Why your airline seat may shrink even more under new regulations - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-your-airline-seat-may-shrink-even-more-under-new-regulations-2018-09-24 <comment><USER2> So they show a table confirming only two out of about eight airlines have a 28" pitch, and yet they argue the legal minima will become 28. Guys.. its not that hard: force the two dogs to come up to scale, set the minimum at 31" or 32" and then give some cost support to migrate.

PS Airlines re-configure seating when it suits them. The "it costs too much to move them" argument feels pretty tragically bogus. Somebody lobbied to hard, if thats being believed.

<comment><USER3> Except it was noted that anything 27" or more is 'safe'. While they could easily force a few to make them 30", there is no legal reason to do so, even when it is clearly the right thing to do here.

<comment><USER2> Oh I have no doubt we won't get regulation for public good: we'll get regulation for minimum cost/lawsuit outcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"It would have been nice if they did this in 1985," Elliott said. "If the government does what I think it's going to do, this is going to give airlines a license to reduce space even more. I don't see the consumer benefit."

The obvious consumer benefit is cheaper flights. Smaller seats mean lower costs, and competition should force airlines to pass the savings on to consumers. If they're colluding to keep the savings to themselves, that's a failure of anti-trust law, not a failure of seat size law. I don't see why the government should force people to pay extra for luxury.

<comment><USER5> Don't be too optimistic about "smaller seats meaning lower costs" because it might not.

Cereal packages has gotten smaller, but the prices for cereal hasn't gone down.

<comment><USER6> That's a bad comparison. Generally, shrinking the size of a packaged good is a way to compensate for inflation without sticker shock, a huge problem in a very price-sensitive market like groceries. The chief the government measures inflation, in fact, is the Consumer Price Index, which measures the cost of a "basket" of consumer goods. [0]

The cost of flying, on the other hand, has fallen dramatically since deregulation. [1]

[0] [https://www.bls.gov/CPI/](https://www.bls.gov/CPI/) [1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how- air...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline- ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/)</comment></comment></comment>


Tailwind: style your site without writing any CSS - <AUTHOR> https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/11/01/tailwind--write-css-without-the-css/ <comment><USER2> How would have React adoption looked like if it wasn't backed by a tech giant? React propounds a very controversial idea: to put HTML inside Javascript. Of course, once you get the hang of it, it all makes perfect sense: tight coupling and composability.

Tailwind, along the same lines, proposes a contrarian idea and it will only make sense once you start working with it. Here's what I have seen happen frequently: As the CSS grows, so does the bloat and repetitiveness of the same basic style. Let's say you want to position elements in the center of a component? "display: flex, align-items: center" easy. But what do you do when you encounter that same requirement again? Creating a utility class and replacing existing once will be a pain, so you add the same styles again. And that's how folks you end up with a megabyte of CSS doing a job that could be done in <100Kb.

This pattern is more pervasive than you think. The fundamental problem is that we are not thinking about styling in terms of composability of basic styles.

The benefits of utility classes outweigh the cons. You can iterate faster, you don't have to fight the framework, you don't have rethink abstractions at every point ("this style belongs to a component or a utility class") and as CSS becomes more expressive you'll need fewer classes anyways. I hope Tailwind takes off because styling definitely needs to be less painful than it's today.

<comment><USER3> The benefits absolutely do not outweigh the cons. For starters, your CSS can never compile down to a smaller size than component CSS - ever. Because of the nature of compositional classes the plateau of problems expands out almost infinitely, and the resultant inconsistencies necessitate new overrides, more code, more complexity, more misdirection.

What size site do you work on? How often do you have to completely change an interface, or move a component from one place to another without it breaking _at all_ , and how well does that work for you with Tailwind? How do you plan to scale this codebase consistently across organizations, teams, potentially platforms?

Tailwind and the frameworks like it are absolutely terrible at scale. I've spent years of my life trying to remove functional css from sites trying to scale while it holds them back.

<comment><USER4> Co-author of Tailwind CSS here. Prior to building Tailwind, I followed more traditional approaches to writing CSS, like BEM. In fact, I remember when BEM first came out, and people hated it too. I've worked on small projects, and very large projects. I recently rebuilt a large web app using Tailwind, and my resulting CSS was TINY. I use Tailwind in conjunction with Purge CSS. The resulting filesize was 8.1kb gzipped (42kb).

> Tailwind and the frameworks like it are absolutely terrible at scale.

