[HN Gopher] List of Special Elevator Modes
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       List of Special Elevator Modes
        
       Author : altrus
       Score  : 167 points
       Date   : 2021-07-08 19:52 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (elevation.fandom.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (elevation.fandom.com)
        
       | hawk_ wrote:
       | my personal favorite is the Sabbath mode
       | https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Sabbath_service_(SHO)
       | 
       | not to pick on a specific belief system, but it's quite
       | interesting the lengths people go to follow the letter but not
       | the spirit of things.
        
         | jackbeck wrote:
         | Previous discussion here:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27010617
        
         | canadianfella wrote:
         | Can we all agree that religion is pretty silly?
        
         | chimeracoder wrote:
         | > not to pick on a specific belief system, but it's quite
         | interesting the lengths people go to follow the letter but not
         | the spirit of things.
         | 
         | That's not the way observant Jewish people look at it at all.
         | You're assuming that these workarounds are not "following the
         | spirit", but according to them, the workarounds are as much a
         | part of the spirit of the law as the law itself.
        
           | tamaharbor wrote:
           | Tell that to your nearest Eruv.
        
         | AndrewDucker wrote:
         | The letter was, they believe, the word of God. If God hadn't
         | meant the loophole to be there then he would have used
         | different words. The loophole is _divine_.
        
           | LudwigNagasena wrote:
           | If the loophole seems to go directly against intended
           | meaning, can you say it's there?
        
             | jacobr1 wrote:
             | The distinction is the belief that there is no intended
             | meaning beyond the literal meaning.
        
           | krapp wrote:
           | >If God hadn't meant the loophole to be there then he would
           | have used different words. The loophole is divine.
           | 
           | One could just as well state that if God had meant the
           | loophole to be there, he would have mentioned it.
        
             | Kalium wrote:
             | When you believe in an omniscient and omnipotent lawgiver,
             | that line of argument is a little weak.
        
               | BitwiseFool wrote:
               | If you assume omniscience and omnipotence as a starting
               | point, then you can justify _anything_ that exists using
               | the same reason, otherwise it wouldn 't exist, right? I
               | don't mean to get into a theological or ontological
               | argument, though. It just seems like you can use the
               | foundation to justify anything you want.
        
               | stickfigure wrote:
               | "If God didn't intend for us to eat animals, then why did
               | he make them out of meat?"
        
               | SketchySeaBeast wrote:
               | "If God didn't intend for us to eat people, then why did
               | he make them out of meat?"
        
               | krapp wrote:
               | God doesn't explicitly forbid cannibalism anywhere in the
               | Bible. We just have to find a way to define humans as
               | ruminants with cloven hooves and it'll all be kosher.
        
               | leephillips wrote:
               | Where did you get the idea that the Hebrew God is
               | supposed to be omniscient and omnipotent? I am told that
               | biblical Hebrew does not even have a word for omnipotent.
        
               | skissane wrote:
               | Orthodox Jews accept Rambam (Maimonides)'s 13 principles
               | of the faith. Rambam taught that all his 13 principles
               | can be derived from the Torah.
               | 
               | The 10th principle explicitly says that God is
               | omniscient. The 1st principle "Belief in the existence of
               | the Creator, who is perfect in every manner of existence
               | and is the Primary Cause of all that exists" doesn't
               | explicitly mention omnipotence but rather obviously
               | entails it. (If God is not omnipotent, then God is not
               | "perfect in every manner of existence" since God would
               | not be perfect in power.)
               | 
               | https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/332555/jew
               | ish...
               | 
               | Whether or not the ancient Hebrews believed in divine
               | omniscience and omnipotence is something that can be
               | historically debated. But contemporary Orthodox Jews do.
               | 
               | (I'm not Jewish but I hope I've stated the Orthodox
               | Jewish viewpoint accurately.)
        
               | leephillips wrote:
               | Thanks for pointing this out. I encountered the claim
               | recently that the concept of divine omnipotence was
               | invented by Catholic theologians. maybe in the early
               | middle ages, and does not quite exist in Judaism. But
               | you're pretty convincing.
        
