151–160 of 379 posts
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 ma…
I spent 6 months commuting between France and Germany flying on a Sunday night in one direction and a Friday night in the other. To avoid waiting in airports for any length of time I hacked my boarding passes. I was always flying in economy but I would check in on line and print my real boarding pass, then modify the PDF of the boarding pass and change it to a seat in business with whatever other indications where ne…
I wonder how many terrorism charges you'd be up on if you did that in the US these days.
I lived in Germany for a bit. While there I really wanted to learn to speak German properly, but when I first arrived my spoken German was pretty awful. Since many Germans speak English pretty well and could evidently tell from the way I was pronouncing things that I was an English speaker they would often switch to speaking English with me mid-conversation. This annoyed me because I'd gone to a lot of effort to move…
I spent 6 months commuting between France and Germany flying on a Sunday night in one direction and a Friday night in the other. To avoid waiting in airports for any length of time I hacked my boarding passes. I was always flying in economy but I would check in on line and print my real boarding pass, then modify the PDF of the boarding pass and change it to a seat in business with whatever other indications where ne…
Nice. This would definitely work today (at least at the airports that I usually fly through). Also would be a pretty good hack to do some duty-free shopping in the international terminal - at security they usually only seem to glance at your boarding pass and wave you through. Who's to say you don't just go shopping and walk back out the arrivals exit?
For my first experiment testing boundaries, I went round the building taping off red high five zones, put up posters outlining an official high five incentive program, and started recruiting a high five squad. The Wall Street Journal picked the story up and it worked out well for everyone. We still high five a lot. Then I stole a conference room called Battle Ship, moved into it with my big purple chair, end table an…
In high school, I had a rough time with family stuff and my grades started to slack. I knew that getting a scholarship would be crucial if I wanted to go to college in the future. However, my grades simply weren't going to cut it for the Florida Lottery Bright Futures scholarship. I needed a 3.5+ GPA, a 1250+ SAT score, and 60 hours of community service in order to get their best 100% scholarship.
At the rate I was going, my GPA wouldn't be near that.
So I did some research, and I found out that the Bright Futures Scholarship was also applicable to home schooled students. Intrigued, I researched a bit into what made up a home schooled student's GPA.
I found a legal loophole here. One of the ways that the State of Florida graded home schooled students was by letting them talk to a psychologist. The psychologist said you were performing at a grade level, and you graduated. Grades were simply "made up".
So I dropped out of high school end of sophomore year, and created my own home schooled program. Which basically consisted of building a boat, programming, and volunteering at ECHO (echonet.org)
In dropping out, I basically had two years to practice taking the SAT's in order to get above a 1270. I scored a 1280 and got a 100% free ride into any State school.
But by the time I'd spent 2 years out of the educational system, I'd decided a year of living in the rain forest would be better than partying at school. So I turned down the scholarship and moved to the Panamanian rain forest instead.
Free College Hack: In high school, I had a rough time with family stuff and my grades started to slack. I knew that getting a scholarship would be crucial if I wanted to go to college in the future. However, my grades simply weren't going to cut it for the Florida Lottery Bright Futures scholarship. I needed a 3.5+ GPA, a 1250+ SAT score, and 60 hours of community service in order to get their best 100% scholarship.…
(I know, that's totally wrong and probably not what PG refers to by "beating the system".) Some years ago, my friend and I decided to kick off the night by drinking some beer in a park, downtown Montreal. After a few minutes, it started raining like hell. We had to get inside somewhere and the closest place was a university building which was "fortunately" still opened. We went inside and walked by the security, each…