Captured the requests in a flash client used in a 6 hour defensive driving class to skip to the last page. Got my certificate. My friend did the same thing and the company reached out trying to figure out why they were getting all of these database errors...
Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
201–210 of 414 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#202Use kitchen scissors to cut and any herbs . At our university we cannot park closer to our classroom building because that parking was reserved for only professors. However I observed that the people who check if any students parked in that parking area come at specific times . I made note of their schedule and used to park and remove when they about to come
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#203Not a hack, but something I'm proud of:
I built/launched an entire transactional site: signup/login/purchase membership while walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain, in 2017, for a small event (swing dance event).
Was supposed to spend the two months prior to going there working on it, but because of delays in planning etc. I didn't really get started until the week right before, which meant I had to haul my old MBP 2015 on the walk. So basically, I trekked something like 18-20 miles a day lugging that thing (and the charger), then spending mornings/evenings in the little hostels (more like barracks) writing code (most had wifi, thankfully), then the next 4-6 hours thinking through how to design/build every little piece, then find a cafe with wifi to implement some of that in 2 hours, then walk another 4-ish hours. Then write more code.
Surprisingly, there were almost no bugs at all, since I'd have to iron out every single thing during the walk (what else are you going to do walking through middle-of-nowhere Spain, which is all farm land, anyway?).
In the end everything worked! Paypal integration worked! Hundreds of people signed up and bought membership on the system! Oh, and this was my first project of this sort, and I was the solo designer/developer on it. I also had to design our logo, branding, and T-shirt as well.
(Stack: Meteor, DO)
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#204In the early 90s, when ECUs were just becoming a thing, my colleague, who was a weekend rally driver, plonked one on my desk and asked if I could figure out how it worked and, if possible, to tune engine parameters for maximum performance.
I identified the microprocessor as a 6502, based on board topology, even though all IC markings were removed. At the time (before the internet), I could not find a 6502 disassembler, so I wrote my own. I successfully decompiled the code, figured out how it worked and found the parameter "maps" stored in ROM.
Loaded these into Matlab and wrote scripts to allow my colleague to tune the maps and write them back to EEPROM.
It was a couple of weekends' work for me, and I never thought about monetizing the knowledge. Several years later, I met another colleague who did the same for the Mazda RX7 ECU, and made a tidy side income selling "performance ROMs". C'est la vie.
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#205About ten years ago I got invited to do a college recruiting event for my company. All of the opportunities were for weekend visits to podunk colleges in the US and Canada, but there was one week long trip to a couple of colleges in Europe. The problem was the button was greyed out and I couldn't click it (probably reserved for people in a higher pay grade). F12ed that mf-er and got a free vacation...
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#206I wiped a scammer's email campaign software database one time after receiving a Bitcoin extortion email from them which spoofed my email to make it look like it came from me and bypassed gmail's spam detection. This was several weeks after Ledger leaked their customers' information. Not my proudest moment, but I think the receiving party deserved it.
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#207Maybe not the proudest, but here's a fun one for which my friend Nial Peters should get most of the credit.
We were on Mt Erebus and I needed to power some 6V carbon dioxide sensors for my work. We had lots of 12V lead-acid batteries, but we knew they were made up of 6 roughly 2V cells. We drilled a hole and put a screw in the middle. Now we had 6V batteries.
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#208I used to play games for free at the local internet café. Not sure how the system locks work today, but back then there was some special software preventing you from using the computer unless you had paid for access. I read somewhere that there was a keyboard combination, I think it was Win + U, which brought up an accessibility screen. From there you could click on a "Read more" link and it would open up a browser a…
I'm guessing that internet cafe used Smartlaunch, and let me tell you, that was far from the only bypass you could run to get around its frontend, haha.
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#20910 years ago I fixed my car's transmission with a purple silly band...
photo: http://i.imgur.com/RbDkt.jpg
story: https://old.reddit.com/r/Cartalk/comments/10cwhb/til_how_to_...
Re: Ask HN: What's your proudest hack?
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you discover these loopholes in the first place? Did you work in the finance industry or an ATM maker or something like that and just figured it out?
Can’t say I remember exactly. No particular experience other than a general knack for spotting loopholes like this. If I remember correctly I had some vague knowledge that basically anyone can own an ATM and set the surcharge as they want. I probably looked into it as a passive income stream at some point (these things had a high growth phase some time ago). Then I think the first time I heard about ATM rebates was o…
This makes me wonder if there is a way to (legally) give ATM rebates as an ATM operator.
Ex: User withdraws $50. Machine charges $5 fee, and gives a $2 in cashback as part of the withdrawal (cash or gift card?)