For many years, jamba juice was running a promotion: buy a $25 gift card, get a free jamba juice. So one day I bought a gift card, got my free razmatazz, and was about to head out on my way when I doubled back. Me: "I'd like another $25 gift card please." Cashier: "That will be $25. What is your free smoothie?" Me: "Peach pleasure." And then I would pay with the previously purchased gift card, creating an infinite lo…
Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
21–30 of 72 posts
Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#22I made a portrait of my girlfriend out of dice. http://www.elusivesnark.com/2008/11/carolines-dice-portrait....
Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#23For many years, jamba juice was running a promotion: buy a $25 gift card, get a free jamba juice. So one day I bought a gift card, got my free razmatazz, and was about to head out on my way when I doubled back. Me: "I'd like another $25 gift card please." Cashier: "That will be $25. What is your free smoothie?" Me: "Peach pleasure." And then I would pay with the previously purchased gift card, creating an infinite lo…
Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#24It's not a specific hack, but it has given me the same feeling, something I keep discovering: It's just a bunch of rules. Learn the rules and you understand it. We've probably all seen it with computing; it looks mysterious from the outside but learn the logic and you can make it go. Fixing cars is the same way (fuel, air, spark). Circuit design is the same way (a few types of component, logic gates). Power engineeri…
Good for social engineering, too. :)
Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#25On the same camp, I talked Emanuel Goldstein into signing and selling me the last VHS of Freedom Downtime that he had broad over from the US and was intended to be a present for the camp organizers. ...Or did he talk me into buying it...?
Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#26During chaos communication camp (lots of hacker do camping) 2003 in Germany was one of the hottest days recorded since $longtime. Normal fridges where not allowed on the campside, because of the heavy power consumption. So I built a fridge out of a box, a towel, plastic bottle and a fan. Worked like a charm. Most other hacker who saw this were like: 'Damm, I told my friends this would work...' Execution is all! :) On…
brought
Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#27Building a windmill and powering my house with it ? (I guess that has mechanical, but it is also technical, hard to be 'mechanical' without 'technical'). Not sure if this qualifies as a 'hack', but when abroad and stopped by the police I suddenly only speak dutch. That seems to reduce the interest level considerably. Saved me a few fines by cops playing the 'fleece the tourist' game.
Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#28Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#29The hack was simple, and spread like wildfire on campus:
Place a GBP 100 bet on a basket ball game, at odds of 1:1.9. Get GBP 50 rebate.
Get a buddy to take the opposite bet, at GBP 100 (they get GBP 50 rebate)
One person wins 0, the other GBP 190. Split the 190, both parties are up GBP 45.
Repeat as many times as you have credit cards numbers (new registrations each time)
Lots of people pocketed hundreds of pounds in ~1 hours work, risk free, and we were students, so it was good money. I think it was 1999, maybe 2000.Re: Ask HN: Your biggest non-technical hack/discovery
#30Building a windmill and powering my house with it ? (I guess that has mechanical, but it is also technical, hard to be 'mechanical' without 'technical'). Not sure if this qualifies as a 'hack', but when abroad and stopped by the police I suddenly only speak dutch. That seems to reduce the interest level considerably. Saved me a few fines by cops playing the 'fleece the tourist' game.
Does your windmill provide 100% of the power needed for your house? If so, how big is it and how much did it cost to build?
We did just about everything we could to conserve power though, one of the lessons you learn fastest when working with renewables is that it is a lot easier to save a Watt than to generate one.
The machine was a 16'er, or about 5 Meters, so a swept surface of 18 square meters or thereabouts, it cost a small fortune to build because I was planning to make it in larger numbers. Designed power was about 2.5 KW, it came out a bit less than that, mostly due to a slightly larger air-gap than what I had planned on (the plasma cutter nozzle used to cut the stator laminates was wearing down, and cutting with a slightly larger diameter jet than planned).
The design is far from perfect but for a first try at a variable pitch machine it worked pretty good. It survived several major storms without failure, we only took it down because we emigrated back to Europe. It's laying in pieces on the garage floor waiting for better times.
edit: the only way to get 100% of the power for your house from the wind would be if you would consent to being without power every now and then. After all , the wind only blows so much, and when it doesn't you'll need to have either enough power stored up in batteries or you'd have to have an alternative source.
What people do to get to the economical equivalent without using batteries is if their grid operator allows it do something called 'net-metering', this allows you to pump your excess power into the grid and back out again when you need it for the same price.
The whole uncoupling of network and electricity production is seen by plenty of people in the renewable energy scene as a way of discouraging net-metering, after all, if the 'base' rate per KWh is already quite a bit just for transport then they can afford to give you a crappy price for your excess power, and charge you twice for the storage and retrieval of the power.