Ask HN: What's the hardest problem you've ever solved?
I somehow decided I needed to cheat to pass a certain exam because I was basically crap at memorizing stuff. So I used an analogue wireless headphone, an induction loop around my neck and a mobile phone. Since I lacked an accomplice to dictate, I read aloud the hundreds of pages and recorded myself, careful to preserve and properly serialize things like complex formulas.<p>This was before the era of iPods and SDCard players, so I had my mobile phone in a setup where I would call back another phone connected to my Pentium MMX 233MHz at home, that ran a sort of audio directory that would playback a certain lecture recording I would select from the menu, using DTMF tones.<p>I had a small keyboard sewn into my sleeve that connected to the customized mobile phone via a DB9 plug and then to the numeric keyboard, allowing DTMF codes to be sent by gently and invisibly moving my fingers. The whole setup was hideous and had it&#x27;s own dedicated jacket, with wires, phone, keyboard, audio amplifier, neckloop, the earphone... a complete cyborg for academic fraud.<p>Back on the PC side, I wrote a C++ application from scratch that would capture audio via the soundcard using Windows Wave API, decode the DTMF pulses using a couple of IIR filters then navigate the menu and playback the required file to the mobile phone connected to the soundcard. The C++ program and menu system was scripted using an .INI file that defined the structure with links to various ADPCM-compressed .wav files that represented the menu headings or the leaf content itself (a good structure was necessary to quickly access the correct lecture after receiving the exam subjects).<p>Work-wise, it was a lot more difficult then putting the effort in memorizing the stuff, but I rejected memorisation on principle, that&#x27;s not what an university should be about. The whole thing turned out to be a massive learning project, but I obviously could not speak about it at interviews. It&#x27;s the first time I mention it to anybody.<p>I used the setup for two exams that I aced, was never caught but it was nerve-wracking to use in close proximity to a teacher.