n the early days of internet, helpdesks had endless queues. I wrote a little modem script to dial in very 15 minutes, just to hear the length of the queue (I could hear it through my modem speaker). While doing that I was imagining how, in the future, they would surely have a service to call you back automatically instead .. right ?
In the early days of wifi, my own network was open. Neighbours hardware used to connect automatically, I guess they didn’t even realize. Then I found I could use tcpdump to see what was going through the air, and I spent some time prettifying the output so I could see their mails, chats and the webpages they visited. They turned out to be boring people.
About the same time, I worked for a company that required me to fill in awkwardly detailed work hours for separate projects, to monitor efficiency and such. The backend there was mysql , so I wrote a little cron job that would do it for me, based on a config file that I updated to match the planning. They found out.
When my father was taken to the hospital, I couldn’t reach my sister, who was in africa. I applescripted skype to dial the same number every minute, and hang up after one or two rings, so I woudn’t get charged. She woke up seeing 300 missed calls on her phone .. and 1 text message.