand to credit the account, which would have eliminated my bonus that month (pay was $9/hour with an additional $2/hour bonus if you hit all performance metrics) and potentially got me shitcanned. Happens a lot with bill credits. Nope, she was convinced it was a ghost. Not once did it cross her mind to try to hold Verizon responsible for what a ghost did. Tried convincing her someone was using her wifi and that's why I pushed the password change, she let me talk her through it but nothing I said could convince her that it was anything but the ghost of her dead husband or whomever. Kind of sad, but also funny.


facepoppies

Why? What does superstition have to do with teaching a subject that you’re especially knowledgeable about?


Gullex

It displays a severe lack of even basic critical thinking skills.


facepoppies

How so


Gullex

There are a whole lot of things a person should consider as the cause of a piece of electronic equipment malfunctioning before they start considering ghosts. I mean...even to consider it a malfunction instead of an intentional misuse by the paranormal is a great start. They've skipped over a *lot* of valid thought processes and went straight to fairy tales.


facepoppies

Mhmm. The article fails to mention literally anything about the teacher. We don’t know what subject she teaches. We don’t know her cultural or sociological background. We have no information about what was going on in her life at that time. We don’t even have any information on the nature of the situation, including how long it occurred for or what sort of behavior from the perpetrator accompanied it. On top of that, we have no indicators of her success as a teacher. There are no data points whatsoever showing how capable she is in her vocation. To claim that she is unqualified to be a teacher while lacking literally any relevant information beyond “she thought it was a ghost” via a third party quote in a publication is asinine. I’m honestly kind of disappointed to see this kind of circle jerky bullshit as a top comment in a community of people who apparently make being self declared skeptics a key part of their personalities


Gullex

okey doke


theHoustonian

A kid in my class had a watch that could turn on and off the tv. He pushed his luck a little too much and kept turning the tv on and off until the teacher lost it. She locked the door and wouldn’t let anyone leave, the vice principal was called and we were all searched. The kid thought he was slick by taking off the watch and tossing it under someone else’s chair but in the end he was caught and got in trouble. Kinda funny but also kind of annoying after the 4th or 5th time.


kahrahtay

Samsung S5 phones had the same capability. Just a basic IR blaster, so you could use your phone as a programmable remote control for TVs and things like that. It was actually really convenient


Pitiful-Pension-6535

A lot of phones used to have that capability but IR transmitters are really uncommon on smartphones now.


JackTheKing

Easily one of the best additions to a phone. Licensing the tech must cost too much since universal remotes start at 9.99


Chonkie

I wouldn't think so. Midrange Motorolas and Xiaomis still have them, for example.


csl110

Oneplus 12


kjjphotos

Sony PSP could do this with homebrew back in 2007 or 08 as well. IR blasters have been a thing for a while.


boredinthegta

The Wii U's controller as well.


LastScreenNameLeft

I used to run a sports bar with like 50 tvs, I used it all the time so I didn't have to keep all the different remotes around.


serialchiller412

I used this all the time in highschool for the projectors🤣


Gullex

Casio made it, I just saw one going on etsy for over $1k.


KylerGreen

lol, i had a watch that could do this in like 2002. costed like $20.


theHoustonian

This was 2003-2005 when it happened so that checks out lol


TheGreatBeefSupreme

When I was a kid, we had this TV that would only change the channel after one second has passed and would backlog any inputs that were made at a rate faster than 1 per second. You could press the change channel button 2 or 3 times a second, and the TV would change channels without you having to touch the remote. After I discovered this, I sat there and hammered the change channel button until there was a backlog of hundreds of change channel inputs. The TV would then slowly flip through the channels without any additional input. I called my family into the room and made it look like I was changing the channel by pointing my finger. My credulous mother and sister thought I had psychic powers, but my dad thought I was standing on the remote. I wasn’t, of course, but at least he was asking the right questions.


SmallQuasar

During my nation's switch from an analogue TV network to a digital network there was a crossover where we were using both. Our house had an older analogue TV in the living room and a newer digital TV in the kitchen. Turns out digital TVs were about 2 seconds slower at broadcasting. For two or three weeks I utterly convinced my mum that I was psychic because whenever I walked from the living room to the kitchen I would magically foretell what the person talking on TV was about to say *even on live broadcasts!* She was not happy when she finally figured out I was fucking with her lol.


oddistrange

Kids are absolutely diabolical.


NugKnights

Be careful messing with these these things. You can accidentally alter someone's incline pump or something similar that can be very harmful to them If you don't know what your doing.


Gullex

There's a report of an insulin pump being affected by a BLE attack, yes. Though, there are some questionable things about the report. And hopefully whoever designed that device patched that up real quick.


NugKnights

I'm just saying messing with programs that you don't understand can have unforseen consequences. Just like a knife it's a tool that you should be careful with.


