The time I hacked my high school | Hacker News Reader

The time I hacked my high school

nathanmarz.com

224 pointsfogus58 comments

And they say you can't get a decent education in schools anymore. Everyone in the Chess Club now has an intimate understanding of how money moves through governments.

See you in Congress Nate.

More like Wall Street. Generate excessive leverage and let the government bail you out via taxpayers.

Politics are politics. Any time more than 10 people form an organization, there are odd political heuristics used by the establishment that can be gamed.

I apparently missed the part were he took part of the money for himself and his friends after his "business" failed.

He apparently refused to do so...

>> When I graduated, Chess Club had $500 in the bank. I considered holding one last tournament with massive prizes, but ultimately decided to leave the money for future generations of Chess Club.

I remember the time I "hacked" my school library's computers. I changed the homepage on the browsers to my Geocities blog (this was almost 15 years ago). Later that day I was pulled from class by a security guard. In the library was most of campus security and most of the administrative staff. They were sure that I had put my blog on their servers and destroyed their website. They even had some teacher from the computer lab who couldn't seem to figure it out. Once I showed them how to change the homepage back (there was a tense moment when their server took forever to respond) they stopped threatening to have me arrested and made me sit quietly at a table until the period was over.

We'd just put a batch file attached to autoexec on our school computers which prompted with Cannot read C:\ Abort, Retry, Fail?, and then we made batch files for A, R, and F which just printed "Error" or something similar.

It was pretty awesome watching the "computer expert" claim the harddrives had died and needed to be replaced.

I did something similar - I had TSR programs written for DOS that "simulated" viruses. They simulated viruses like Cascade (where all of the characters on your screen would fall to the bottom and lie in a pile every few minutes) but didn't actually replicate.

I put this in the autoexec.bat file on every computer in the lab during my Pascal programming class. The next class was a word processing class.

Apparently the FBI was called to investigate when the computer teacher couldn't figure out that it wasn't a real virus. I wasn't really punished because I hadn't done any damage, but my parents got called.

As usual, someone with limited computer skills that can't get a better job somewhere else, ends up teaching computers for slightly more than minimum wage.

We used to have a lot of fun on the Novell network as well when the IT guy (think comic book guy from the Simpsons in real life) would walk away from his desk and leave it logged in. We would give ourselves admin and wreak havoc for a few hours until he noticed there was more than one superuser.

> As usual, someone with limited computer skills that can't get a better job somewhere else, ends up teaching computers for slightly more than minimum wage.

Statements like this make me rage a bit; students have to put up with non-technical teachers in part because precious few people in the high-tech sector can be moved to do teaching work in their community.

It's as much our fault as anyone else's.

As a counterpoint, I had a teacher with limited computer skills who taught 'keyboarding' in middle school. Given that I was already at 80wpm, he decided to let me use the school's brand new computer lab next door during class hours, as long as I reported back with what use I put the computers too. So, not all non-technical teachers teaching computer classes are bad.

Fair enough, but the comment is not meant to denigrate the teacher. I would much rather see a system that paid teachers appropriate salaries for their skill sets so that they could get qualified educators instead of the least common denominator.

Why should qualified high-tech people work for substandard salaries? You can say out of the goodness of our hearts, but if the service they provide is valuable enough, and I think it is, they should be compensated appropriately.

Clifford Stoll has explained this far better than I could [1], but aside from the sheer intrinsic value and altruism of taking time out to be an amazing teacher for some students, it can also serve some really practical benefits: if you want the next generation of adults to have a firm grasp of science and technical issues -- whether they later operate a cash register, enter a career in politics, or build the next Amazon -- then it makes sense for us to find the time to teach these skills to students.

If you want open source software to take over the world, teach programming to kids. If you want sensible social policies where science and technology are concerned, then teach science and technology to kids. If you want more rational discourse in the future, then teach logic to kids.

Saying, "this is somebody else's job" -- even if you're also saying that it's a valuable job and they should be compensated well for it -- is not just self-serving, it's short-sighted.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj8IA6xOpSk

<evil>I don't care about future generations, if you want me to teach you need to pay me real money to do so.</evil>

Clearly there are people willing to significantly sacrifice their family's financial future for the good of the community. However, there are not enough such people. Thus paying more money allows you to pull in talented people who don't feel the need to sacrifice for their community.

PS: You don't actually need to pay market rates. You just need to reduce the sacrifice enough to attract talented people. EX: I would be willing to take a small paycut to do scientific research, but I am unwilling to take the massive paycut it would take to do so.

Then you all are getting exactly the world that you deserve.

