Playstation 4 - The Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review

<comment><USER3> Quite aside from the content - I thought the review itself was a very nice piece of design (The animations that I thought would annoy me ended up being a nice touch).

One thing I take issue with is the completely arbitrary nature of the rating at the end. Why bother giving the platform a rating at all at this stage - <USER2> exists in a vacuum. Only time will tell how Sony's latest offering, along with its attempts at a platform, will stack up against Steam and Microsoft. Besides that - there seemed no clear criteria for the points system whatsoever.

It is at times like these that I am reminded of the "IGN: Fair. 10/10" meme.

<comment><USER4> They cover that at the end of the review. It's basically the score of the system as it is today. It's a fair way to judge something that people will consider purchasing and wanting to have fun with right away. I wouldn't want to buy a console only to hope I have fun with it in 2 years (buy it in 2 years instead). [1]

"But the PlayStation 4's focus on gaming — and only gaming — is undermined by a distinct lack of compelling software. That failing is sure to improve — better games and more of them will appear on the PlayStation 4 — but right now, this is a game console without a game to recommend it. Early adopters of the PS4 this fall are buying potential energy. We're just waiting for a place to spend it."

[1] [http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review/conclusion](http://www.polygon.com/a/ps4-review/conclusion)

<comment><USER3> I understand the concept of scoring the system as it is today. On the other hand I disagree emphatically with the premise for doing so.

A "general impressions" wrap-up paragraph would be fine. A rating system with a very low granularity (Thumbs up/even/down for example) would even be acceptable.

A score of 7.5 implies, at the very least, a granularity of 20. This is only useful in a case where you have either 20 binary criteria, or ~5 criteria with some kind of sub-scoring system. Where, or what, are these criteria? Are they implicitly, yet obviously, defined through the content or structure of the article? No.

I'm not defending the PS4 - I am ranting at the profligacy of meaningless scoring systems throughout the entire video games industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't read the whole review because I'm not planning on purchasing a next- gen console but I was quite impressed by the page design. Usually, animated UI tweaks are frowned upon because they hinder the readability and hurt the usability. But here the execution is well balanced and actually supports the content. Plus, the animated wireframes are simply beautiful.

<comment><USER6> yeah, I kept scrolling without reading the texts(not a big console gamer) but just to see the animated wireframe going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A pretty poor review without specs. What version of bluetooth is supported? Does it include a blu-ray drive? (I know its Sony and probably does, but if they are competing on price, it would make sense to drop it and go with online downloads instead). They show it accepting discs, so I am assuming it does indeed have a blu-ray drive, however is it a mini? does it support BDXL or IH- BD? Will Linux be installable? These omissions from the review makes is seem haphazard at best.

</comment><comment><USER8> This has been the overall impressions of the system on all the review sites: Good hardware but no software. It is a beefed up PS3, no next-gen leap worthy step, and the games are not there. Seems like an iPad3 to iPad 4 type transition, not like iPad 2 to iPad Air type.

One of the PS3's selling point was Bluray drive, which is not a selling point anymore. It is an affordable system, and I want to see it improve its UI, XMB is hideously ugly. Let's wait for Naughty Dog magic on games side. Sony has high quality first party studios.

That webpage is beautiful. Minor nuisance was the jarring transition while scrolling onto next section it kept me taking to top of the page, but it's still fine. Well done by the designer.

<comment><USER9> > It is a beefed up PS3, no next-gen leap worthy step, and the games are not > there.

I feel you could almost substitute "PS3" for "PS2" and target it at original PS3 at launch as well.

I'm guessing that Sony simply wants to get the hardware out of the door, and do software features as they go. Considering how much updates the PS3 has seen over the years, I believe this holds for the PS4 as well, but as they say in this review, for now, it's a tad underwhelming.

<comment><USER8> The launch games are getting 5/10 (Killzone) and 1.5/10 (Knack) it feels totally underwhelming. Compare with Xbox. One is a distinct leap over 360, bluray drive and massively improved Kinect. Although, I am worried for games on Xbox One too.</comment></comment></comment>


When The Dragons Emerge - <AUTHOR> http://jordancooper.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/when-the-dragons-emerge/

<comment><USER2> Excellent analogy and insights - the bit about having to "deflect their various attacks and attempts to kill you dead" as being part of the test is spot on. Very much enjoyed the post!</comment>


O'Reilly Loves the New Federal CTO - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/03/mancrush-federal-cto-todd-park.html I'm excited to see what he can bring to our country as well. <comment><USER2> This goes along well with Tim's new fondness for Darpa.

[http://storify.com/demilit/make-darpa-and-children-a- match-m...](http://storify.com/demilit/make-darpa-and-children-a-match-made- in-hackerspac)</comment>


Goodbye Dropbox (and some alternatives) - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2013/09/goodbye-dropbox/

<comment><USER2> BitTorrent Sync "doesn't have a central server": can be solved by setting up a central server, e.g. on a vm somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER3> Simple solution: encrypt your data yourself, locally, before placing the result into your dropbox folder. In fact, you should have been doing this all along, irrespective of the NSA revelations.

If you want a fairly automatic way to do so, look into encfs: [http://www.arg0.net/encfs](http://www.arg0.net/encfs)</comment>


Major next steps for fusion energy based on the spherical tokamak design - <AUTHOR> http://www.pppl.gov/news/2016/08/major-next-steps-fusion-energy-based-spherical-tokamak-design <comment><USER2> Anybody ever wonder if we put 1/3 of the defense budget into Fusion energy research (literally a new Manhattan project, lets call it the Princeton Project) that we could have more impact than that entire defense budget? Think about it. Most of the worlds conflict arises over struggle for resources, and most of those resources are oil. If the world didn't lust for oil as a cheap energy source, could we defund dictatorships around the world? Could we start focusing on cultural and structural issues vs. the struggle for fossil fuels? Seems to make far more sense to spend a few hundred billion USD on fusion research vs. 1.59 million USD per cruise missile to fix/quell conflict that arrises from that struggle. Just a thought, but it seems fixing the cause rather than treating the symptoms is a far better approach in the long term.

<comment><USER3> Not to get too political, but I think that the US tends to have the policies it does to prevent the all out collapse of the Middle East. If you think it's a shit storm now, just wait until they have nothing.

Few of those states invested in their people and their infrastructure. Instead they created an almost UBI for their population. It's enough to keep them relatively passive. Cheap gas and just enough to get by. All the while they've created a sense of entitlement in their population. Look at how they treat immigrant labor.

Sadly this population didn't take their minimal freedom to pursue the arts or sciences. While there are instances of individuals improving their life, developing skills and preparing for a post-oil world, the bulk of their society just floats. Moving off oil will pull the plug on their basin. Their societies will probably go down the drain.

Watch out for Europe when that happens. These groups will migrate north and west. I don't think you'll see an exodus into Asia. Given their poor skills, Europe will have a hard time incorporating them into general society. In the end they will probably ghetto-ize. Now Europe will be a melting pot of terrorism. Disaffected young males, the primary target of extremist groups, will be sitting, by the millions, in slums in and around major European cities.

TL;DR: Oil, for all of its faults, stabilizes the world. The US military budget keeps that around.

<comment><USER4> A while back I read that states which get their funding from natural resources instead of taxes very seldom turn into liberal democracies. I think it was in Zakaria's _Future of Freedom_ : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_Freedom)

So maybe oil hasn't been a net benefit for these countries. In any case, if we stop needing their oil, their capacity for causing trouble will be drastically diminished.

<comment><USER5> > if we stop needing their oil, their capacity for causing trouble will be > drastically diminished

I think in a few decades their new need for self reliance could pay dividends. They could be living much better in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This may be cynical but every time I read the Princeton Lab's press I am reminded of how different fusion _science_ is from fusion _engineering._ In the former the words are like "explore ways of doing _x_ ..." or "Compare different forms of _y_ ...". In the engineer press it is more like, "Once we achieve _x_ which we expect to achieve by _p_ , _q_ , or worst case _r_ , we will move on to _y_ leaving us one step away from fully operational fusion plants."

