Hacking Real Life

Hacking international computer systems from the comfort of your bedroom is all well and good, but occasionally you need to leave the house, get on the train, go the airport, and fly half way across the country with a couple of unwanted hours at Chicago. And when you do, you need some hacking fun to keep you occupied. So here it is.

Suppose, like me, you want to go from New Brunswick to Newark Airport via the train. For some reason, you are not allowed to buy a return ticket. Instead, it seems that your only option is to buy two one way tickets. According to the bottom of this page, the price for this is

2 * $10.80 = $21.60.

That's a bit steep, you think, isn't there some cheaper way of doing this trip? Turns out there is. There's a secret trick: it's possible to buy a one-way ticket from one side of the automatic ticket barriers to the other in Newark Airport. You have to go to the ticket machines, and type in destination "099". If it helps, you may think of this as the secret cheat mode option. I found out about this last time I was at the airport, when my ticket wasn't working. The approximately 5 second trip from one side of the barriers costs $5 each way, but you can still save some money this way: buy a round trip ticket from New Brunswick to Newark (the next stop after Newark airport). Now you can buy an off-peak round trip ticket for $8.75.

So the total cost of the journey is $8.75 + 5 + 5 = $18.75.

A total saving of $21.60 - $18.75 = $2.85, or 13%. Cool, huh?