               | krapp wrote:
               | I mean... If God's so omnipotent why did he need to rest
               | on the seventh day to begin with?
        
         | disruptthelaw wrote:
         | I took my gap year in israel with a religious Jewish friends.
         | We were slight stoners back then and on sabbath in order for
         | him to get high I'd have to light a bong in a cupboard and fill
         | the cupboard with smoke and then swap places with him. This was
         | multiple times per sabbath every sabbath. I also had to
         | constantly open the fridge for him because of the automatic
         | light. I found these rituals ridiculous (20 years later I still
         | do) and we fought over it and decided to part ways for the rest
         | of the gap year.
        
           | deregulateMed wrote:
           | Any idea if he is still a zealot or if he is woke yet?
        
           | ars wrote:
           | He should not have done that. In general a Jew is not
           | permitted to ask a non-Jew to do things that are forbidden to
           | him.
           | 
           | Some exceptions are things necessary for normal life, that
           | would be impossible to do in advance. A classic example is
           | lighting a fire for heating (back when that was done with a
           | pile of wood), and minor medical needs. (Major medical needs
           | the Jew would violate the Shabbath and do himself.)
           | 
           | Getting high is not a necessity, and the fridge switch could
           | have been taped before the Shabbath.
        
         | jtchang wrote:
         | Goes well with the Eruv around NYC:
         | https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...
         | 
         | It is hilarious the lengths people go to.
        
         | michaelhoffman wrote:
         | The prohibition is on doing work generally, with a specific
         | prohibition on kindling a fire, which was quite a lot of work
         | millennia ago.
         | 
         | Does using a device that allows you to avoid walking up many
         | flights of stairs really violate the spirit of a law
         | prohibiting work on the sabbath?
        
           | moduspol wrote:
           | And for that matter, where is the line drawn?
           | 
           | The other workaround I had heard for this is to have a non-
           | Jew hired specifically to stand in the elevator and push
           | buttons on behalf of Jews on the sabbath. But they'd still
           | have to speak the floor so the attendant would know what
           | button to push, right?
           | 
           | If so, what if an elevator had basic voice recognition?
           | Speaking the floor number to a machine is no more work than
           | speaking it to an attendant, right?
           | 
           | Maybe this rule interpretation was originally made back when
           | elevators generally had attendants and did require some
           | expertise to operate (e.g. to stop at the right spots)? And
           | then didn't get rolled back when it became essentially
           | trivial?
        
             | bellyfullofbac wrote:
             | If speaking isn't allowed, a hack* would be for the
             | elevator to start counting, and tell the passenger to nod
             | or lift their head up after their floor number is
             | mentioned. Or even just walk to the activation corner.
             | 
             | * I asked Yahweh, he said this is legal.
        
           | hawk_ wrote:
           | if the idea is to not work then pressing a button isn't going
           | to change anything. if the elevator is being taken to do some
           | work, again pressing the button has nothing to do with it.
        
           | ars wrote:
           | "Work" is a bad translation. A better translation would be
           | "creative activity". Fire is a problem not because it's work
           | to light, but because you are creating heat from wood.
        
         | 908B64B197 wrote:
         | You'll enjoy this then (when Richard Feynman encountered
         | something similar):
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/ev3gy/excerpt_from...
        
         | jackbeck wrote:
         | There are sects (like the ultra orthodox) who don't use Sabbath
         | mode specifically for this reason. They say that the added
         | weight causes the elevator's motor to work harder thereby
         | desecrating the Sabbath.
        
           | dmurray wrote:
           | Are they allowed to go down?
           | 
           | Also, depending on the counterweight and the current load of
           | the elevator, adding an extra person to it might tax the
           | motor less even when ascending.
        
             | ars wrote:
             | Generating electricity is equally forbidden.
             | 
             | The prohibition is not work, but rather creation. In this
             | case creating electrical energy.
        
