by pieterhg on 10/25/21, 12:28 PM
So cool to see this on top of HN.
Pankaj took my VSCode for Remote OK and modded it for cricket scores. Great work and it even still says index.php, hah.
If you'd like to see the original from a few weeks ago: https://remoteok.io/vscode
by tailspin2019 on 10/25/21, 3:15 PM
@dang seeing as this is a derivative of
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28472170 but the credit isn't very clear, could you give the original Show HN another repost perhaps?
Seems a shame that the author of the majority of this work (pieterhg) didn't get a lot of credit here or the same level of interest in their original Show HN.
by ratww on 10/25/21, 10:10 AM
by vzaliva on 10/25/21, 2:39 PM
I had written TSR (Terminated and Stay Residendt) MS DOS "Boss key" program which when activated shows TurboC screen with compilation going on and compiled lines number counter changing. Used it when I played games during my internship in early nienties.
by cyberferret on 10/25/21, 10:06 AM
Nice work! Reminds me of the old days of the 'Boss Key' in most games of the 80's. +1 on the suggestion to actually make this a VSCode extension so you can have it running in a tab in your actual workspace and check it from time to time.
by kioleanu on 10/25/21, 9:55 AM
I was always fascinated by these kind of things and I always wondered why they are necessary, as I had never had a job in the past 15 years where you couldn’t open a sports page once in a while. Or better said, where someone would expect you sit 6-8-10 hours in front of the computer and churn code without interruption. Or go outside and check the scores on your phone
by stared on 10/25/21, 10:43 AM
Reminds me of the PhD Comics "Emergency button" (
http://phdcomics.com/, bottom right) redirecting to a fake journal article and a similar tool for Tinder redirecting to a spreadsheet.
In the case of PhD Comics is clearly an inside joke (I guess). For other tools I find it a clearly desired yet not the most honest feature.
by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK on 10/25/21, 11:19 AM
I had a video camera and a motion detection algorithm running to alert me if someone was approaching my cubicle, where I was napping.
by ChrisArchitect on 10/25/21, 2:40 PM
This made me laugh, nice one.
Reminds of all the old apps/games that had boss key/buttons -- I wonder if there's a gallery of a bunch of them somewhere? Creative 'fake' docs and spreadsheets etc kinda funny
by nirui on 10/25/21, 10:26 AM
A file named "index.js", when you open it, the tab says "index.php", and the file contains HTML code.
A comedy at it's finest.
by kirualex on 10/25/21, 3:18 PM
Made me laugh, but also made me think of all those bad experiences I had working with teams from Indian / Pakistan... I can definitely imagine those guys watching cricket instead of pushing new code.
by _joel on 10/25/21, 11:09 AM
Just goes to show the difference in work cultures. Here in the UK I could quite happily have the match up on another monitor, nobody would bat (pun unintended) and eyelash. I'm not sure I could do that with a game that requires more oversight though, test cricket, especially, is slow to watch. Fun though!
by varispeed on 10/25/21, 10:14 AM
If your job prevents your from taking your mind off temporarily off of a task, then this is nothing short of abuse.
I cannot focus on the task for more than 10-20 minutes, then I take few minutes break, sometimes more. If I couldn't do that, I wouldn't get any work done because quickly my brain would sort of shut down.
I've been through this many times - manager would get me to a meeting room and say "people complain that you are browsing the internet rather than working". I'd say "do I deliver on time?" the answer would be "yes". That would be the end of it. I would also say he or she should talk with those who reported this, whether snooping on other workers is a good use of their time.
Nonetheless nice project! I remember doing similar thing to browse Reddit ages ago ;-)
by jabl on 10/25/21, 10:08 AM
Excellent!
Reminds me of those old MS-DOS games that often had a "boss key" which switched the game display to some fake spreadsheet.
by piyush_soni on 10/25/21, 9:54 AM
Great work, but the fact that you had to build it means you need to change the company you work with ;).
by m_st on 10/25/21, 1:35 PM
Reminds me of the Boss Screen in the famous German PC game 'Moorhuhnjagd' where pressing [B] would pause the game and show a fake Word document.
by DonHopkins on 10/25/21, 10:44 AM
by wastedhours on 10/25/21, 10:38 AM
Very good! About 7/8 years ago I did the same to make HN look like some PHP code - did a looot of "code reviews" back then.
by klelatti on 10/25/21, 12:30 PM
For those not too familiar with cricket - matches can go on for days and a summary of the score can be a couple of numbers.
Browsing the score might mean a glance at those numbers every fifteen minutes or so - probably about the same impact on productivity as checking the time.
by efitz on 10/25/21, 11:51 AM
If you use VS Code, why not just build that as a plug-in?
by jpindar on 10/25/21, 3:42 PM
You all might like CyberCoderOnline, a multiplayer game which runs in a browser and looks like vscode (though it also has another mode that is slightly more graphical). It would be cooler if was an actual vscode extention, though.
https://cybercodeonline.com/
by wesleywt on 10/25/21, 10:35 AM
My work is already pain. I don't need to know how bad South Africa is doing while at work.
by baybal2 on 10/25/21, 11:10 AM
by jonnycomputer on 10/25/21, 11:25 AM
I think this is hilarious. And let's be honest here. Getting a score feed like this is much less distracting that launching a browser and visiting some site and somehow ending up on Facehook.
