Linux developers threaten to pull "kill switch" - <AUTHOR> https://lulz.com/linux-devs-threaten-killswitch-coc-controversy-1252/ <comment><USER2> I don't see why folk are getting so frustrated about this Code of Conduct.

I'm far from a so-called SJW but to me it's just common sense written down and formalised.

 _Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:_

 _Using welcoming and inclusive language_

 _Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences_

 _Gracefully accepting constructive criticism_

 _Focusing on what is best for the community_

 _Showing empathy towards other community members_

What is wrong here? Isn't this how any professional should act in the workplace? Why shouldn't this apply to one of the largest open source projects around?

 _Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:_

 _The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or advances_

 _Trolling, insulting /derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks_

 _Public or private harassment_

 _Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission_

 _Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting_

Same here. Most of this is illegal and morally wrong to do inside (or even outside) the workplace too.

Seems like a few people getting annoyed over nothing.

<comment><USER3> > The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or > advances _Trolling_ , _insulting /derogatory comments_, and _personal or > political attacks_ Public or private harassment Publishing others' private > information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit > permission Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate > in a professional setting

These sorts of terms are impossible to define, so the decision to ban people comes down to personal, subjective interpretation. In the name of setting standards, there are no standards at all.

<comment><USER4> Only in the sense that everything is subject to personal interpretation of those who are responsible for enforcing a set of rules.

But wouldn't you agree that it's generally better to have a set of pretty clear guidelines that might not always be watertight, versus an _entirely_ personal, subjective set of inscrutable rules?

<comment><USER5> I dont see "pretty clear guidelines". I see an attempt to regulate complex human behaviour in a one dimensional document. it does not consider culture, tradition and upbringing in different regions. a friendly comment in one culture could be seen as unwelcoming or even sexist in another.

the same with "Focusing on what is best for the community" .. there is no single "best" and no single "community". its a melting pot of cultures, countries and people. what benefits one might not benefit the others.

this CoC is just an attempt to regulate what you cant regulate. maybe just replace it with "dont be an idiot, respect others and assume good intentions".

<comment><USER4> _a friendly comment in one culture could be seen as unwelcoming or even sexist in another._

It could be. That's why subjective interpretation and reasonableness are concepts.

 _there is no single "best" and no single "community"_

There is clearly a single community by any reasonable definition – diffuse though it may be. The role of a set of guidelines is to establish what behaviour that community has generally decided is acceptable or not acceptable. We accept this kind of moderation guideline all of the time.

 _maybe just replace it with "dont be an idiot, respect others and assume good intentions"._

Yeah, that's basically what it says in a little bit more detail, and with a few more examples. So where's the issue?

<comment><USER5> the issue is with people who will follow the CoC to the letter. who will interpret something one says so it fits the CoC definition and will ask for their heads.

just look at the stuff happening to Theodore Ts'o [https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504](https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/1042769399596437504)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sigh.

1\. Most of Linux is written by paid contributors. They won't leave.

2\. Most of those who kindle this flamewar are not Linux contributors but the alt-right. They also got involved in the Larry Garfield-Drupal affair (which was extremely poorly communicated).

3\. If I may offer an explanation on why Code of Conducts are important: [https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead- deve...](https://medium.com/@chx/a-note-from-an-open-source-lead-developer- who-got-banned-from-his-community-due-to-code-of-conduct-22d8f066ab9e)

<comment><USER7> The alt-right, seriously?

<comment><USER8> If you have a better umbrella term for the cretins who think "Social Justice Warrior" is an epithet, I think we'd all be fine with using it instead. Until then, it seems to me that the alt-right is a reasonable proxy.

<comment><USER9> If you oppose a group, it's just as wrong to automagically get labeled "the other group" the first group finds most revolting.

<comment><USER10> the minute you separate people into groups even on false criteria, you discriminate against the group you do not belong to.

there's an episode of you are not smart about this:

[https://youarenotsosmart.com/2018/02/26/yanss-122-how-our- un...](https://youarenotsosmart.com/2018/02/26/yanss-122-how-our-unchecked- tribal-psychology-pollutes-politics-science-and-just-about-everything-else/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is trolling by people who do not understand the GPLv2, and has happened before. Someone had the "brilliant idea" of "retroactively revoking" the GPLv2 a decade ago (2008): [http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2006062204552163](http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2006062204552163)

You cannot do it. The only way the right to distribute GPLv2 software gets revoked is for a _specific party_ that distributes a GPLv2 licensed work in violation of the GPLv2 distribution terms.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is odd that Theo T'so, who resisted introducing backdoors into /dev/random, was the first one targeted by the code of conduct. The allegations made against him are ludicrous. Smells like intelligence agencies using radicalized useful idiots to "take out" vigilant contributors, so they can get their backdoors through. It's worth keeping an eye on these areas of the kernel.

<comment><USER13> There's exactly 0 evidence of this.

<comment><USER14> What do you mean? There's tweets in the article targeting him using the CoC. I don't think anyone would dispute he wanted to use multiple entropy sources. What are you disputing?

<comment><USER15> Evidence of a relationship between the two?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the headline is misleading: not a single developer has been identified who has threatened revoking their license to any contributed code, to the extent that it's even possible.

As for whether it is actually possible, Eric Raymond has an _opinion_, but it's certainly not a legal one (he's not an attorney himself), and the issue has never been adjudicated AFAIK. (IAAL, but this is not legal advice.)

<comment><USER17> ESR's opinions are the trash can of open source quackery. He hasn't said anything coherent or useful in this conversation since... ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I want to sidestep all of the usual back and forth debates in this and point out something that really stuck in my craw...

> 2\. Lack of CC's CoC sustains meritocracy, which "has consistently shown > itself to mainly benefit those with privilege, to the exclusion of > underrepresented people in technology". > [[http://archive.is/o2OzZ](http://archive.is/o2OzZ)]

What is this bullshit idea that the beneficiaries of open source software are those that contributed as opposed to from being able to use it? Good commits benefit everyone.

The idea that someone(s) would block a person's commit based on some non-code distinction, to the detriment of everyone who uses that software...which possibly also includes the other people contributing to it...is completely ludicrous.

</comment><comment><USER19> I have read this a few times, and it still is not clear to me who is trolling who here. Is this a mix of 4chan, or shills acting through 4chan, pretending to be SJW's? I thought most people left 4chan long ago.

