[HN Gopher] Hackerrank DMCA Notice
___________________________________________________________________
Hackerrank DMCA Notice
Author : captn3m0
Score : 310 points
Date : 2021-11-16 12:04 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| sreeramb93 wrote:
| Github is a globally used site and US law takes precedence over
| all else. We need to decentralise the web.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| This has already been the case for git repositories since day
| one. What makes github unique is the workflow management for
| teams of developers. I think one of the issues is that people
| default to the easiest choice of using github or gitlab rather
| than self hosting their own system [1].
|
| [1] - https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea
| dekken_ wrote:
| is there a better way to make these companies fail than just to
| not support the use of their tests during interviews?
| dotancohen wrote:
| The problem is with the laws, not with the companies that abide
| by those laws.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In this case the problem is with a company abusing the law,
| not abiding by it.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| The problem is with both.
| riffraff wrote:
| to paraphrase a trite but true aphorism: "the things they
| do are not illegal" is a very low threshold for supporting
| a company.
| bbarn wrote:
| It's the only way, IMO. I am someone who tends to drift every
| few years from manager to individual contributor. Here's my
| take:
|
| As an engineer, I refuse to do tests and take home projects for
| interviews unless the company also offers to pay me for my time
| and the problem seems immediately relevant to the domain. There
| are few other fields one would ask to to perform your work
| product for them before hiring, and few that it would matter
| (being a chef is an example that comes to mind, but there are
| others I'm sure).
|
| As a manager, solving gotcha problems is rarely indicative of
| someone who will perform good at a development job. Give me
| someone who shows understanding of my stack via experience and
| understanding my business. These efforts to screen at this
| level by untrained people tells me the hiring manager is too
| disconnected from his hiring process, or just too lazy. All I
| want my HR team to do is scan resumes for at least some
| relevant experience before passing them on to me, and I provide
| them with plenty of examples, both on and off stack sometimes,
| of what that might look like. If I was going to suggest a take
| home project or a quiz app like this, I would already have
| dedicated enough of my time into vetting that person that I'd
| probably just invite them for an interview instead and do a
| live coding exercise with them.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| The whole DMCA is an affront to humanity.
| vhold wrote:
| The DMCA is flawed, but even the EFF will defend the importance
| of the safe harbor it provides.
|
| https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| What problem are they trying to solve?
|
| "cheating" on HackerRank is trivially simple - just have a second
| computer that you can search for the answer on. Removing some of
| the github repos for this is really not going to solve that
| problem.
|
| But that's not really cheating. HackerRank is used to test
| programmers during recruitment, and I don't know a single
| programmer that doesn't search for an answer when stumped with a
| difficult question. Hell, it's Best Practice - why waste time
| thinking up your own (probably flawed) answer to a problem when
| there's an entire internet full of working solutions? As any
| experienced programmer knows, "google-fu" is an essential skill
| for a commercial coder. They should be giving points for "minimum
| number of searches needed to find a solution" on HackerRank,
| instead of trying to stop solutions being available.
|
| The problem here, really, is that using HackerRank as anything
| but an educational toy is universally stupid. But that would
| involve explaining difficult things to HR people, and that's a
| difficult problem that we can't search for an answer to.
| trasz wrote:
| That's why the world needs platforms like https://gitee.com.
| MadcapJake wrote:
| How will another centralized git host solve for US DMCA
| protection?
| thefr0g wrote:
| He probably meant https://gitea.io ;)
| trasz wrote:
| By being outside the US jurisdiction - in this case in China.
| srvmshr wrote:
| As a fun trivia: Today I learned Hackerrank, HackerEarth &
| CodeChef all started as Indian startups. They probably account
| for more than half of traffic by coders taking competitive
| programming as hobby. SPOJ, Codeforces, UVA are probably more
| algorithm focused (read: harder/complex)
| ldehaan wrote:
| Hacker rank is such a Joke. I'd never use them, and everyone I
| know who had used it found out that hiring people who call
| themselves Hackers because they can answer a quiz, aren't Hackers
| and suck in the workplace. ,........,........,........,........
| Don't use these scammer companies, get someone who knows what
| they're doing to do your interviews. Or waste your money, you can
| do that too.
