I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation • Hacker News Board

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#41

Post by Quarrelsome » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

CITIZENDOT wrote: post #11

rdksu wrote: post #8

Bruh the harry potter theme song scared the shit out of me as it turned itself on. Bad UX for a personal site. Great article btw !

sorry, i added it to set the mood for my site :') yk, like moving lamps at the top, hanging dementor at the right side (only visible on desktops). should i remove it?

NEVER PURGE YOUR WHIMSY.

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#42

Post by wslh » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 10:25 PM UTC

I assume an standard way to do this is through a VM provided by the recruiter, right?

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#43

Post by girvo » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 10:43 PM UTC

CITIZENDOT wrote: post #11

rdksu wrote: post #8

Bruh the harry potter theme song scared the shit out of me as it turned itself on. Bad UX for a personal site. Great article btw !

sorry, i added it to set the mood for my site :') yk, like moving lamps at the top, hanging dementor at the right side (only visible on desktops). should i remove it?

Nah, it's fine! I just muted the tab, no big deal

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#44

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 10:45 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#45

Post by CITIZENDOT » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

wslh wrote: post #42

I assume an standard way to do this is through a VM provided by the recruiter, right?

yea, i'm just lazy

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#46

Post by gowld » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 10:58 PM UTC

wxw wrote: post #17

> They embedded a script that checks the victim’s host operating system and silently executes a remote payload. Seems like this is becoming a recurring theme, similar story was on the front page last month. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48546294

The OP says as much, and links to a Google Search results that says the same.

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#47

Post by vardalab » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 10:58 PM UTC

My takeaway from this was that Claude was being completely useless as a helper Thanks to all the safety safeguards and that nonsense.

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#48

Post by fitsumbelay » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 11:03 PM UTC

TIL about tree ...

I stopped being surprised by new stuff I learn about an OS I've been using for 25+ and 10+ as my daily whip and just enjoy the discovery-buzz

these take-home interview nightmare stories are so common ... I'd hate to see a bad actor take advantage by offering a "service" to unsuspecting and underinformed folks like ... erm ... me

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#49

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 11:05 PM UTC

fitsumbelay wrote: post #48

TIL about tree ... I stopped being surprised by new stuff I learn about an OS I've been using for 25+ and 10+ as my daily whip and just enjoy the discovery-buzz these take-home interview nightmare stories are so common ... I'd hate to see a bad actor take advantage by offering a "service" to unsuspecting and underinformed folks like ... erm ... me

[deleted]

Re: I Inspected My Take-Home Interview Project. It Was a Whole Operation

#50

Post by tclancy » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 11:19 PM UTC

Had something similar but less dangerous recently: I “won” a month’s subscription to a brand new “high paying, not on the public sites” job board where if I wrote a cool integration I would make a bunch of money (except the fine print said they could just take it). It took about a minute and a half of playing with the API to see they hadn’t even bothered to fully trim the listings they scraped from other sites. Each job application required you to answer a fairly detailed engineering issue. Best I could tell is they stole your answer, applied to the gig and then did one of those bait and switch interviews with the actual company.