Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#221

Post by harunurhan » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

Maybe not the weirdest but;

I was building the client library (wrapper) of an old external third party service we were running, for the our new system (re-write).

By the way, this old third party supposedly has REST interface which was added later, when REST was getting popular. So I needed to get all ABCs but couldn't figure out how because there wasn't any `GET /abc` for ABC but `GET /abc/ on the docs. So I just checked how it was done in legacy code.

Then I found a for loop 0 to 100 which was doing 100 `GET /abc/`. It was working because ids were incremental and there were only less than 50 ABC records. Unfortunately there was no caching or `break;` after `404`. :(

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#222

Post by scandox » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

johnflan wrote: post #219

scandox wrote: post #180

I installed 65 cash registers all over Ireland. Each one had only an RS232 serial port. I had to read and aggregate their daily reads between 5am and 10am (only time these outlets were not running). It was not possible to read this particular cash register when it was in operation mode OR if it was in OFF mode. Also we did not have access to GSM sims and there was no WIFI at stores. SO: We installed 56K modems and pl…

CBE?

Nah. EPOS wasn’t our main business - or even competence! Got dragged into it because we could do the backend...

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#223

Post by xenadu02 » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

drinchev wrote: post #71

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`.

Such directories are non-portable and can’t be used in $PATH on any Unix, nor any other path-like mechanism like $DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH.

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#224

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #203

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who enforces screen lock timers for compliance, if I ever found someone was using any of these hacks, my solution would probably involve writing a script to automatically lock their screen every five minutes regardless of activity until they agreed to knock it off. :P

Have you ever read the following? https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/risk_intuitio...

I actually find people's risk intuition spectacularly bad. People seem to suspect their IT department will catch them and report them for things that their IT department doesn't care about, for example. Or expect that the IT department and/or supervisors may be watching their webcam, which is creepy, and really not something ordinary workplaces do.

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#225

Post by cbanek » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

Making a wrapper function that locked/serialized access to printf. There was a crash that would happen occasionally in a server which always happened in printf and outputting logs and debug data. While you'd think it was a software bug in calling printf, the underlying issue was that the app wasn't linked with the multithreaded stdlib on Windows, so therefore the printf we were calling was not reentrant.

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#226

Post by cookingrobot » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

ssalka wrote: post #146

Odenwaelder wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

DON’T remove caps lock!!! Use it as an application switcher! Some of my most used shortcuts: Caps + C = Chrome Caps + S = Spotify Caps + A = Atom Caps + T = Terminal +1 for removing windows key if gaming

On Windows, Win+1 launches the first app in the taskbar, Win+2 launches the second, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#227

Post by ilammy » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

neverminder wrote: post #73

Spooky23 wrote: post #8

I 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.

WTF? How come I worked around three years on RDP clients and stuff and did not know about this?

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#228

Post by ysleepy » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 6:55 PM UTC

davidmr wrote: post #166

This isn’t even top 20 in this thread, but here’s mine: maybe 17 years ago, we upgraded our department server from a big old Sun 4/690 running sunos to a shiny new Ultra80 running Solaris. Among the many functions this server has was to host a bunch of black and white x terminals. Probably only a few people here ever used those (although more than most other online forums!), but basically the idea is that they plug i…

That reminds me of this: https://github.com/strace/strace/issues/14

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#229

Post by theyinwhy » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #194

CTO had to make a deadline for the next morning, so he decided to override the safety system of an Autonomous Guided Vehicle of a few tons. Just bridged over it electrically. Not only this, but he failed to inform the onsite crew that was going to put it in production. AGV went somewhere it wasn't supposed to go, first employee pushed the red safety stop. AGV kept on riding, and thank god there was another person at…

Now I am curios! What deadline needs you to override the safety system of an Autonomous Guided Vehicle?

Re: Ask HN: Weirdest hack that you ever saw in production?

#230

Post by eitland » Sun, Mar 25, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

Dr_Jefyll wrote: post #134

norbertnorris wrote: post #5

my dad put a rubberband on an ibm mainframe printer in 75 to make it work while ibm showed up to fix it. They came in and didn't get it to work. So my dad as he needed to print millions of water bills on time put the rubberband back in and ran his job.

Glad to see confirmation of using a rubber band to fix an IBM mainframe. Been there done that, but the story is so loony I wondered if anyone would believe me. http://laughtonelectronics.com/oldsite/comm_mfg/commercial_i...

Love that you've updated your page with a reference to this discussion already :-)