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Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#161

Post by _carbyau_ »

chronicler wrote: post #87
conductr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a lot of logistics with physical cash. But yeah I tried to run it as close to "real" as possible in case I did hit legal issues (isolating the entities, not comingling funds). Also, had to make sure for taxes that the cycled cash wasn't possibly viewed as income to either entity. There were a few optimization steps I found that helped me streamline the logistics but I still was withdrawal-ing cash from the ATM…

Bro who the hell are you

I feel as though this is the qualifying level of a "hack". If someone is asking "who the hell are you". :-)

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#162

Post by birdhouse »

sokoloff wrote: post #150

Writing a first-gen PSX (Playstation) game, NASCAR Racing, we had an in-house physics engine that needed the physics thread to run on a constant 30 Hz. PSX SDK didn't have pre-emptive multi-tasking. Sony US "checked with Japan" who said we were out of luck. Then I remembered my old Atari 8-bit programming days and the vertical blank interrupt (which there was on the PSX, but we couldn't run all the physics in the VBI…

I wrote multithreaded code in C++ before for a different use case. Was the challenge here just getting 30hz or was there something limiting where you couldn’t get that output with just running a dedicated thread? I’m no expert. Teach me :)

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#163

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

edit: Actually saving the atomic numbers of all the periodic table of elements to my calculator as variables lets you do chemistry math with "He9" resolving to "18" might be better than the below.

I had - ahem - acquired some user logins for my local ISP. Not knowing any of their dialup numbers on account of not being a customer, I just called them and asked for it. They gave it to me no problem.

The weakest chink in the armor of any company will always be its humans. The unpatchable hole.

Runner up: I was noticing that if it was really quiet I could hear noises from my speakers even when nothing was playing from my computer. I eventually listened long and closely enough to hear that it was a local radio station. In a flash of brilliance that came from where I don't know, I looked up their website and emailed their engineer. I got the most detailed and thorough response I think I've ever received back from a cold email.

A protip in that vein: If you want to read a scientific paper but can't afford the journal fee online, email the author(s). Turns out they love when people are interested in their work, have the right to share it, and will send you a copy 100% of the time I've tried this. Sample size: 1

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#164

Post by sokoloff »

birdhouse wrote: post #162
sokoloff wrote: post #150

Writing a first-gen PSX (Playstation) game, NASCAR Racing, we had an in-house physics engine that needed the physics thread to run on a constant 30 Hz. PSX SDK didn't have pre-emptive multi-tasking. Sony US "checked with Japan" who said we were out of luck. Then I remembered my old Atari 8-bit programming days and the vertical blank interrupt (which there was on the PSX, but we couldn't run all the physics in the VBI…

I wrote multithreaded code in C++ before for a different use case. Was the challenge here just getting 30hz or was there something limiting where you couldn’t get that output with just running a dedicated thread? I’m no expert. Teach me :)

We couldn't find another way to get a steady 30Hz. I don't think there was a pthreads implementation for the PSX SDK, but it's been a little over 27 years, so I can't swear to it. I do know we didn't do it without trying a bunch of other more conventional alternatives.

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#165

Post by bentcorner »

alhirzel wrote: post #86

One time I accidentally overwrote my hard drive with dd while making an installation thumbdrive. While unfortunate, it was only the first 8GB or so. This nuked the partition table, bootloader, and start of the Windows partition, but fortunately my daily-driver, still-running Linux system partition was unaffected. I kept my cool and figured it was recoverable. I ended up recovering the partition table from RAM and wri…

Reminds of this story: https://www.ecb.torontomu.ca/~elf/hack/recovery.html

(And its HN thread, with other recovery stories: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25491790)

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#166

Post by quickthrower2 »

avidphantasm wrote: post #95
nickcoury wrote: post #94

When Web Sockets were still not finalized, I was writing a C# program using them but there wasn't a functional library available. There was however a nice open-source Java implementation. I copied it into Visual Studio, changed all the file extensions, and spent half an hour hitting build then fixing syntax and import red squigglies. It eventually built successfully and happily sent data to a NodeJS front end for yea…

Nice. C# did start off life as Java with the serial numbers filed off…

J++ without the legal mess

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#167

Post by furyofantares »

Proudest is probably my first and not particularly clever, but I am very fond of it.

Early 90s, a friend let me borrow a copy of a game he had, which included a physical codewheel you use to prove that you own the shareware. I thought about copying the codewheel so I could return the floppy to him and still play, but I'd read that computers have no way to make random numbers and usually seed the random number generator with the current time. I made a batch file that set the time to a specific value and then launched the game, and memorized the code I'd get if I sped through the main menu as fast as possible.

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#168

Post by bambax »

laylomo2 wrote: post #145

I was performing as the principal bassoonist in a symphonic band concert. We played a piece or two, the audience clapped, and when I sat down, I looked down and one of the pads had fallen off one of the highest keys. The pad is what seals the hole allowing the instrument to play different notes. Since I effectively had a leak at the very top of my instrument, I literally was incapable of playing anything at all. The…

My son plays the clarinet. Last year he lost a pad. (He has a nice instrument that he plays often). I went to a reputable shop and they said one should always replace all the pads at once, some were loose, and a complete revision was in order. The cost was €350.

I told them I would think about it, went home, ordered a set of pads online for €7 and replaced the missing pad myself with the help of a couple of youtube videos.

The clarinet has been working perfectly since. Two months after my repair my son had an exam at the conservatory. I was a little worried because it was a formal affair with a jury of five professionals and should the instrument have an audible whistle of some kind I was sure they would noticed it.

He passed with flying colors. I was proud of him, but also of my repair.

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#169

Post by LouisSayers »

conductr wrote: post #61
actionfromafar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you just cycle the money in the machine, or did the cycle somehow involve taking a bunch of cash, depositing it in your checkings account, getting new cache delivered by courier, put it through the money machine, repeat... or a tighter loop I can't grasp how it would work with your account?

It was a lot of logistics with physical cash. But yeah I tried to run it as close to "real" as possible in case I did hit legal issues (isolating the entities, not comingling funds). Also, had to make sure for taxes that the cycled cash wasn't possibly viewed as income to either entity. There were a few optimization steps I found that helped me streamline the logistics but I still was withdrawal-ing cash from the ATM…

Whoa, this is actually pretty awesome. Nice work hahaha.

Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?

#170

Post by mindwork »

I went in some coffeeshop in Iceland, and when I got there I saw locked wifi. I guessed the password which was related to the coffeeshop name and it worked from the first time. Thats my proudest 'hack'

And the luckiest hacks were when I was editing diablo 2 save files with HEX editor in FAR commander and getting tons of super cool items in the process. And sometimes a broken save file

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