         | chadash wrote:
         | In Orthodox Judaism, the letter of the law typically _is_ the
         | spirit of the law. Not a perfect analogy, but think of the
         | talmud as similar to the tax code. There are things that are
         | black, things that are white and things that are gray. If the
         | tax code said there 's a 5% sales tax on tangerines,
         | clementines, navel oranges, lemons, and grapefruit, I'm
         | probably not gonna volunteer to pay taxes on my Sumo Citruses,
         | because it's not explicitly in there. Perhaps doing so would be
         | in the spirit of the law, but that's just not the way people
         | think when it comes to taxes. Same thing in Judaism... if it's
         | technically legal, you can do it (this stems from the notion
         | that the Jewish legal rules are of divine origin, and so if
         | something was excluded, then its absence is intentional)[1].
         | 
         | Of course, much like the tax code, there are gray areas where
         | different accountants (rabbis) may interpret the rules
         | differently. One place where the analogy diverges is that in
         | Judaism, there are lots of areas where the earlier generations
         | of rabbis acknowledge something to be technically allowed
         | according to the divine rules, but they forbid it anyway,
         | either because they felt there was some societal benefit to
         | doing so, or because they felt that adding an additional
         | prohibition would prevent people from accidentally breaking the
         | divine rule [1].
         | 
         | [1] Of course, the analogy breaks down, because it's more
         | complicated than this. There are plenty of areas where people
         | are customarily stricter, even if something is ok by the letter
         | of the law. This applies to Sabbath Mode on elevators, which
         | many Orthodox Jews won't use, but won't necessarily say that
         | it's prohibited.
         | 
         | [2] An example of this is the prohibition of eating milk and
         | meat in the same dish. Technically, the divine rule is no
         | _cooking_ milk and meat together, but the rabbis added an extra
         | rule of no _eating_ them together to make sure that people
         | wouldn 't come to cook them together.
        
           | asciimov wrote:
           | So my Jewish friends could technically eat a cheese burger,
           | as long as the cheese was placed on the burger after cooking?
           | 
           | Would they have to wait till the burger cools down so that it
           | doesn't melt the cheese? (Here I am concerned about carryover
           | heating/cooking being considered cooking by law.)
           | 
           | I am endlessly fascinated by religious laws and their
           | implications/consequences.
        
             | dsr_ wrote:
             | You would have to find someone who counted the validity of
             | the original law ("Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its
             | mother's milk" in Exodus https://www.mechon-
             | mamre.org/p/pt/pt0223.htm) but did not count any later
             | interpretation or fence around it.
             | 
             | Please talk to your participants well before you start this
             | experiment; very few people are going to have an equivocal
             | attitude towards it.
        
             | chadash wrote:
             | _> So my Jewish friends could technically eat a cheese
             | burger, as long as the cheese was placed on the burger
             | after cooking?_
             | 
             | No they can't, but this would be a violation of a
             | rabbinical law (the rabbis forbade _eating_ them together
             | as a safeguard), which is less serious than a biblical law
             | violation.
             | 
             |  _> Would they have to wait till the burger cools down so
             | that it doesn 't melt the cheese? (Here I am concerned
             | about carryover heating/cooking being considered cooking by
             | law.)_
             | 
             | The real question you are asking is what counts as cooking.
             | This has _lots_ of ramifications in Jewish law,
             | particularly because cooking in general is forbidden on the
             | sabbath. From here, you can go down the rabbit hole of
             | related questions. What temperature counts as cooking? If
             | something has a low melting point, is it treated
             | differently or is there an absolute temperature? Can you
             | keep things warm on the Sabbath if they are already cooked?
             | Can you rewarm them? I can go on and on, but the gist is
             | that it gets complicated and this is the reason why there
             | are many people who spend a lifetime learning talmud and
             | never master it.
             | 
             | But to answer your question specifically, waiting for the
             | burger to cool down is irrelevant in this case since it's
             | rabbinically prohibited to eat them together anyway. The
             | only real question is at what temperature it goes from a
             | rabbinical to a biblical prohibition.
        
               | asciimov wrote:
               | Thanks for your answer. It sounds like most things
               | involving religion, complicated.
        
