Secret calculator hack brings ChatGPT to the TI-84, enabling easy cheating

Yeah, nobody in class is going to suspect the kid with the arduino-type science project mess of wires duct taped to their calculator.

For those too lazy to read, that’s how this works. An external micro controller talks to the calc through the IO port, and does the Wifi stuff, acting as a middleman.

Edit: I did not see the video.

I saw the video. It closes up nicely and is invisible. It can even re-download the programs if wiped before by the teacher.

Well, that teaches me to read AND click all links in an article.

You could just have read. It’s also mentioned in the main article how it was nearly hidden.

Click all the ads too please

For those too lazy to watch the video, the whole thing is eventually concealed within the calculator.

Sounds fake but okay.

Not sure if it’s the same thing but a few days ago I saw a youtube video where person modded it with a wifi card so it could communicate with your pc which is at home. It required internet access from your phone which needs to be near though.

Saw the video. Quite cool mod.
https://youtu.be/Bicjxl4EcJg

It sounds fake because it sounds like they only used software hacks. But they also added a microcontroller board in it with wireless networking

Better than plastic explosives and shrapnel.

Utilizing the tools available to you to solve problems is not cheating, its resourcefulness, and using your brain. Which is of course frowned upon in schools that exist to churn out mindless drones for corporate enslavement.

ChatGPT is famously bad at the things you’d use a calculator for though

But you also have a calculator…

Obligatory plug for calcgpt

Id see it potentially being useful for starting a problem. Could probably point you towards the right direction for physics problem even if the numbers are off

If a kid is smart enough to figure this out and make it work for them, they’re gonna be fine…

As someone who was a kid who would do things like this to avoid putting in the work, no this kid will probably not be fine.

Back when we were doing quadratic equations; I wrote a program on my TI-84 that would ask which parts of the equation you already had, and would fill in the rest for you.

My teacher liked it so much he bought a transfer cable for those calculators so he could get a copy for himself. Then used to to grade tests.

So you didn’t get the transfer cable with your calculator? Smells fishy

Issued by the school; I never owned it.

you can code directly on the device, it’s just a PAIN to do compared to moving the files over

I did the same thing. It was allowed in general, with the correct thought, “if you can code it yourself, you know the content”

I had another “program” that would fail to run but that’s because I wrote notes into it. Doubt that was allowed.

I did that but made it return success before it got to the notes. You had to scroll to get to the notes, but it looked innocuous before that.

Here in NZ they do a factory reset on your calculator at the start of every exam.

I made one to decompose polynomials it was very good because it showed all the steps it was literally just copy what’s on the calc to the page

I could never remember the formula to calculate compound interest.

But I had no trouble writing a for loop.

What always annoyed me was having to draw charts by hand. Just let me put the data in a computer for god’s sake, the rest of the working is there… I did actually write a python function for one of my assignments which was fine, but they told me not to do it for the exam.

Yes, but the kids buying the modded devices may not be

good. they will learn not to buy their way out of a problem at least.

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Secret calculator hack brings ChatGPT to the TI-84, enabling easy cheating(arstechnica.com)

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