by someothherguyy on 10/25/21, 11:29 AM
I think it would it be easier to make a repository with a file that just auto updates with the scores? You could use it in any editor, and you wouldn't need a facade.
by stefanvdw1 on 10/25/21, 9:57 AM
Clever! Next step would be to build a VSCode extension so you can actually work in VSCode and keep track of live cricket scores
by harha on 10/25/21, 2:05 PM
This adds an item on my long list of fun little projects I unfortunately never start: a general purpose information consumption tool disguised as VS Code (with an extra feature to look like the IDE used at the firm in question)
From tennis or football games to text adventures, there would be so many great options to give the mind a quick break from work.
by bonyt on 10/25/21, 3:38 PM
When I was in high school, I wrote an IRC client that looked like microsoft word. In visual basic. Simpler times...
by Trex_Egg on 10/25/21, 10:23 AM
bro thank you very much I was looking for this my whole career.
by irrational on 10/25/21, 12:43 PM
If it’s just the scores, I would think using curl/wget in a terminal window might be simpler.
by skinkestek on 10/25/21, 10:52 AM
Back in the days I remember the manual (or help file or something) for some submarine simulator game containing an "emergency key" that brought up a spreadsheet screenshot.
Can't remember the name though, but it was on a Mac in the 90ies sometime so before Mac OS X.
by iamgopal on 10/25/21, 10:08 AM
Years ago ( 15+ ) I created not to automatically send cricket updates to office chats.
by kkcorps on 10/25/21, 11:45 AM
Bro, It is amazing but I would suggest you to look for another job. In my office in Bangalore, we watch on TV and screen in cafeteria leaving the work aside although some meetings have to be attended.
by eb0la on 10/25/21, 12:02 PM
This used to be a fake excel :-D
Thank you for make me smile today.
by sAbakumoff on 10/25/21, 10:28 AM
yeah, but why do you want to hide that you browser this cricket stuff in the first place? Does someone constantly watch what's going on on your screen?
by katzgrau on 10/25/21, 1:24 PM
Separately, I used to keep an ssh session to one of my servers open with lynx running, so I could browse HN and have it still look like work to a non-dev
by analog31 on 10/25/21, 1:54 PM
I learned alt-space-n for minimizing a window, which can be done discreetly without any obvious mouse motion. That and a rear view mirror on my monitor.
by bluedino on 10/25/21, 12:05 PM
I always seemed to have a putty window with a colorscheme similar to my editor. Then I ssh into a VPS, browse whatever over lynx, have IRC open...
by mihaaly on 10/25/21, 1:22 PM
It's so sad if one has to resort to these kind of tricks. Mostly for the management, I guess (assuming no abuse level of diversion).
by mnd999 on 10/25/21, 9:57 AM
Hope you didn’t regret it after yesterday’s match.
by cambaceres on 10/25/21, 12:41 PM
Some posts I upvote just by reading the headline.
by nkozyra on 10/25/21, 11:56 AM
Can't imagine going this far without taking the next step of bundling it into an electron app with matching icon, etc.
by brainwipe on 10/25/21, 9:59 AM
Modern problems require modern solutions. I hope your boss isn't on HN. If my team wanted to check the scores it wouldn't bother me - I hired people not robots.
by pjmlp on 10/25/21, 10:33 AM
Great!
Next step, create a VBA macro that drops the results into Excel worksheet, for those more tasked with Office activities.
by fsnowdin on 10/25/21, 11:22 AM
someone make the HN version of this plz
by faridelnasire on 10/25/21, 1:56 PM
You could just change jobs to a company that allows you to have a window like that open on the side.
by throw1234651234 on 10/25/21, 3:04 PM
Title should be appended with "...and could have gotten away with a .sh/.ps instead"
by frankfury on 10/25/21, 2:19 PM
Now, I'm interested in an NBA score like this. I wonder how it will look like on code.
by abledon on 10/25/21, 12:54 PM
I can't imagine working at a company that micro-manages like this. I have a style where i Code at like 500% effort for short bursts, then relax/browse web stuff for up to an hour.
by nathias on 10/25/21, 11:25 AM
doing the needful
by zamadatix on 10/25/21, 10:15 AM
Anyone remember Ghostzilla?
by rafaelturk on 10/25/21, 11:35 AM
Fake VS Code everywhere!
by francisduvivier on 10/25/21, 1:36 PM
Sooo, do we already have something like this for Hacker News?
by aquir on 10/25/21, 12:18 PM
Great! Can we have one for HN as well, please? :)
by Lapsa on 10/25/21, 2:01 PM
used to play some Nethack when didn't felt much like working. quite indistinguishable
by tarkin2 on 10/25/21, 3:03 PM
Is there a vim plugin for it?
by pelasaco on 10/25/21, 1:21 PM
it would be nice to have it to read HN newest topics. Open source for sure :)
by pknerd on 10/25/21, 3:16 PM
Which APIs are you using?
by seanhunter on 10/25/21, 2:40 PM
That is spectacular
by shoulderfake on 10/25/21, 1:06 PM
Who's getting in trouble for looking at sports scores in the office? What archaic organization do you work at this pt ?
by darepublic on 10/25/21, 3:18 PM
file has extension .php but is html
by xtat on 10/26/21, 2:48 AM
A+
by looping67 on 10/25/21, 1:48 PM
the website hang up