My experience has been the opposite. BEM is terrible at scale. You write the CSS, but then never dare change it, because you have no idea of the consequences of those changes. Developers end up duplicating BEM components for their use case, because it's safe. Which just leads to more CSS code. It's also worth noting that we're seeing more and more large companies move to utility based CSS, including GitHub and Heroku.

<comment><USER5> At scale, the priority is isolation of components. This allows things to be composed, moved, etc. without affecting each other.

We accomplish this in our web app (over 500 kloc) by simply giving each component's top-level element a unique, formulaic, memorable CSS class (which is very easy to do with SASS/SCSS). And each component gets its own CSS (or .scss) file, HTML file, JS file(s), and I18n directory. The app loads each component's CSS when that component is loaded at run time (which could be during startup or later). I just don't see how one could get more straightforward than this for a large app.

We do have some classes that are included in the base-level stylesheets and shared among components, but we only use those when it would result in less code than not, or when necessary for themeing.

It may take a lot of effort to build this kind of architecture, but once you're there it's a breeze to create, compose, and maintain UI components.

<comment><USER6> The problem with isolation of components is that then the stylesheets are no longer cascading -- each component needs to be re-designed to fit within a design framework, and there's no CSS reuse between components is entirely copy-and-paste. Good luck re-styling anything for "dark mode" without having to hand-visit each component's JavaScript and CSS.

Plus, component isolation has really slow polyfills. None of the Google stuff as of late runs on anything other than Chrome for like a year after launch because it's too slow and broken -- everything is being rewritten in Polymer, which relies on browser support for component isolation.

<comment><USER3> Avoiding the cascade is kind of the point, although I'm sure that sounds antithetical. IMO, the cascade should be treated with an "opt-in" approach, where you have a fine degree of control over what, precisely, is cascading and why.

In general, with component CSS, you will tend to avoid the cascade, except within your component. This is actually where utility classes have some value - if they're scoped very tightly to the parent, and their effects are well- understood - then your single purpose class can add an easy way to do simple updates.

That being said, for my part, and on my own website (doggos.com) we do not use any form of utility classes whatsoever. The entire website depends upon isolation, and through this isolation, I have a degree of control that I've not found in applications that have opted for other methods.

In short, it's worked very well for us.

As for your dark mode example... you should take a look at how Apple made dark mode a reality with their new Mojave update. I think you will be surprised at the level of isolation their interface demands and, although we're no longer talking about the web here, just how easy it was for them to implement...relatively speaking.

In short, I can make a site go dark with components, no problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is not for me. I am very good at, and very comfortable writing CSS since I've been doing it since the CSS Zen Garden days. But I understand the pains this is trying to solve and I think that this is the wrong approach and also the wrong abstraction.

\- If you don't like CSS, this will not help you write less CSS, it will only make you write it inline and using a weird syntax.

\- If you want to do the sensible thing and compose your styles into components then you'll still have to write CSS with the weird syntax and add a PostCSS to your dev pipeline. Not to mention that you'll still have to have some kind of system for your class naming.

\- The order of the clases does not matter, the specificity is decided by the order in which they appear in the source. I can see all kind of untraceable bugs coming from that.

I've used BEM and SMACSS and similar before and I think they are useful as a naming convention for teams but I don't think of them as great tools to writing better CSS. In my humble opinion CSS-in-JS solutions are closer to a great abstraction. I quite like both StyledJSX (for react) and .vue files in which you can write plain css and forget about the global aspects of CSS and the cascade for the most part.

But I can see why some people will dislike that as fiercely as they dislike tailwind.

I think Styled System is a better abstraction than tailwind: [https://github.com/jxnblk/styled-system](https://github.com/jxnblk/styled- system) it's a React library but I can see it's principles could be extracted successfully to plain CSS.

<comment><USER8> Tailwind and CSS-in-JS are not mutually exclusive! On the contrary, they're a terrific match!

<comment><USER9> Not really CSS in js is basically applying styles directly to an element, this one declares a small style sheet upfront and classes on elements are looked up to get style information.

Css in js is very efficient if you don't need any css inheritance. Tailwind is just inefficient for the browser to do all those lookups to resolve the final style bag.

I'm not sure why I would ever use tailwind. It's yet another archaic syntax I have to keep in my head.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, but, respectfully, you misunderstand tailwind in the context of css-in- js. This post might make a better case than I have time to right now: [https://github.com/jlengstorf/gatsby-tailwind- demo](https://github.com/jlengstorf/gatsby-tailwind-demo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lol here we go again. Why does this get people so riled up?