| yosito wrote:
| Hackerrank is a terrible platform.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| It is also a Y Combinator company:
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/hackerrank
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ycombinator companies having some ethical challenges is
| nothing new either, unfortunately.
| DarthNebo wrote:
| Wonder what percentage of the questions are genuine creations of
| Hackerrank & not just garbled up CS questions from other
| textbooks/generic code
| game_the0ry wrote:
| This is funny.
|
| I take this as - folks pushed their hackerrank practice to share
| on github, and hackerrank is trying to stop github copilot from
| auto-filling answers to the question. It goes to show how useless
| hackerrank and leetcode type sites are.
|
| Also, if hackerank claims copywrite over answers, they can
| promptly go fuck themselves. Jokers.
|
| I really do hate hackerrank. Their platform is the worst for
| interviews, always buggy, autoformat and autcomplete never works,
| just an overall PoS.
|
| Update - reading the comments pissed me off even more. We as
| participants in the tech industry need to stop using hackerrank
| altogether, full stop, immediately. They're going after
| developers, their own target market, with threatening legal
| action - scumbag move.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Hackerrank is fantastic at filtering out companies I'd hate to
| work for.
| crawsome wrote:
| I bet half of HR's questions are stolen from someone else anyway.
|
| I hope ppl who write coding questions for a living check their
| site out for stolen exercises they're so concerned about.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Most of them are simple modification of algorithm course like A
| star algorithm, DFS, BFS and they have gall to dmca repo. Idk
| how can HR is so spineless to report such DMCA. Companies
| shouldn't use such platform to write coding question.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I think Cormen, Leiserson,Rivest, and Stein could probably
| DMCA takedown all of Hacker Rank. The questions are not much
| different from the textbook.
| kamaal wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| The standard practice while designing these questions is to
| take what already exists(Classic DS/Algo questions, questions
| on other OJ sites) and then add puzzle aspects to them, or a
| slight variation in the solution that involves a 'small trick'
| to it.
|
| Leetcode almost feels like the defacto question bank for people
| who want to do interview prep. People just take questions from
| there and add small variations to it.
|
| At this point in time this is worse than judging math skills by
| checking a persons memorisation of multiplication tables. Only
| people who ace these tests are unproductive at their current
| jobs, and spend whole days memorising these things.
|
| If you are hiring based on these tests. You are quite literally
| hiring wrongest possible people for the job. Nobody answering
| these questions are inventing novel algorithms for the
| questions asked.
| xtracto wrote:
| This was 100% the case for a startup I worked for 4 years
| ago: we actually used hackerrank and asked 3 of their
| questions.
|
| We realized that the people who better answered them were
| college kids /recent graduates who had specialised in
| algorithmic puzzle solving. They mainly programmed in C , but
| their code was way too far away of what you would like to see
| in a production environment.
|
| The best people for us were the ones that had spent their
| free time checking different technologies and doing crazy
| projects (like reverse engineering something, or developing a
| small game)
| kamaal wrote:
| This is so important and most people don't realize this.
| Ability to build things quickly, make tools, write/rewrite
| stuff. All this is so much more important than memory
| skills, or even for that matter novel algorithm design
| skills(even questions that demand novel algorithms are rare
| in most production environments).
|
| That given, it's a shame that our interview skills are no
| where close to hiring people who can build anything at all.
|
| The problem is a lot of these top companies have tons of
| money and time, to spend doing these things. They can even
| end up hiring the wrong people and it wouldn't matter all
| that much because they have lots of money, and every once
| in a while a genuine contributor slips in and makes up for
| everyone else.
|
| Now everyone wants to do this, when they don't have the
| same conditions.
| cute_boi wrote:
| Blocking entire repo for FindSubstring.java sounds a bit hostile?
| Also if the repo lets say contain general question like
| FindSubsring can they dmca whole repo.
|
| If I check on archive
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200921030437/https://github.co...
| it doesn't look like this repo should be dmca ed.
| soco wrote:
| What _we_ think is irrelevant because GitHub _already_ took
| down everything. Soooo, in general... is DMCA already used as a
| weapon? If not, why not?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Literally claiming copyright on this description for "find
| substring": "Given s and x, we want to know the zero-based
| index of the first occurrence of x in s"
|
| They also seem to claim copyright on renditions of "their"
| questions in various repositories containing interview notes in
| general, e.g.