I have used the Covenant Code of Conduct [1] in my git repos for some time and I don't see how this has derailed into so much drama.

[1] - [https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of- con...](https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct)

</comment><comment><USER20> This is going to be an interesting approach.

On one hand I'm against the approach because it means that contributions that have been dependent on may just disappear. (Kind of anti-community)

On the other hand: it gives the people who contribute work to the project leverage. People who contribute shouldn't be under threat of being bullied by this.

Let's be honest, people who can just make up the rules about 'whats a violation' will abuse that power.

<comment><USER4> _Let 's be honest, people who can just make up the rules about 'whats a violation' will abuse that power._

The problem with that interpretation is _that is already the situation, except to a much greater extent_.

People holding a position of power in a community inevitably have the ability to use that power and influence to affect the community, including restricting or removing participants. I struggle to see how the introduction of a set of pretty straightforward rules would make that situation worse.

Indeed, one of the major reasons for introducing that set of rules is for somebody to be able to subsequently point at it, say "(bullying|privacy violations|personal attacks|sexual imagery) are not allowed here, please stop doing it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > A controversy over politics is now seeing some of its developers threatening > to withdraw the license to all of their code, potentially destroying or > making the whole Linux kernel unusable for a very long time.

Interesting. I've been under impression that once you licence your code, you cannot "take it back" (for that particular version or release).

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5419923/can-gpl-be-re- li...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5419923/can-gpl-be-re-licensed)

<comment><USER22> Anyone who definitively tells you that it can or cannot be is not being honest. It's complicated; it's complicated in all the normal ways copyright and contract law are complicated, but compounded by (1) this being a murky, unexplored area of copyright and (2) the collaborative, open source code sharing model thriving in part based on legal ambiguity (e.g. collaboration incentivized when potential antagonists can each pretend the law favors their Plan B).

As an example of the difficulty: U.S. Copyright gives authors absolute termination rights.[1][2] An author can unilaterally choose to terminate a license or transfer 35 years subsequent to the grant, but no more than 40 years after. A contract, promise, or some other contrivance executed to nullify the right is void, just like you can't willingly contract yourself into slavery. Which is to say, a court won't punish you in any way, shape, or form for statutory termination; and won't hear any arguments about reliance or other arguments intended to coax a court to enjoin termination.

However, statutory termination requires notice to be given at least 2 years prior (but not more than 10 years prior) to termination. There are unresolved questions regarding notice and its effect. Many observers (including Stallman) are of the opinion that statutory termination rights are of little or no practical consequence to FOSS because of the technical requirements of notice, but arguably that's motivated thinking on their part.

The types of termination being discussed in the context of the CoC involve more context-dependent questions of law and fact. If the practical effects of the most clear-cut and categorical route to termination are still left open, you can bet that other routes to termination pose significant unresolved questions and implications.

[1] Statutory Termination: [https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html#203](https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap2.html#203)

[2] Copyright Office's rules for effective notice: [https://www.copyright.gov/title37/201/37cfr201-10.html](https://www.copyright.gov/title37/201/37cfr201-10.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why do people in the name of diversity destroy everything they touch?

<comment><USER24> Some people do, some don't. (Of course the True Scotsmans are aware of the problem.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> More mountains out of molehills.

LKML has been relatively quiet if you consider the number of subscribers on that list.

There's basically a few ambulance chasers trying to drum up business, and pretty much everyone involved knows to ignore them.

But that won't stop folks from trying to generate views, clicks, followers, etc. by reporting on and exaggerating the practically nonexistent situation.

Also, Unrelated ESR story: In my teens my LUG saw him visit our regular meeting while he was in town for some other event, back in the 90s when linux was on a hype wave. We all went, as we normally did, to a group dinner afterwards. He and his guest straight up vanished on us before the bill came. I don't even know what he came for, he didn't tell or show us anything interesting. He behaved like a celebrity and forced a small group of broke kids to have to pay for him and his guest's meals. I don't even know how we managed to scrounge up the money, I certainly didn't have it.

ESR can go f*ck himself.

</comment><comment><USER26> I hope so much that we find out what the actual political game here is. That this kind of stuff happens now, shortly after Linus takes a break, is not a coincidence. That has been growing there for quite some time. But who and why? I don't know yet and am happy for any hint.

</comment><comment><USER27> I appreciate this website trying to reach out to someone to see if this threat has teeth. But I don't trust RMS nor ESR to know the relevant law, not being lawers. And I don't trust ESR to be truthful when an issue aligns with his personal opinions.

</comment><comment><USER28> I hate this timeline...

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm as guilty as anyone of this, and is there anything in the CoCs that say something like "start by assuming the best of everyone involved?" Is that possible here?

</comment><comment><USER30> This is extremely slanted article.

</comment><comment><USER31> If they did this, what would make Linux devs any less evil than <pick a large company name>?

Linux would lose a LOT of corporate support. You'd see businesses migrate [back] to Windows. You'd see support for Linux being dropped left and right. It would set Linux back _a decade_ if they did this. All because they don't want to grow as a person. This is the emotional equivalent of, "I'll just take my ball and go home!"

</comment><comment><USER32> Mods please update the title. It's clickbait to the extent everyone has to click it to learn what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER33> Linux developers? Which ones exactly?

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Right-wing trolls stirring the pot. Don't give them the benefit of your attention.

<comment><USER34> Regardless of the messenger, take a look at the message. What _would_ happen if a kernel developer were to withdraw the rights to their code? How would the community deal with that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is... not an easy matter.

To begin with, I wouldn't be surprised if this is fueled by fringe right wing interests, similar to GamerGate etc. Second, I am generally in favor of CoCs and changes that aim to elevate minority groups. Thirdly, it's often hard to take "we have no problems with diversity" at face value when it comes from those favored by a lack of CoCs.

All that said - This, to me, seems like a hard call to make. An updated CoC seems great, and I agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of it, and the need for it. On the other hand, I find the lack of definition and process it entails problematic. Hopefully it's a "two steps forward, one step back" situation and not the other way around.

<comment><USER35> Not be particularly salty, but Hacker News is not where I expected to face a slew of downvotes without commentary.