I suspect people who immediately dislike this maybe are not using some type of component-based UI. CSS classes are all about code-reuse. If you have the concept of say a "button" in your UI, and you are copying your button markup every where you use that "button" then it certainly makes sense to have a class for your button markup that encapsulates the styles for that button in a style sheet somewhere.

If using a button component however, you've already created a place for the concept of your button to exist. At that point if you go on making a class in some style sheet that also represents the concept of your button, now your button concept exists in multiple places, linked together by one or several class names. That seems a lot messier to me than using utility first styles, but I don't think it really makes a huge difference one way or another.

<comment><USER11> This can easily be accomplished with SASS and a methodology like BEM. And it makes the markup a lot easier to read.

<comment><USER12> after doing a project with tailwind I have completely abandoned the idea of BEM. while it was nice having clean classes, having the styles directly in the html is way easier to reason about.

<comment><USER13> We're back to filling in style attributes on each tag, aren't we?

<comment><USER14> Not quite, because you can still define thematic defaults and change those globally to suit any changes to your style book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really don't see the benefit. Sure, you don't write "CSS", but you write a lot of classes that look like CSS. If you write class="bg-white no-underline" you could easily write style="background: white; text-decoration: none;" and every frontend guy will understand it. I don't get the point.

<comment><USER16> If this article didn't make it click for you, that's understandable. It took me a long time of hearing about this & thinking it was stupid before it made sense. When that happens to me, it's usually a sign of something good.

The author of Tailwind suggested I read his best effort at explaining why this makes sense.: [https://adamwathan.me/css-utility-classes-and-separation- of-...](https://adamwathan.me/css-utility-classes-and-separation-of-concerns/)

Towards the end of the article it started clicking for me.

<comment><USER17> Easier just to quote the reason he gives:

"With inline styles, there are no constraints on what values you choose... Utilities force you to choose...

You can't just pick any value want; you have to choose from a curated list. Instead of 380 text colors, you end up with 10 or 12."

<comment><USER3> in what way is that consistent tho?

<comment><USER18> In what way is it not? You'll consistently get 10 or 12 colors instead of getting an inconsistent set of colors, for example.

<comment><USER3> But I only want the element to be the color it IS, not a range of colors it could be. Whats to stop a dev using $concrete when they should be using $cloud? or $linkGray instead of $headerLinkGray?

these inconsistencies compound, especially across teams.

<comment><USER18> Nothing would stop them from choosing to use cloud vs. link gray but it's far easier to identify and fix those cases than it is to have #CCC, lighten(#CCC, 10%), etc. around the codebase. This doesn't fix human error, just reduces it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sounds to me like the author should simply use SASS + a good autocomplete feature in their IDE.

When I write CSS, I use a lot of shortcuts. I simply write "mt5" and then press tab, it then auto completes to "margin-top: 5px;". If I write "tdu"+tab and then it goes "text-decoration: underline;". The IDE also shows me in a drop down all the options that can be used after writing "text-decoration".

Changing standards because you do not want to learn or remember something is the perfect example of programmer "laziness". Why remember this super common language when instead I can develop and remember a new obscure abstraction instead?

<comment><USER20> Oh no, laziness! Someone is doing something in an easy and convenient way that somehow doesn't match up with other people's ideals of conceptual purity! :'(

<comment><USER19> Bloating your markup with classes is simply a bad habit. It bites you hard in the long run.

Even the framework that they are using proposes better alternatives.

" _Tailwind encourages a "utility-first" workflow, where new designs are initially implemented using only utility classes to avoid premature abstraction._

 _While we strongly believe you can get a lot further with just utilities than you might initially expect, we don 't believe that a dogmatic utility-only approach is the best way to write CSS._"

Read this page: [https://tailwindcss.com/docs/extracting- components/](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/extracting-components/)

A class based rapid prototyping framework is a powerful tool, don't get me wrong. However, like all tools you should only use them when they truly are needed.

<comment><USER21> Could you suggest how it's bloating the markup and how it'll bite you in the long run?

I understand that maybe adding a bunch of classes for every element will increase the overall size of the page but if it's served with gzip compression doesn't it actually (maybe only technically) work better to have repetitive classes everywhere instead of unique class names?

<comment><USER19> Adding some classes is alright. Things like "row", "column-6" are tolerated evils.