As an engineer I much prefer the latter, something with a bit of urgency that "we need to develop this as quickly as possible because it unlocks a lot of solutions to problems which are threatening billions of people." Not "Ohh look at all the shiny ways we can turn three two small atoms into one slightly bigger atom!"

<comment><USER4> Recently I watched a presentation[1] by the director of MIT's fusion program, talking about their ARC design. They want to minimize physics risk by using a standard tokamak, but take advantage of new commercially-available superconductors to make a net-positive 200MW reactor that's ten times smaller than ITER.

He mostly talks about practical engineering issues: modular reactor construction, easy maintenance, testing current flow through joints in superconducting tapes, 3D printing a reactor chamber with complex cooling channels, immersion in FLiBe for ample cooling and breeding 14% more tritium than the reactor consumes, etc.

The reactor would be about the size of JET, which was built in four years. MIT has pretty good experience for this, since their Alcator C-Mod has more powerful magnetic fields than any other tokamak in the world.

Of course the startup companies pursuing fusion are also taking an engineering approach. Here's an interesting panel discussion[2] between the MIT guy and people from Tri Alpha, General Fusion, and Lockheed.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWjAJKPLMEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWjAJKPLMEo)

<comment><USER7> Is it just me or does MIT seem to tend towards the more practical end of things when it comes to R&D?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Purely for the esoteric linguistic amusement: tokamak is a Russian acronym where the "toka-" comes from тороидальная камера or toroidal chamber/cabin. So a spherical tokamak would be a 'spherical toroid', and a bit oxymoronic. By the bye, is there a likely set of pro/cons as compared to the stellarator configuration? ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendelstein_7-X)) It's at least interesting that "stellarator" appears in the posting's address: GPS: 100 Stellarator Road.

<comment><USER4> It's still a toroid, regardless of the shape getting revolved: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toroid)

People generally say stellarators are harder to build but easier to operate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are (like me) an armchair follower of energy news like this, these guys give a good overview of the challenges of fusion research: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8460493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8460493)

As much as I want any of these "experiments" to succeed- and don't want to denigrate the hard work of people focused on these projects- this is one of those areas you have to really read between the lines on. It turns out it's really hard to create a mini sun in such a way that you can reliably and cost- effectively generate electricity from it.

<comment><USER4> Nothing against .Net developers, I'm one myself. But to see what some actual fusion scientists think about fusion, see the videos I posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381137)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The funny thing is science fiction like Star Trek capitalised on issues like plasma confinement (in a way that can fail) well before anyone could have anticipated it would be an issue.

It will be interesting to observe how science converges with science fiction

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting to see the trend continue towards spherical tokamaks.

<comment><USER12> Like _actual_ AI (not the expert systems everyone is misleadingly labeling as 'AI' for marketing reasons), fusion power has been 20 years away for the last 60 years.

<comment><USER13> This graph might have something to do with it:

[http://m.imgur.com/sjH5r?r](http://m.imgur.com/sjH5r?r)

<comment><USER14> The graph is both accurate and misleading. Funding is often cumulative to an extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just a PSA: there is _zero_ chance that nuclear fusion makes a meaningful impact in stopping climate change in the next 30 years.

Before it becomes a significant part of our energy mix, fusion needs to be cheap, safe, and reliable. It is nowhere close to any of these things right now, and it will take a lot of time and money to get there - especially the "cheap" part. It's simply not going to happen before the year ~2050.

The technologies that have a chance to stop climate change are solar, wind, and energy storage.

<comment><USER16> The combination of reduced spending on fusion researcher and increased demands of ITER, has resulted in a slowing of progress funneling funds aways from other designs and projects. So if we stay on the same underfunded trajectory, I agree. However, 34 years is a long time. Between now and 2050, if we had a Manhattan Project-style push, that number could be brought down to 2040 or maybe earlier depending on how soon we shifted.</comment></comment>


Xkcd: I Could Care Less - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/1576/ <comment><USER2> Started to read this, but lost interest halfway through... which I found kinda ironic.</comment>


Coder Tees – Coderware for the discerning programmer - <AUTHOR> http://coderte.es <comment><AUTHOR> This was just for kicks. But defo would be fun to extend this to add some cool commandline web grepping and filtering piping and scheduling.. Powershell for the web!</comment>


Who's Behind the 'Web Listings' Mail Scam? - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/03/whos-behind-the-web-listings-mail-scam/ <comment><USER2> It irritates me when people say this isn't a scam because the invoice discloses (in fine print) that it is a solicitation not a bill.

The fact is, most scams operate this way. There are generally subtle signs that it's a scam if you look hard enough AND know what to look for, but they are effective because they are misleading and rely on some realities of human nature, such as the fact that many people trust that when they receive something that looks like a bill, it's actually a bill, and they will often pay it without looking it over with a fine-toothed comb.

Claiming that it's not a scam, even though it's clearly deceptive, just because an astute person might be able to identify it as a scam by reading the fine print, is unfair to those who are taken in. It's like trying to pass off counterfeit bills and then claiming you weren't engaging in fraud because the money had "Not legal tender" written in small print and the store clerk would have realized that if they'd only inspected every individual bill closely enough.

This scam is also not a "stupid tax." Its victims do not deserve to be defrauded simply because they failed to exercise the same caution that a more savvy person might have. It is an immoral, legally gray activity that hurts others and tends to prey on vulnerable people, like the elderly and those for whom English is not a first language.

<comment><USER3> But the example's disclosure in the link was not hidden in fine print at all. It is in boldface and uses the largest font on the paper: THIS IS NOT A BILL. THIS IS A SOLICITATION. There are scams out there but this one seems more like a dark pattern. You don't have to be that astute to identify it--you just have to be able to read and not go on autopilot.

Victims don't deserve to get scammed, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't exercise caution.

<comment><USER4> "Dark pattern" is just a nice way of saying "how can we trick people while staying just barely on the right side of the law."

Why is tricking people _legally_ ok?

<comment><USER5> Often tricking people is not legally ok, also even tricking people that is not deemed criminal may not be allowed by a civil court, if you cared to take it to court of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was shocked that our public schools do business with a company that does something similar, which is also illegal:

Kids draw a picture in art class, and come home a week later with a magnet that has been printed with their drawing. They also have an invoice saying you can order these other things (mugs, shirts, etc), and we've included a sample magnet so you can see what the printing looks like.

But the magnet isn't free — if you want to keep it, you're supposed to pay 6 bucks, or you can return it to the basket where the order slips go.

Now of course no kid wants their artwork to be sent back and destroyed, so they want you to keep it. And since that forces you to fill out the order form, perhaps you'll order something else while you're at it.

Of course, the prices are terrible compared to vistaprint/costco/etc. And since you have the original art (that your kid made), if you want to have a shirt printed up, you can do so for half the price elsewhere.

This practice is totally illegal (where I am, in California). You can't send someone a thing and then charge them if they don't send it back. I was surprised and disappointed that our public school would partner with a company that literally breaks the law, to the detriment of students and their families.

<comment><USER7> Same thing happened to me, but it was photos. I just kept the photos, threw away the order form.

If they give random things to kids then the parent is not on the hook to make sure those things are returned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This kind of salesmanship sliding into fraud is getting more common in the US.

ADT (the big home security company) had someone come to my house that I recently bought. He insisted he was not a salesman. He pretended that the house had previously been using their services (but didn't out right say it). He asked if the escrow office informed me, and said that their system was 'already set up'.

Of course, it wasn't. It was a ploy but a confusing, sinister one.

It's troubling that such a large company can get away with this legally.

It's also not surprising that the merchants of fear (selling security) are employing such tactics.