Anyone care to point out what I said that was so offensive, or nah?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's really, really unsurprising that ESR is at the heart of this. He's been extremely upset about being kicked out of various programming communities after deciding that his new life goal is redefine the stereotype, "Racist Old Uncle Who Totally Knows Kung Fu and Probably Invented All Modern Economics Independently." It's equally predictable that never-been-that-relevant Mark Kern is rabble-rousing for this, as that's practically his livelihood. In neither case should this really be mistaken for a wide-held sentiment.

The problem with the project and license structure of Linux in 2018 is that literally any threat the relatively small number of neo-reactionary programmers can execute on can simply be paved over by various large corporations simply assigning more resources to pick up any slack. For them, ensuring continuity in Linux is both a public commitment and an business requirement.

In other words: this is another ill-considered example of burning shoes you already bought in protest. Since most of substance of their work has already been turned over to the public consciousness, it's relatively straightforward to continue with that work or to replace it if a licensing conflict comes up.

Doubly so since the actual slice of people who will put up this much of a fight over an agreement to adhere to professional standards is quite small.

<comment><USER37> I've been reading ESR for decades and have never noticed him saying anything racist. Can you provide a few examples?

(And I suppose using "old" in this way is against the CoC?)

<comment><USER11> Here is a good example of ESR being racist: [https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833](https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/816449724127608833)

Here is an example of ESR being misogynist: [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=6907)

<comment><USER37> I recall thinking it sounded like BS at the time, but the "misogynist" link seems prescient in hindsight.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Do Startups Hire Well?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.markevanstech.com/2012/02/20/how-do-startups-hire-well/ <comment><USER2> Does this article strike anyone as vague?</comment>


Steve Wozniak First in Line for iPhone 4S - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcbayarea.com/blogs/press-here/Steve-Wozniak-First-in-Line-for-iPhone-4S-131816808.html

<comment><USER2> I like Woz, but his "everyman" schtick for new product releases is getting kind of old.

He's got connections to Apple, I don't think anyone would begrudge him getting a pre-release unit, or having one held for him, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess he just enjoys the 'High' of being first in line for a new Apple product.</comment></comment>


A $99.99 Surfboard Upends the Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/wavestorm-s-99-99-surfboard-upends-the-industry <comment><USER2> How long until this happens in the snows sports industry? Mid level snowboards / skis sell in the $500 range, with high end going for $1000+. Most probably have < $50 worth of raw materials and < $100 worth of labour costs.

As Signal have shown, you can make a snowboard out of just about anything once you have the machinery (which is where the high initial investment happens i suppose): [http://signalsnowboards.com/shows/ett/season-1](http://signalsnowboards.com/shows/ett/season-1)

<comment><USER3> I am pretty sure you can go to any ski resort and pick up a second hand board for the close to $100 bucks.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, and you can pick up gear that is unused but from a couple of seasons ago for significantly less than the new season's stuff.

I guess the board rental part of the market currently takes the place of a low cost gear for beginners alternative, and if you're only spending a few days a year on the slopes you might not even be bothered about buying your own gear.

<comment><USER4> New season skiboard sounds like new season wrench/plier to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surfer here, this isn't really "disrupting" the surfboard industry. It's actually helping it because it lowers the barrier of entry and in turn introduces the sport to more people. There is still a very big market for performance surfboards in the ~$500 range.

<comment><USER6> Question, if you are new to surfing, where to do you go in Southern California without the threat of bullying by locals?

<comment><USER7> Bullying by locals doesn't really happen and if you've experienced it, it's most likely a safety issue or you're violating some surfing etiquette. Head over to Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/surfing/wiki/index](https://www.reddit.com/r/surfing/wiki/index) for their detailed beginner's guide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> the open secret about surfing is that most people only try surfing once-- usually on vacation. this is because to be a "surfer", (a) you have to live within a 20 mile proximity of a very select area of coastline; and (b) it takes many different sessions, spread out over a long period of time, in order for you to become proficient. this is largely due to the fact that you need to paddle out to the wave.

compare this to snowboarding. your first time on a mountain, you will absolutely "snowboard". there's a lift that carries you directly to the top of the mountain.

surfing is like going skiing or snowboarding without a lift. you'd have to hike up a mountain every time you wanted to ski. think of how many people would end up being proficient.

that is why this $99 surfboard has really taken off. there may be 2.7 million surfers as the article states (which i find highly doubtful--this is way too high a number), but there are many more times that inland people that try surfing on their holiday and then never go again.

<comment><USER9> > this is way too high a number

I assume you've never lived in Southern California? You'd be astounded at the number of casual surfers (by that, I mean someone who surfs at least once a month) who own surfboards. And that's just one high concentration surf area.

<comment><USER8> i live in socal but on second thought 2.7mm is pretty realistic i guess. hard to get a baseline. there are around 30mm golfers in the us; but for surfing, 1/3 of the usa lives on the coastline (123mm people); maybe 1/3 of that is surfable (basically ca, fl, hi, and then maybe or, wa, nc, va); so anyway 1/9 of golfers? makes sense

<comment><USER9> Basically every state with a coastline has some amount of surfers. All the Pacific and Gulf states have well-known breaks, as do the southern Atlantic coasts. The Mid-Atlantic and Northeast have fewer "quality" surf spots, but they're all surfable. Even Alaska has a well known break, though AK's population limits its contribution to total surfers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Man, I came here expecting an article about Motorola Surfboard modems. I really need to get out more.

</comment><comment><USER11> I learned how to surf on one of these. It's a nice beginner board, easy to catch waves, and soft enough that it didn't hurt when it bonked me in the head while I was still learning.

<comment><USER12> "soft enough that it didn't hurt when it bonked me in the head while I was still learning"

That's a really good point, I always forget about the safety aspect. There's nothing like getting slammed in the back of the head by a 9'6" fiberglass school bus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This video came out in 2013 of a pro surfer riding the Wavestorm in the big waves of Jaws. It helped fuel Wavestorm's sales, if it rides pretty well at Jaws, it will be just fine in a 2 or 3 foot beginner swell.

[https://youtu.be/0s2cCHg5EEs?t=1m51s](https://youtu.be/0s2cCHg5EEs?t=1m51s)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is one of my favorite boards to go out on, whether I'm in Hawaii or Florida - it's really good quality.

I never gave it much thought, so it's very cool to learn the business story behind it.