Look at the button from his article:

Buy for $10

That's way too granular.

<comment><USER21> So you're just talking in terms of visual bloat?

On this page it documents how you can create component classes [https://tailwindcss.com/docs/extracting- components/](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/extracting-components/)

       <button class="btn-blue">
         Button
       </button>

Then in your style

       .btn-blue {
         @apply bg-blue text-white font-bold py-2 px-4 rounded;
       }
       .btn-blue:hover {
         @apply bg-blue-dark;
       }

<comment><USER19> The problem with granular classes is that you project won't scale in an efficient way. It also makes refactoring almost impossible.

On a small one page website, do use them. However in something more complex like an e-commerce website theme or a complex web app, you will regret it quickly.

is no better than

It is simply a fancy way to use inline styles.

One of the selling points of CSS is the ability to scale and refactor very quickly and easily. Class based frameworks remove all those benefits. Extracting components and building sementically is the solution. As I said in my previous comment, that framework they are using supports it. They say it themselves:

        "*While we strongly believe you can get a lot further with just utilities than you might initially expect, we don't believe that a dogmatic utility-only approach is the best way to write CSS.*"

I have worked on many contracts where the client came to us because their current web agency wanted to charge crazy prices to refresh their website's design (e-commerce websites change at least one a year). Almost every time, those projects are a pain for both the team and the client because the previous developer decided to be lazy and use classes or inline styles everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's 2018, does CSS supported by modern browsers still lack the basic building blocks of reuse? Why am I being asked to choose between class="resources" (and having to know how to center a div in that resources class) and class="t:center t:wide-margins t:light-bg" (which is basically reintroducing all the harm of style tags). Why can't I, in 2018 and with vanilla CSS, say:

        .resources {
          @include .centered
          @include .wide-margins
          @include .light-bg
        }

It seems like every one of these styling tools is just polishing a turd that is a turd for no reason. I can't imagine why the above would be difficult, it wouldn't have to change anything about the actual application of CSS rules, it could literally just be a simple preprocessor.

Sure give me a library of common ways of doing something. That's great. But the lack of basic code reuse for CSS is staggering. Even if you're doing reuse with SASS you're stuck with the fact that you end up generating a CSS File that's 4-5 times larger than it needs to be.

<comment><USER23> What's wrong with class="centered wide-margins light-bg"? It would do the same as what your .resources class looks like it might do, and it's supported everywhere already.

<comment><USER22> Nothing when everything's a one-off and you only have one supported theme. But if CSS is your component model (e.g. a card is always just a div but with a special style) then you'll have "centered wide-margins light-bg dropshadow" on every one of those divs, rather than just class="card". Similarly if you want to have two different themes with the same DOM, you can't do so easily.

<comment><USER24> Nobody who uses Tailwind would suggest copying the same classes over and over again in the example you're talking about. You would either still create a card component (Tailwind does have the concept of components), or if you were using a framework like Laravel you could create a card blade component that held the tailwind card classes in one place.

<comment><USER22> I wasn't talking about Tailwind, I was talking about vanilla HTML and CSS. I assumed the question asked of me ("what's wrong with"...) was asked in that context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been using tailwind for almost a year and I love it. I would not use something else willingly for something new! Its easy/fast to write and in my mind VERY readable, and if you don't know whats what, their docs are really good.

And for example in React to build a component with conditional styling I use classNames and use props that correspond to classes.

[https://github.com/JedWatson/classnames](https://github.com/JedWatson/classnames)

</comment><comment><USER26> It puzzles me why these Atomic CSS based systems use various mnemonic systems instead of plain English which is much more understandable. I'm not a fan of human-powered text compression.

<comment><USER27> It's based on how often you use a helper. For instance, changing letter spacing is verbose ([https://tailwindcss.com/docs/letter- spacing](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/letter-spacing)) as it's not something you use that often. Tweaking spacing is _very_ common and "padding- horizontal-2" uses an awful amount of characters.

<comment><USER26> In what context is this "an awful amount of characters" an issue? GZip compression is fairly standard these days, and languages based on plain english (or similar languages) has a better level of compression than random text because of repetitive nature of sequences of characters.

I can't believe that mnemonic based languages are easier and more readable than something closer to a natural language. And with the assumption that code is written for humans first, computers second, what is the point of inventing a language that's less readable than the one it's trying to replace? CSS compresses particularly well, as every Atomic CSS based framework tends to point out on it's landing page!

