This isn’t something anyone used, it was a meme.<p>See, in 2005 John Hodgeman (PC in the old Mac vs. PC Apple ads) published “The Areas of My Expertise” [<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Areas_of_My_Expertise#The_700_Hoboes_Project_and_e-Hobo.com" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Areas_of_My_Expertise#Th...</a>], including a description of hobo signs and 700 hobo names. Hodgeman was on The Daily Show and the hobo thing took off for a few minutes.<p>I went to one of Hodgeman’s signings during that book tour. Jonathan Coulton was there during his his “Thing a Week” project and traditional Hot Fries and brandy (or bourbon?) were served. I bought a copy of the book and some hobo chalk for my brother.<p>We were talking when Hodgeman went to sign my copy of the book. He asked my name and started to write “To Mike”.. I blurted out “No! It’s for my brother!” He looked up at me and let out a sigh before looking down and continuing without pause: “To Mike — If you wish you may give this to <brother’s name>”. Always wondered if he had that one chambered or if he came up with it on the spot. Either way, brilliant, and, 100% in character given the tone of the book.
Wardriving is something necessary when you are too broke in America and every McBurgerHut has wifi. I wish I came across warchalks too. That would've been a great help
I was adjacent to the folks who came up with this (I think it was almost entirely Matt Jones' work creating that PDF). The symbols were intended to be useful, and there was a flurry of subsequent usage (including official labels at cafes, etc). It didn't have a huge amount of organic growth, but it was a form that journalists could write about, and it made more concretely explicable the somewhat trickier but more prevalent concept of wardriving.<p>It may have been an artifact of the time, but it remains to me surprising how quickly and easily a timely and well-packaged idea can catch people's attention and propagate, even now. (Note that warchalking preceded John Hodgeman's book, but he too was playing off the background curiousity of hobo signs. There's no necessary origin point for combinations like this. You're just mixing and matching what's in the air.)<p>Our same rough circle of people are why you talk of Betteridge's law, life-hacking, or even know about that Steve Balmer "Developers! Developers!" video. If it didn't come through that route, those concepts or presentations would almost emerged from some other corner of the online world. There was no ulterior motive, no intent to get rich or famous, just people playing as they do with what's interesting in the world around them, and the ideas they spark.
Everything old is new again:<p><a href="https://dustyoldthing.com/great-depression-hobo-code/" rel="nofollow">https://dustyoldthing.com/great-depression-hobo-code/</a>
The reference to WEP makes this sound pretty dated. Has anybody encountered these in the wild?<p>(I went to a restaurant recently that had its WiFi profile on a QR code, which I found very convenient.)