<comment><USER9> The UK has this situation where Tories insisted on privatising the utilities even though they are a natural monopoly. So the actual delivery (of gas or electricity) was given to a company to do but then "supply" to customers is on paper something customers can switch, even though obviously the actual gas or electricity delivered to your home can't be switched because that would be horribly impractical.

The idea was people can choose a better "supplier" \- maybe it's a famous brand or they liked the TV advert or it just offers better prices. These days a lot of them offer "100% Green electricity". You're getting the same electricity as ever, but they've got a spreadsheet which shows they bought the requisite amount of "credits" for solar or wind or whatever not coal. Not quite pointless, but maybe about the same practical impact as signing a petition. Anyway of course it turns out consumers don't like change (this is the _Conservative_ party, you'd think they might know a thing or two about that) and so most people stuck with the "incumbent" they were assigned based on where they lived even if it had worse customer service and higher prices.

But just keeping 80+% of the market wasn't enough. Incumbent suppliers wanted 100% of "their" market, so for way too long (until businesses actually got fined real money for this after being caught on camera too often) they'd do stuff like a sales guy is given a badge which says "District manager" or something, not "Sales" \- and dressed up like an actual maintenance guy and he shows up at homes that have switched to a different supplier. He's all apologetic, "Sorry to bother you," but he just needs you to sign some paperwork because of a "problem". Maybe he looks at a meter, pretends to examine the cables or pipework... He doesn't mention that he's a sales person and the "problem" is that you're paying less money to somebody else for the same product. You sign, "All done, you won't have any more problems" and you only find out when the bill arrives from an unfamiliar supplier what sort of "problem" it was you were having.

Of course if you spent a few minutes reading the paperwork it says what you're signing, so it won't fool the average HN reader, but "Technically not scamming most smart people" isn't the standard we ought to be setting for anybody, much less essential utilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I registered a trademark I got a very similar fake invoice from a company in Serbia. They wanted £940 for their "trademark monitoring service". The only clue that this was not a real invoice was "This offer is not an invoice but a solicitation" in the fine print at the bottom.

Fortunately the Trademark Office warns everyone who registers a trademark that they can expect to receive something along these lines, but of course the idea is that in a big company the "invoice" might get paid by someone in too much of a hurry to look carefully.

<comment><USER11> I think almost any transaction which results in a public record including your address could lead to this. After I bought my house, I was inundated with letters offering mortgage insurance.

<comment><USER12> And in some states in the US, the DMV will sell your information to companies who will eagerly remind you that your car's warranty has expired.

<comment><USER13> WA-state. When I registered a new (to me) car three years ago, the privately- owned licensing agency misspelled my name. I began to receive junk mail to my address with the misspelled name within a week or two and which continues to this day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In Germany, if you register a company, your accountant will warn you that you'll get scam invoices. The notary that does the legal stuff will warn you. And finally the official court registry will send you a letter warning you that you'll get scam invoices (their letter arrives _after_ the first scam invoices, though).

It's ridiculous. Everybody knows it's a scam, they even give themselves official-sounding names to pretend that they are the official registry, and yet the government just folds and says "I guess we can't do anything". It's a joke.

<comment><USER9> It's the same with pyramid schemes. Essentially all "Direct Marketing" businesses of any significant size are just a pyramid scheme of course, but governments are reluctant to try to jail people for it, since of course these people will have all the resources of their bogus "company" to throw at the court case. So they mostly limit themselves to trying to force these companies to "explain" their "Direct Marketing" company in a way that should help more victims to spot the scam before they lose their life savings.

For example they might oblige the company to tell (albeit not necessarily very obviously in headline fonts) its new "independent business owners" that only 0.01% of such "independent business owners" make any money at all in a typical year's operations. That's the sort of sobering statistic that might persuade some other gullible people to reconsider. Or not.

But just going in and shutting down the business - they're not keen. After all, the same victims will likely just sign up for another and perhaps even more predatory pyramid scheme.

My favourite scheme (I used to research these) had a setup where they sold basically mediocre fruit juice as a health product, and it's a pyramid scheme but then the extra genius is that the product sold through this pyramid scheme is itself bogus. So even the underlying business, ignoring the pyramid structure, is crooked anyway. The corporations were set up such that if the pyramid scheme is busted it has no money, all the "real" profit went to the notionally separate company making mediocre fruit juice. They can claim ignorance of the pyramid scheme and of the bogus health claims, everything, and they keep all the money. Brilliant.

<comment><USER15> "Direct Marketing" just means mailing ads to consumers. Almost all locally present businesses do that and many remote ones. It's cheap and effective.

You deem to be describing Multi Level Marketing.

<comment><USER9> D'oh. Too late to edit my comment but you're correct, this should say Multi- level marketing throughout. No idea what brain short-circuit caused that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The previous occupant of my apartment had a .com with real WHOIS information. I got a scam invoice for a renewal at multiple times the actual cost.

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember receiving letters in the mail to remind me it was time to renew my domain name. They were sent around the time my domain was set to expire, except they were sent from a different registrar.

It was written in a way that made it easy to miss the fact that the sender of the letter was not my registrar. IIRC, the letter contained scary language like "you must renew to keep your domain name!".

I only noticed the fine print that said it was a solicitation for business because I was curious why this other registrar was contacting me.

<comment><USER18> From "Domain Registry of America" or somesuch, right?

<comment><USER17> That sounds about right.

<comment><USER19> Yes, except they were charging 800% more for what was a $10 renewal fee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If any of this junk mail includes a prepaid mailer I just send it back to them. Its not much but does cost them money. They can pay to have their trash thrown out.

<comment><USER21> Tape it to a brick, for good measure.

<comment><USER22> Common fallacy. The USPS will not deliver anything significantly heavier than the expected weight of the mail piece.

<comment><USER23> Hassling the USPS by making them dispose of a brick seems like suitable enough punishment for them delivering junk mail in the first place.

<comment><USER24> USPS wouldn't exist without junk mail. I thank the junk senders for their patronage of our postal system.

<comment><USER23> They could charge a reasonable price, or receive [more] funding from taxes. The notion that scam/junk mail is essential to the system is moronic.

<comment><USER25> They could, or they could let private companies subsidize it.

The only ("only") problem I personally have is that it generates soooo much waste. It is always so frustrating checking the mail, and immediately dropping 10 or so sheets of paper in the trash before I even close the mailbox (the safeway mailer is especially bad at this...)

<comment><USER26> If we could avoid junk mail, that would definitely be ideal case scenario. I find a little comfort in believing that what I throw in the recycle bin (which is all the junk mail) gets recycled into new paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The guy mentioned has quite a significant online profile. He runs a startup that just raised quite a bit of money and I heard about him before I clicked the post.

Not going to link (tbh, anyone can probably find this guy/his picture/videos online) in case this turns out to be a case of mistaken identity (the guy who raised the money is 100% the guy Krebs is talking about...maybe Krebs is wrong though) but...if this is true...it seems that some well-regarded people really didn't do their due diligence.

<comment><USER28> > it seems that some well-regarded people really didn't do their due > diligence.

That is not rare at all. Lots of scammers try to milk investors. Usually unsuccessfully but sometimes they score, and sometimes they score big too.

<comment><USER27> Yep, one of the investors is a guy who has made $25m from investing in similar companies (and ran his own).

Scamming institutional investors isn't unusual. I know the lead investor on the deal is one of these PE/VC bubble firms that sprung up in the last ten years. But there are people involved who are definitely not stupid.

Also, the company is most certainly not a scam. Again, I heard about them years ago, and they have a legitimate business selling to consumers (i.e. it is fairly straightforward to check if the business exists).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22668610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22668610)

</comment><comment><USER30> So did Krebs report all this?

I'm surprised to see so much talk congratulating Krebs on his skilful fact- finding, and seemingly no mention of informing the authorities.

<comment><USER15> What was the crime under the law?

<comment><USER30> The offence of deliberately scamming people, of course.

This comment [0] points out that it's likely against the law in the USA. (I _think_ the relevant law is at the federal level.) It seems likely that Scotland's laws are similar.

