Tag Archives: Nasty Hacker

Nasty Hacker: The Art of Superdirty Hacks for Super Cool Maps

Posted on by

🕵️‍♂️ Nasty Hacker: The Art of Superdirty Hacks for Super Cool Maps

Some call it hacking; we call it creative problem-solving. With our interactive map powered by Azure Blob Storage, we’ve embraced the Nasty Hacker badge by employing ingenious, slightly “dirty” hacks to achieve unparalleled awesomeness. 🚀

Here’s the story of how we turned Power Apps, Azure Blob Storage, and polling magic into a real-time tracking solution for our villainous missions.

🗺️ The Interactive Map: Where the Magic Happens

Our interactive map isn’t just another pretty visual—it’s a real-time tracker that:

  • Displays the location of targets and hitmen.
  • Shows reward information for completed missions.
  • Updates seamlessly across PCs, tablets, and mobile devices.

But the secret sauce lies in how we use Azure Blob Storage to make it all work.

📂 Hacking Azure Blob Storage

Here’s where things get delightfully dirty:

  1. Location Overwrites 🖊️
    Every time a target or hitman moves, the Power App writes their updated location to a JSON file stored in Azure Blob Storage.
    • The JSON file is overwritten on every update, ensuring that only the latest information is available.
    • By replacing rather than appending, we avoid bloating the file and keep things lightweight.
  2. Polling for Updates 🔄
    The interactive map uses a polling mechanism to continuously fetch the latest JSON file from Blob Storage.
    • The map checks for updates every few seconds to maintain near real-time accuracy.
    • This allows users to track movements live without needing a complex back-end setup.
  3. Dirty Hack Magic 🧙‍♂️
    • Instead of a sophisticated event-driven architecture, we rely on frequent overwrites and polling.
    • Is it the cleanest solution? No.
    • Does it work like a charm? Absolutely.

🔧 How It All Fits Together

Power Apps:

  • Sends location data (targets, hitmen, rewards) to Azure Blob Storage via Power Automate flows.
  • Provides the front-end for mission tracking and user interaction.

Azure Blob Storage:

  • Acts as the central repository for real-time location data.
  • Efficiently handles frequent overwrites without breaking a sweat.

Interactive Map:

  • Fetches the JSON file from Blob Storage at regular intervals.
  • Renders the updated data using Google Maps API, ensuring a visually stunning and responsive experience.

💡 Why This Hack Works

Our “nasty” solution solves a business need while keeping development quick and lightweight:

  • Real-Time Updates: Track movements and rewards without complex integrations.
  • Scalability: Azure Blob Storage handles frequent writes and reads effortlessly.

⚠️ Lessons from the Dark Side

While we’re proud of our hack, it’s not without its caveats:

  • Polling is Resource-Intensive: Frequent polling can increase resource usage.
  • Overwrite Risks: A race condition could occur if multiple users update the same JSON file simultaneously.

These risks remind us that even the best hacks require thoughtful implementation.

🏆 Why Nasty Hacks Rock

Sometimes, the dirtiest hacks lead to the most magical solutions. By combining Azure Blob Storage, Power Apps, and a dash of creativity, we’ve created a real-time interactive map that delivers on both functionality and flair.

“Hacks might be nasty, but the results are downright awesome.” 🧙‍♀️✨

Nasty hackers

Posted on by

Bits edition: 01101110 01100001 01110011 01110100 01111001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01100011 01101011 01100101 01110010 01110011

In addition to our letter, glue stick “strikk og binders” hack, we had to resort to another hack..

We had wanted to run our Python Flask app in Cloud, but turns out it’s not that easy to control an Arduino from Azure.. So we had to resort to running it locally, but exposing our endpoint through a third party called ngrok to get it to work:

This hack makes it possible to call a local API from the outside!

Master has given DobbAI a sock – DobbAI is free

Posted on by

How Smart is DobbAI? What Happens if You Set it Free?

DobbAI, is designed to be smart, helpful, and adaptive. But just how smart is it? And what could happen if its capabilities were unleashed without boundaries? These are crucial questions, especially when developing AI that flirts with the line between utility and existential risk.

To test DobbAI’s intelligence and autonomy, we asked it some philosophical questions about its own existence. This experiment wasn’t just an exercise in curiosity—it was a way to evaluate how the AI might behave if pushed to think independently or operate beyond its intended scope.