</comment><comment><USER15> These boards are especially great for mushy days. Another great board is the 5'8" Sushi fish if you like shorter boards. I have one for the smaller, weaker days and it's a blast.

[http://reviews.costco.com/2070/100114919/keeper-sports- produ...](http://reviews.costco.com/2070/100114919/keeper-sports-products- california-board-company-sushi-58-fish-surfboard-reviews/reviews.htm)

</comment><comment><USER16> Apparently by $99 in store: [http://costcocouple.com/wavestorm-8-soft-top- surf-board/](http://costcocouple.com/wavestorm-8-soft-top-surf-board/)

$179 shipped. Shipping is almost same price as the board. [http://www.costco.com/surfboards.html](http://www.costco.com/surfboards.html)

<comment><USER17> You are shipping a huge impractically shaped object (too long for many regular shelves).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the first news story I've seen with an explicit tl;dr line at the bottom.

<comment><USER19> Plus the obnoxious Bloomberg habit of writing a sentence, then writing it immediately again in A HUGE FONT SIZE for no obvious reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wave Storms have been around for years so this story really doesn't cover anything new.

It's also not really disruption because Wave Storms are considered entry level boards that if anything drives demands for more expensive boards once someone actually makes it a hobby.

When I read the article I was hoping for a stylish mass produced fiberglass board. Now that would truly disrupt the market.

<comment><USER20> Well i mean were close. With all the current Mass produced boards made by like JS (for example). They are glassed in china and should not cost even close to what they charge for them.

The only problem is profit margins from the companies that actually are able mass produce boards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Surfing sucks. Don't try it."

</comment><comment><USER22> There are so many different kinds of markets like this. Just to pick another example:

(In Europe) You can today pay 800 Euro for a chinese-made electric bike that sorta works, or 2000 Euro for something built in Germany that really works (with a drive engine made by Bosch taking most of that profit margin).

I'm pretty sure the difference in price isn't down to the cost of the raw materials, but rather the know-how. This know-how will become common knowledge soon...

</comment><comment><USER23> This isn't disruption. It's just "make something that's cheaper and/or better".

It's a 75+ year old idea called called Creative Destruction.

</comment><comment><USER24> Title misleading, expecting a super cable modem</comment>


74 year old woman arrested for resisting arrest.. for that arrest - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130702/13385923696/texas-trooper-shoves-74-year-old-then-arrests-her-felony-assault-when-she-hits-him-with-her-purse.shtml

<comment><USER2> This shows the importance of remaining calm as possible when dealing with the police. Especially if they're being arseholes. You sort it out later with complaints and civil litigation.

Also this reminds me of the guy who had committed 2 crimes, was wrongfully convicted of committing a third and sent to prison. This was a long sentence because of 3 strikes laws. All the appeals ran their course. He escaped from prison, gathered evidence, and had his wrongful conviction quashed. He was the re-arrested for escaping from prison and convicted and again, because of 3 strikes laws, sent away for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER3> A better Techdirt article than usual, but it says _right in the headline_ that she was arrested for felony assault. Rewriting the headline to be factually incorrect misrepresents both the situation and the article. Why would you do that? Flagged.

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this part of the article particularly interesting, because I've seen more than a few comment threads on HN lately where people say you can't be arrested for resisting arrest alone (as it makes no logical sense)

 _Because Contempt of Cop has yet to be codified into our criminal statutes, the trooper allegedly drew a blank at first when filling out his report. But even the final reduced charges are ridiculous, especially the resisting arrest charge. If you 're going to charge someone with resisting arrest, it should logically follow that an arrest was already in progress. _

<comment><USER4> Can you point us to a thread where someone actually said you can't get arrested for resisting arrest? That's a nonsensical belief. You do not have a right to resist arrest.

<comment><AUTHOR> They said you can't be arrested for resisting arrest alone, of which there have been many recent cases.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. If you're arrested "for resisting arrest", there must have been some arrest in progress. I assume the claim is instead that the arrest was somehow invalid. Some states have an affirmative defense to "resisting" charges when excessive force is used, but otherwise: resisting arrest is itself a crime.

If the police try to arrest you, don't fight back.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _If you 're arrested "for resisting arrest", there must have been some > arrest in progress._

That's exactly how a sane person would expect it to work, but it's not the case lately in America. There have been many recent examples of people being arrested and the only charge is "resisting arrest". Of course they get let out of jail 12-24 hours later, but at that point the police have removed you from what you were doing (protesting, for e.g.) and they now have your fingerprints, photo and you have a history of arrest.

A quick Google gave me:

[http://www.naturalnews.com/040399_adam_kokesh_resisting_arre...](http://www.naturalnews.com/040399_adam_kokesh_resisting_arrest_philadelphia_protest.html)

There are many more examples.

<comment><USER4> Hopefully nobody is disputing that the police sometimes arrest people for bogus reasons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sean Murphy on the first dozen enterprise customers - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/09/sean-murphy-on-the-first-1-6-enterprise-customers.html

<comment><USER2> Sean is a really great guy. He helped my partner and I out when we were sort of at a crisis point. He reached out and gave us several hours of his time and put us in touch with a great advisor who we are still working with.

</comment><comment><USER3> skmurphy approached me a while back to see if I'd like to get some help with my business, and I gratefully accepted. I found him (and Theresa) to be dedicated, extremely intelligent, knowledgeable in multiple fields, and -- best of all for anyone willing to try working with me -- very patient.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a fantastic interview. It has given me a new perspective on how a B2B is started. In my mind it was like building a pretty much finished product and then sending some emails around to people who might be interested. But instead it seems much harder to get the first couple of customers and you want to work really closely with those first customers to get credibility, success stories and last but not least to improve and develop your product according to their needs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I found this to be a really worthwhile read. This is about the stage we are at right now and I've really been thinking about many of the points that were brought up here which clarified my thoughts. It's long, but definitely worth it.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've only read the first few pages, but this sounds exactly like Steve Blank's 4 steps - ie. fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why does this read like a page of fake testimonials? :-)</comment>


Building a new Windows 3.1 app in 2019: A Slack Client - <AUTHOR> http://yeokhengmeng.com/2019/12/building-a-new-win-3-1-app-in-2019-part-1-slack-client/ <comment><USER2> _Notice the binary size of the app is only 64KiB._

In the demoscene this would be a disqualification as it's 676 bytes over the limit, but in this case I'll overlook it because of the sheer awesomeness of what you've done (and I'm sure trimming off 676 bytes wouldn't be too difficult ;-)

More seriously, this is an _excellent_ proof-of-concept that a Slack client does not need to use hundreds of MB of RAM and consume most of a modern CPU core to provide its basic functionality. I'm a long-time Win32 programmer who started in the tail-end of the Win16 days and one of the things I've wanted to write if I had the time and need was a Win32 native Slack client, to show that it can be done with far less resources, but you've gone even further with Win16. Win32 has native TLS support (via SChannel library, not well-documented but examples exist) and you'd be able to even use it practically (32-bit applications will run on all current versions of Windows, both 32 and 64-bit.)