I get the sense that a lot of people think it's obvious the law can do nothing, so there's no point even reporting the guy. I don't see the sense in this. I imagine scammers benefit greatly from this kind of thinking.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22677118)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Has anyone try to go the site.

it gets redirected to:

[http://126.96.36.199/online/](http://184.108.40.206/online/)

Says secure payment on a NON-SSL site. Sounds pretty shady.

<comment><USER32> Can you name a legit site for the general public that doesn't even have a domain name?

<comment><USER9> 220.127.116.11 does _have_ a domain name (and of course is operated by Cloudflare) but it doesn't redirect you or anything, it's totally happy to advertise itself as [https://126.96.36.199/](https://22.214.171.124/) which seems more memorable than most possible names.

<comment><USER15> Yes the DNS companies are an exception because the number is meaningful to humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> so what's happen to these people? it sucks that you can report them hand over fist and nothing happens to them and they continue to operate and scam people.

<comment><USER34> Read the comments.

This appears to be him: [https://www.bellaandduke.com/our- story/](https://www.bellaandduke.com/our-story/)

His latest scam involves a terrible DIY website hocking "healthy" dog food

<comment><USER35> Oh geeze, he claims that regular dog food gives dogs cancer in one of those promo videos. Yikes.</comment></comment></comment>


AWS Management Console Now Supports the Relational Database Service - <AUTHOR> http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/05/aws-management-console-now-supports-the-relational-database-service.html

<comment><USER2> Is anyone here using RDS in production? Are you seeing good performance?

<comment><USER3> We're using it in production in service we just launched. "Performance" is a relative term. We measured performance in:

1\. Minimal amount of time to setup (minutes) 2\. Minimal amount of time to maintain (none) 3\. Minimal amount of time to make redundant (none, see Multi- AZ support just announced)

By the time the segment of our data we're keeping in RDS exceeds the capacity of the largest instance size AWS offers ... it'll be a very good problem to have.

<comment><USER2> But did you benchmark it against MySQL running on a bare metal box? That's the "performance" benchmark I was interested in...</comment></comment></comment>


How to learn to program in 10 easy steps. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techendo.co/posts/how-to-learn-to-program-in-10-easy-steps

<comment><USER2> '1\. Buy a MacBook Air'...

'MacBook Airs are really the standard for coders right now'

And that's all I read of that article. There is no world in which that is even remotely true, except _maybe_ in the land of web development. Maybe.

Beyond that, it locks you out of .NET. Regardless of your opinion of .NET, it's accessible, it's high level, it's relatively simple, it's powerful, VS Express is totally servicable and it's everywhere. It's a pretty great language to pick up because you can do stuff with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Literally stopped reading at .NET</comment></comment>


Comments Wanted: An Overview of "Full Stack Development" - <AUTHOR> http://www.penzba.co.uk/cgi-bin/ModWebProg.py?FullStackDeveloper <comment><USER2> I'm a C++ guy with minimal knowledge about web development. For me this is enlightening. I like details on how things work "under the hood".

Please develop it further and also provide information about how the front-end interacts with the back-end at different abstraction levels with lots of diagrams and details.

I also think going below the OS level is perhaps outside the common understanding of what full-stack development is. Enlightening nonetheless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for that - we've generally had no reaction or feedback at all, so we've not bothered developing it. Yours is the first positive response - we'll have a look about what we can easily add.

Again, thank you.

<comment><USER2> The problem I find with most web development tutorials is that they either jump immediately into frameworks, or they approach the process with artificial examples of creating web pages with absolutely no coverage of the actual problem being solved.

What is lacking is a good single resource covering:

1\. How the internet works 2\. How web browsers work 3\. What communication protocols come into play 4\. Coverage of the OSI model in terms of web developemtn 5\. Typical front-end and back-end architectures and how they interact 6\. What problem frameworks are trying to solve and how they do so 7\. How to go about choosing a framework if at all

...and so on

Really a bare-bones example of how to get a website up and running without all the fancy JS and frameworks guff is the sort of thing a beginner would like to see. I want to understand in detail what actually happens when I type a website in my browser until the entire thing is loaded.</comment></comment></comment>


It is as if you were doing work - <AUTHOR> https://pippinbarr.github.io/itisasifyouweredoingwork/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of the (very fun!) cooperative game SpaceTeam[0], where you have to complete an ever-increasing set of fanciful space-themed actions on a little control panel on your phone. The fun part there is that some of the actions require you to tell someone else to complete an action on their phone, so games always involve frantic shouting to your teammates. Lots of fun

[0] - [https://spaceteam.ca/](https://spaceteam.ca/)

<comment><USER3> Shares the concept with "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes". Its a game about diffusing a bomb. One player has a pdf file containing the instructions, and the other is on the PC diffusing it. The game gets increasingly more complicated, and harder for both players to communicate what they are seeing/what should be done. Really fun, and tests your relationship with the other player, as you'll be shouting and insulting each other the whole time.

<comment><USER4> Once the bomb is sufficiently diffused, the explosion will cover a large area but it will be too weak to cause much damage.

(sorry)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sort of ironic that the Windows 95 aesthetic is simultaneously both comforting and familiar (vaporwave), and full of dread and ennui (Dilbert, Office Space).

<comment><USER6> Dread and ennui is as much a part of vaporwave as anything else. It's kind of the duality of the hopefulness of the era -- Windows and Mac machines being touted as the precursors of the Ono-Sendai cyberdecks we would all be using -- and the soul-crushing boredom and consumerism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _What do you do for a living? Oh, I 'm an_ about dialog _-operator for a few years now and the work really suits me._

Repeatedly opening dialogs from the desktop allows to gain work unit points even during breaks. What. A. Madness.

<comment><USER8> Stanley worked for a company in a big building where he was Employee #427.

Employee #427's job was simple: he sat at his desk in Room 427 and he pushed buttons on a keyboard.

Orders came to him through a monitor on his desk telling him what buttons to push, how long to push them, and in what order.

This is what Employee #427 did every day of every month of every year, and although others may have considered it soul rending,

Stanley relished every moment that the orders came in, as though he had been made exactly for this job.

And Stanley was happy.

<comment><USER9> This is from "The Stanley Parable". I have not played the game, but looked up the source because I liked the quote; thanks for posting it.

[https://thestanleyparable.fandom.com/wiki/Dialogue](https://thestanleyparable.fandom.com/wiki/Dialogue)

<comment><USER10> Highly recommend playing the game, even if not a fan of video games. It's wonderfully written and doesn't require a large time commitment. It's also devoid mechanical checks.

<comment><USER11> I have a mental list of video games that i could use to justify to my dad that video games are not a mindless waste of time. The Stanley Parable is on that list.

<comment><USER12> I would be careful about using The Stanley Parable for that specific purpose, because it is one of the easiest targets for "mindless waste of time" classification.

Don't get me wrong, I totally like it, but the whole "game" can be described as "do a bunch of actions, pick some different doors every time, and then restart it all over again, except it might be slightly different, but you are still just choosing which doors to walk through, while listening to some voice".

Note: I didn't "beat" the game (assuming there is some actual ending), but I spent a good couple of hours on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Please Login with you work credentials"... never saw someone putting so much work into a phising website ;D

<comment><USER14> This was brilliant touch!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This evokes such a broad array of emotions. Nostalgia, despair, mirth, appreciation, existential puzzlement.

</comment><comment><USER16> I found something about this comforting: it shows me dialogs that focus only on the thing that needs my attention, without having to load an entire app with its associated branding. I actually prefer these types of popups to what I deal with now: slack notifications (requires me to open slack first), mail notifications (requires me to open mail), our custom admin app notifications (same). Apps have become first class citizens and the content they operate on have taken a backseat. I'd like to think of these dialogs as the GUI equivalent of Unix pipes.