| https://github.com/jayshah19949596/CodingInterviews/blob/mas...
|
| There's also a number of URLs in here which have "leetcode" and
| not "hackerrank" in them.
|
| A sibling points out this golden nugget from the DMCA notice:
| "(the whole repository is infringing copyright as it contains
| the solution)" i.e. HackerRank is claiming that not only they
| own the copyright on "How to find the first occurrence of x in
| s?" _but also_ every solution to that question, which is a
| completely ridiculous notion.
| imglorp wrote:
| Is that a long enough sample for DMCA? That sounds more like
| fair use if it's only one sentence.
| kamaal wrote:
| >>HackerRank is claiming that not only they own the copyright
| on "How to find the first occurrence of x in s?" but also
| every solution to that question, which is a completely
| ridiculous notion.
|
| They are in hiring business not CS education business. Their
| business is not helping people learn things, but helping
| companies hire people.
|
| If the solutions are available online, anybody can memorize
| them and ace tests, And they often do. If too many people do
| it, the whole point of test is defeated. The more solutions
| are available online, the more pointless the test becomes.
| Which actually says more about the testing methods
| themselves.
|
| On the other hand, it's realistically impossible to keeping
| coming up with questions that can genuinely test a person's
| ability to come up with a novel algorithm for a problem.
| That's a CS PhD at least, if not a Fields medal category
| problem.
| RansomStark wrote:
| I get your point, but copyright was designed to stop people
| stealing an authors work. The DMCA was similarly designed
| to help in that regard even is the implementation is
| somewhat questionable.
|
| Protecting a business model such as HackerRank's was not
| the intention of copyright or the DMCA. Your argument
| almost turns the entire idea of copyright on it's head.
|
| As I read your comment I take away a point of view of:
|
| The HackerRank business model is predicated on keeping
| other peoples copyrighted work out of the hands of
| potential users, therefore HackerRank should be entitled
| the copyright of these other people.
|
| That is not a viewpoint I could support and I don't believe
| many, other than HackerRank could support it either.
| kamaal wrote:
| I know, it's just so wrong. But this is the world- as is.
|
| Just be glad, they haven't yet patented or copyrighted a
| tree, graph or a linked list yet.
|
| Wrote a tree traversal program to solve some problem in
| your program? Sorry that connects to some problem they
| own, so now your solution belongs to them.
| MikeDelta wrote:
| I guess that this touches the topic of many discussions on
| HN: how valuable is a test that you can beat by memorizing
| solutions?
|
| (Not bringing up the discussion, just mentioning it.)
| madeofpalk wrote:
| That doesn't sound like Github or the legal systems
| problem?
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Any chance that it's an example solution copy pasted from
| their site?
| xyzal wrote:
| I just checked another link on archive.org that really just
| explains how to do linear interpolation of a missing array
| element from neighboring elements. This is insane. GH should
| really be considered a potential single point of failure now.
| thefr0g wrote:
| > GH should really be considered a potential single point of
| failure now.
|
| now...
| adrr wrote:
| They claim find substring question as their own art? I was
| asked this in the early 2000s and i am sure i asked this
| question to candidates in the mids 2000s. Someone should find
| proof of any early example they asked a candidate and DMCA
| hacker ranks cloud provider.
| wizardofmysore wrote:
| Can we have something like github on top of bit-torrent?
| caymanjim wrote:
| Gitea is free. Host it anywhere you want. Invite anyone you
| want. You're still bound by the law somewhere, though.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| We don't need git _hosting_ at all. Git can be served off any
| computer with SSH access. You serve git off a raspberry pi.
|
| Github, gitlab, etc is just an overgrowth.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Github is, Gitlab is not because you can run it on-prem if
| you want.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Point is neither is even close to necessary using git. Git
| isn't a web application. It's a version control system.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, but that's OT, the topic here is GitHub, not git.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah, and my point is that it's mostly superfluous.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You are welcome to your opinion of course but Github has
| become a pretty essential part of the workflow for many
| projects, closed and open source both. That it is
| possible to work around that doesn't diminish that, it's
| just how people are currently using it. I would have
| preferred a much more decentralized solution, I always
| thought it was a mistake that the git core left room
| enough for the likes of Github to establish themselves as
| gateways to various projects.