<comment><USER27> It's an awful amount of characters once you multiply it. For instance, the first example ([https://tailwindcss.com/docs/what-is- tailwind/](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/what-is-tailwind/)) would be twice as big:

        <img class="block h-16 sm:h-24 rounded-full mx-auto mb-4 sm:mb-0 sm:mr-4 sm:ml-0"

         I can't believe that mnemonic based languages are easier and more readable > than something closer to a natural language.

Well, it's worked out pretty well in mathematics. This is _not_ about file size at all. It's about defining an "alphabet" of common concepts.

<comment><USER26> Ah, I see your issue: you do know you can have whitespace inside attributes? You don't have to clump all the class names on one line. Scanning vertically is quicker than through the horizontal line-noise of both your examples.

This also has the benefit too, that if you use version control line-based diffs to see what's changed, it will highlight the specific css class name that changed. Handy if you need to ensure that whenever you change the bottom margin, you can see at a glance whether the small prefixed one has been updated too.

On the other hand if you regularly need that many classes to style an element, perhaps it's a good place to refactor commonly occurring class names into a set, and label that set with a meaningful identifier.

As for mathematical notation, it's about as understandable to me as my understanding of Hanzi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Tailwind is really awesome. I switched from bootstrap in some projects and it's been great. You gain a lot of flexibility in your designs

I recommend this post by Adam to anyone who is interested in learning more about utility first CSS.

[https://adamwathan.me/css-utility-classes-and-separation- of-...](https://adamwathan.me/css-utility-classes-and-separation-of-concerns/)

</comment><comment><USER29> I use Bulma (discussed at the end) for all my projects. It's very easy and quick to get started with, but I found myself diverging from this style when I was starting to add new CSS of my own, to get the pages to look exactly how I wanted them.

And due to the lack of tooling, it's hard to refactor CSS (removing duplicate code, etc.) so I'm not sure how scalable it is to adhere to what the OP says for a long time.

<comment><USER30> I never tried Tailwind, I landed to Bulma after using Bootstrap, and then Tachyons, for many years, and I really enjoy it. I find myself maintaining an helper.scss file with basic classes that bulma does not support out of the box, but other than that, it definitely saves me time and, overall, improves the outcomes.

<comment><USER31> Tailwind is basically Tachyons + a bunch of features.

Last time I migrated a project from Tachyons to Tailwind, it was quick and painless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Everytime I see Tailwind/Tachyons/Functional CSS at the top of HN I die a little inside. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you actually like this kind of CSS, you probably don't work on large websites. And when you do, the reason people hate it so much will become abundantly clear to you.

Functional CSS makes for an unscaleable, inconsistent, unmaintainable dumpster fire of styles that is _objectively_ worse than just writing regular CSS.

<sarcasm> But it's convenient, right? So who cares! AirBnB, Facebook, Walmart, Github, and Twitter are all probably wrong anyway. </sarcasm>

<comment><USER32> GitHub has been switching to functional CSS over the last couple of years: [https://primer.style/](https://primer.style/)

I interviewed Diana Mounter who leads their design systems team about this a while back: [http://www.fullstackradio.com/75](http://www.fullstackradio.com/75)

<comment><USER3> I'll definitely respond to this more later. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been using Tailwind lately and I really like it. It lets me prototype and iterate quickly, and then when I've settled on a design I can create component classes for those completed styles. It has made doing frontend work slightly more bearable for me.

</comment><comment><USER34> Lots of comments in here echo the initial gut reaction we all have when first encountering utility class composition.

"What about semantic classnames? Separation of concerns? It looks ugly, is going to be hell to maintain, won't scale.. may as well use inline styles!"

I did a conference talk about my own experience moving from BEM to utility- first CSS, you might find it interesting

[https://vimeo.com/294976504](https://vimeo.com/294976504)

</comment><comment><USER35> _Most (all?) of the classes apply exactly 1 line of CSS._

I see this as an anti-pattern, because to me it looks like inline styles with extra steps. The only thing it avoids is accidental strong specificity.

The reason we have CSS is that it's really easy to make HTML unreadable - after all it's essentially a 1D medium(lines of text) trying to describe a 2D space.

<comment> wes-k Inline styles = open ended, while classesrestrict you.

Also this is switching things around. Now your html depends on your css classes and not your css depending on your html. No more broken css when a dev modified the html structure and didn't realize that one of the hundreds of lines of css now doesn't get applied right.

