
At work? Try this Hacker News homepage inspired by Node [SFW] - ericz
http://nowjs.com/codehn
======
NathanKP
I would imagine that a fairly large percentage of the Hacker News community
probably works for themselves or as freelance contractors. The main problem is
not that of hiding your browsing from an employer, but having the self control
to work rather than browsing.

~~~
otherwise
With 100 upvotes in the first hour, I would imagine a fairly large percentage
of the Hacker News community thinks this is useful. Or (more likely) funny.

~~~
scythe
It's not just amusing -- it's a clever, unique and interesting solution to a
common problem, however pyrrhic[1] the victory might be.

[1] -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory>

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aidenn0
If I worked at a place where I felt that reading HN would get me fired, there
would be lots of other problems.

~~~
techtalsky
It's not really about reading HN getting you fired, it's just about perception
management. People walk behind my desk. I'm salaried and so free to manage my
time, but some people like the CTO are kind of peep-ey. I'd rather minimize
the number of times someone who might care walks by and I'm doing something
non-worky.

Once a bad perception happens, it's hard to counteract it, so it's better to
just work a little to manage it. If I have something I can use to kill time
while I'm blocked on something, while not worrying about how it looks, I kind
of appreciate it.

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jdp23
This is great. But why isn't it async?

~~~
NinetyNine
The only way I can see to do it is constantly scraping HN's pages(unless
there's an API?). On another note, having source code on your screen randomly
shift and change large blocks of itself might be suspicious, defeating the
purpose of this.

~~~
scythe
He was joking about the comment "//why isn't this async?" which appears in
every entry.

~~~
NinetyNine
Oh, I seem to have missed that.

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idlewords
At work? Try working!

~~~
siedrix
Or try getting a new work...

~~~
va1en0k
or (better) a new job

(I hope I understand the difference between these words)

~~~
danudey
'Work' is sometimes used to mean 'office' or 'job'. For example, someone might
say 'Why don't you drop by my work after lunch?'

I think that's the usage the parent meant; possibly, it was an intentionally
awkward but colloquially valid variation on the grandparent's post.

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trotsky
_At work?_

Yup, and that means I have a pretty restrictive firewall.

Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to ec2-50-18-7-165.us-
west-1.compute.amazonaws.com: _8081_ <\----

~~~
eru
Get yourself a proxy.

~~~
jmatt
One way to proxy is through ssh. Create an ssh tunnel to a trusted machine and
setup your browser to use localhost:<ssh tunnel port>:

[http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/weblogs/azul/firefox-ssh-
tunne...](http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/weblogs/azul/firefox-ssh-tunnel)

This is a decent example. I've seen others that have more options and
presumably more functionality.

A few notes from past experiences. Your IT department will completely freak
out. Hopefully they'll also be impressed. HR will freak out worse because they
won't understand. A good IT employee will come see what the heck is up with
your ssh throughput to a weird vps or home box - befriend this person if you
haven't already. Average code-monkeys will be impressed, especially if you
don't do web development. Finally, it's almost certainly a violation of that
20 page agreement you signed on the first day of work.

~~~
michael_michael
This is what I do to get around blocks on some IM services. I work for a
large, well-known and presumably IT-savvy organization. Nobody has confronted
me about it yet, which in itself is actually kind of worrying. I half expected
an IT SWAT team to rappel through the window after starting the tunnel.

------
Osiris
I laughed out loud when I clicked on that link. (Un)fortunately for me, I work
from home so I don't have anyone checking over my shoulder.

------
shawnee_
Good idea. Better idea - YC news from the console:

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/follow-hacker-news-from-the-
con...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/follow-hacker-news-from-the-console)

And, for old timers, there's always lynx.

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autoreverse
My version in HTML/JS (click the license to toggle HN)

<http://autoreverse.s3.amazonaws.com/mit_yc_plain_text.html>

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ChuckMcM
I really enjoyed this, its an excellent UX pun. If you could use enough
javascript to make it look like an emacs buffer some pointy haired types would
be hard pressed to discern between this and actual work.

That being said, if you are truly into employee surveillance (and I know of at
least one company that is) then what the screen shows is irrelevant since the
http{s} traffic between your work station and the world is just as clear
without having to 'walk around and look into your cube.'

Total kudos to the skinning though, I really enjoyed it.

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ericz
Here's the Github: <https://github.com/ericz/CodeHN>

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rajasharan
There was a similar one for Reddit in C# style. Nice.

~~~
uxp
That was <http://codereddit.com/>

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kin
Funny, but my boss is also a hacker and now recognizes this =(

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michuk
Nice! But it doesn't beat the Jabber client embedded as an Excel macro I used
while working for a bank.

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mirkules
This reminds me of the "boss key" in video games
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key>)

Nicely done!

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sawyer
I wonder if someone could learn Node simply by browsing HN in this format for
a few weeks.

