Tell us your naughty stories • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#141

Post by Mz » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:21 PM UTC

Surfed the zero percent interest rate promos on credit cards: rolled debt onto a zero percent card (thus not really making a payment that month because you just moved the debt around) and had lower payments until the promo ran out. Repeat with new promo on a different card.

One I'm proud of but might not be counted as a hack here (not exactly naughty, but good for blowing people's minds, so similarly satisfying to me): Amicable divorce without lawyers. Saved probably tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers fees and had the added bonus that since we didn't lawyer up, we weren't getting antagonistic "cover your ass" advice from lawyers. This meant there was more money to go around (and less paranoia), so we both were able to refrain from squabbling about the small stuff and say "whatever makes it easiest for you". I had people tell me I was crazy to trust my ex but I got a lot more money out of it than I otherwise would have (more than I could have legally insisted on had I fought with him).

We went to the courthouse together to file the papers. The person behind the counter was telling him "you need to do yadda yadda". I guess they thought I was his new love interest, not the future ex. He turned to me and said something like "Did you hear that? You need to sign here." I signed there while the person behind the counter tried to pick their eyeballs back up off the floor. I guess they had never seen anything like it before.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#142

Post by gjm11 » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:22 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #123

nhebb wrote: post #37

Studying for an engineering dynamics final, the old "when in doubt, pick C" saying popped into my head, so I decided make a frequency plot of answers for the 4 quizzes we had that term. The prof had B as the correct answer ~50% of the time. At the end of the 2 hour final I had only finished 13 of the 20 problems, so I quickly marked B for the 7 remaining. I got the 2nd highest grade in the class, bumping my grade fro…

My chemistry prof would tell of a student who needed to get just one question right on the multiple-choice final to pass the course. He walked in, picked 'C' for all questions, and walked out. No correct answers were 'C'.

And this, boys and girls, is why we have randomized algorithms.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#143

Post by kilian » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:23 PM UTC

In high-school I was part of the webteam. This gave us slightly elevated privileges meaning we could get away with a lot of simple windows NT/XP hacking. We had internet on the 'non-internet' machine much to the awe of everyone else, chatted with each other via netsend, played games (until the admin sent us a netsend telling us to stop).

Also, all pc's were numbered corresponding to their network name. You can reboot pc's via netsend. Much fun was had :) This went on until we could print on the machines of the principal + other higher-up stuff. We never dared doing that though.

...then I went to college and got an email from one of the sysadmins telling me I had a virus and that I should use [random windows antivirus]. I was using IRC on Ubuntu on a non-standard port. I got a really sour reply from the sysadmin upon telling him that.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#144

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:23 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #101

StavrosK wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is a suggestion. As long as you look like you belong, nobody will stop you 95% of the time.

Best clothing for this is not a tux, it's a yellow workman's jacket.

[deleted]

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#145

Post by makmanalp » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:30 PM UTC

At my highschool cafeteria we'd use these RFID charge cards which you could load cash into. Now, I didn't have the means to access an RFID reader to mess around with it, but turns out that there were other problems.

Being the absent minded person that I am, I'd often lose these cards, pay some extra amount to get a new card, and then find the old cards in my pocket, in a bag etc. The old cards wouldn't work in the main cafeteria but they'd transfer the cash amount you had into the new card (minus the card fee) for you. However, they would work in the coffee vending machines. It turns out they actually stored the cash value in the cards!

So, I ended up loading a large sum of money in a card, "losing" it, and me and my friends had free coffee and hot chocolate for the better part of the most academically challenging two years of my life.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#146

Post by gvb » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:30 PM UTC

jonhendry wrote: post #2

Pretty minor, but while working on FedFunds/Eurodollar trading software at a big bank, I came in on the weekend and reconfigured my cubicle walls so that the entrance was in the same aisle as my coworkers, rather than being on the opposite side and having to walk all the way around to talk to them. Normally I believe that sort of thing involved the maintenance staff, etc, at who-knows-what expense.

When one of our co-workers was out on vacation, I put a panel across his cubicle's "doorway" opening. The maintenance guys were more than happy to help. ;-)

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#147

Post by zb » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:34 PM UTC

settrans wrote: post #133

dageroth wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didnot play with our own money, but with the coupons on the back of the cinema tickets. But even so, we should have made slightly less than 300 a month, but we did a slightly more on average. We did not really have an optimal betting strategy, at least nothing that can be proven scientifically, there is no such thing. But after some time we started to bet on the wheel, e.g. "Voisins du zero" or "Jeu zero" and we k…

> We did not really have an optimal betting strategy, at least nothing that can be proven scientifically, there is no such thing. Ah, but there is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion

The optimal (Kelly) strategy for Roulette is not to play. It even says so on that wiki page.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#148

Post by makmanalp » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:34 PM UTC

kilian wrote: post #143

In high-school I was part of the webteam. This gave us slightly elevated privileges meaning we could get away with a lot of simple windows NT/XP hacking. We had internet on the 'non-internet' machine much to the awe of everyone else, chatted with each other via netsend, played games (until the admin sent us a netsend telling us to stop). Also, all pc's were numbered corresponding to their network name. You can reboot…

Hahahah, I figured out exactly what net send * did when I turned my head and looked at all the other computers in the lab :P

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#149

Post by TooSmugToFail » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:36 PM UTC

davidst wrote: post #18

I rode a motorcycle across Russia and several of the former Soviet republics eight years ago. You can't help but learn many useful hacks along the way. Here's one: How to deal with the police. Their work is boring and it's not unusual for them to go long stretches of time without being paid. They see you coming up the road-- They're curious and you look interesting. They motion for you to pull over and unless you've…

I did the similar thing at Heathrow Airport. I took the underground from London to Heathrow, but I only had Zones 1 & 2 travel card, while Heathrow is in Zone 4.

When I went out the train, I've put my worried face and I walked hurriedly to the guy on the exit gates (there's always a guy manually opening the door). When I got fairly near, I flashed my travel card asking in a worried voice "What's the quickest way to Terminal A?" Worked like a charm.

Re: Tell us your naughty stories

#150

Post by gvb » Sat, Oct 23, 2010, 2:41 PM UTC

jlongster wrote: post #6

Oh college, the days when we would sit around forging emails between guys and girls on campus, professing their love to one another. Or sending an email from the dean to our rebellious friend calling him in. Or using the "net send" command on XP workstations to send alerts to all computers across campus. Or when we would tunnel through the college filtering service to download music. Ol' friend, those were good times…

It wasn't my hack, but someone did a hack that gave me months of entertainment.

I worked for Smiths Industries, and my buddies were smart enough to register "si.com". Sports Illustrated was a little too slow (ultimately they bought the domain - my buddies got nothing, life is not fair).

Anyway, someone on a University of Michigan lab email list forged an email... the "from" was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, with a bunch of "CC:s" to other "SI models" and CC:ed the UofM email list. The email was pretty well done, something to the effect of "Hey Tyra, do you know why we are getting this strange email from this UofM lab?" There were a surprising number of students that fell for it.

At the time, I was responsible for catching bounced email and dealing with it. For the next couple of months I was entertained by lovelorn UofM students trying to hit on Tyra and all her friends. :-D I saved all the email in an archive, but lost it at some point, moving between computer systems. :-( One of my life's major regrets.