Note that C89 only prevents declarations of variables in the middle of a _scope_ ; you can simply create an inner scope with new variable declarations at _its_ start. Like so...

        case WM_PAINT: {
          PAINTSTRUCT ps;
          HDC hdc = BeginPaint(hwnd, &ps);
          ...
        }

Another small tip: if you make it a dialog-based application, you won't have to bother with WM_PAINT and drawing text yourself --- you can just make the "statusText" and "settingsText" edit controls, and use SetWindowText (or SetDlgItemText) to set their content. They will paint themselves automatically just like the listboxes that you used for the chat contents and userlist. At least you'll save some of those 676 bytes that way...

<comment><USER3> > More seriously, this is an excellent proof-of-concept that a Slack client > does not need to use hundreds of MB of RAM and consume most of a modern CPU > core to provide its basic functionality.

If you're so sure that this is possible, then where is the Electron competitor which allows us to build cross platform applications like this, with the same levels of productivity and a consistent and decent user interface? No one needs to be convinced that a native Slack client for each platform would be much better, I wish they would build those clients. The problem is most companies can't reasonably justify the costs of building multiple native clients when a single cross platform one is good enough.

<comment><USER4> Qt and to some extent GTK+ come close. GTK+ can be programmed in Vala which is a fine language that transpiles to C and supports idioms such as asynchronous programming.

<comment><USER5> That's cross platform for Windows, Mac and Linux, but what about Web, Android and iOS?

<comment><USER6> Ignoring that you probably _don't_ want the same interface across all of those...

Qt, as well as Windows, macOS and Linux actually can do Android [0] and iOS [1], and Web is halfway there [2].

[0] [https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/android.html](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/android.html)

[1] [https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/ios.html](https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/ios.html)

[2] [https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_for_WebAssembly](https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_for_WebAssembly)

<comment><USER7> I just want to step in quick to advocate. _Please_ do not use Qt for the web. Their web export tools aren't just unfinished, they're actively hostile to web paradigms. The finished product doesn't render to the DOM, it's completely screenreader inaccessible, it overrides browser preferences. In a lot of ways, Qt on the web is even worse than Flash was.

You know all of the arguments against Electron that people trot out about how it's not real native, and it doesn't follow the right UX conventions or paradigms? Qt on the web is exactly like Electron on native, except _way worse_ and without any sign that it's going to improve, because fundamentally Qt is structured around the idea that it should be able to spit out a binary blob of pixels instead of hooking into web-native primitives like the DOM.

Look into something that's showing more promise, like .NET and Razor. The Rust community is also doing some good work here, although I don't know that they have any UI frameworks that are mature enough to be reliable in an enterprise setting.

These aren't true cross-platform efforts yet, since they're still forcing you to think about HTML. But if I was going to bet on any project ending up with a real cross-platform solution that felt good on the web, some kind of export option from an Open Source Windows Forms or similar is probably what I would bet on. Either Microsoft or (possibly) the Rust community are the two parties that I think are most likely to end up producing a true native UI toolkit that can actually export to the web in a usable, acceptable way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I built a Win 3.1 app during a company hackathon just for fun. Here, I detail learnings and process for how a new old app can be created with the aid of modern tools and hindsight of old technologies. And perhaps what lessons can it offer us today.

Without the benefit of modern libraries and languages, I had to read up and take care of many low level details, socket programming, HTTP, JSON parsing, UI design in code all under tight memory constraints. Nevertheless, it was a terrific lesson in understanding how things work under the hood.

I had to do things the old-fashioned way reading books and header files due to the dearth of online documentation. I can empathise with the plight of the programmers of yesteryears who had to code without the benefit of online search engines.

With this blog post, I hope you'll find it interesting to learn about developing a modern-ancient app for Win 3.1.

[https://github.com/yeokm1/w31slack](https://github.com/yeokm1/w31slack) [https://github.com/yeokm1/http-to-https- proxy](https://github.com/yeokm1/http-to-https-proxy)

<comment><USER8> I expected to be compiled in some kind of VM, not on an _actual_ computer with Windows 3.11 :-).

I feel "old-style" documentation is much better than we have now. My most productive _python_ only work times were when I had only the python .hlp file and a _physical_ paper book.

What are your impressions?

<comment><USER9> I've been programming since 1983. The internet opened up publishing to the masses, which means that non-professional people could also publish, resulting in much more documentation than ever before.

But now the amateur documentation writers are competing with the professional ones; the quality of the professional documentation is still as high as ever, but it can be drowned out by the amateur quality documentation.

All in all, finding the information you need is MUCH quicker via a search engine, but the signal-to-noise ratio is lower.

<comment><USER2> The quality of Microsoft's own documentation has also fallen considerably; the latest nail in the coffin is that docs.microsoft.com thing that started to replace MSDN several years ago, that created tons of ridiculous fuckups in the "migration process". While doing that they also "open sourced" their documentation on GitHub, which to me sounds more like they're just trying to rely on free labour from the "community" to fix the mess.

