Ask HN: Can anybody please explain this hack?
- You hear what sounds almost like a power generator going off in the distance, except it's a "softer", more "bass"-boosted and buzzing sound and doesn't have that final "crackle" exploding sound at the end; more like a slowed-down version of the sounds leading up to that final "generator blew out during the storm" sound - During this, the light in your room noticeably dims for a brief moment, but then goes back to normal (the nearby cable TV box if fine, not rebooting or anything) - However, your laptop (Mac, if it makes a difference) that you reasonably recently updated the battery for at a reputable, licensed location inexplicably shuts off (no warning, no fan overheating sound (no fan at all, actually), not a lot of apps open to stress processor or memory - Your laptop at this moment was not just fully charged, but also plugged in - The laptop self-reboots, whereupon you notice your battery charge is now inexplicably "0%"; opening up the settings panel, the graph shows that your laptop was in fact fully charged until just a moment ago when the charge inexplicably nose-dived to "0%" (when that outdoor "power generator humming buzzing sound happened and the light dimmed) - This part didn't happen exactly this way and I don't want to go into details of how it did happen, but let's say something like this happened: Upon your laptop rebooting, let's say there is an open sticky note or a notepad app that inexplicably opens also and something like the following was typed in: "Hope you saved your work at (hour)(minute) on (day)(date)" – so basically you do not have doubts that "this was no accident"
My question is 2-fold: (1) How is it possible to instantly discharge your laptop's battery so that it goes from 100% to 0% in a split second, and, more importantly (2) how is it possible to rewrite your laptop's "whatever" so that if the battery suddenly has 0% charge, the hardware is reset to ignore the fact that it can draw power from also being plugged in?
I'm not expecting (though I'd love) any "As a hacker who used to do just this sort of thing to people, I know exactly how they did it" answers, but ANY ideas about how this may have been possible would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
But this time the laptop temperature was perfectly normal and there was no indication of sudden heat spikes.
Because otherwise you're just debasing yourself by not only engaging in ad-hominem attacks, but making up the basis for doing so.
I've personally seen them do things WAY beyond what I describe in this post, some so far beyond what most people would think is technically possible that simply describing it (without proof) would come off as highly-delusional to I suspect most of HN's readers/users.
So despite "they benched 800 pounds" seeming as "You're jumping to conclusions, go see a doctor" material to you, you're talking to someone that has seen them bench 3,000 lbs. (as an analogy).
NOW who's "jumping to conclusions" about what happened and whether or not this was technically-feasible?
In this case the troll is showing you a rare act of kindness in trying to teach you a legitimately healthy lesson by breaking the fourth wall.
On the internet nobody knows you're a dog etc.