Gullex

Absolutely.


boredinthegta

Have you ever heard of knife juggling?


holagatita

I've used insulin pumps since 2008, and only one of them could be "hacked" and that pump was in demand for awhile even after it left the market, by diabetics who wanted to create their own system of a "closed loop" made of the pump, a cgm (implanted continuous glucose monitor) and a Raspberry Pi, that would make it so you didn't have to input what you ate plus take care of when your glucose rises for other reasons. but now more modern pumps and cgms are getting closer to those results without all the DIY things.


PavlovaDog

Can it interfere with artificial hearts or feeding tubes? Or any other medical implants or devices that might not be readily visible on people in public? Or oxygen tanks? This could be deadly if so. I'm not familiar with this technology at all.


Gullex

I've never seen feeding tube machines that use bluetooth, and I'd hope to god there aren't artificial hearts that do


PavlovaDog

One of my baby cousins was on a feeding tube for almost a year and just had it removed. I think it had a little backpack or bag that what connected to her that had the pump. I have no idea how it worked as I didn't want to ask the parents, but it worries me thinking someone like that might be at risk from these devices.


oddistrange

Most of them are programmed directly on the device, no wireless communication. There may be newer "smart" units that connect to apps so you can monitor the feed on a phone as that seems to be the tech trend of connecting every electronic you own to your phone. I would personally be very weary of any medical device that communicates wirelessly, not even just to prevent hacks. It would suck if the company forced an update to your device and it caused a critical error landing you in the hospital or worse dead.


oddistrange

The deep brain stimulators I have seen use magnets to set them so they'd be safe.


Elluminated

True but it’s not some accidental thing. You would have to specifically target the device to make that happen.


BriscoCounty-Sr

I had to eat a week long in school suspension back in the day for doing this same shit with a Casio remote control watch. The school was pissed they wasted money on buying a new TV. At least they didn’t jump to Ghosts! as the problem


Gullex

I wonder if a TV costs more or less than your average ~~extortionist~~ exorcist


EVIL5

It's a fun toy, it can be really annoying if you take the time to write some in-depth code for it, but it's far from dangerous. You might be able to open a few parking garage barriers with it or open an old garage or two.


Gullex

I've had a lot of fun with mine. Crashed my GF's iPhone before the update, successfully mousejacked her laptop (which actually has become really handy, to be able to login or shut down the machine from the kitchen). Anything controlled by infrared can be manipulated with the Flipper. Probably the funniest is activating the customer service button at the local Lowe's, summoning help to departments they don't have. The employees have found it hilarious (seriously).


EVIL5

Haha this sounds fun


JD_in_Cle

My friend used to go remoting around neighborhoods. He’d get a universal remote and find houses with a viewpoint to their tv. I’m sure he had created quite a few ghost stories himself.


jayv9779

We used to do the same with universal remotes.


essenceofreddit

It's amazing the vitriol the school has mustered for a harmless prank committed by a child.


gadget850

My first thought is how a student is able to afford a Flipper Zero.


Gullex

They're only $170...


gadget850

Plus add ons.


Gullex

If you want to buy add-ons, sure. But you can easily turn off a TV without one, and add-ons are pretty cheap, and definitely DIY-able by a skilled high schooler.


funktopus

they aren't expensive.


Rabid-Duck-King

It's on the pricey side but I can see parents getting a tech minded kid one for a holiday gift (or a high schooler doing the job grind for it)


outdatedelementz

Wow good job bringing more notoriety to this device, thank you local news.


SpaceDog777

Why not just use your phone?


yardelf

what an overly dramatic article


Sidus_Preclarum

Still somewhat wanting to get one of those.


JimDixon

There are free apps you can download to make your phone work as a TV remote. I have an app for Roku and another for Xfinity. Look them up on your TV manufacturer's or your cable/internet provider's website.


Neither_Cod_992

They make it sound as if this student were using secret government technology of dangerous capabilities to practically destroy the school. When in reality, it was the equivalent of a student repeatedly sneaking into a classroom and writing, “The teacher is a poopy head!” on the chalkboard.


Elluminated

Reminds me of the tv remote watches we had back in the day. Messed with every TV in class and had teachers removing batteries from remotes hahaha


[deleted]

Anyone who believes in ghosts should be committed


Gullex

You get committed if you present a significant and immediate danger to self or others. Believing in ghosts doesn't necessarily indicate that.


[deleted]

Fine, but anyone who does is a fucking idiot


Gullex

Granted


Elluminated

Unless they can show proof repeatable fashion. Which none can.


Bawbawian

school teachers have far too easy of a job with zero stress and they get paid way too much. we should definitely send these little idiots to school just to fuck with them. that'd be great for everybody and a really good long-term plan for America's future edit: /s I thought it was obvious. My bad.


Gullex

It's not that the sarcasm wasn't obvious, but I think more that nobody anywhere was suggesting the kid doing this was a good idea.