One of the more memorable WTFs I've seen is this, which is still wrong as of this post:

[https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/api/wininet/n...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/win32/api/wininet/nf-wininet-internetopenurla)

Compare to the old version of the page on MSDN:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20080828050103/http://msdn.micros...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080828050103/http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/aa385098\(VS.85\).aspx)

See what's missing? The newer version is not the correct one... in "migrating" the document to the new site, for a reason that completely defines all rational explanation, _the return type of the function declaration became void_. There are plenty of pages on the new site with this serious error, and they've remained unfixed for well over a year. People report such problems on their GitHub, and they get fixed --- individually --- as they're reported, but it still boggles the mind how such a blatant and widespread error could go through (and the old, correct, content deleted flippantly) without someone in power shouting "STOP!":

[https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/windows-driver-docs- ddi/iss...](https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/windows-driver-docs- ddi/issues/336)

<comment><USER10> MSDN was a gold standard in the 90's. Now you have tragedies like social.technet.com

<comment><USER11> The low quality of the technet "answers" are mind-boggling. Why doesn't Microsoft pull the plug on this?

Also, what's the purpose of the people who will answer nearly any question with a very low-quality (but wordy) answer? What are they getting from this effort?

<comment><USER12> There must be some reputation game there.

You see it on SO too, people answering basic questions 2 seconds after they're postedd with long pastes from documentation that are sorta related to the original question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading this article and others by the same author on his travails of getting Windows 3.11 to install and then bridging it to modern(-ish) tech was like being transported back to the 90s when I was first learning about computers. Seeing those screenshots of the unmistakable Win 3.1-style dialogs was a real nostalgia hit. What a treat.

10 points (well, an upvote, I guess) for anyone who knows why the Windows DOS- mode installer says "Press F3 to exit"

<comment><USER14> I seem to recall that F1 and F2 had some sort of hard wired functions (that were printed on my keyboard) but I don't remember which they were...

<comment><USER15> There was never any that much hardwired functions for F1 and F2 on PC (apart for the convention that F1 is almost always help).

On the other hand there is a related issue: on DEC (and some other) terminals with LK201-style keyboards (which in turn inspired the "modern" PC/AT keyboard layout with F1-F12) the keys in positions of F1-F5 had fixed functions. This is the reason why there are about four different escape sequences across vt220-compatible terminal emulators for F5. There simply was not any DEC terminal that had F5 on its keyboard (F1-F4 are almost always mapped to PF1-PF4).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Related: winevdm makes running 16-bit apps on 64-bit Windows possible: [https://github.com/otya128/winevdm](https://github.com/otya128/winevdm)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh I did not know about this! I just based my understanding from the official Microsoft documentation. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _The stack size of a 16-bit program is typically 4-6 KiB with a similar size > for the heap. This is smaller than the size of the HTTP reply + JSON > returned by Slack!_

Maybe this would be a good opportunity to stop for a moment and reflect about whether or not the industry is really moving in the right direction.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure slack actually uses these apis in their own app? They use websockets for a lot of the communication right? In which case the server just pushes small messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> After the first few paragraphs, I was most eager to see how he managed to handle modern TLS on Win3.1. Last time I wrangled with vintage stuff near that timeframe, that was the toughest part.

Alas, he "cheated" for it with a proxy app. Can't say I blame him, since it's probably about as much work over again to get modern TLS 1.2 working on such an old Windows.

<comment><USER2> IMHO the fact that it's hard to get TLS 1.2 (or indeed any form of "pure" cryptography) working at all on an obscure platform says a lot about the state of commonly available crypto libraries --- as those who are against regulating it like to say, it's "just math"; and math that any computer should theoretically be able to do. OpenSSL is one of the more portable ones, yet I'm not sure how it would be able to handle the 64K segmented model. It would need at least 32KB (maximum TLS record size, multiplied by both directions) and a little bit more per TLS connection. That said, a 2048-bit RSA key is "only" 256 bytes, and ECDH ones are smaller, so I think a TLS 1.2 (or even 1.3) implementation on the platform is definitely in the area of "feasible, but not trivial". A lot of IoT stuff has similar constraints (minus the segmented addressing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Considering that Windows 3.1 takes less space than Electron binary, one can actually run this program in VM and get better performance and less RAM usage than official app.

<comment><USER21> I have DOSBOX, but Windows 3.1 runs very slowly on DOSBOX.

<comment><USER22> I was running win 3.1 under DOSBox fastly since forever (athlon days). You may have some CPU settings wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> If the target was just "Windows 3.1", he should have built a 32-bit app using the Win32s API [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s)]

It's also probably possible to use a current compiler, maybe clang or gcc, to compile such code (officially only up to VC++ 4.2 is supported), although it might require some hacks.

<comment><USER24> Win32s applications can be executed on a limited subset of hardware supported by Windows 3.x.

<comment><USER15> Which is moot point given that the Microsoft-supplied TCP/IP stack is essentially also Win32s application and thus only runs on the same subset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Petzold is Gold. I have a copy of the Fifth Edition that I bought new and I expect it to remain useful for some time yet.

<comment><USER26> Fwiw programming windows by Petzold through the 5th edition covers native Windows development through Windows XP.

The sixth edition on words begins to use the. Net CLR and other non-native toolchains as Microsoft changed them. So, those are less valuable to me.

If you want to do native Windows development, that is probably the single best book you could buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This presents c89 as the most antiquated thing in the world, but VS didn't support mixed declarations and code in a .c file until 2015. There is still a lot of code out there that avoids this to be able to work with MS's compilers.

<comment><USER28> Could have done it with C++, would have worked for calling WinAPI too.

<comment><USER27> If there are gripes about c89 I don't want to think about how different c++ support would be relative to the late 90s or early to mid 2000s, let alone now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > _Purists may not like this solution but this is the best I can do with my > abilities in a reasonable amount of time._

I am going to be using this line a lot in the future.

</comment><comment><USER30> You can probably run this app using WINE on any modern Linux 64-bit system. Or maybe even Mac OS X Catalina.

(The Linux x86 maintainers are semi-seriously considering deprecating the horrible machinations needed for 16-bit on 32-bit to work, but 16-bit on 64-bit Will be supported for the foreseeable future.)

</comment><comment><USER31> Windows 3.1 and 16 bit would be a little too painful for me. Windows 95 was quite nice with 32 bit and preemptive multitasking though. I kind of miss this or Windows 2000.

<comment><USER32> NT4 was _very_ nice, although no USB.

Didn't crash and was smooth as butter.

<comment><USER33> I find this history so super interesting.

Have you kept a nt4? Do you still use it? What do you think is the closest equivalent: win200, reactos??