You can sit on your high horse forever if you want, but altruism only works when everyone is altruistic. Do you really expect technically competent people to work in an environment where free thought and initiative is punished and bureaucratic nonsense is everywhere...while being paid a third (or less!) of what they would be paid in the industry? That's the choice potential teachers like me face. Personally, I would love to teach, but the pain just isn't worth it. The choice seems like a no-brainer.

Going into teaching would be stupid because (1) I'd be miserable if I had to fight the bureucracy (2) said bureocracy would prevent me from having the full impact I could have as an instructor and (3) I wouldn't be anywhere near properly compensated. Is that much pain really worth the joy of making a small difference? You're selling yourself short to a stupid and old-fashioned system.

Perhaps changing this would be possible if there was some parallel school system that was completely private and received support from the government in addition to fees from students/parents. Ironically, this is the system we currently have i Norway, but the creation of new private schools is in practice outlawed by the government..severely restricting the possible avenues of teaching and probably limiting the wages of the teachers who want to work there.

> ...but altruism only works when everyone is altruistic.

Not a big fan of open source then, I take it? Or volunteerism in general?

> Perhaps changing this would be possible if there was some parallel school system that was completely private and received support from the government in addition to fees from students/parents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school

Also, after-school programs. Or, getting involved in a school board.

There are numerous and ample opportunities for someone with the means and motivation, but I think the real issue here is:

> I wouldn't be anywhere near properly compensated.

I've been wrestling around lately with an ever-widening sense of dismay I have at HN; it's only a problem for me because it's the last community of sorts that I participate in. There are numerous other hobbies and interests that all have their own groups of people, but the advantage to online communities is that they're always there when you need them and not there when you don't.

Anyway, I was whining to a good friend recently about this, because I'm having some trouble adjusting to the idea of not being a member of any communities anymore, and he tried to tell me, "Fuck the money-chasers."

I fundamentally can't relate to what seems to be the majority here on certain issues. It doesn't at all make sense to me that anyone could have this thought process that goes, "Here is a problem ... and I will complain about it ... and I have the power to change it ... but I won't."

How do you think bureaucracies change? They change when enough strong-willed individuals get involved.

Are you waiting for them to change themselves? Nothing changes all by itself; every single improvement in society is brought about by someone who worked for that change.

Where do you think the funding for teachers comes from? Teachers get their funding from voters, and all voters have been students. If students don't go through school and see, really see, that there was value in their education, then they won't be motivated to vote to spend more money on it.

The silliest thing is that we're constantly surrounded by examples of altruism working. The recent "offer HN" series -- which seems to have died out now -- were triggered by just a couple of people choosing to donate their efforts. The recent popular memorial post for Luke Bucklin and family (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1861964) is another example of the impact that a little bit of altruism can have.

And then there's you. I don't think we could ever reach a point of mutual understanding on this topic, because -- and I mean this with no disrespect -- nobody can afford to pay you enough to be altruistic. It looks like more people here see your point of view than mine.

How could I expect to be able to get usable advice on my business from HN then? The odds of my finding anyone here that would understand my motivations and limitations are looking pretty slim.

There seems to be a rampant social disease right now, where "hard" problems are concerned, in which those are always somebody else's problem. A lot of talented people are happy to pour effort into building social networks and other trendy things, because there's money and prestige in that, but when it comes to problems like education, public policy, government, and community development -- those are all somebody else's problem.

That makes me a little bit concerned for the future.

Anyway, this is probably all just a colossal waste of my time and yours. I haven't got anything else to contribute to HN.

It's not just about hoarding cash. When you act so as to maximize your income, you have found society's consensus that what you are doing is the most important and valuable thing you could offer. Altruism disregards all that feedback from everyone else, in favor of doing what you think we should want most from you (even though we demonstrably don't).

> When you act so as to maximize your income, you have found society's consensus that what you are doing is the most important and valuable thing you could offer.

That's not how economics works.

For a wide range of economic situations it is true. Ignoring theft and other edge cases where the system breaks down the fact that Google's founders made a ridiculous amount of money directly relates to the value they created. Do you really think they would have created more value for humanity at larges as kindergarten teachers?

There are many ways that this breaks down. In a world of finite resources Money provides a feedback loop which says "repairing and selling car X is worth it but nobody will buy car Y so it's not worth repairing." It also says becoming a Dentist has more value than a Plumber and Poor artists should find something that creates more value.

PS: Conceder that the world is not filled with identical copies of you. Individuals have different values, goals, talents, and resources. Finding the best way to utilize humanity and its resources is a ridiculously complex problem, but the act of buying / biding on what you want communicates your desires. It also bribes people into doing things that they don't want to do because they can then get other people to do things that they want.

I made a number of points in my diatribe, and the only one that was responded to was the implication that some people are more concerned about hoarding cash. Among my first points was an example of the value of volunteerism that many on HN should find relevant.