</comment><comment><USER17> I kept holding down a key in the email boxes thinking the story was going somewhere...but then I looked at the source and it turns out each sentence is randomly picked from an array of inspirational sentences.

<comment><USER18> This is, itself, a meaningful metaphor! love it.

It also encourages you to zone out and type without even reading what's being written, which is scarily accurate given some corporate emails I've seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not sure what this does. All I see is a grey screen on my iPad.

<comment><USER20> That's because work can't be done on an iPad. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ah! This is classic, wonder if this is based on the old flash game...

* [https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/186896](https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/186896)

<comment><USER22> Ahhh, this pulls at my heartstrings.

I always loved the window-simulator genre [1] of flash games as a kid, and it's no exaggeration to say that windows spoofs made me the person I am today. I wanted to make my own so badly that in middle school, I saved up to buy a student edition of Flash CS3 and spent a few years building "Window Doors" [2], which I'm proud to say was one of the most fully-featured windows spoofs of its time. Ten years later I have a cs/math degree, all thanks to the kind people on the Newgrounds BBS who were kind enough to put up with middle- school-me.

[1] [https://www.newgrounds.com/games/browse/tag/windows/sort/sco...](https://www.newgrounds.com/games/browse/tag/windows/sort/score)

[2] [https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/512482](https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/512482)

<comment><USER23> One identification of the keyword " _pepperflashplugin-nonfree_ " and a browser restart later, I can wholeheartedly concur this implementation was very well made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Busy work and responding to stuff as it comes in so you don't have to figure out what you should be doing. A simulation is worth a thousand words.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have no idea what I'm doing. Screens appear and I have to click on things... Another day in the office then.

Also, loving the hip hop music loop.

</comment><comment><USER26> Finally, a sense of purpose! Can we add this to UBI somehow?

</comment><comment><USER27> Loved it, 9/10\. Only loss of points caused by the available game not being minesweeper or solitaire.

</comment><comment><USER28> Here's more about how this came about:

[https://github.com/pippinbarr/itisasifyouweredoingwork/tree/...](https://github.com/pippinbarr/itisasifyouweredoingwork/tree/master/press)

<comment><USER29> Readme here: [https://github.com/pippinbarr/itisasifyouweredoingwork/blob/...](https://github.com/pippinbarr/itisasifyouweredoingwork/blob/master/press/README.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Reminds me a lot of the "job simulator" game on oculus.

<comment><USER31> Is that one any good? Trying to find satisfying VR games after play Alyx is tough.

<comment><USER32> Make sure to try out Budget Cuts too, it is also set in 90s-style megacorp offices, but it's a stealth/action game.

Think the Matrix office escape scene, but a full game out of that. (And less crouch-walking, so it's knee-friendly!)

<comment><USER31> Crouch walking is one of those things that is both incredibly awesome but also needs to be optional. I think Alyx did an okay job with it but there were times when I had to literally crouch behind cover not to die. Again, it was pretty awesome but I'm glad they have a toggle crouch option in the settings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Very well done!

To all the people out there (not this thread necessarily) for whom this resembles their daily work - CHANGE IT NOW! Go create value. And of course, not only in the monetary sense. Solve problems. Be proud of what you have accomplished.

</comment><comment><USER34> If I never acknowledged the 3D display popup then it would let me type forever and get promoted without doing anything else.

<comment><USER35> found our future CEO

<comment><USER36> Sociopaths win. [0]

[0] [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or- the-office-according-to-the-office/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does it ever end? I was starting to get flashbacks to the real world times I'd be typing mid-sentence and some mystery dialog would appear for a nanosecond, grab my spacebar entry, and then take that as permission to go do... something, so I had to quit. (I'm amazed Microsoft hasn't managed to do something about that issue for going on three decades now...)

</comment><comment><USER38> This is very cool and very well done. The dialogs are perfect.

However, did anyone else get a bug where the breakout game would no longer destroy the bricks?

My own self-directed minigame within the game was to try to get on top of the brick wall before my "break" ended and the whole thing was less fun after that bug.

<comment><USER39> I think some of the bricks have a durability number to them, where the same brick has to be hit (e.g.) twice in order to be destroyed? On the other hand, I do think I noticed a time where the ball went through a brick, which was odd.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Way too accurate for comfort.

</comment><comment><USER41> This captures the constant sense of being interrupted with senseless/out of context requests I have in my day job, and reminds me why I sorely miss doing engineering.

The only way it could be more realistic is if some of those texts were PowerPoints.

</comment><comment><USER42> Crowdsourced random number generator?

</comment><comment><USER38> Finally, I've found my purpose.

</comment><comment><USER43> Supposed to be doing actual work, ended up getting to Computation Administrator in this.

</comment><comment><USER44> still made more sense than jira

<comment><USER45> brutal work simulation. Drag little poops from the bottom of column A to column B. Every time you drag one the page reloads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> showed this to my 8 year old, he's taking it very seriously haha

</comment><comment><USER47> [https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html](https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html)

</comment><comment><USER48> I really enjoy hearing all the old Windows 95 sound effects again.

</comment><comment><USER49> In only 30 seconds I wanted to punch my screen. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER50> Hmm, just a gray screen here. I allowed Javascript and even permitted it to read canvas data. Does this only work on some specific browser?

</comment><comment><USER51> Does it deliberately not work on Safari?

<comment><USER52> It works for me on safari (Version 13.1 (15609.1.20.111.8) / catalina). So probably not deliberate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> My companies name showed up in one of the dialog boxes and it kinda messed me up... Well done!

</comment><comment><USER54> immediately addictive. can i turn off the tasks and just play pong? can i reduce the number of emails to send? i don't like smashing on my laptop keyboard in order to keep up.

</comment><comment><USER55> My real-life break reminder ended, and the in-game one started.

So realistic!

<comment><USER55> P.S. Ah, why is progress in Breakout not saved? I had a good run...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I have a report to work on, and this just took over my life.

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER57> Bullshit Job Simulator 2020.

</comment><comment><USER58> Absolutely great!

</comment><comment><USER59> Lol this IS art.</comment>


What books have you found to be helpful in starting your business? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> There was a good thread about this a couple weeks ago. People recommended a lot of great books.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=5572>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for linking to that thread. i must have missed it before. There are definitely some interesting looking books in that list.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to get some recommendations for books that might be helpful for a web startup. Personally, I have really found "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell and "Getting Real" by the 37signals folks to be really helpful. I've read lots of great articles via news.YC, and I'm hoping you can all recommend some good offline reading as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber - its all about vision, systems, and building a business that can scale.

Small Giants by Bo Burlingham

</comment><comment><USER4> A stack of composition notebooks from back in grade school.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is your business an online version of "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki is a good one

</comment><comment><USER6> Think and Grow Rich - by Napoleon Hill

-Zaid</comment>


Living skin can be 3D-printed, with blood vessels - <AUTHOR> https://news.rpi.edu/content/2019/11/01/living-skin-can-now-be-3d-printed-blood-vessels-included <comment><USER2> For some perspective on why this matters. If you've never had a serious skin issue it's hard to understand how traumatic it is. I had basal cell carcinoma (a treatable skin cancer) in my early 30's on my nose. The treatment was careful excision of flesh from the affected area. The thing you can't prepare yourself for is how much and how deep the necessary removal is. Imagine a stack of 5 dimes taken out of your nose, and in it's place, a dark and gaping hole.

It is impossible to look at oneself in the mirror without a sense of revulsion and horror. It then takes months of careful wound care for flesh to regrow. My case was simple, and I healed as quickly as could be expected. Most people who need skin grafts are not so lucky.

I sincerely hope this technology is proven effective and makes its way out to the real world as soon as possible.

<comment><USER3> I agree that 3d printing is potentially of value for tissue engineering, however in this case the printed tissue is functionally no different from a full thickness skin graft which is used routinely for reconstruction of nasal defects and has significant limitations e.g. inability to reconstruct a deeper defect and colour/texture mismatch.