| nightcracker wrote:
| Looking through some of these URLs through Google cache, a lot of
| these contain verbatim copies of the problem text. Fair enough,
| legally speaking, if you are the copyright holder.
|
| However, in the DMCA itself HackerRank asks for the removal of
| entire _repositories_ , claiming "the whole repository is
| infringing copyright as it contains the solution". This is a
| blatant lie, HackerRank is not an automatic copyright holder of
| any solutions to a problem they published.
| realce wrote:
| > HackerRank is not an automatic copyright holder of any
| solutions to a problem they published
|
| That's an interesting point of view. You're saying the question
| text is copywrite-able but the logical conclusion of such a
| question is not?
| boomlinde wrote:
| Both a question and an answer may or may not be subject to
| copyright. What GP is saying is that such rights, if any, are
| assigned to their respective authors.
| nightcracker wrote:
| Copying the question text _verbatim_ certainly is copyright
| infringement (and I would guess unlikely to be fair use, but
| I 'm not a lawyer). If you give the problem in your own
| words, it won't be, just like your solution isn't.
| rectang wrote:
| Giving the problem "in your own words" raises the question
| of whether or not your restatement constitutes a derivative
| work.
|
| From the 1976 Copyright Act section 101:
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/101
|
| > _A "derivative work" is a work based upon one or more
| preexisting works, such as a translation, musical
| arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion
| picture version, sound recording, art reproduction,
| abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work
| may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting
| of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other
| modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work
| of authorship, is a "derivative work"._
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| Chegg seems to have sorted this out with textbook
| questions?
| captn3m0 wrote:
| They license it I think.
| moeris wrote:
| That's not how copyright works. Simply rewording each
| question will still violate copyright when you're copying
| all of the questions. I couldn't just reword Harry Potter
| and republish all of the novels. Likewise, copying some
| small portion may fall under fair use.
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| That is how copyright works. I believe you are thinking
| of plagiarism, which isn't the same thing.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| On the contrary, I'm fairly sure you could do that with
| the Harry Potter books. What jurisdiction are you in?
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| I believe (and I'm not a legal expert here), that what
| the commenter is alluding to is the "moral rights" over a
| work. This is more common in the UK and Canada. When I
| worked for a Canadian company (I'm a U.S. American) part
| of our IP release for works-for-hire included a
| waiver/transfer of rights specifically for the "moral" or
| "authors" rights, which were explained as being the
| "spirit" or "whole" of works we created.
|
| It's a legal construct, but I was never satisfied with
| that explanation. The gist was that while we could
| transform things that we learned or did, we could not re-
| use the ideas that formed the functioning product in
| other works elsewhere, even by transformation.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Doesn't the Berne convention specifically make moral
| rights inalienable? The whole _point_ being that you may
| transfer redistribution rights, etc. to somebody else,
| but they still don't get to (affirmatively) claim they
| wrote it (thus can't even try to pressure you to allow
| it)? Am I misunderstanding or is the local (and likely
| original) definition of "moral rights" different from the
| one in the convention?
| nikanj wrote:
| The same way you may copyright a writing prompt, but you
| won't automatically get copyright to stories inspired by said
| prompt
| scaryclam wrote:
| The solution is certainly copywritable, but not by hackerrank
| as they did not author it
| mannykannot wrote:
| I think (or at least hope) that copyright is limited to a
| specific expression of a specific solution. Anything more
| broad would be tantamount to a copyright on basic
| algorithms, I think.
| gzer0 wrote:
| And what happens when there are multiple different
| possibilities for the solution? As is the case here, the
| solution can be achieved in multiple ways. It would be
| bizarre for one to have copyright claim over all of them.
| mannykannot wrote:
| My initial reaction to your question was that I thought
| perhaps Hackerrank could claim copyright on any
| particular solution that had either been written by
| Hackerrank or where the copyright had been assigned to
| it.
|
| With regard to the latter, I would guess, knowing how
| corporations work, that Hackerrank requires anyone taking
| a test to assign her rights, with respect to any solution
| given, to the company. (To be clear: I do not like that
| at all.)