             | jacobr1 wrote:
             | I can highly recommend "Legal Systems Very Different from
             | Ours" by David Friedman
             | 
             | http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsC
             | o...
             | 
             | It includes a few chapters on religion-based legal systems
             | and is interesting throughout.
        
           | LudwigNagasena wrote:
           | First, when people feel that the tax code doesn't represent
           | the spirit of the law, they change the wording, likely they
           | will amend it and put the same tax on Sumo Citruses as on
           | other citruses. So the tax code and the Talmud are quite
           | different animals.
           | 
           | Second, I am pretty sure the Talmud is not so precise to the
           | point of specifically mentioning pressing pressing buttons on
           | an elevator. So the analogy kind of doesn't work there again.
        
             | BitwiseFool wrote:
             | Imagine if the US Code suddenly became fixed and holy. Now
             | imagine you are thousands of years in the future. Congress
             | is long gone and if you're lucky you might have some notes
             | and stories about how the laws were enforced in the past.
             | 
             | Naturally, the world has changed a lot since the text of
             | the law became immutable. But who is to say how new things
             | fit into the old framework? What about old contradictions
             | that were never addressed? What about laws on the books
             | that were never enforced in practice, do those still count?
             | And so on.
             | 
             | In our hypothetical scenario there is no Supreme Court, but
             | there would probably be dozens of 'pretenders to the
             | throne' who believe they have the right to interpret the
             | law correctly. So you as an individual can choose which
             | school of thought you want to subscribe to. Letter of the
             | law? Spirit of the Law?
             | 
             | And in a funny way, when we ask ourselves "what did the
             | Founding Fathers want?" we are doing the same thing as
             | theologians when they wonder what God wanted.
        
               | chadash wrote:
               | To extend this analogy further, in Judaism, we ascribe
               | more value to the opinions of rabbis "closer to the
               | source". So we would look at the tax code from 1000 years
               | ago and try to interpret that. But we might also say,
               | "John Marshall was a great justice and one of his
               | opinions dealt with something similar, how can we apply
               | that to our situation here?"
        
           | derefr wrote:
           | > this stems from the notion that the Jewish legal rules are
           | of divine origin, and so if something was excluded, then its
           | absence is intentional
           | 
           | I would like to understand the reasoning behind the belief
           | that even legal rules of divine origin would include mention
           | of things human culture would have had no concept of, and
           | human language no word for, in the time the rule was made --
           | such that the rules would be "complete for all future time"
           | rather than "those relevant as of the time of covenant."
           | 
           | Wouldn't even a god think it more optimal to hold off on
           | telling us rules about e.g. which synthetic meats are kosher,
           | until we invent such things?
           | 
           | It seems awfully _suspicious_ to the validity of that
           | interpretation, that there are plenty of specific /concrete
           | prohibitions given amongst divine rulings, but of those, none
           | are about things that were entirely mysterious at the time,
           | written down "as spoken" without understanding, only able to
           | be made sense of centuries/millennia later.
           | 
           | In fact -- the Hebrew god is an intercessor god, not an
           | absent god; don't they already "amend" their own previous
           | rules whenever they communicate specific orders / demands /
           | requirements to particular people? Does that not, by itself,
           | disrupt the interpretation of the initial set of laws given
           | being a perfect closed set, never to be updated, applicable
           | to all future circumstances? Would a perfect body of divine
           | law not already _imply_ those orders  / demands /
           | requirements, such that there would be no need for further
           | communication?
        
             | golemiprague wrote:
             | In Jewish monotheism god is beyond time and space, probably
             | because the concept of God tries to encompass the infinity
             | of the universe in time and space and the lack of
             | understanding of those things, us being humans.
             | 
             | Therefore when we ascribe some will to god, specifically
             | the will for humans to follow all those rules, we believe
             | that this god "exists" in every time and every space, past
             | present or future.
             | 
             | That's why also the "spirit" of the rules doesn't matter,
             | we don't try to understand god, all we can is to try to
             | understand things which are in the realm of science. Spirit
             | of the rules is something that might exist in a human moral
             | system, not something we believe that came from a
             | transcended entity beyond our understanding.
        
