from Hacker News

QR codes appearing in Google street view?

by notbeuller on 8/17/23, 12:12 AM with 76 comments

  • by tornato7 on 8/17/23, 1:10 AM

    I spotted a series of signs posted near me (irl) that only contained hex characters. I was curious and thought it might be some sort of Cicada 3301-type nonsense, so I transcribed all of the signs and tested multiple combinations to discover a secret URL, and...

    It turned out to be a crypto scam!

  • by davidw on 8/17/23, 1:58 PM

    My favorite street view easter egg:

    https://www.google.com/maps/@48.6547428,-120.5744037,3a,75y,...

    Technically, not actually street view I don't think, but the blue circle does show up on Google Maps if you drag the little yellow guy in search of imagery.

  • by adrianmonk on 8/17/23, 12:56 AM

    Could be a sneaky recruiting trick. Stuff like this has happened before:

    https://www.vox.com/2015/8/26/11618060/puzzles-are-fun-searc...

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588080

  • by klabb3 on 8/17/23, 5:10 AM

    That’s a curious domain, seems like it’s a meme/joke? (NSO group is the ones that helps shady governments put 0days in the phones of journalists etc). I guess it’s kinda fun to see this quirky and in-jokey vibe to the fediverse. Reminiscent of the pre-corporate internet era.

  • by e0zh6az27noua5k on 8/17/23, 7:30 AM

    It's literally the location of Google Datacenters, maybe where-is-google-maps as in where is Google Maps hosted ?

  • by its-summertime on 8/17/23, 1:16 AM

    Worth noting its implemented mostly in JS, view-source on the page to get the whole list of photos and destinations.

  • by ofou on 8/17/23, 3:43 AM

    I need to know what does it mean all of them:

    https://www.google.com/maps/contrib/107193335994695458225/ph...

  • by keirabee on 8/17/23, 8:40 AM

    It seems like if I go to http://where-is-google-maps.com/?p={number} such as http://where-is-google-maps.com/?p=1, http://where-is-google-maps.com/?p=2, and so on, I get the locations of different google data centers around the world with qr codes on them. also worth noting the page title seems to be 'hide and seek' for all these pages. also the fence in p=2 seems to have a number on it? "4-20-11911191" or something.

  • by gowld on 8/17/23, 12:41 AM

    User submitted photos with QR codes?

    How would it get into Street View?

    Easter egg?

  • by saagarjha on 8/17/23, 8:30 AM

    I wonder if these are the actual data centers that power Google Maps?

  • by KirillPanov on 8/17/23, 1:31 PM

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  • by mdwalters on 8/17/23, 4:53 AM

    Kinda off-topic, but this just reminded me of that story Paul Graham made about him being on Google Maps.

  • by KomoD on 8/17/23, 2:50 PM

    The title is very misleading

  • by Tao3300 on 8/17/23, 1:01 AM

    The codes translate to series of billboards for "South of the Border" and "Burma Shave"