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How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

twilio.com

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Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#61

Post by makr99 »

e12e wrote: post #41
makr99 wrote: post #25

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did - The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are n…

Nice story, and great that Twilio worked out for you - but this really is the sort of thing that email alerts (or IM alerts, or IRC alerts) should also work fine for. I would argue that the fact that you find SMS/phone calls a more urgent alert is a fault with your phone/communication setup - and twilio is an interesting hack around that. But there really should be an easy way to make just as much ruckus from a simpl…

I tried web alerts, but the emails were not instant, plus no phonecalls. Most the services I found didn't look reliable enough as I had no window for mistakes for my immigration. So I rolled my own.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#62

Post by kevsully5 »

I did a similar thing my freshman year of college, and by junior year I created an API based around the class registration system and an iPhone/Android app for it that sends push notifications to students when the class they want opens up (shameless plug: http://www.eaglescribe.com/).

This past semester, the active users was between 1/3-1/2 of the undergrad students in the school. As you can imagine, popular classes had dozens of people "subscribed" to receive notifications when it opened, so it became a race to sign up once the push went out. On the plus side, this gave us a treasure trove of data on the most popular courses, and we've been in communication with the school to see if they would be interested in this data.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#63

Post by makr99 »

patmcc wrote: post #54
makr99 wrote: post #25

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did - The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are n…

We're always glad to have more hackers in Canada, welcome! (If you've got your PR this was probably a while ago, but still)

Thank you. I got my PR some months back. My spouse can work now. We are very happy than being in the US where she was not authorized to work. We enjoy the real freedom here.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#64

Post by droidist2 »

cgmg wrote: post #56
_sbrk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because of US broken immigration system Immigration is working just fine: It is a rate-limiting mechanism to prevent massive immigration of every "me too" person from other random countries. You're just like everyone else, and everyone else wants to get in, too. Just like a lifeboat, the US can't let everyone in at once or we'd sink. Buy a parka and enjoy Canada!

"Just like a lifeboat, the US can't let everyone in at once or we'd sink." Actually, the consensus among economists is that immigration makes your own economy better off. It has a net positive effect on productivity and prosperity. In other words, your "rate-limiting" analogy makes zero sense. You want more immigration, not less.

It's a balance, if you don't have enough immigration you want more, if you have too much you want less. Which side of the curve the US is on is debatable.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#65

Post by foepys »

tomjen3 wrote: post #58
teddyc wrote: post #37

I used to work in University IT and registration time is the worst. The systems never handle the load well and everyone freaks out. I think your work might anger the sysadmins b/c of the increased load.

Couldn't you just let anybody sign up for $LONG_ENOUGH_PERIOD and then randomize who gets in the classes? It sounds like a much better solution in general.

My university switched to that for some (mostly optional) classes. This resulted in a lower attendance rates because as a student you end up registering for pretty much everything instead of one or two classes you really want. There was a system in place to fill the empty seats with students still in the waiting queue by the second session but most students already got into other classes and just didn't remove themselves from the queues. So the students got an email that a seat was free for them which they ignored and because you can only miss two sessions before failing the classes, the seats stayed mostly empty.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#67

Post by deepspace »

tomjen3 wrote: post #58
teddyc wrote: post #37

I used to work in University IT and registration time is the worst. The systems never handle the load well and everyone freaks out. I think your work might anger the sysadmins b/c of the increased load.

Couldn't you just let anybody sign up for $LONG_ENOUGH_PERIOD and then randomize who gets in the classes? It sounds like a much better solution in general.

An even better solution would be to add a wait list, as mentioned by the OP.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#68

Post by BeetleB »

_sbrk wrote: post #46
makr99 wrote: post #25

I was in the US and want to immigrate to Canada because of US broken H1B immigration system ( for me it will take 9 years to get a greencard). Here is what I did - The immigration website of Saskatchewan province opens up randomly to apply for immigration. I missed it many times because there is no indication other than the "Apply" button being enabled and a small text in their homepage which says "Applications are n…

> because of US broken immigration system Immigration is working just fine: It is a rate-limiting mechanism to prevent massive immigration of every "me too" person from other random countries. You're just like everyone else, and everyone else wants to get in, too. Just like a lifeboat, the US can't let everyone in at once or we'd sink. Buy a parka and enjoy Canada!

>You're just like everyone else, and everyone else wants to get in, too.

Actually, no. Parts of the US immigration system have separate queues for people in certain countries. Not all applicants for a given immigration category are treated equally.

Re: How I Hacked My University's Registration System with Python and Twilio

#70

Post by KekDemaga »

murukesh_s wrote: post #55
hbk1966 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah you can sends texts to your phone just like sending an email.

How to do that?

Put the phone number in front of a domain for each carrier, a list is here.

https://github.com/WilliamFCipriano/FreeSMS/blob/master/data...

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