Bug: [scribd] appended to every direct link PDF "Invalid upload" | Hacker News Reader

Bug: [scribd] appended to every direct link PDF "Invalid upload"

louisvillegeekdinner.com

Note, "[scribd]" is a separate link to the iPaper version of a pdf. It's not a tag appended to the title.

The second paragraph [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html] under "In Submissions" says, "If you submit a link to a video or pdf, please warn us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title." What is the point of marking it [pdf], if it will be flagged/tagged/whatever with [scribd]?

From a usability perspective, the flag/tag/whatever shouldn't appear in the same style as the title. It looks like the author simply tagged it. Perhaps the scribd link (if this is even needed) should be in the info-line below the title.

A broken link.

I think you'll find that's a feature, not a bug

If you/anyone didn't notice, it's actually a link to view the PDF in a flash viewer on Scribd. Scribd is YC-funded, and they've been doing this for a while. There was some minor disagreement over the desirability and ethics of this, but nothing came of it.

Personally, I prefer Google's viewer to Scribd's: http://docs.google.com/viewer

OK, this finally motivated me to make a userscript that replaces Scribd links with Google docs (I didn't realize it was so easy to construct a link to their viewer).

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/63596

I'm sure Scribd works just as well if you have Flash installed, but I don't. I like my local PDF viewer but I have to admit sometimes not having to download the file is nice.

Does anyone actually click this? It would seem that the "Invalid upload" bug would have been discovered/reported much sooner than this.

I think that what usually happens is that when you send a link to scribd that doesn't exist, it downloads the document and immediately presents it to you in their UI. Therefore, it would seem that the bug is related to scribd, not HN.

One hell of a bug. It's pretty incredible that it just happens to work out that, every PDF link, which often open in annoying viewers in many OS/browser combinations, gets a scribd link at the end of it, both as a warning that's a PDF file and as a way to view it online without downloading it first. What are the odds?

Please take your axe to grind elsewhere.

Click on it, do you recommend that we leave it the way it is?

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