Hacker News Reader

I was an EE student and worked for UW CSE back in the day, someone tried to do this back then as well and got very in trouble.

There may have been some browser automation scripts about… I wouldn’t know.

View on HN

How were said student(s) even caught? I am assuming someone spoke too loudly or shared too much, but I'd be lying if I said I was not hoping for some kind of technical solution.

Not sure, but UW IT isn’t incapable of noticing repeated requests from the same IP or something, I assume most students are not setting up systems that go over residential proxies.

You typically need to be signed in in order to get all the course info.

UW does have that info publicly available: https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2025/

You do have to be signed typically to actually make changes of course, I imagine this tool would have to have your netid login… (yikes)

I benefited from a UW CSE spot trade in like 2010 and didn't get in trouble for it at the time.

Yeah, a small amount of "organic" mischief isn't bad IMO, but it's problematic on a larger scale.

Yeah I agree, not ideal given how limited capacity is in some classes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com