Not an actual bug, but I found this a couple of days ago. And it seems like an elegant hack, allowing `/` in directory, files, etc.
Typing `mkdir foo:bar` in my macOS's terminal leads to a directory, that Finder shows as `foo/bar`.
Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
71–80 of 289 posts
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#72In my startup days, we were working on a proof of concept with a really big bank. Because of their security rules, we couldn't have direct access to their systems - so if we wanted to do something remotely, we would have to start a webex, they would join and share their screen, and give us remote control. This worked great, except if we wanted to work over the weekend, since if we left the screen alone for more than…
I use a posh script like this when i dont want the computer to lock. $ws = New-Object -COM wscript.shell; while($true){ $ws.SendKeys("j"); Sleep 60;} Ive used it for demos that way the computer doesnt lock before the demo starts, its pretty short and easy to remember. Also on windows if you spam SendKeys("{Left}") everything you type is backwards and when you hit the windows key it freezes the computer in an interest…
The script is overkill, just put some plastic under your mouse.
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#73I worked at a place that had a large, distributed terminal network running on something like OSF or DEC Unix. It was 2001 and the thing was on life support while PCs were being rolled out. I was helping to rack my new database servers, which was next to this big lab table/shelf combo with like 16 terminals on it. When pulling a cable I banged my head on the table, then this big book fell on my hand. About 10 minutes…
I've got one of those from "Only on WIndows" series. One of my colleagues uses WIndows and tends to remote in from home. Unfortunately when a cleaner cleans the office after hours she sometimes accidentally hits the CAPS key and he can't log in anymore remotely. His solution was to rip out the CAPS key and cover the hole with duct tape.
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#74I worked at a place that had a large, distributed terminal network running on something like OSF or DEC Unix. It was 2001 and the thing was on life support while PCs were being rolled out. I was helping to rack my new database servers, which was next to this big lab table/shelf combo with like 16 terminals on it. When pulling a cable I banged my head on the table, then this big book fell on my hand. About 10 minutes…
I've got one of those from "Only on WIndows" series. One of my colleagues uses WIndows and tends to remote in from home. Unfortunately when a cleaner cleans the office after hours she sometimes accidentally hits the CAPS key and he can't log in anymore remotely. His solution was to rip out the CAPS key and cover the hole with duct tape.
I do this, too. The first thing I do when I get a new keyboard is to remove the caps lock key. I never used it in my 20 years of PC usages and I don't get why it's still there.
Back in my CounterStrike gaming days I would also remove the Windows key because it would crash the game when accidentally pressed.
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've got one of those from "Only on WIndows" series. One of my colleagues uses WIndows and tends to remote in from home. Unfortunately when a cleaner cleans the office after hours she sometimes accidentally hits the CAPS key and he can't log in anymore remotely. His solution was to rip out the CAPS key and cover the hole with duct tape.
I do this, too. The first thing I do when I get a new keyboard is to remove the caps lock key. I never used it in my 20 years of PC usages and I don't get why it's still there. Back in my CounterStrike gaming days I would also remove the Windows key because it would crash the game when accidentally pressed.
On Windows, CapsLock is my Push-To-Talk key, so I remap it to F9 or something "useless" via KeyTweak.
On Linux, it's my meta/compose/whatever key, so I can write äöü on UsIntl via caps-aou ( https://github.com/winks/dotfiles/blob/master/.us-intl-germa... )
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#76I worked at a place that had a large, distributed terminal network running on something like OSF or DEC Unix. It was 2001 and the thing was on life support while PCs were being rolled out. I was helping to rack my new database servers, which was next to this big lab table/shelf combo with like 16 terminals on it. When pulling a cable I banged my head on the table, then this big book fell on my hand. About 10 minutes…
I've worked at a place with a very similar hack before, but it was for a bunch of windows servers. The issue was a process was trying to scan various Office files, and even though no actual Word/Excel/etc app was running warning dialogs could suddenly appear blocking the scan process. The problem was "solved" by some frustrated ops guy that wrote a service that scanned for dialog boxes and closed them.
First time I've heard of this problem there was "Buzof" - maybe nearly 20 years ago? I just googled and it still exists: http://www.basta.com/Buzof
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#77Not claiming "weirdest" by reading the other comments - but this is one off the top of my head.
Application A is multi-threaded, huge, hardly maintained. It also constantly crashes. Would've probably taken a few ace C++ programmers quite a while to iron them all out.
Solution? Write a custom watch-dog application that restarts it once it crashed. (This was on Windows, and a while ago. Being a *nix guy myself, I've no clue if something -available- like daemontools could've been used back then).
Let's say I didn't know whether to facepalm or stand in awe.
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did this once. A client wanted a website that mimicked the functionality of a complicated spreadsheet that he had created to calculate quotes for customers and didn't have enough money to pay to have all the logic rewritten in a webserver (not to mention continually updated). I imported the spreadsheet into google sheets, gave him access, and had the webserver paste the values in the spreadsheet via the google shee…
I created a whole project for this! https://github.com/franciscop/drive-db Since you can also hook a Google Form to a spreadsheet, you can do surprisingly advanced things over there.
I did this once, the DOM isn't too bad to store your program source code :P https://github.com/winks/brainclick
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#79Right after WinXP came out, I was a sys/win admin at a manufacturing co. Their ERP system was an old VB app that sat on a share drive and everyone opened the same .exe from their respective workstations. The app required a ton of scheduled database and ERP tasks (it used a legacy flat-file db), so the vendor wrapped them all up in a secondary executable that was effectively a non-headless (headful?) daemon (this was…
Back at CS school, that's the definition I always hoped to hear of "race condition".
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#80I worked at a place that had a large, distributed terminal network running on something like OSF or DEC Unix. It was 2001 and the thing was on life support while PCs were being rolled out. I was helping to rack my new database servers, which was next to this big lab table/shelf combo with like 16 terminals on it. When pulling a cable I banged my head on the table, then this big book fell on my hand. About 10 minutes…
/dev/random entropy issues?