               | derefr wrote:
               | Oh, I do get that; I'm more asking why a timeless god
               | wouldn't tell the Jews 4000 years ago to e.g. not
               | construct or partake of social-networking apps (and other
               | such things where they'd have no idea what their God was
               | on about.) An intercessor god dreamed up _today_ would
               | certainly give commandments like that; so why wouldn 't a
               | god giving commandments 4000 years ago, but who "exists
               | outside of time", do the same?
        
         | el_nahual wrote:
         | There are a few sibling comments explain this by saying that,
         | since the law is divine, so are the loopholes. That doesn't
         | tell the whole story.
         | 
         | A big chunk of judaism has always centered about cultural
         | preservation. In a way, the careful crafting of ridiculous
         | loopholes is a stronger indicator about _caring that the law
         | exists_ --ie, presereving the culture-- than blindly following
         | it. And so it 's allowed and celebrated.
         | 
         | ("What happens when a culture that is built on the notion of
         | being an opressed people finds itself in a position of
         | dominance" is an interesting question and left as an exercise
         | to the reader.)
        
           | thrdbndndn wrote:
           | With all respect, what you said makes zero sense to me.
           | 
           | I don't see how "caring that the law exists" equals to
           | "preserving the culture" (at least not see it in a good way),
           | or how it's _not_ "blindly following it".
        
       | dinkleberg wrote:
       | Maybe this is common knowledge, but I never knew people used
       | fandom for topics like this. I'm amazed that it had 800+ articles
       | and over 1000 videos on a wiki dedicated to elevators.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | Here's another couple pretty random Fandom wikis that I came
         | across just recently. Linking the specific pages I landed on
         | them at.
         | 
         | https://allspecies.fandom.com/wiki/Bogdanoff_Twins
         | 
         | A fandom wiki about "all species" and it has just short of 1k
         | articles about everything from these two guys to fictional
         | species such as Alien.
         | 
         | https://monstercat.fandom.com/wiki/Crab_Rave
         | 
         | This one is specifically about the music label Monstercat. It
         | has about 4k pages.
        
         | fansub wrote:
         | Fandom was formerly known as Wikia, the commercial platform
         | launched by Jimmy Wales. This wiki (along with many others) was
         | launched long before the Fandom name.
        
         | fortran77 wrote:
         | There are many "elevator spotters" on YouTube. I can watch
         | elevator videos for hours.
         | 
         | For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE9x-S_3sdY
         | 
         | It's a very interesting community:
         | 
         | See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz9ZzIgyDR8
        
           | ethbr0 wrote:
           | Seems as good a place as any to OT, but does anyone know of a
           | vacuum tube wiki?
           | 
           | I may have acquired some Otis elevator power(?) tubes, but
           | have no idea where to go for part schematics or
           | identification. I'd love to build them into a project, but am
           | not sure where to start.
        
           | thrdbndndn wrote:
           | I think the surprising part (to me at least) isn't there are
           | communities for elevator lovers, but there is a wiki about it
           | _on Fandom_.
        
           | jdmichal wrote:
           | I remember seeing an elevator once that lit up both the up
           | and down arrows when arriving if it didn't have a set
           | destination yet. I called it Schroedinger's elevator --
           | neither going up or down until observed to move.
        
             | rossdavidh wrote:
             | Were you alive or dead when you noticed this?
        
               | jdmichal wrote:
               | I was on vacation. So more alive than typical, but dead
               | to those who usually see me around.
        
           | dinkleberg wrote:
           | I love this aspect of HN. I never would've known there was a
           | community around a shared interest in elevators, yet this
           | topic has hit the top of HN and a bunch of members of that
           | community have all gathered here.
        
         | swiley wrote:
         | Are you aware of the vim fandom?
         | 
         | It seems to be one of the more complete vim wikis and it's
         | probably the most annoying wiki for a piece of open source
         | software ever. I often go without using whatever information is
         | on there just to avoid listening to my fans (heh) spin up.
        