COI: Mohs surgeon

<comment><USER2> Ah well :) Good to know, thanks!

Btw, what does "COI" stand for in this context? That's a new one to me.

<comment><USER4> Conflict of Interest?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone have access to the full text? Sci-hub hasn't got any proxies for this apparently.

I'm curious what geometry they're printing the the EC/PC bio-ink in, eg printing coarse grained vasculature networks.

If they're leaning too heavily on self-assembly I would start to question the term 3D printing here. Particularly if they're, for example, just printing homogeneous layers of the different inks and the syringe-on-a-gantry was just a readily available way to do so.

<comment><USER6> It's round and 2cm in diameter when we do in vivo studies in mice. But with the printer we can potentially scale up and make any shape we want. The advantage is that we can create personalized shapes with different thicknesses to fit the wound site. You're correct: in this study 3D printing is being used as a tool for high throughput production of skin tissue. This will be important to make this a cost-effective treatment. However, we are also working on the inclusion of hair follicles which require patterning and later self-assembly. Microvasculature in skin doesn't really require patterning but higher caliber vessels in other organs, such as heart, will likely need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Karande said more work will need to be done to address the challenges > associated with burn patients, which include the loss of nerve and vascular > endings.

Slightly off-topic, but it may be high time for a Darkman reboot.

<comment><USER8> Can we keep Liam Neeson?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Would this allow for replacing of scar tissue? Essentially cut out the skin you want to remove and replace it with this? Or does it not quite work like that? Btw when I say scar I'm not talking about a cut line, since the will likely be a noticeable scar like between the new and old skin, I'm referring to larger ones like burn scars. Wondering if this could also be used to replace things like vitiligo patches.

</comment><comment><USER10> Which organ is closest to being 3D printed for real patients? I've seen articles about 3D printed livers and hearts almost a decade ago.

<comment><USER11> Is the final product like... electronic? What is the input material to 3D print this and what is the output?

<comment><USER12> Input is cultured cells, output is a functional biological structure. In principle it can be anything from a simple part like an earlobe too something complicated like your entire body outside your brain combined, though the latter is very far away at this point.

<comment><USER13> Why not the brain?

<comment><USER14> The brain is a 3d structure with immense complexity tightly packed and out of reach of any non-destructive probe, and the details matter. In fact, we don't know yet, to what extent they matter - or for that matter, which details. (Structural obviously. Electrical probably not, as that recovers from erasure. Chemical? Quantum? Answers are guesswork right now.)

The last person I read talking about how to scan a brain in detail was Anders Sandberg and his method would require death, brain removal, slice-n-dice, vitrification, microtoming and staining, and microscope scanning on an enormous parallel gang of microscopes, followed by computer assisted reassembly into a 3d model, and analysis so that neurons and their connections can be mapped.

Now imagine having all that data and trying to reverse it into a connected, living organ. Even if you could place all the cells and their wires that precisely, could you keep them in situ and oxygenated as you're printing billions and billions of individual pieces? And finish it before doomsday? And avoid it suffering the sensations of half-a-brain that is inexplicably not dying as it gradually grows towards sentience, for the duration?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi everyone. I'm the first author of this paper. The full text should be available in the "just accepted" section of Tissue Engineering part A. It will come out later in print in a special issue on "3D printing for tissue engineering". I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have about it!

</comment><comment><USER15> What about intestines? I know someone with a 'permanent' ileostomy and I'm banking on this kind of technology to let them poop again.

</comment><comment><USER16> TFA says the grafts were rejected by host by the way.

The progress shown was that the grafts now have a functional-ish vascular system that booted up.

Still a long way to go.</comment>


Steve Jobs Responds To iPhone SDK Complaints - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/10/steve-jobs-responds-to-iphone-sdk-complaints-intermediate-layers-produce-sub-standard-apps/ <comment><USER2> See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1255858>

</comment><comment><USER3> why do people keep re-submitting the same story over and over again, while most of the content are well discussed on the other thread?</comment>


The scoop on rising food costs  - <AUTHOR> http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-19/business/29677639_1_ice-cream-scoop-gasoline-prices <comment><USER2> I keep hearing the phrase "worldwide food costs are at an all-time high" on NPR and in other news outlets; although I would expect natural disasters and political conflict and other changes in supply and demand to affect specific regional markets, I find it difficult to ascribe a worldwide across-the-board rise in commodities to just those explanations.

(I would expect a higher demand in China for American milk to actually decrease domestic milk prices, for example, assuming that production could be scaled upward to meet demand; given what I've seen of the dismal conditions of several dairy farms in California, healthy pastureland doesn't seem to be a requirement for operating a dairy.)

There's a solid alternative theory -- as yet unproven, though -- that makes a lot more sense to me. Relatively recent changes in the handling of speculation in commodities is causing across-the-board price increases where prices should be decreasing instead. For more info: [http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/2011415...](http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/2011415143212280315.html)

<comment><USER3> I was immediately reminded of the same story. As far as I remember, speculators (who are important for a market, but should not dominate it) have been relatively recently allowed to dominate the market they speculate in. This led to them simply buying and buying, speculating on the rising prices the buying itself causes.

<comment><USER2> Yes. IIRC, the critical change was that a major investment firm successfully lobbied regulators to allow them to give investors the option of indefinitely rolling over their commodities investments for a small fee. Investment firms are making a ton of money on the rollovers, and investors are simply purchasing commodities orders at whatever price they're available for and sitting on them until the market prices raise enough for them to feel like selling the orders.

So, I could buy a pile of grain or a truckload of oil or what-have-you, not on the expectation that I'll be able to sell it for more money 6 months from now, but on the expectation that I can sit on it until I _can_ sell it for more money. Basically, it gives me a place to stash money, that's guaranteed to pay me back at whatever rate I feel like demanding.

The downside for everyone else is that this is creating artificial scarcities in markets across the board. There's a glut of oil in storage right now that isn't being refined into gasoline or other products just because investors somewhere are waiting for the price to go up before they let go of it.

When you look at the peculiar way that so many commodities prices have risen so quickly in recent years, and at the way that other more traditional markets have been recovering more sluggishly than people are expecting, and at the way that the real estate market has been staying in gutter, this theory starts to make a lot of sense. There seems to be a lot of investment capital missing somewhere, and commodities seems to be inflated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why hasn't it happened such that somebody just goes to a nation like India and brings modern farming technologies that yield such high growth products here?

This allows people to grow products a fraction of the price but at a similar market value. Thus eliminating that 5x increase in the cost of feed for the milker, allowing him to expand his supply to meet the new demand for milk.

<comment><USER5> Isn't that what the Green Revolution was?

<comment><USER4> See above about the cows in India vs United States.

There have also been significant advancements in farming since the 1970s when the Green Revolution happened I would think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This on the flip side is creating an opportunity to optimize (if you have the land) to iterate in farming.

<comment><USER2> Hahaha. Modern farming methods are advanced. If you think a background in programming would be enough to contribute a significant advance to the science of farming, then you've fallen into the common programmer's trap of actually believing that understanding one kind of system means you can more easily understand unrelated systems.

You would likely have to spend years in study and practice before you could expect to contribute to agricultural science.</comment></comment>


Show HN: An extension to turn your LinkedIn into a resume - <AUTHOR> http://ceev.io <comment><USER4> > _So you 're saving and selling my information, then?_

> _No. The information on your LinkedIn profile never leaves LinkedIn - <USER2> > for your email address, which I am saving to use with some features in the > future. I won 't sell it, and I won't annoy you with pointless emails._

I think it's important to state this on the front page, particularly by the "No strings attached" section. Many would consider collecting their email an "attached string".

Otherwise, I think this is great -- looking forward to more updates!

<comment><USER5> I still don't understand why people would give their information/data to LinkedIn. Their tactics over the years have been extremely scummy (harvesting contacts and sending spam is the one that immediately springs to mind).

Its a solution looking for a problem.

A lot of these comments seem pretty dubious too.