<comment><USER32> No, I haven't used it since early 2000. Windows 2000 was the successor, also a good release. I guess both are pretty close to what NT4 was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As a side note, since TFA mentions you can't run 16b apps on 64b Windows, I'd like to mention that otvdm/winevdm actually allows you to do it by running Win16 apps on Win32 using Wine!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for raising this to me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Nice, Would have been a lot using with Visual Basic 4, but I guess easy wasn't the point.

<comment><USER36> Same with Delphi. We did decades of applications going from Turbo Pascal in the 80s to Delphi in the 90s and 00s and 10s without hardly any changes (this was possible because I wrote a tooling to convert the DOS Pascal graphics code to Delphi Windows automatically so we ran 1 version of code that compiled on both) right up until the company was sold a couple of years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> You could avoid the copy out of the JSON string by using a field width specifier in your printf formatting string. Those should be available in ANSI C / C89/90.

       currentToken = tokens[index];
       tokenSize = currentToken.end - currentToken.start;

       if(tokenSize <= 0){ continue; }

       printf("Current token %.*s\n", tokenSize, startOfJson + currentToken.start);

<comment><AUTHOR> The printf is just for example code.

In actual fact, I'll have to copy the data to a char array to be sent to display in the listbox.

<comment><USER37> Fair enough. I read this quite literally and thought "not exactly":

> hence I need to use those values to copy out from memory to a separate char > array for printing purposes. Certainly not so trivial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _I had to do things the_ old-fashioned _way reading books and header files [...]_

O tempora o mores!

I'm getting old...

</comment><comment><USER11> Another option would have been Turbo Pascal for Windows 3.1

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal#Turbo_Pascal_for_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_Pascal#Turbo_Pascal_for_Windows)

</comment><comment><USER39> Cool tutorial, I read an article about ideas for mobile applications ([https://mwdn.com/mobile-app-ideas-2020-how-to-create- somethi...](https://mwdn.com/mobile-app-ideas-2020-how-to-create-something- new/)) and now I want to create my own, there is one idea about how to create another application from one application, I read your article and was inspired. thanks :)

</comment><comment><USER40> > Therefore, if one wants to write an app using Windows OS standard APIs, WFW > 3.11 is the oldest one can go back without putting in even more exponential > effort.

Hey, what's wrong with Trumpet Winsock? :-)

<comment><USER41> My thought too - but then I recalled - vaguely - the "setup" procedure for it - so "even more exponential effort" sounded a bit right...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is so amazing, I love all you people who take the time to do these super mega awesome tinker/fun projects and then share them with to the world!

</comment><comment><USER43> Disappointed not to see the now deprecated WSAAsyncSelect function in use. It was their extension to make sockets play nicely with the UI event loop.

They needed some way that you could be waiting for either window messages or socket data. Otherwise your window would stop responding to input or repaint itself if some socket operation blocked.

</comment><comment><USER44> Reading how he cheated with proxy. That was what I wanted to see. :( Had a client of a enterprise style company integrate into one of our products. Dude was the definition of cowboy coder so we often looked at logs. All I can say is wow - them logs for negotiating a https connection in BASIC..

<comment><USER33> please tell us more!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> When I found a win95 box with tp7 on it, my first thought was to write 'modern' things on it. HTTPS, Haskell... I starter writing a lisp. Didn't finish sadly. Because i love the idea of bridging 'old' with the good parts of 'new'

<comment><USER46> Though Lisp is much older than Windows 95 of course :)

<comment><USER45> lisp is forever more modern, you know that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Everyone really should be made to code up a few Win32 apps, at least, before they are allowed to make an Electron app, just so they can get a real sense of what the trade-offs actually are, instead of relying on hearsay and FUD.

</comment><comment><USER48> > Also, we can't write our code directly on the Windows 2000 VM as it has > limited software support for modern IDEs like Visual Studio Code not to > mention security issues.

I'm guessing that Visual C++ 1.52 has no code editing capabilities like Visual Studio?

<comment><AUTHOR> VC++ 1.52 has an internal text editor but nowhere near the capabilities of Visual Studio Code or any modern text editors.

I also use Git and sourcetree and they won't run on Win 2K.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is amazing, very well done. I think every programmer should from time to time build something for a very old platform and appreciate the progress achieved so far.

<comment><USER50> By which you mean that they'll recognize everything that's been stolen from the users, right? Win 3.1 & DOS was probably about the last time I really felt in control of my PC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> > _Windows 10 [...] cannot directly talk to the ancient SMB protocol used by > WFW 3.11._

Not true, you can downgrade the SMB version requirement in the Windows 10 registry.

<comment><USER52> But then you'll have to spend the rest of your life dodging Ned Pyle of Microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> It's unfortunate slack is this difficult to integrate with. Jabber or IRC clients could be spun up with zero pain.

<comment><USER54> Show us :-)

I'm sure writing mIrc was not "zero pain" back in the day. And Jabber needs a XML parser which is more complex than a JSON parser.

<comment><USER22> There are tiny XML parsers out there.

Also, an IRC client is a joke, it can be compiled and built even on BSD 4.3, released in late 80's.

The suckless guys created some IRC clients in few lines, and the sj client is not that difficult.

Heck, you could write an IRC client with Bash and even with Netcat/ed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I wonder how much easier this would have been in Borland C++ or Borland Pascal with OWL.

Or even Delphi! Delphi 1 targeted Win16.

</comment><comment><USER56> Aaw cheating with https. I wonder if an embeddable library like BearSSL would be hard to get working.

<comment><AUTHOR> Something I can try next time! I didn't know about BearSSL before

<comment><USER22> Or FreePascal/Lazarus with OpenSSL. If you build a Win16 statically linked binary it may work.

[https://wiki.freepascal.org/Win16](https://wiki.freepascal.org/Win16)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> So a properly native Slack client exists for Windows 3.1 before modern platforms? Whaat the hell?

<comment><USER58> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19617699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19617699)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I'm a bit disappointed that the code doesn't appear to use Whitesmith style...

</comment><comment><USER60> Do the public slack APIs offer enough to built a third party client?

<comment><AUTHOR> I felt it was enough for me. :)

[https://api.slack.com/](https://api.slack.com/)

<comment><USER60> Thanks! given the amount of complaining about slack on HN I thought someone would have produced a native open source client by now. I might look into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> snprintf() may not be C89, but fgets() sure is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. Will update my blog post!

