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Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

alistair.blog

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Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#21

Post by club_tropical »

jrockway wrote: post #5
aabbccsmith wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha true, and that's really not even a terrible idea to give 24 hours. We definitely ended things on a good note with Hegarty & Educake. They were really friendly to us and also super helpful to be honest, good team over there.

That's good to hear. Maybe it wasn't a veiled threat, but rather an attempt to be nice. ("A lot of companies would sue you right now, but we would never do that," could be an alternate reading.)

100% veiled threat. Even the "a lot of companies.." interpretation is just a reminder of their power should you not want to hop on that call.

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#22

Post by aabbccsmith »

trinovantes wrote: post #20

These online learning platforms should also consider drawing on canvas e.g. flutter to make it harder to scrape screen contents I think they could also just check the isTrusted field in the Event since that can't be overwritten without a custom compiled browser

It's always a game of cat and mouse... if a human can use a website then it's theoretically possible that a robot can too. I used to do a lot of sneaker botting a few years prior, so I kind of lot about web automation then. Developers will always find a way, even if it means spending more time writing the software than it would have just doing the homework

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#23

Post by club_tropical »

cercatrova wrote: post #13

Awesome story, and good response by Hegarty. It reminds me of something similar (but with an opposite response), where an intern who worked at Replit built a basic repl site (not even a clone) but was threatened by the CEO that he'd be sued. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195

The threat of suing very much loomed in the background if they did not cooperate. Hegarty is just more slick, buttering them up with (well deserved) praises and attention from grownups to get voluntary cooperation.

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#25

Post by lupire »

aabbccsmith wrote: post #14
alexarena wrote: post #7

Honestly kind of impressed that the HegartyMaths guy independently found this and then handled it without (explicitly) threatening to sue you.

They were champs! We even connected on LinkedIn with Colin afterwards and he actually offered us summer work but that fell through unfortunately.

He didn't pay you for the consulting time you have him?

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#26

Post by aabbccsmith »

club_tropical wrote: post #23
cercatrova wrote: post #13

Awesome story, and good response by Hegarty. It reminds me of something similar (but with an opposite response), where an intern who worked at Replit built a basic repl site (not even a clone) but was threatened by the CEO that he'd be sued. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27424195

The threat of suing very much loomed in the background if they did not cooperate. Hegarty is just more slick, buttering them up with (well deserved) praises and attention from grownups to get voluntary cooperation.

I didn't really get that vibe, especially when we called Colin. He was super friendly. But then again, we didn't want to test it and we complied immediately =)

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#28

Post by lupire »

jrockway wrote: post #5
aabbccsmith wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha true, and that's really not even a terrible idea to give 24 hours. We definitely ended things on a good note with Hegarty & Educake. They were really friendly to us and also super helpful to be honest, good team over there.

That's good to hear. Maybe it wasn't a veiled threat, but rather an attempt to be nice. ("A lot of companies would sue you right now, but we would never do that," could be an alternate reading.)

He explicitly avoided saying he wouldn't do it. He said he prefered not to, because he was making a threat to harm the person who exposed his incompetence and caused no harm.

Re: Avoiding homework with code and getting caught

#29

Post by jbman223 »

Reminds me of a passion project I started in high school that went completely viral and took on a life of its own. Wrote a small script for my friends to check their AP scores a few days early. Required high schoolers giving clear text access to their entire CollegeBoard account so I could log on and scrape their scores. Somehow it got posted to Reddit and from that year on, grew wildly. Got to almost 2 million students checking their score in its peak year. It was immensely fun while it lasted (ran for about 7 years) and honestly I miss the thrill of it. CollegeBoard now releases all scores on the same day so the site is pretty much useless now. Definitely always looking to chase the thrill of that score release day again though.

Congrats on a successful end to a fun high school project! Stories like this are always fun to read.

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