In a consumer app, I would say Snapchat's early camera hack on Android takes the cake. To be brief, their app ran the Android native camera app in the background and took a screenshot of the resulting feed for the image, bypassing actual integration with Android's camera apps. Having worked on an Android smartphone from the ground up, I can understand their reluctance to commit dev time to having to support so many A…
Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
101–110 of 289 posts
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#102Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#103Not 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`.
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I used to use autohotkey to send an F13 key press every couple minutes to avoid lockout on a work computer where I wasn't allowed to increase the timeout
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#105In 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…
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#106In 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…
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#107Found a way to hook the vertical blank interrupt (shades of old Atari 8-bit programming), push all the registers onto the stack to create a setjmp/longjmp-ish way to call our physics thread at a consistent 30Hz. (OK, 29.97, but close enough)
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#108I 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?
#109Not sure if this is still the case, but back when I was at Apple the program that triggered when you pressed a button on an Apple remote pointed at a Macintosh was just a giant AppleScript file that, at the top level, was a giant `if...else if...` statement to try and determine which application had the foreground so that the appropriate action (e.g. next track for iTunes, next slide for Keynote, next chapter marker…
Interesting! The only .scpt files I can find in /System are Automator actions or in Script Utility itself, and of those the only one that seems relevant is Library/Automator/Initiate Remote Broadcast.action/Contents/Resources/Scripts/main.scpt, which seems like something else. Hopefully that means they fixed it (if someone with an apple remote wants to run opensnoop and double-check that would be cool!)
Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to use autohotkey to send an F13 key press every couple minutes to avoid lockout on a work computer where I wasn't allowed to increase the timeout
Wait is Function keys above F12 still addressable?