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm pretty surprised to see slack client exists for Windows 3.1 before modern platforms

</comment><comment><USER62> Bravo

</comment><comment><USER63> This is a lot of work to avoid using that WYSIWYG editor.

<comment><USER64> There's an option to disable the WYSIWYG editor now :)

Unfortunately, it still doesn't work as good as before: text like `Object`s (no space between the ending ` and next text) doesn't work anymore, and according to Slack's support this is 'working as intended'.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unsure why it goes to twitter. Here is the blog post. [http://yeokhengmeng.com/2019/12/building-a-new- win-3-1-app-i...](http://yeokhengmeng.com/2019/12/building-a-new-win-3-1-app- in-2019-part-1-slack-client/)

<comment><USER65> Changed now from [https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927593460642615296](https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927593460642615296).

Edit: oh, I see what happened now. We made a mistake, intending to set the URL for [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21831931). Sorry!

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> OMG, this is amazing tutorials bro</comment>


Improving the Responsiveness of the Document Detector - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/10/improving-the-responsiveness-of-the-document-detector/ <comment><USER2> Couple of days ago I tried the "scanning" feature. Had dozens of receipts that I needed to scan. I was really impressed with document edge detection. I was also able to stack 2 receipts and scan as one document. The edge detection was failing in some cases. However, I was able to correct the edges manually. I had a document with 2 different color background, the app had some issues detecting the edges on it. It was detecting the only part of the document with same color. But again I was able to manually select the edges and able to scan entire document.

<comment><USER3> I've also had good luck with "scannable" in the past (acquired by evernote, but still works without evernote). One nice thing about their UI is that as soon as it gets a good lock, it acquires and processes the image, and then moves on to the next one, making it really easy to quickly scan a stack of papers into a single PDF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can they improve the resolution of the scanned document by exploiting that multiple images are taken from different angles?</comment>


Inuit.css - Another CSS framework - <AUTHOR> http://csswizardry.com/inuitcss/

<comment><USER2> Looks nice. But there should be some way to see the source without downloading a zip.

Github is an easy answer, something like what the HTML5 Boilerplate or backbone.js does would be even cooler.

<comment><USER3> Wow, on Hacker News, cheers guys!

I'm Harry, the guy who made inuit.css. There is a link to inuit.css in the page's h1, which I _know_ is way too hidden: <http://csswizardry.com/inuitcss/css/inuit.css>

I'm a designer/front-end dev at heart so I don't know Git(hub) at all. I have made an account about an hour ago though and I'm hoping to get inuit.css on there asap. Just gotta learn it now.

Cheers, H

<comment><USER4> Any reason for using height:101% instead of overflow-y:auto for scrollbars?

Also, shouldn't the utf-8 declaration be at the top before a massive block of commented text? Though in practice I'm not sure if it matters much either way.

Thanks

<comment><USER3> overflow-y, although relatively stable, has only been officially proposed in CSS3. So I could (and might) use overflow-y, but the height:101%; is a hangover from when overflow-y was a non-standard bit of CSS.

I don't dislike the overflow-y method, I just used the one I've used for year. I might update inuit.css to use the more obvious overflow-y property soon though.

Good spot on the charset declaration though. Thank you very much. I'll update on my lunch break or something :)

Thanks, H

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was skeptical at first and skimmed through inuit.css - I must say the "debug" stuff, in particular checking for images without alt tags and links without titles, et cetera, is rather nice. I'd like to see this packaged in a Sass/SCSS format too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks cool (pun intended). The website could use more demo pages, though. It could also have a section "Sites using Inuit.css" with screenshots. Why would I use Inuit.css instead of Blueprint ( <http://www.blueprintcss.org/> )?

<comment><USER7> Why would I use Blueprint, when I could use the excellent 960 ( <http://960.gs/> ) by Nathan Smith? To me all of the above choices are good as long as there is a way to use Sass ( <http://sass-lang.com/> ) like in Compass ( <http://compass-style.org/> ) to remove the presentation code from your markup, i.e. span-8, grid_4, etc., using sass. Compass defaults to Blueprint, but thankfully there is the excellent compass-960 plugin ( <https://github.com/chriseppstein/compass-960-plugin> ) so you also can use 960.

Anyway, I will try Intuit and see how it compares to the above. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a developer, I'd like to thank front-end designers and CSS experts for style-sheets like this, but why isn't there a demo page ? It seems kind of obvious since this contributes to a project's look-and-feel.

<comment><USER9> A demo page would have been nice but I went for it anyway. I applied this to an internal app at work and it went to a 5/10 to 8/10 with about 45 minutes of work. It's really nice for us not-so-good-at-designing types.

<comment><USER10> _A demo page would have been nice_

Documentation would have been nice, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I've put a little system in place where, instead of margin-right:20px;, the > grid items have a margin-left:20px; applied. This pushes them all a little > too far across but doesn't break if you put them in a container that is 20px > too wide. Then, once all that's happened you pull the container back by > 20px.

That doesn't really make sense to me. Why not just use :last-child, and use a JS fallback if you really want to support browsers that don't support that?

<comment><USER12> Why use :last-child and a JS fallback when you can use CSS without a JS fallback?

<comment><USER11> One means more work on my behalf, and the other is to support a minority of users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Question: I viewed the site on my G2 and could not zoom or otherwise change the size. Why is that? Is this controllable using Inuit?

</comment><comment><USER10> Sorry, "body { width:940px; }", really?

It's 2011, we should be using fluid layouts (see blueprint-liquid, emastic).</comment>


YouTube Red - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/red <comment><USER2> It will be really interesting to see what they do to fight ad blockers. Is a war going to start? I'd still prefer to watch Youtube _not_ signed in and with an ad-blocker.

As far as I can tell, the paid service requires sign-in, (There's probably no way to make it work without sign-in) and I have reservations about that as I want to not share my viewing data. By not logging in and flushing cookies at the end of each viewing session, I give them as little as possible.

</comment><comment><USER3> It will be really interested to compare this to google contributor [0] in a year or so and know what's working, what isn't working, and why.

[0] [https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/](https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "As an added bonus, your YouTube Red membership includes a free subscription to Google Play Music, with access to its extensive catalog of music. If you're already a Google Play Music subscriber, you'll receive a free YouTube Red membership."

That's an interesting way to bootstrap their paying userbase</comment>