<comment><USER6> I'm also inexplicably giving money to LinkedIn. I signed up for their premium plan so long ago, back when it was 200 something a year. They recently shot the price straight through the roof nearly doubling it while removing some features and restricting them to even higher paying tiers.

I however, have been grandfathered in to the original price and keep all the original feature set. However, if I quit or cancel my subscription or there is a lapse in payment I lose this benefit forever.

It's scummy as fuck. Designed purposely so I never let go.

<comment><USER7> That's not the purpose of grandfathered pricing, they just want to raise prices without upsetting active users.

If you cancel you're not an active user anymore :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, I'd rather have my resume turned into my LinkedIn. My reasoning is that when something comes to LinkedIn, it doesn't come out easily: it's proprietary and it's hostile. So it can't be where you trust to save your primary data.

<comment><USER9> Makes sense, though I don't think it'll happen soon, considering LinkedIn holds a lot more information than the average 1 page resume. I don't keep all my work experience on my resume.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. That was the hardest part of making this extension... trying to decide what to strip off of peoples' profiles to get it to fit on a single page.

<comment><USER10> Single page has really gone out of style for experienced talent (if ot ever was in for those people). People switch jobs too much and the way resumes steer stored and read has changed since that was the standard. Mine is three dense pages and that is still heavily trimmed.

The most important part of my resume is the top third of the first page that lists skills, technologies, and finance specific information that allow a recruiter or target person to easily see I do and get a feeling for my career path without having to go into the job specific details yet. I don't really see a way to do something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It was a sad day when LinkedIn retired the official resume generator. It would be nice if they could at least export some XML for anyone to run with, but I guess its all about locking users into your walled off service.

<comment><USER12> I read somewhere about an EU regulations coming which would force platforms to provide a way for their users to get their data back. Reimplementing the XML export would be a good way to (partially) comply ahead of time.

<comment><USER13> It's not ahead of time - that regulation has existed for a long time. See the work of Max Schrems against FB, and his site on how you can get your own data: [http://europe-v- facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data...](http://europe-v- facebook.org/EN/Get_your_Data_/get_your_data_.html)

The new regulation updates that existing right to specify that the data should be provided in a "structured, commonly used and machine-readable format".

<comment> rising-sky I believe the writer is referring to the GDPR regulations in Europe which are coming into force May 25, 2018, therefore "ahead of time" is chronologically accurate. They have a handy countdown clock here:

[https://www.eugdpr.org/](https://www.eugdpr.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I highly recommend that you build out more boring themes. Software engineers need resumes too, and interesting looking ones are treated as an expression of creativity. But target demographic for chrome extensions is not on HN, where people care about their privacy, know of a 1000 different ways to abuse trust online, and are capable of creating a custom LaTeX resume if they have to.

People in, say, finance would __love __to have an easy tool that generates a resume that looks like a banking resume. Your fancy templates are worthless to them - they do not conform to industry standard. I 'm sure a lot of other professions have the same culture and you should do some research in this direction.

Otherwise, great product! Wish you best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's #1 on my to-do list right now.

I just started sharing this around publicly today. I haven't been working on it for long, and just finished working out some major bugs on it last night. I wanted to know if this was something people liked and would use before spending a ton of time making themes.

The themes I have now are basically just general themes with no specific profession/purpose in mind. But yeah, I'll definitely be adding more themes in the coming days, some of which will be tailored to different professions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great idea and perfect, to-the-point, snappy demo video!

Now if we can only get rid of the 'fill your resume via our outdated ill- designed online form' anti-pattern that's still common in many industries...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, can't help with that ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

But I agree!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> On a not dissimilar note, [https://jsonresume.org/](https://jsonresume.org/) tackles similar problems anl could use some love.

</comment><comment><USER17> Does LinkedIn have a different policy regarding scraping LinkedIn pages if you are an extension vs. a crawler? I read recently that LinkedIn is fighting tooth and nail to prevent crawlers from scraping their content.

Just curious.

EDIT: Found this on the user agreement

[https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user- agreement](https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement)

k. Develop, support or use software, devices, scripts, robots, or any other means or processes (including crawlers, browser plugins and add-ons, or any other technology or manual work) to scrape the Services or otherwise copy profiles and other data from the Services;

<comment><USER18> This could lead to users of the plugin being banned. Have seen this happening to recruiters who were using some extensions extensively and then somehow Linkedin decided to lock them out, which is quite a bad thing to happen to a recruiter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The European Union also has a CV Format, already translated in the 25 (?) European Languages. You first have to enter your resume once (I mainly copy the information I already update on LinkedIn) [https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/editors/de/cv/compose](https://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/editors/de/cv/compose) and then you get a PDF+XML document which you can send to companies or re- upload to the EU website in order to update it. It's very handy and would be surely easy to adapt.

<comment><USER20> Noone in Europe ever used that thing. Don't advise.

<comment><USER21> Not only, it's also a awful format generally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just so you know, LinkedIn released something similar: [https://blog.linkedin.com/2018/february/7/rock-your- resume-w...](https://blog.linkedin.com/2018/february/7/rock-your-resume-with- resume-assistant-from-linkedin-microsoft)

<comment><USER23> This should be standard functionality built into LinkedIn, they let you export to PDF but it sucks. Depending on office365 is scummy

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> My girlfriend is a recruiter and spends a good amount of time formatting resumes of her clients. When I saw this I figured it would be a dream come true for her and anyone in her industry. Unfortunately resumes she submits have to follow a template created by her company.

Do you have any future plans to allow customizable resume templates?

<comment><USER25> Hey OP! Here's a paid SaaS solution to implement and expand on.

As a consultant I'd love to have an easy customized theme, where I can pick a font, colors and upload logo. Would probably pay one time fee to get started and maybe a small fee to update an existing with new info? Or a fee per sent resume? The time this would save would be so worth it.

PS. Love the design. DS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've actually done something similar in the past. I made ineedaresu.me a few years ago (and have since sold it)... but after launching that, I had a few different schools and organizations contact me wanting custom resume generators styled how they like, with custom themes, fields, etc.

This extension is basically the start of a recreation of ineedaresu.me. I'll be working on a full resume generator next that doesn't rely on LinkedIn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great idea.

In the past I've used high dpi screenshots and way too much time in photoshop to edit my LinkedIn page into a printable format that feels just like LinkedIn but doesn't have all the extraneous crap around it you get on an actual printout.

People have responded super well to that approach when I've handed it out in meetings. All the LinkedIn chrome makes it feel very easy and familiar and authoritatively correct to them.

Any chance you could do a theme that's as close to pure LinkedIn as possible? I basically want the print template that LinkedIn's site should have rather than the one it does have.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea. I do want to get more themes in, and a pure LinkedIn theme would be good to have. I'll work on it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This looks really nice!

Still, the geek in me is a bit unhappy. LinkedIn will change their HTML structure in the future, so this software will break. Fixing it is easy---if you have the source code and access to the server. I tend to pick systems that I think might work for a long time, so this is not optimal.

Other than that, I personally wouldn't like to use LinkedIn as my priamry data repository. They're a company and not even the most friendly company at that, so who knows what will happen in five years.

<comment><USER28> I suspect it's also brittle if LI does any A/B testing in that regard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> For some reason, it won't show my first job. Console reports this error:

        clean.js:53 No Volunteering
        clean.js:65 No Languages
        clean.js:111 Removing last job.
        9q4fcy0u894wfpt4om65ddw5d:1332 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'contains' of null
            at s.onWindowClick (ecqz9oxm6n7j7lgxh46b6hgxw:2735)
            at p.run (37faxrlgmrjbfus14qcvdqns0:3786)
            at p.join (37faxrlgmrjbfus14qcvdqns0:3788)
            at Function.u.join (37faxrlgmrjbfus14qcvdqns0:6776)
            at 37faxrlgmrjbfus14qcvdqns0:6779

Also, if you continue development do please consider a nice way to parse projects! As a programmer, I have plenty of those with outbound URLs.

