As many American cities move to replace manual coin-fed parking meters with applications and kiosks, a lot of the old strategies for keeping your parking fare up to date like “feeding the meter” are no longer usable. However, different states have different license plate syntax rules, which can be used to work around hard-coded limitations in at least one major application to simulate a more manual and traditional parking meter experience. This talk is specifically about the quirks of North Carolina license plates and Raleigh's parking systems.
This talk was originally a ten-minute lightning talk at ShmooCon 2023 but I would like to expand upon the original premise (above) to also talk about the systems thinking that goes into parking and transportation networks. Systems thinking, much like in technology, is part of how modern cities design their transportation network. Parking is one way to meet the need of getting someone to where they want to be. I will draw parallels between Raleigh’s parking network and what information security professionals think about and experience in their day-to-day job.