       | trhway wrote:
       | "pet mode" reminded about my cat many years ago - we lived on the
       | 5th floor of an apartment building, and going outside the cat
       | would walk the stairs down, yet coming back the cat would sit
       | near elevator on the ground floor until somebody would come to
       | use the elevator and everybody knew that "the white cat rides to
       | the 5th floor" so they would let him out there.
        
       | ortusdux wrote:
       | I had read somewhere that holding the boor close button along
       | with your desired floor button will override the que in many
       | elevators, taking you directly to that floor. I successfully
       | tested the button combo in the elevator in my building. It came
       | in handy when a kid pressed all the buttons and then stuck his
       | tongue out at me.
        
       | teruakohatu wrote:
       | If says this about 'Pet Mode'
       | 
       | > Does not infect other passengers if the animal has an infection
       | 
       | I think this must be a mistranslation. There are very few
       | infectious diseases that a human can get from being around a
       | house pet. I think they mean allergies.
        
       | dbcurtis wrote:
       | Pfft. List is far from complete. I have done 3rd party interfaces
       | to several elevator controllers. I am highly encumbered by NDA's,
       | so won't say much. But I still wonder what "Korean Lunch 2" mode
       | does???
        
         | neolog wrote:
         | > so won't say much
         | 
         | can you say something though?
        
         | iratewizard wrote:
         | Ah, yes. The mode that fills the elevator with vinegar and
         | waits for the passengers to ferment.
        
           | rossdavidh wrote:
           | I live in a warm climate and can confirm that sometimes the
           | passengers do start fermenting, if it's summer in the middle
           | of the day.
        
         | hooplah wrote:
         | Wouldn't that most likely be derivative of a peak mode (either
         | up or down).
         | 
         | Park at top, open doors, wait for traffic down, return up.
         | 
         | Korea Lunch 1 would park at top for people leaving for lunch, 2
         | would park at bottom for people returning?
        
         | jannyfer wrote:
         | Ooh I've no idea what that would do, but wanted to share
         | something interesting I noticed.
         | 
         | When I visited Korea, I've noticed companies tend to have exact
         | 12-1PM lunchtimes, all at the same time. People raise eyebrows
         | if you leave at 11:50 and return 12:50.
         | 
         | At 12PM, it's hard to grab an elevator going down, so people
         | will press the "up" button to try to catch an empty elevator,
         | then ride it to the top then down to the ground. Vice versa for
         | 1PM.
        
           | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
           | > When I visited Korea, I've noticed companies tend to have
           | exact 12-1PM lunchtimes, all at the same time. People raise
           | eyebrows if you leave at 11:50 and return 12:50.
           | 
           | It just seems so inefficient to do it that way? In theory, I
           | guess the company sorta benefits from having everyone on/off
           | at once, but doing it like that basically guarantees traffic
           | jams.
        
             | lozaning wrote:
             | All the buildings in Samsung's digital city in Suwon have
             | their lunches organized by floor. It is verboten to go to
             | the cafeteria before the lights on your floor dim,
             | indicating it is now your floors turn. The cafeterias,
             | while huge, aren't large enough to accomodate everyone
             | going at the same time.
        
       | rightbyte wrote:
       | I wish 'hold to deselect' was standard. It only works on some
       | elevators and it can be quite annoying if some kid presses all
       | floors ...
        
         | jackbeck wrote:
         | I found that on some elevators a quick double press cancels a
         | selection.
        
       | grensley wrote:
       | My favorite interview question is "how do elevators work"?
       | 
       | 0. If they immediately blurt out something like "I know how
       | elevators work", probably don't hire them.
       | 
       | 1. You can find out what areas they're most interested in. Do
       | they jump straight to the physical mechanics? The programming?
       | The UI? The abstraction that they're solving a problem?
       | 
       | 2. Eventually, they reach a point where they just have to say "I
       | don't know". The rabbit hole really just keeps going with
       | elevators. You could know this question is coming and we will
       | still easily reach the knowledge boundary.
       | 
       | 3. If they "don't know" you can ask them to guess how a system
       | might work. Or give them time to research it and follow up with
       | you later.
        