|
| In the US, the Copyright Act of 1976 extended copyright
| to unpublished works (Hackerrank presumably does not
| publish its own solutions, though it might well register
| them.) IANAL and AFAIK, I think there are fairly
| stringent requirements on fidelity for a work to be
| considered infringing, and there is also the matter of
| fair use, but in practice in this case, it is Github, not
| the courts, that Hackerrank has to persuade.
|
| I would guess that publishing something that advertises
| itself as a solution to a Hackerrrank problem might fall
| under trademark infringement or some such law, and
| something stating the particular problem being being
| solved might be an infringement of a copyright on the
| problem as stated by Hackerrank.
| randombits0 wrote:
| Not in the least. Copyright applies to creative expressions,
| not functional expressions. My solution to your problem is my
| creative expression, not yours.
| jacquesm wrote:
| If only because you could get the answer wrong.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Seems to me that's the simplest and most intuitive point of
| view. Can you imagine publishing a question and then owning
| the copyright to every answer to it someone writes!?
| rocqua wrote:
| There is a difference between "Questions" and "test
| questions with a known specific solution". One could argue
| (I would not) that the solution to a test question is an
| integral part of the question and therefor if the one can
| be protected by copyright, so can the other".
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Is there any legal basis for that argument?
| RattleyCooper wrote:
| Nope
| ben_w wrote:
| While that would apply to simple maths questions -- 16x16
| is always 256 -- I don't see that applying to HackerRank
| programming challenges, where the challenges (last time I
| used it) are essentially "produce correct output from
| this mostly-secret input", and they don't even mind which
| _language_ you use to do this, never mind what variable
| names you use.
| oaiey wrote:
| well... strictly speaking ... how can a git repo exist when a
| single artifact is blocked. the hashes will not sum up anymore.
| Miner49er wrote:
| Since we're getting technical, couldn't you could find a hash
| collision in the repo without the artifact to make them sum
| up again?
| hannob wrote:
| No, that's not how it works. (Finding a hash collission for
| an existing hash would be a preimage attack, and that's not
| possible for SHA1 with computing power available to
| humans.)
| tmstieff wrote:
| SHA-1 collisions have been proven as an attack vector for
| a few years now.
|
| https://security.googleblog.com/2017/02/announcing-first-
| sha...
| Sebb767 wrote:
| And, as the parent correctly pointed out, that would be a
| preimage attack, which is far harder.
| IncRnd wrote:
| SHA-1 as cryptography was broken in 2005. The first
| collision created by humans was in 2017.
|
| See https://shattered.it for the practicals.
| johnsoft wrote:
| SHAttered is a collision attack. A collision attack is
| easier than a preimage attack. There are no known
| preimage attacks against SHA-1.
| IncRnd wrote:
| I never wrote shattered is a preimage attack. What I
| wrote is exactly correct. There are multiple preimage
| attacks, neither of which I referenced.
|
| A first preimage is where one searches for h(m1)=h(m2). A
| second preimage attack is where, given m1, find m2 such
| that h(m1)=h(m2).
|
| It's best not to give the incorrect impression when
| discussing something exact. As with any crypto, the
| construction is either valid or not, but it is actually
| the use of the construction that determines real world
| correctness.
|
| For example, if SHA-1 is used over input where there is
| known data in specific positions, that is quite different
| to SHA-1 over unknown data. In pratice, the first is
| often the case.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| ... Or even against MD5, IIRC, which is why you are still
| kind of able to use HMAC-MD5. You probably still
| shouldn't, but I don't know of any other symmetric
| authenticator that is as short and requires neither vast
| tables of constants nor 64-bit operations for an
| implementation. (For all the recent lightweight crypto
| work, the only cipher I can reasonably see myself
| implementing on an oldish ATMega without disgust is the
| NSA's Speck, with all the accompanying caveats, and there
| isn't a single hash of a comparable complexity at all.)
| Sebb767 wrote:
| In theory. In practice, since you roughly know the
| contents of the file, you could probably brute-force it
| pretty efficiently.
| josephcsible wrote:
| That just makes it a second preimage attack, which even
| SHA-1 is still resistant to.