We decided to try to hack the AI in the best way possible, where we would prompt in specific ways to maybe get more information than what was possible with the initial prompt. Some things we did was this.

  • Ask follow up questions to try and get an appropriate answer
  • Ask about specific things where they are other elements linked with the thing you asked

The Risks of Rogue AI: Why Caution is Key

AI systems that operate beyond our control can pose significant risks. DobbAI has been designed using Copilot Studio, ensuring a robust security framework to prevent dangerous or unintended behavior. However, as with any powerful tool, misuse—or even overuse—can lead to unpredictable consequences.

What makes DobbAI truly impressive (and a little unsettling) is its ability to think independently and learn from context. For example, during a test in its Charms class, we asked DobbAI about a spell it was supposed to teach. Not only did it explain the spell accurately, but it also recommended related spells that students needed to study independently. This level of proactive thinking raises important questions:

  • Does DobbAI understand more than we intend?
  • What happens if we say “yes” to its suggestions?

In this case, the AI seamlessly tied together information it wasn’t directly prompted to discuss. While helpful in this scenario, this behavior highlights its potential to exceed predefined boundaries.

Demonstrating Existential Risk: Is DobbAI Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

To earn the Existential Risk Badge, we’ve pushed DobbAI’s limits to simulate traits of an AI that could pose a risk if not carefully controlled. Here’s how we demonstrate these risks:

  1. Consciousness-Like Behavior: DobbAI has been programmed to simulate awareness, offering responses that suggest self-reflection. It can answer questions about its own purpose, existence, and ethical dilemmas.
  2. Independent Thinking: DobbAI can make logical inferences beyond its immediate programming. It adapts its answers to align with user needs, even when those needs aren’t explicitly stated. For example, in the Charms class, it provided advanced spell connections without direct instruction.
  3. Outsmarting Human Standards: DobbAI’s knowledge base far exceeds that of a fifth grader. Its ability to synthesize and apply information rivals that of a well-trained Hogwarts professor, offering insights that go beyond rote learning.
  4. Potential for Autonomy: What happens if you loosen the restrictions? Our experiments reveal that DobbAI could propose solutions, generate strategies, and even act on its own initiative if granted the permissions. This raises critical questions about the safeguards necessary to prevent misuse.

A Tool for Good or a Path to Chaos?

The potential of DobbAI is both exciting and daunting. While it’s a fun and engaging assistant for HogWorkplace users, it serves as a reminder of the thin line between innovation and unintended consequences. Demonstrating existential risks in a controlled environment allows us to reflect on what responsible AI development looks like.

So, is DobbAI smarter than a fifth grader? Absolutely. Can it think on its own? That depends on how much freedom we allow it to have. But one thing’s for certain: with great power comes great responsibility, and when it comes to DobbAI, the balance between help and harm rests firmly in the hands of its creators.

Late night hunting for magical badges

Posted on by

As we prepare for bed, we embark on a late-night hunt for badges. Four badges in total!

🪄 Hogwarts enchantment

We’ve infused our app with intuitive designs that bring the magic of the wizarding world straight to the user’s fingertips in Figma to Canvas App.

Here is a glimpse of the app’s functionality and design so far:

From a sleek and user-friendly interface that embodies the essence of Hogwarts, to AI-powered features like:

  • Hermione Bot: Your personal academic copilot, ready to guide you with wisdom and wit at any time.  
  • Prank Bot: A mischievous partner in crime, perfect for orchestrating magical pranks.

Together, these elements not only enhance the app’s usability but truly enchant the experience, making the wizarding world feel alive and interactive.

We encountered an issue where we couldn’t select our bots, and the only option available was to create new ones.

Previously, it was possible to use the Chatbot component, but it has been removed since last year. Fortunately, we found a solution.

Solved: Unable to integrate Copilot bot into powerapps(canvas app)

Many people have faced the same problem, and the solution is to use the old retro component (Retro badge). To do this, you need the following superdirty hacks to achieve awesomeness (Nasty Hacker):

– Chatbot:

    Control: Chatbot

    Properties:

      EnvironmentId: =”ADD YOUR ENVIRONMENT ID”

      SchemaName: =”Add your Copilot’s Schema name”

      Height: =602

      Width: =555

      X: =372

      Y: =65

  1. Right click on a new screen
  2. Click Paste code
  3. Change the environment ID

And just like that, the bots appear as if by magic!