All in all, good work, will definitely use this once I apply for a job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. Strange error. That Uncaught TypeError is unrelated. That happens when you click any element on the page because I removed a ton of the LinkedIn code and haven't been able to figure out where that's coming from yet, but it shouldn't affect how it works.

How many jobs do you have on your profile? Is it only not showing the first (newest/current) job? Or is it not showing your first job as in first on your profile (oldest)?

When it loads, it places everything onto the resume, then checks the height to make sure it'll fit on a single page, and if it doesn't fit, it removes items until it does fit.

So it looks to me like it removed your oldest job on your profile to get it to fit. I'm planning on making it more customizable - let people choose which items to remove to make it fit.

But also yes! I too have a bunch of projects I usually include on my resume, so I will definitely work on grabbing projects and getting them onto the resume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This encounters a javascript error on my profile:

      Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'trim' of undefined
        at init.<anonymous> (inject.js:69)
        at init.<anonymous> (jquery.min.js:4)
        at l (jquery.min.js:4)
        at Object.add [as done] (jquery.min.js:4)
        at Array.<anonymous> (jquery.min.js:4)
        at Function.each (jquery.min.js:4)
        at Object.<anonymous> (jquery.min.js:4)
        at Function.Deferred (jquery.min.js:4)
        at Object.then (jquery.min.js:4)
        at init.<anonymous> (inject.js:59)

userSummary = $(".pv-top-card-section__summary-text").html().trim();

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Good catch. Do you have a really short summary/about paragraph under your picture?

It looks like it's trying to read that and can't find it.

I'll have to fix that.

<comment><USER30> Nope, mine is empty.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. That's the issue. I'll have to make sure it checks for empty/short strings there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looks great. I love the styling.

As a general feedback: I'm a bit cautious about using third party Chrome extensions. I'm more OK with giving auth to my LinkedIn account. Maybe a server side option with headless chrome would be a good addition.

<comment><AUTHOR> What is it about third-party extensions you don't like?

I know many extensions have full access to any site you visit, but I specified LinkedIn for mine, so when you install it, you are warned that it can access all your data on LinkedIn, but no other sites.

<comment><USER31> Yup, as solotronics said.

On Chrome extensions, minor bugs (or minor bugs in the libraries you depend on) might end up having far worse consequences. Read/write access to only linkedin.com can still leak a decent amount of unwanted information in case there's an exploit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm. I'll have to read into that more.

I don't use any external libraries, I wrote all of the code in the extension, and the only external requests made outside of the extension are to Google Fonts, so I wonder if it'd be possible to infect this extension.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> can you add firefox to this .. for some reason i can not get the chrome to work on my system.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually just started looking into porting it to Firefox. I haven't made any extensions for FF before - and this is my first Chrome extension as well - <USER3> I'm not sure how much work it'll be to convert it. But it's definitely on the top of my todo list.

<comment><USER33> The main difference between Chrome and Firefox extensions is that Chrome uses a callback-based API while Firefox's is based on promises. Other than that they're functionally the same aside from some differences in the manifest and the namespace (Chrome uses `chrome` while Firefox uses `browser`). I think Firefox has some backwards compatibility with the callback interface for easier porting but I haven't tried.

There's a nice polyfill by Mozilla so you can use their promise interface in Chrome but it was missing some important apis last I checked (sessions and optional permissions). [https://github.com/mozilla/webextension- polyfill](https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Very cool! I've been wanting something like this ever since LinkedIn removed their export functionality.

Only one problem... It only seems to be able to grab my most recent 2 job experience items?

I would very much like the ability to configure it so that I could tell it what parts of my LinkedIn profile I wanted it to include instead of just automatically cherry-picking parts of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one thing I really want to improve...

So right now it's grabbing your entire profile, but then it deletes the oldest entries to get everything to fit on one page.

I'm planning on making it so you can pick and choose what goes on it instead of it doing it automatically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> FWIW I've been a happy creddle.io user for a few years.

I (used to at least) let me import data from LinkedIn and use it to create a custom cv.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great project! This will be used by recruiters like myself. Only today I had to send an ugly Linkedin-PDF resume because an applicant didn't have anything else. I would have used ceev.io, if I knew about it before!

Let me ask, aren't you afraid of this: If you get big enough, Linkedin will fiddle with their HTML and your app won't work anymore, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought about that... If things change and break, it should be pretty easy to fix as long as LinkedIn doesn't make massive changes... The extension just goes through the page and extracts the elements that contain what I need.

So to get the person's name, it just looks for h1.pv-top-card-section__name and grabs that.

As long as what I need is available and visible on the page, I should be able to grab it.

The next thing I'm working on is something similar to ineedaresu.me (a project I made a few years ago) - but with a ton of improvements and better themes and customization options. It'll work the same as this extension, but it won't rely on LinkedIn - you'll have to enter the content yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd list the type of output formats on the landing page.

.doc/.docx are mandatory for me to look at any resume generator.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the hardest part of making an online resume generator. No real way to generate a .doc/x...

But good idea to let people know. I'll add it to the landing page.

<comment><USER12> You can generate Open Xml documents with the SDK. [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa982683(v=office.1...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa982683\(v=office.12\).aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Works surprisingly well. Just one issue, since I just graduated, I do not have a whole lot of work experience so the generated resume looks empty. It would be awesome if you could use the information in the projects section as well and create a projects section.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's one of the top things on my list!

I was having trouble pulling the projects from the profiles, so I pushed it to the side while I got everything else working. Now I'm going to focus on getting projects in, as well as a few new themes

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I really like it, but it would be good to have an editable version beyond just the text, either with a Microsoft Word or HTML/CSS. It would be good to be able to tinker around with the template to personalize it more, such as adding different sections.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats the next thing I plan on doing. I made the site ineedaresu.me a few years ago, and I'm going to build something similar, but much better, based off what I have here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Linkedin has a built-in 'download as PDF' feature that still seems to exist. Doesn't create anything nearly as aesthetically pleasing as this - nice work.

</comment><comment><USER40> Cool, I've just tried. But it produce 'İ' letter instead of 'I'. A little more template options also would be great.

</comment><comment><USER41> Pretty cool. Now I have an incentive to populate my profile beyond the current cache of titles and dates.

</comment><comment><USER42> Wow, that works really well. It looks a lot nicer than the default "save as pdf" option.

</comment><comment><USER43> Love the look of the landing page, is that a purchased theme you used or created from scratch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I created everything from scratch.

I actually decided to get away from all frameworks for the landing page. It's just simple HTML, Javascript/jQuery, and CSS/LESS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is really cool and would have been handy for me in the past.

But these days, if someone needs my resume, I send them to my LinkedIn page. If they say they need something else, I do File->Print to PDF on my LinkedIn page. It that's not good enough, I probably don't want to do business with them or work with them.

</comment><comment><USER45> Doesn't LinkedIn already have this feature? I've used it a few times.

</comment><comment><USER46> Funny I stumbled upon this discussion because I just used this pretty cool service called HipRez to revamp my plain resume into a resume website. Has definitely been great for getting my foot in the door with job interviews and responses to job applications.

Check them out here: www.hiprez.com

</comment><comment><USER47> I thought there was a download resume link. Maybe they removed it.

<comment><AUTHOR> There was (is?)... but it just spits out a super plain resume you can't do much with. My plan with this is to make it super customization, and make themes tailored to a bunch of different professions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Mitch, unemployed loser aspiring to work in Apple... perhaps it's satire of Linkedin? Who on earth puts on Linkedin enough personal and career related information to compose an usable CV out of it?

</comment><comment><USER49> Among my skills is "[...]"

Not quite professional.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's because some people have dozens of skills, and I couldn't put them all on. I added that to show there are more. It can be left if desired, otherwise you can click the edit button and delete the brackets and periods.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> this is f'ing awesome</comment>