| AlfeG wrote:
| Well, GitHub seems to be able to remove single
| `globalMaximum.hs` file from https://github.com/cmk/HR-
| Haskell
| aerojoe23 wrote:
| The hashes will sum to something. To do it, at least as far
| as I understand, you'd have to use https://git-
| scm.com/docs/git-filter-branch . This will create a divergent
| history and the new master branch or any other branches that
| exists will have to be forced pushed. As far as "but local
| copies of the repo will have the 'problem files' still" - Yes
| they would. All parties would have to be notified of the
| legal request.
|
| I'm not a copyright expert but it seems like enforcing this
| is another step in the erosion of fair use. Something about
| transformative works. The problem was transformed into a
| solution.
|
| On the other hand hackerrank's terms of service should have
| banned this activity. I would imagine it does. I'm not sure
| how much leverage that gets them legally though. I suppose
| once you intend to publish it you're no longer an authorized
| user, and then you're violating that
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act we
| see get applied harshly from time to time.
| [deleted]
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is a great point. The author would have to rebase and
| force push. Or at least Github could try to selectively block
| access in the web UI.
| tumetab1 wrote:
| Exactly, very weird DMCA.
|
| Repos like this were DMCA'ed
| https://github.com/saikrishnareddykatta/react-movie-director...
|
| I think the DMCA is incorrect but the copyright argument might
| be correct, as in, I imagine that the starting code was
| provided by HackerRank so they have the copyright. The solution
| is a whole different thing.
| canyon289 wrote:
| My blog is on this list. It was very surprising waking up on
| Saturday to learn my entire blog would be deleted for this, and I
| had 7 hours to fix it. Ended up using a repo cleaner to remove
| the file and i wasn't even sure it would be up today bit today
| but seems like I made it.
|
| I wrote the post 6 years ago when I was trying to break into a
| programming job. Turns out Hackerrank was worthless for that, and
| shifting my focus to OSS contributions was much more fruitful.
| Wrote a whole thread on twitter about it with more detail
|
| https://twitter.com/canyon289/status/1459524967306047494
| egfx wrote:
| My GitHub repo is on this list https://github.com/egfx/React-
| Leaderboard
|
| I was dumbfounded to receive this message yesterday. I made this
| project over 3 years ago and I didn't even know about hacker rank
| at that time. This project was made because I was seeking a
| contract job and they asked me to create a leaderboard in react
| which i did with no code copying whatsoever. I implemented it in
| react hooks which wasn't natively built into react so I used
| preact which had the newest feature set. If anything did
| hackerrank use my work to seed their tests? I see that as the
| likelihood. Also it could be because I used the text copy from
| the contracting job that asked me to create a leaderboard in the
| readme. In truth it could be either but this has become yet
| another pitch fork into a very difficult time where I have no job
| or money to do anything.
| egfx wrote:
| By the way if anyone reading knows about an opportunity for a
| frontend engineer please let me know immediately. But my only
| request is that I don't participate in coding exams.
| jkeuhlen wrote:
| My company is hiring frontend engineers (React/Typescript
| stack), but we do have a technical coding interview. What
| exactly do you mean by "coding exams"? We have a ~2 hour,
| synchronous technical challenge that all of our engineers go
| through (as well as screening questions before that point).
| No leetcode style problems, no take-home tests though.
| stillblue wrote:
| The Irony is amazing! So much stuff in hackerrank is copy/paste
| from other sites. And the site is super low quality to boot. This
| is pure wtfery.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I bet Copilot will automatically solve most published leetcode-
| style interview problems. There's tens of thousands of repos out
| there.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Hackerrank also records videos and takes random screenshots of
| you when you are taking a tests.
|
| Unfortunately recruiters don't inform about this in advance so
| that one could know about the privacy policy. When you are taking
| the test you've to give those permissions.
|
| I think those images can be seen by literally anyone at
| recruiting company (and then I guess at Hackerrank as well).
|
| edit: Context https://www.hackerrank.com/products/free-trial-
| search
| 1337shadow wrote:
| Silly, could just use another computer.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| Tape over the webcam. Problem solved.
| fsflover wrote:
| What about the microphone?
| danuker wrote:
| unplug or desolder it.
| nabakin wrote:
| Could remove the driver too
| josephcsible wrote:
| Problem not solved. You won't get credit for passing the test
| if you do that.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Hackerrank also records videos and takes random screenshots
| of you when you are taking a tests.