Frankly, I find the notion that money is the only indicator of social value not only despicable, but fundamentally wrong in the context of economics. I also think that there are so many utterly obvious counter-examples in so many industries and in so many areas of the world that anyone who still holds this view could not possibly be convinced otherwise. So, I don't see any point in continuing this conversation.

This. Why does it have to be evil to be interested in providing for your own family first? For example, I want my children to be able to go to a nice school and get a good education, before I can worry about other children. This means getting paid something higher than a teacher's salary.

Society needs to stop chastising the individual for "not being altruistic enough" and look in the mirror. If we are not willing to pay qualified teachers enough, what does that say about our society as a whole? What does that say about the legacy we leave for our children?

That's because a) there's no reward for excellence or penalty for failure in teaching (see the list of articles I compiled here: http://jseliger.com/2009/11/12/susan-engel-doesnt-get/ for more on that subject) and b) standardized contracts mean that high-tech people who want to teach aren't going to be subtly underpaid -- they're going to be vastly underpaid. Notice the data from Payscale.com here: http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp .

I actually thought about being a high school teacher. In Seattle, where I lived, teachers with an M.A. made ~$36K / year and got lockstep pay raises to the point where they'd make around $65K / year after 30 years. You get summer and winter break off, so you can effectively multiply that by 1.2.

Google, Microsoft, and other big tech companies start superstars in the neighborhood of $75 – $100K and go up from there. The possibility of starting your own company is there.

That's why competent technical people seldom work in schools. It isn't "our fault" so much as it is the fault of some combination of voters, teachers' unions, and school districts.

It's not the same as this story but I gamed Algebra II in in high school. It was last class of the day, the teacher was a track coach and most of us were in sports. Since time was short near the end of the year we all got permission to work at our own pace... As a C+ student in Algebra I quickly did the minimum on assignments in order to take more tests more often working far past in the book than we would have reached. I turned in crap of course but the total extra credit added up real good! ;) The teacher knew what I was pulling and even had to specify certain minimums, but went along with it nicely. (Other than never telling me just how high my grade finally was. Probably ~105%.)

This never made sense to me. Back in freshman/sophomore year of high school I was pretty dumb and a little "grey hat" (just exploring, really). I would spend my spare time writing stack buffer overflows and of course had an Administrator account password to every computer in the network. Why would you do something so trivially traceable to you? I tended to do things more useful and under the radar like install CVS for my CS class.

Why would you do something so trivially traceable to you?

Mostly because I didn't think it was a big deal. I mean, I changed the default homepage, I wasn't trying to format the drive or actually do anything that could be considered harmful. I didn't feel like I had to hide what I was doing.

It's not like when I took "keyboarding" (it's like typing! but on computers!) and had to type some long paragraph 20 times. Typing it once and then copy-pasting 19 times was more "wrong" in my book.

On the old BBC micros, I wrote a script that would loop through all possible passwords and try to log into the teachers password. Nothing was stored on computers in those days, so it wasn't such a big thing.

I got busted, had to go to the Principle, and despite explaining that it would have taken approximately 2 years to loop through all possibilities, he still threatened suspension.

On the BBC's Econet system unless a machine was 'protected', any other machine on the network had access to its RAM - including the keyboard buffer. So it was fairly easy to get access to the teacher's password, especially if they always used the same machine and you could make sure in advance to unprotect it!

Excellent, although the "we didn't need so much money" might give the impression they were taking money that other clubs could have used, although that's government for you!

I'm under the impression that this hack didn't really mean other clubs got less money. On the contrary, it seems to me that thanks to his actions (which resulted on the restrictions for all clubs being softened) caused all of the clubs to make more money with increasing lunch sales.

ah okay, I read it as if there were limited places and they acquired more by pressuring the people into needing them to make more, if there's no limit then awesome, I retract my distaste!

Oh there where limits in place. The school allowed one club to do a sale per week. That's one sale per week regardless of the club, and clubs that had a precedent generally took most of the dates allowed to do sales. After this, the school realized that more clubs needed more money and they now allowed more then one sale per week, and more than one club to do said sales per week.

The other clubs did lose out, since he was taking spots in the lunch queue he did not need, and stopping other clubs from using.

Nowhere does it say they council changed its restrictions due to the chess club.

The fact is, chess club does not need much money, nor fancy chess sets.

Nevertheless, good work, nobody was really hurt, survival of the smartest club and all that.

> Nowhere does it say they council changed its restrictions due to the chess club.

Actually no: "Soon afterwards, the student government relaxed the rules to let clubs have lunch sales more days per week."

Even if they didn't need that much money, I would say offering prizes for merit-based performance was a nice side-effect. The amount that they needed was the amount required for N chess sets, while the amount that they were able to put to good use was significantly greater. And even if* they were essentially taking money from other clubs, who's to say that those other clubs would have used the money as effectively?