       | dqv wrote:
       | Since we're talking about elevators, it would appear anyone can
       | call the elevator's emergency phone line. Which is good, but also
       | has unintended consequences: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdXyQ5ra/
        
       | llampx wrote:
       | I wondered why, during the pandemic, it wasn't common to let
       | elevators "air out" while they were idle. Given what we know
       | about COVID-19 and how it spreads with aerosols. From looking at
       | this list, it appears that that's not a mode they would have by
       | default.
        
         | galago wrote:
         | I work in an office building that's less than 5 years old.
         | During the pandemic the elevators started returning to the
         | ground floor and opening their doors. I wonder if the system is
         | configured via the control panel in the elevator or if there's
         | some other interface.
        
           | jakemal wrote:
           | Sounds like it was in up-peak mode?
           | https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Up_peak_(MIT)
        
       | matsemann wrote:
       | Related, Elevator Saga.
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27487111
       | 
       | A game where you program the logic of elevators to move people
       | around efficiently. Surprisingly complicated.
        
       | 1024core wrote:
       | I found a "mode" in an elevator in India that I have not seen
       | anywhere else: if a destination floor number is highlighted, and
       | you press it twice, it gets cancelled. I have used this magic
       | power just once, when an obnoxious man got on and insisted on
       | having a loud conversation on his phone. Since he wasn't paying
       | attention, I double-tapped his floor number and made him skip. I
       | happened to get off at the floor before his, so the elevator went
       | down to the first floor after dropping me off. Small
       | pleasures....
        
         | 63 wrote:
         | I believe your story highlights precisely why more elevators
         | don't include that functionality.
        
       | svat wrote:
       | Donald Knuth's _The Art of Computer Programming_ has, in its
       | first volume, a lengthy section on simulating an elevator. It is
       | a single regular elevator (nothing  "special" going on as in the
       | post here), but even so, as he tries to make things precise, you
       | realize how much detail is involved, and get some appreciation
       | for the task of programming.
       | 
       | It occupies about 15 pages (plus several pages of exercises and
       | solutions). Knuth started working on TAOCP when he was a PhD
       | student at Caltech:
       | 
       | > _The program developed below simulates the elevator system in
       | the Mathematics building of the California Institute of
       | Technology. The results of such a simulation will perhaps be of
       | use only to people who make reasonably frequent visits to
       | Caltech; and even for them, it may be simpler just to try using
       | the elevator several times instead of writing a computer
       | program._ [...]
       | 
       | > _The algorithm we will now study may not reflect the elevator's
       | true principles of operation, but it is believed to be the
       | simplest set of rules that explain all the phenomena observed
       | during several hours of experimentation by the author during the
       | writing of this section._ [...]
       | 
       | > _The elevator system described above is quite complicated by
       | comparison with other algorithms we have seen in this book, but
       | the choice of a real-life system is more typical of a simulation
       | problem than any cooked-up "textbook example" would ever be._
       | 
       | It ends with:
       | 
       | > _It is hoped that some reader will learn as much about
       | simulation from the example above as the author learned about
       | elevators while the example was being prepared._
       | 
       | And one of the exercises adds:
       | 
       | > _It is perhaps significant to note that although the author had
       | used the elevator system for years and thought he knew it well,
       | it wasn't until he attempted to write this section that he
       | realized there were quite a few facts about the elevator's system
       | of choosing directions that he did not know. He went back to
       | experiment with the elevator six separate times, each time
       | believing he had finally achieved a complete understanding of
       | its_ modus operandi. _(Now he is reluctant to ride it for fear
       | that some new facet of its operation will appear, contradicting
       | the algorithms given.) We often fail to realize how little we
       | know about a thing until we attempt to simulate it on a
       | computer._
        
       | mmastrac wrote:
       | My university had an elevator with a special three-button
       | keypress that took you to a dark sub-basement full of asbestos
       | warnings and terrifyingly dark that wasn't listed on the display.
        