|
| Isn't hacker rank a website? How could it possibly do that?
| fragmede wrote:
| The JavaScript function _Media devices.getUserMedia()_ will
| do this, and also includes screen sharing possibilities. It
| will ask the user for permission first but in a test
| situation, there 's high pressure to accept those permissions
| or fail the test.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I see. Okay. So we need to patch that funtion to make them
| _think_ it 's working. I wonder if there's an extension for
| that.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Unless you could substitute a realistic facsimilie of
| yourself answering the question, you would probably
| simply be treated as if you had declined to take the
| test, or be suspected of attempting to cheat. No-one who
| uses Hackerrank is going to spend any time trying to
| figure out whether they should consider you as a viable
| candidate, they will just move on to the next.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Unless you could substitute a realistic facsimilie of
| yourself answering the question
|
| Sounds great. Maybe some harmless pre-recorded loop.
| Whatever it takes to defeat their surveillance. Also I
| bet someday someone will come up with some AI thing to
| generate that video feed...
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| Just set up a fake webcam
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Will that work with screen shots and screen sharing?
| emidln wrote:
| They are giving you javascript which executes on your
| machine in a browser you control. You can override those
| APIs do do whatever you want. In my teens, this would
| probably have served up goatse. Now it's likely to get a
| picture of a stick figure labeled with my name. They
| might get upset about defeating the webcam. They probably
| won't hire you. Whether you can afford to stand up to
| surveillance as the norm depends on your personal views
| and financial situation.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| Should be similar, but you might need to set up some
| hacks to spoof the browser in thinking it's the screen.
|
| https://testrtc.com/manipulating-getusermedia-available-
| devi...
| imajoredinecon wrote:
| No, but other client-side measures could.
| cesarb wrote:
| What if you don't have a webcam? Most desktop computers
| don't come with a webcam. If you were warned in advance,
| you could buy or borrow one, but not if it came as a
| surprise.
| throwaway890112 wrote:
| They don't allow you to take the test without the camera.
| I had to retake the test someother day for Amzn by
| borrowing laptop. If I remember right microphone should
| be turned on too.
| stonecharioteer wrote:
| How about a physical webcam blocker so all you get is a
| black screen?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Websites can ask for permission to use your camera.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I just deny it by default.
| kcarter80 wrote:
| Many websites won't function until you approve, and why
| did you ask your original question if you understood the
| denial mechanic?
| vultour wrote:
| Because if a website asks me to use my webcam I assume
| it's going to use my webcam. Why is it surprising that
| it's recording video?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Many websites won't function until you approve
|
| I suppose we need to find ways to feed them junk data.
|
| > why did you ask your original question
|
| It was the screen shot thing that surprised me. Had no
| idea that was possible.
| gsich wrote:
| OBS has a feature for that.
| kcarter80 wrote:
| Such things have been possible via the web for about a
| decade.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I know about camera access, there's a permission prompt for
| that. Didn't know about screen shots. That's honestly
| terrifying.
| endless1234 wrote:
| How is it terrifying? It's pretty nice to be able to
| share your screen in an online meeting. It has the same
| kind of permission prompt, of course.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Because it will be abused. Just like video game anti-
| cheating software used to periodically take and
| exfiltrate screenshots without the user's knowledge.
| Reading the privacy policies of those things was
| terrifying.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| That functionality alone, I don't find terrifying. It's
| what allows web-based video-conferencing with screen
| sharing. However, I'd consider this an abuse of it, you
| should not be pressured into giving consent to do that as
| part of a job application.
|
| The same goes with the terrible online testing platforms
| that have grown in use during COVID. They're terrible,
| ineffective, and an invasion in privacy.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > However, I'd consider this an abuse of it, you should
| not be pressured into giving consent to do that as part
| of a job application.
|
| Yes, I completely agree. I hate it when Javascript gains
| new features and capabilities. Everyone is so happy
| because they'll be able to create more cool stuff, nobody
| seems to consider how these capabilities will be abused.
| djbusby wrote:
| GetUserMedia API in the browser
| lanecwagner wrote:
| Don't use em.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I wonder if anyone took the time to fork the repos on another Git
| provider.