*My reading of the article agrees with the other commenters that this is not the case.

Once again, a perverse incentive accomplishes the opposite of its intended objective.

Similar to "Better to do and ask forgiveness, than to ask permission first"

The punchier version is, "Better to ask forgiveness than ask permission."

Punchier still: "Ask forgiveness, not permission".

The students who bought the food at the lunch sales most likely did not care what their money was going to. This was not like paying taxes, it was getting restaurant food at a markup at your high school. I'm sure that those who actually thought about where the money for their food was going were few and far between.

The end-result of this hack was that the student government opened up selling outside food at lunch time more often for more clubs than previously allowed.

I see this as good for everyone involved, with the possible exception perhaps of the poor kids.

Or the rich kids' arteries.

The high-school I went to served pizza and french fries regularly. The food was extremely unhealthy and to my knowledge that hasn't changed much. It's far easier to deep fry a few hundred pounds of tater tots than to make a few thousand sandwiches and sliced apples.

I doubt either option was fairly healthy for the students, but I wouldn't use a high-school cafeteria as the epitome of healthy living.

Also for some reason the rich kids at my school typically brought their own lunch and ate more natural food than the middle-class or the poor kids. Anecdotal at best, but that was my experience.

In the late 90s there was an email service in India that mailed you a check if you logged in a minimum number of times a month (heady dotcom dayz). I received a few $5 checks - in Rupees that was a decent amount of pocket money for a student!

While playing around once, I figured that if you entered the answer to the "Pet's name" security question as "pet's name" verbatim, it gave you the password in plain text! And this for _any_ account.

It was fun hacking into email accounts. I tried to persuade the girl I had a crush on at the time to join the service saying she could get money if she uses the service. She never did. Woman's intuition I guess.

Somewhat off-topic, I guess.

While I approve of finding a way to get your foot in the door for lunch sales, the soon abusing of it really turned me off. Too much like politics really. Other clubs or the school itself could have used that money.

I wouldn't call this an abuse. It made it so all the clubs where making more money, so everyone was really profiting from this.

Even though the rules about one sale per week were relaxed, it seems like each day could only have one club making a sale, and there was still a queue for those days. He was saying that since his group had a 'precedent' of 'needing money' they still got priority in that queue. There is no guarantee that other groups were or weren't missing out on money. There is just isn't enough information to make that statement.

Yeah let's put it this way. Say school has no vacations so they used to get 52 sales a year, in which of course the clubs with a precedent of needing more money took precedence. Now say they now get 104, or hell... 156 sales a year because of the change in rules. Let's say that clubs that needed money took 80% of the days (this not changing in the worst case scenario), leaving 10 or 11 days for the rest of the clubs before, the remaining sales for this other clubs increases to 21 or 32 respectively.

The only way that the chess club was going to take away sales from the other clubs is if their percentage of sales increases, and even then it would have to increase beyond a threshold where it started eating up the extra days beyond the original sales the other clubs where having.

Sure it could be the case that other clubs where missing out, but it is very much more probable that everyone was benefiting from the chess club 'hack'.

Besides, you could argue that if your club does nothing to take at least some advantage of the relaxed rules it's the other clubs' fault, not the chess club's. In the end the clubs profited, the members profited, and the businesses that provided the food profited. This is a good compromise if X club didn't get much benefits after all.

Politics is reality... like it or not. We don't live in an idealized world where everything is fair.

And it involved the student government.. so of COURSE it's political...

Is "Politics is reality" really an excuse for such behavior, though?

Morally? No. But it's reality.

If everyone was acting all nice and fair and happy, all it takes is one person who really gets how to manipulate public opinion to their own ends and they'll rise to the top... so unfortunately, it's reality.

An excellent hack that left a bad taste in my mouth.

All those references to school lunch?

Lucky. At my high school, the cafeteria made it real hard for anyone but the student government to sell food at lunch — our club had to collect dues from members who wanted pizza delivered. Then again, I knew a guy who would drive to the local taco shop before lunch and then sell real burritos to the other students to make a few bucks.

Please tell us about the time you, nathanmarz, most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage. :D

With great power comes great responsibility.

If only your student body showed fiscal constraint, this wouldn't have worked.

i know this will come off as dick-ish...

just saying this hack seems more like a ruse... which i guess is a hack... i was expecting more from such an inflammatory title...

This is one of those questionably ethical "hacks" that entrepreneurs commonly use to gain advantage. There was no great harm, but there was deceit and some harm. Socrates would not approve, but I think Paul Graham would.

When the victor tells the history, everyone cheers around the campfire, while the defeated cry foul and regroup their forces for revenge.

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