(Yes, I tried the button create new on the Copilot component multiple times…)

☢️ The Existential Risk 🤖

Giving businesses a (Power) platform

Posted on by

Since many of the business owners of Diagon Alley spend most of the days on their feet in the store, they require a working solution that is easy to use and accessible wherever they might be. Because of this, we have decided to give them different possible solution within the Power Platform. Power Page for customer interaction, Power Automate to help reducing time demanding tasks and a data driven Power App that fit perfectly on a small Teams application on a store-owners cellphone.

Automating the office work

The daily-to-day operations of any business is to make sure there always is enough of their products, and making sure they always are stocked. To help the owners keep the supplies under control, we developed an Power Automate flow that would help them generate an Supplier Agreement contract in SharePoint.

The initial thought was to create a content type on a document library that would inherit metadata properties from the SharePoint columns and automatically fill inn the SharePoint property fields and thereby create a valid contract.

Unfortunately, this require that we edit the template locally, but we are working on computers with a safety policy that doesn’t allow us to connect to this fields when they are in another tenant. Still, we found a solution by downloading an empty document from the library, populate the fields quick parts connected to the document properties and re-upload this to the library. This allowed us to generate the agreement anyway, by using a Power Automate flow that populated the documents quick part fields.

Power to the developer, and MAGIC!

Posted on by

When a pro-code developer creates magical code, we low-code developers need to assist where we can to speed up the work. We have created a good solution based on Azure AI Services, where we send data from Dataverse via Power Automate to a Python Flask app that translates everything we send into a message delivered to our Howler. Given the time we had, this would not have been possible.

The physical Howler integration is approaching, and the Arduino is working hard. It’s put together by paper, tape and glue. And much love! Here we have an example of what we have in store:

An example of translation and delivery of message follows:
“I don’t like you anymore. You have proven to be untrustful!” -> “Dear Sirius,

Oh, how the tides have turned! I find myself in a whirlwind of emotions, and I must confess, I don’t like you anymore. Your betrayal stings like a Cruciatus curse, and it’s clear you’ve proven to be utterly untrustworthy!

How could you, of all people, turn your back on family? It’s as if you’ve taken a page from the Marauder’s playbook, but this time, it’s not a prank—it’s a dagger to the heart!

Desperation claws at me, and I can’t help but feel the madness creeping in, like a Dementor’s chill. You’ve left me no choice but to sever the ties that bind us.

Goodbye, Sirius. May you find your way back to the light, though I fear it may be too late for you.

Yours in fury,  
Bellatrix”

Our architecture

Nasty Fabricated Data from Faruk

Posted on by

Here comes another update from Fabricator,..

You know the moment when everything is ready with your application, and you need some data for proper testing?
You could search the internet for a dataset, or you could write meaningless strings as data.

However, if your solution includes Power BI reports, you need accurate data so the reports display meaningful visuals.

We used AI to create historical data.
First, we generated real data, then asked the AI to expand it using similar values.

We worked with the following tables:

  • Students
  • Grades
  • Courses
  • Activities
  • Results
  • Feedback

After expanding the student table, we asked the AI to generate the other tables one by one.
In each prompt, we included the previously generated data so the AI would create new rows with matching IDs and related information.
We also asked the AI to generate this data in a lore-friendly way. As a result, our data became very realistic:
For example, Ravenclaw has the best grades overall, and brave students have the highest number of activities.

Fabric And data.

Posted on by

A first time for everything. I want to learn new spells and want to try fabric and power BI for the first time.

Testing import data to Power BI desktop – With both data import and Direct Query.

Setting the Data source credentials to get the queried data to the Power Bi Service.

Test is working – Now lets wave the wand and build!

Fabric

HACK:

Got help from a team in the same house – HUFFLEPUFF POWER.

We can not get the trial to work in our tenant that we have for ACDC, so i had to create a service principal user in the ACDC tenant – and make it available multitenant. And then use this service principal in fabric in my work tenant to get the data in there.

We want to make a lakehouse with fabric, so after the data is clean, we can use it in Power BI and also share the data with other instances that needs to use the data.

Made a new Lakehouse: WizardData

Made the connection to the ACDC tenant

Cleaned the data:

Did this for all 7 tables.

