Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

eieio.games

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 230 posts

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#71

Post by BrandoElFollito »

When I was at the university, I was frustrated with how the Unix servers were managed (IBM AIX 3 to give you a timeframe).

I social-engineering-hacked my way in and fixed some stuff (very basic stuff, I knew nothing about administration back then). Then went to the sysadmins to explain.

They offered me to join their team and this drastically changed my future (for the best).

The annoying kid can be a godsend sometimes, I always try to remember that when sighting at what they did or attempted too do (this cover both my kids and the young recruits in my team)

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#72

Post by eiiot »

As a current student and self-taught developer this is one of the best representations I’ve seen about what makes the world of CS fun. You have a bunch of people with a crazy idea that’s just SO niche and they’re able to use their brains to create something beautiful of immense value.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#73

Post by dtaht »

eieio wrote: post #5

author here :) this is my favorite story from running the site, and possibly the best story I've ever been a part of. I'm not a big crier but I have cried so many times thinking and trying to write about it over the past 2 months. And of course, the process of discovery (and going from panic to excitement) was pretty crazy too. One of my favorite things about this is that it validated one of the core beliefs I have w…

Thank you. I enjoyed the sense of play and this story more than anything I have read about the internet in a long time.

I am def burned out, and need to come up with something frivolous. I am reminded of Richard Feynman´s story of spending 10 years depressed after the war, and him finding joy of the physics in a spinning disk one day at lunch, so he could disregard what he had done before.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#74

Post by M4v3R »

adityapurwa wrote: post #29

I don’t know. Reading this made me tear up a bit. I learned software engineering when I was in junior high school. I learned it because I sucked at math, and I want to write programs that solve my homework. Then I continue writing LAN chat, HTTP server, Anti Virus, and a lot more things just because it was fun to do. It was fun, it was challenging, it was rewarding, it was amazing. Now that I’m working, with the endl…

Same! It reminded me of a story about the latest Phrack issue called "Calling All Hackers" [1] and made me hopeful that indeed the hacker spirit is still present in the younger generation and will always be, as long as we older folks encourage it instead of trying to hammer it down. Makes me remember the times I was a teen and I was writing code because I wanted to, not because I needed to. Sometimes I used these skills for good, other times for stupid crap like hacking the "competition" and I'm ashamed of this, but all in all this experience made me who I am today and I'm grateful that I had it. And I'm happy the next generation is still finding joy in coding.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41306128

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#75

Post by shahzaibmushtaq »

I like every simple boring idea executed in an interesting way. Making things for sheer fun and presenting them to the world is just a few hours away.

I am sure if we all count the silly ideas together that we have in our head or somewhere in diaries like One Million Checkboxes the numbers could be close to one million. Maybe this is a message to all of us, we shouldn't be afraid to test our ideas.

I can't wait any longer to start working on my ideas ASAP.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#77

Post by eiiot »

hunter2_ wrote: post #49

> The typical ways that folks - especially folks who don’t program - bump into bots are things like ticket scalping and restaurant reservation bots. Bots that feel selfish and unfair and antisocial. This reminded me of how a ski resort, Palisades Tahoe, implemented free but scarce parking reservations for weekend parking last winter. Since it's one of the most popular ski destinations from the Bay Area, you can imagi…

It's so funny you mention this, I actually just launched something super similar today for the California DMV (as a Bay Area student). It checks for openings from cancellations and notifies people.

There's a special kind of magic that comes from meaningfully improving your life from software :)

(the project is https://dmvfilter.com if you want to check it out!)

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#78

Post by agys »

adityapurwa wrote: post #29

I don’t know. Reading this made me tear up a bit. I learned software engineering when I was in junior high school. I learned it because I sucked at math, and I want to write programs that solve my homework. Then I continue writing LAN chat, HTTP server, Anti Virus, and a lot more things just because it was fun to do. It was fun, it was challenging, it was rewarding, it was amazing. Now that I’m working, with the endl…

“I program like we programmed 15 years ago” told me once my friend and engineer which I consider one of the best graphics programmers around: his projects are fast, beautiful and innovative.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#79

Post by MattJ100 »

beachy wrote: post #56
hunter2_ wrote: post #49

> The typical ways that folks - especially folks who don’t program - bump into bots are things like ticket scalping and restaurant reservation bots. Bots that feel selfish and unfair and antisocial. This reminded me of how a ski resort, Palisades Tahoe, implemented free but scarce parking reservations for weekend parking last winter. Since it's one of the most popular ski destinations from the Bay Area, you can imagi…

I use a bot for booking overnight huts on the more popular hiking trails in my country. They become available for booking online at a fixed time each year and are all taken a few seconds later. Using a bot is the only reliable way to get one. Amusingly there are news articles every year about whether or not people are using bots to book these huts and the operators always deny it vehemently. Whereas I know my bot is…

Out of curiosity, what tech do you reach for when building something like this?
Post reply on HN