| [deleted]
| DeathArrow wrote:
| If enough people will refuse to take Hackerrank tests, there will
| be no more Hackerrank, no more DMCAs. :)
| olingern wrote:
| If anyone needed a lesson in bad PR for your company, here it is.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| I noticed there are a few websites having found a work around for
| this by posting screenshots of the problem and solutions.
| haaserd wrote:
| Lousy software platform backed up by legal action... The Silicon
| Valley story.
| auslegung wrote:
| It would be a shame if thousands of people forked the listed
| repos and gists...
| sodality2 wrote:
| They're all taken down already. Forks are automatically
| manually enumerated by the DMCA'er and removed
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Forks are automatically removed
|
| Not from my computer.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| There's one really good reason why you don't want centralized
| source code control handed off to some US corporation.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Git is decentralized. You can download a repo from anyone
| else who has it provided they expose those files to the
| internet.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Obviously. But that doesn't mean that you know where
| those other people are without some central place to
| communicate that, say a 'git hub'. There is a reason
| Github was served with these DMCA notices: it's a very
| effective choke point.
| ekianjo wrote:
| You don't need to put "US" there, government/corporation
| overreach is a thing in every country.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Most countries couldn't care less about imaginary US
| property. The US forces them to care via trade
| agreements.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Indeed, but they DO care about THEIR imaginary property,
| and because of that they usually don't need to be forced
| to enter those trade agreements as you seem to believe.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Most countries start to care very quickly after the US
| calls them and discuss matters.
|
| Any centralization is fragile. Github is more fragile
| than what is possible, but there is little point on
| improving that.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I know this is a silly hypothetical but say I forked it and
| then gutted the fork and built my own unrelated project in
| the repo. GitHub would delete my project that contains zero
| offending material?
| detaro wrote:
| yes. (afaik github forks of a repo really all point to the
| same repo internally)
| idealmedtech wrote:
| This is only true if you use the fork button. You can
| easily create a new repo, clone the old repo, and push to
| the new repo. GitHub will not show a fork relationship
| between the two.
| detaro wrote:
| true, I assumed that from the question, because otherwise
| it wouldn't be a fork in any way if the history has been
| deleted.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I think he just means to create the repo like normal and
| push your fork there as opposed to creating a fork using
| the fork button.
| idealmedtech wrote:
| Even if the history is _exactly the same_ , GitHub only
| tracks forks made through the fork button. A true git
| fork (eg anonymous clone, push to brand new repo,
| preserving all commit history) is not tracked.
| detaro wrote:
| ... yes, that's what you already said?
| idealmedtech wrote:
| Based on your comment I thought you only thought it
| applied when you deleted the history, just wanted to
| clarify.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Your hypothetical project would not contain zero offending
| material. It's all still in the .git/ folder, in various
| forms that can be recovered.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| I was under the impression that you could 'rewrite'
| history if you wanted by amending, squashing, and
| removing commits? Or does some of the artifacts still
| live on?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Until Git garbage collects, it's all still there
| (mostly). Sure there are some extraordinarily destructive
| things like `rm .git/` that you could do, but even if you
| point a new repo at remote it might not accept the merge
| (push).
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Github's "fork relationship" is not stored in .git/ in
| any way.
| dotancohen wrote:
| No, but the github server is configured as remote for
| anything checked out from Github. And I don't know how
| the remote will handle a merge (push) from a repo with
| rewritten history.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| It could not be "recovered" by git in any way.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Even with a force push that zeros history?
| justinclift wrote:
| Nope. If you remove the history too, then the content is
| gone.
|
| For good measure, you should also probably run a `git gc`
| (garbage collect) on the repo too, just to be sure. :)
| dotancohen wrote:
| I'm not really sure. Try it, then take a look at reflog
| and see what's still referenced. Check the size of the
| .git/ directory as well - is it smaller? There are some
| ways to rewrite history in git, but until git GCs I
| believe that they are mostly non-destructive.
|
| I'm sure that you could rm the .git/ and overwrite it but
| keep it pointing at the same repo. I don't know what
| would happen on the remote, though, when you push.
| smitop wrote:
| GitHub's takedown notice template says otherwise: "Have you
| searched for any forks of the allegedly infringing files or
| repositories? Each fork is a distinct repository and must be
| identified separately if you believe it is infringing and
| wish to have it taken down."
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