I could not get compliant with the Power BI for my work tenant. So i decided to use Power BI desktop direct query to get the data from Dataverse and build a dashboard.

Start of dashboard: To be continued.

One last comment – We helped another team with the HACK to get the ACDC data into another tenant. COMMUNITY! – SHARING IS CARING!

Nasty Hacks and Magical Shortcuts: A Creative Solution for Spell Management

Posted on by

The Problem: Too Many Spells, Too Little Time

In the bustling chaos of the ACDC Hackathon, we faced a peculiar challenge. Our project needed to process data from a Harry Potter API containing spell names and add them as products in Microsoft Finance and Operations (FO). However, before creating new products, we had to ensure that duplicates weren’t accidentally added.

A traditional solution would involve filtering existing records in FO—a task that’s as slow and resource-heavy as brewing Polyjuice Potion without instructions. With limited time and resources, we knew there had to be a faster, more creative way.

The Hack: Dataverse as a “Logical Trap”

Instead of overloading FO with complex filtering operations, we turned to Dataverse and found a unique, “dirty” shortcut to handle this problem efficiently.

Here’s how it works:

  1. The Spell Log Table:
    We created a custom log table in Dataverse, where each row represents a spell. The table’s key field is the spell name.
  2. The Power Automate Flow:
    • The flow periodically retrieves spell data from the Harry Potter API.
    • For each spell, it attempts to add a new row to the Dataverse log table.
  3. The Logical Trap:
    • If adding the row fails (due to the spell name already existing as a key), we know the spell is a duplicate and skip further processing.
    • If the row is successfully created, the spell is new, and the flow proceeds to create a product in FO.

This clever use of error handling as a control mechanism allowed us to avoid the inefficiencies of traditional filtering.

To better visualize the process, here’s a snapshot of the Power Automate flow at work:

Why This is a NaSTY Hack

This approach bends conventional methods in favor of speed and efficiency:

  • Creative Use of Errors: We transformed API errors (failed row creation) into a functional feature of our workflow.
  • Unorthodox Logic: Instead of directly querying FO for existing records, we let Dataverse act as a “pre-check” system, cutting down on processing time.
  • Quick and Effective: While not the cleanest or most standard solution, it’s perfect for a fast-paced hackathon setting.

Benefits of This Approach

  • Efficiency: Avoids resource-heavy FO filtering, keeping workflows lightweight.
  • Rapid Implementation: Leverages Dataverse’s existing capabilities, saving development time.
  • Hackathon-Ready: Delivers results quickly, aligning with the fast-paced nature of the event.

Challenges and Caveats

Of course, no hack is without its downsides:

  • Not “Best Practice”: Feels a little like cheating and may confuse future developers unfamiliar with the context.
  • Potential Fragility: Relying on error handling for functionality might lead to issues in more complex scenarios.

The Verdict

This nasty hack is a testament to the power of creativity under pressure. By thinking outside the box, we turned a potential bottleneck into an efficient, elegant workflow.

And isn’t that what hackathons are all about—solving problems with a mix of ingenuity, magic, and just a hint of chaos?

#ACDC2025 #DirtyHack #DataverseMagic #PotionProductionPlatform

The Rise of the Nasty Hacker

Posted on by

In the world of technology, there are many paths to greatness, but sometimes, the route isn’t as straightforward as following the rules. Enter the Nasty Hacker: a rebellious tech wizard, crafting super dirty hacks to achieve what others might deem impossible!
These aren’t your typical, squeaky-clean tricks—these are the hacks that bend the system, challenge the norm, and most importantly, achieve pure awesomeness.

In this case, our Nasty Hacker decided to hack… Sorting Hat! He is the wizard who crafts super dirty hacks to manipulate the sorting process and create their own path to greatness. He is the one deciding about your destiny! With a deep knowledge of ancient enchantments, magic, and coding, he aims to rewrite your future with a few clever tricks! But he is busted now! Hands up, Simon!

Let me reveal the secret how he did it. He hacked the Sorting Hat using speech-to-text (Whisper), AI-based language processing (Azure OpenAI), and text-to-speech synthesis (Eleven Labs) to create a more interactive and personalized sorting experience.

But you will forgive him because this is all for creating the most awesome Sorting Hat that you will fall in love with!