~~~
lhnz
This is exactly the same way I think, too. I mean, you don't learn everything
when not putting effort in but familiarising yourself with a new technology is
half the battle.

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yread
Ordinary folk (non-programmer's) already have this <http://myprogressbar.com/>

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brianr
To read in vim:

    
    
      curl http://ec2-50-18-7-165.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com:8081/ | vim -

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famousactress
Oh, sad. (That people need this). Clever, though.

~~~
thenduks
Thought the same thing. At work I'm _encouraged_ to be active online in places
like HN and to read relevant articles and so on.

~~~
sova
That's awesome. Does it make you a better coder?

~~~
thenduks
Absolutely. I'm not sure how following the industry and contributing to open
source projects could _not_ make you better programmer.

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aeter
It's awesome. It would be great to be able to read the HN comments like that
too.

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frazerb
I spend most of my day talking with customers and reviewing contracts etc.. As
much as I would love to, I think if my boss caught me looking at code like
this he would fire me !

~~~
athom
So we need to come up with one that looks like a contract, maybe?

If I weren't trying to get away and do WBC differentials...

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dbuizert
Why would you get fired over browsing websites that fall within the set
guidelines by your employer? If a website like HN doesn't fit in there, you
got screwed over and time to find a new job.

An employee should have the freedom to browse the web with limited
restrictions. If that is not the case then it is a violation of the employees
creativity and could hurt the employer in the long run since his/her employees
are bound to limited creativity on the job sight.

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dudurocha
OMG, this is amazing. Very funny! And you can actually say " there must be a
bug here, i just cant find", and read everthing.

~~~
DTrejo
"This code is really bad, I need to refactor it because there's so much
repetition."

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abraham
The require('http') has an extra ; after it.

~~~
ericz
Fixed =]

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atlantic
Someone came up with a very similar solution for Reddit a short while ago:
<http://codereddit.com>. Not to say that this is plagiarism; great minds often
think alike.

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yuhong
Yea, managing by treating people as dumb automatons is fundementally flawed.

~~~
marcomonteiro
Especially the "thinking" type of people they desperately try to hire.

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thomasfl
Finally something useful hacker news. I have been reading way to much hacker
news lately, and my colleagues have started to take notice.

Next month I hope someone could make a html source code theme for hacker news.

~~~
BrandonM
Right-click -> View Page Source in Firefox

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sgentle
Cool site. :)

You've got a bug on Ask HN posts, though, where you get a relative URL from HN
(/comments/blah) which ends up relative to your site rather than news.yc.

------
MatthewRayfield
Reminds me of the Ghostzilla project:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostzilla>

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koko775
Ha! I see what you did there, eric.

<http://i.imgur.com/WAwRx.jpg>

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redredraider
This is awesome. Someone port it to my circa 1994 cobol compiler and I'll be
set.

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Jasonp
This is hilarious. Not sure about useful, but hilarious - yes.

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dacort
I really wanted to be able to upvote from that interface.

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snissn
I'd be concerned about getting fired for using node.js..

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joezydeco
How about one that looks like a spreadsheet?

~~~
invisiblefunnel
TBS did something like that with a 'panic button'
<http://hiplipblog.com/2010/11/09/hit-the-tbs-panic-button/>

~~~
jaffoneh
Well, they have ads (<http://i.imgur.com/JD69B.png>) so I don't know if that
"panic button" actually works ...

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growingconcern
Now I just need a reddit version!

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mattdeboard
Bravo, this is extremely clever.

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mcorrientes
node.js looks really sexy, can't wait to become stable enough for a productive
system.

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kirpekar
Very cool. Helpful too. Thanks!

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boneheadmed
Freakin' funny. Love it!

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dnot
this is great! is there a 'next' button? Did I just not see it?

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Smirnoff
honestly we need a mobile app for hn. somebody?

~~~
otherwise
<http://ihackernews.com>

~~~
Smirnoff
Thanks a lot. Do you know the IRC channel for hn by any chance? I saw somebody
mentioning it but never got to write it down.

~~~
ilconsigliere
Used to be some discussion in #startups @ irc.freenode.net, not sure if it's
still active

~~~
daeken
More active than it ever has been before. Currently 335 people in the channel,
and there's been effectively constant conversation for months (a year?) now.

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johng
Very cool :)

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martinkallstrom
Dude, nice!

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kranner
Alt-B!

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huge_ness
now working for me!

for some reason it's pushing to <http://ec2-50-18-7-165.us-
west-1.compute.amazonaws.com:8081/> and not nowjs.com