         | _squared_ wrote:
         | You should have explored a bit, might be cake down there
        
       | sillysaurusx wrote:
       | One time when working as a pentester, we were doing redteaming
       | (read: breaking into target buildings, physically). Well, they
       | were doing redteaming; I always wanted to, but never quite got
       | the opportunity.
       | 
       | One of the ideas thrown around for achieving the objective was to
       | somehow get ahold of an elevator key, stop it, and hide in there
       | until the building closed.
       | 
       | I don't know if they actually did that, but it would've been
       | hilarious to see them pop out like a scoobie doo villain and jack
       | into an ethernet port while the janitor has no idea what's going
       | on.
        
         | 542458 wrote:
         | There's a legendary defcon talk about elevators where the
         | speaker describes doing exactly that on several occasions.
         | Searching "Defcon Elevator" on YouTube should pull up the video
         | in question.
        
       | mpd wrote:
       | I ran into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUvGfuLlZus (Elevator
       | Hacking: From the Pit to the Penthouse) awhile back, and it was
       | so interesting to me that I ended up watching the entire 2 hours
       | in one sitting.
        
       | banana_giraffe wrote:
       | Another such list is on Wikipedia:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#Special_operating_mod...
       | 
       | Wiki lists a "Riot mode", which is just amazing if it's a thing.
        
       | natch wrote:
       | I'll just leave this here... I love this guy, he is so passionate
       | about mechanical stuff. A bit on the odd side but a lot of heart.
       | 
       | https://youtube.com/c/WestCoastElevators
        
       | mmazing wrote:
       | I recall hearing of a mode one time where elevators would only go
       | to the 2nd floor and not the 1st. Something for crime, etc.
       | 
       | Maybe it was from a movie or something ...
       | 
       | Edit : Thanks! Found it -
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#Riot_mode
        
         | rail wrote:
         | Riot mode.
        
         | dkdbejwi383 wrote:
         | So only going 0 to 2 and that's it? Not sure I understand the
         | use case.
        
           | Akronymus wrote:
           | 1st floor, for many people, refers to the ground floor.
           | 
           | Basically, it excludes the ground level/publicly accessible
           | floor, like a hotel lobby.
        
       | geephroh wrote:
       | Slightly off-topic, but I'd definitely recommend Colson
       | Whitehead's _The Intuitionist_[1] for anyone interested in the
       | intersection of elevators and speculative mysteries. Never
       | thought I'd get the chance to post this to an HN thread...
       | 
       | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intuitionist
        
       | royjacobs wrote:
       | If you're interested in elevators and the hacking thereof I would
       | also highly recommend this talk: https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus
        
         | simlevesque wrote:
         | The kind of videos you can watch once a year. Deviant Ollam is
         | so interesting.
        
       | phnofive wrote:
       | Pet mode is interesting; it allows you to take your pet on an
       | express ride to your desired floor at the cost of a slightly
       | slower speed.
        
         | Aardwolf wrote:
         | Or can be abused, without pet, to go directly to your desired
         | floor without being interrupted by those passengers at other
         | floors.
        
           | pjerem wrote:
           | In Japan, where this pet mode exists, honor and respect of
           | social rules are something, and I doubt you would take the
           | risk to be seen leaving an elevator in pet mode without a
           | pet.
        
         | dbcurtis wrote:
         | Some destination-dispatch systems used in high-end residential
         | towers will not schedule pet owners and non-pet owners to the
         | same cab at the same time. Which makes a lot of sense.
        
           | dmurray wrote:
           | I'd expect it to be more of a problem having multiple pet
           | owners in the same car.
        
             | dbcurtis wrote:
             | Well you have dog-phobic or people with allergies for
             | neighbors.
        
               | heikkilevanto wrote:
               | Yes, I have a slight allergy for most of my neighbors :-)
        
         | Y_Y wrote:
         | > Pros
         | 
         | > Does not infect other passengers if the animal has an
         | infection
         | 
         | I'm glad that elevators are concerned about such a scenario.
        
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       (page generated 2021-07-08 23:00 UTC)