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Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

Say what to a community of hackers? :D

    setInterval(function(){
      var seconds = parseInt($("#thebutton-s-10s").html()) * 10
                  + parseInt($("#thebutton-s-1s").html());
      if (seconds > 15 && seconds < 20) {
        $("#thebutton").click();
        }
    }, 100);

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People had that running within an hour. The problem is temporary connectivity issues and so which makes you think its hit that low. There were efforts to track the lowest number seen so far but a common problem was getting artificially low just due to lag.

quick edit: Another top level reply to this post is saying something similar.

Careful, if you lose the connection to the websocket you'll click inadvertently! Also, there's a global variable called "r.thebutton" which has info about the timer already - no need to parse out html elements :)

Edited to take this into account. Now it will only click within an interval, from 15 to 20 seconds. In this way, if it was 0, undef, etc, it would not be clicked, thanks!

Okay, so you see 17 seconds and click but who says your click isn't received after someone else's, but before your time is updated?

You don't. Neither does anyone doing it manually, this is part of the game.

They detect 'cheaters' and flair people as such.

really? How would you detect a clientside script like this?

    function validateClickEvent(e) {
        var r = e.target.getBoundingClientRect();
        if (e.x >= r.left && e.x <= r.right && e.y >= r.top && e.y <= r.bottom) {
            console.log('looks legit');
        } else {
            console.log('faked click');
        }
    }

Set this as the click handler. The click method is browser specific, but on Chrome the x/y coordinates on the event will be incorrect. A smarter script could fool this, though.

I don't know much javascript, but that looks extremely error prone to me. How would it behave in different monitor sizes? With zoomed in/out screens? On mobiles, tablets, etc?

And it would still be pretty easy for a cheating script to work cheat your validation!

It's just an example, but zoom should scale both the element coordinates and the mouse coordinates. This sort of validation can be made a lot more elaborate.

thebutton.dispatchEvent( new MouseEvent('click', {clientX:(r.left+r.right)/2, clientY:(r.top+r.bottom)/2}));

Or something along those lines!! :)

They could make their own implementation of setInterval and report you as a cheater when you use it.

AFAIK "cheaters" are just people who used Javascript to defeat the client-side validation and try to click the button more than once. Those extra clicks get caught by additional server-side checks.

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