<comment><USER35> _No more broken css when a dev modified the html structure and didn't realize that one of the hundreds of lines of css now doesn't get applied right._

You can achieve the same, but with much less clutter using BEM. Or even better: BEM + SASS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Doesn't this essentially put you back to the bad old days of style attributes? Sure, the "styles" you are using are much more clever and they adapt to screen sizes, etc., but you are still putting the specific style you want an element to have in the element itself and not getting any redirection.

Say you have an entire application with a dozen primary pages, plus several dozen modal windows and other sub-pages. If you want to make a global change, like, "Change all the OK buttons in my entire application to have rounded corners and a gray to red gradient" then you have to go back and make a change to every button you have in the application. The whole idea with changing the CSS was that I defined a semantic CSS (e.g. "OKButton") which I used in all the places that had a common meaning, and then I could change the look of the entire application in one place.

</comment><comment><USER37> I have trouble with the following statement. Complete flexibility is a bad thing? If I accept that how is limiting options to 30 not providing too much flexibility?

"Limits & standards. With normal CSS, I can make any element any width I want. For me, this is not a good thing! With tailwind, there are only 30ish options for width"

<comment><USER38> Actually it is, especially when you're working with a team of developers.

Imagine that your designer puts together a design system built on a soft grid. The rules in the design system are what ensure consistency across the site.

If you have a team of developers, sooner or later you'll manage a junior dev who interprets the design as a pixel perfect layout, and starts defining widths on elements per their own personal interpretation. Maybe they eyeball it, maybe they measure it, maybe they measure it but don't include the border.

You can catch such things through training and code review, but it puts the burden of managing design consistency on a senior engineer. Starting out with a constrained system is one easy way to ensure consistency of design across large projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> A neat concept — perhaps two years too late.

I fear that many will not prefer attribute bloat in their markup.

And many are moving to React, does this sort of toolset matter anymore? Not being negative, genuinely serious. Does this tool make sense for apps going forward? To me it seems Tailwind is for little html things.

<comment><USER40> If anything, utility CSS frameworks and creating reusable CSS (as opposed to reusable HTML) make more sense when used with something like React.

</comment></comment><comment> wes-k I was definitely hesitant when I first heard about this. After working in a codebase that uses CSS utilities, I gotta say, this is awesome!!

I plan to use tailwind in all future green field projects!

Enforces style, kills duplication, speeds up development. Ahh the benefits are huge!

</comment><comment><USER41> I prefer the hybrid approach, having a mix constantly repeated utility styles for things like padding, margin, floats, and colors, and then having custom SCSS/CSS for the rest.

<comment><USER12> that's what tailwind does, look into the components docs. essentially utilities vs components are a matter of definition order, such that utilities can always override components.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I really like these atomic/functional css libraries with any sort of frontend framework or templating system that leverages components.

Personally, I have been using Tachyons with React for the past couple months, and it's been a blast. Compared to writing html templates with Emmet and css with Sass, I feel as if I am more productive and like I can reuse more components.

It's worth a try if it interests you!

<comment><USER43> I've also found Tachyons & React to be an amazing combination. The only trouble I've had is extracting common CSS class strings into tweakable components, e.g. a <Button> whose background color you can easily override, or a  with tweakable font weight.

I wrote a tiny (1kb) library to make this easier. For anyone working with React and functional CSS, I hope it's helpful:

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/nanostyled](https://www.npmjs.com/package/nanostyled)

<comment><USER42> Seems like an interesting library! I also encountered this issue, but I ended up just passing in colors/borders/spacing as props. I will have to see how that holds up for complicated UIs.

<comment><USER43> Thanks! I started by just passing props too, and I could see that approach working forever. I just got tired of having to always specify <Button bg="blue" border="ba1" />, when 90% of the buttons in the app were blue with a border.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Be sure to check out the Wizard Zines site they are talk about. It had old school hand drawn zines about topics such as git, debugging, and more. Here is one on tcpdump

[https://wizardzines.com/zines/tcpdump/](https://wizardzines.com/zines/tcpdump/)

Reminds me of many computer publications in the early days

<comment><USER45> Absolutely. She's really good at making a complex topic approachable and bringing a lot of excitement as she shows you around. It reminds me how incredibly cool I thought these tools were when I first learned them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Style your site with "only" 291KiB of CSS (24KiB compressed)?

<comment><USER28> Please read this...

 _> By comparison Tailwind seems really heavy (over 1.5x larger than Bootstrap!), but it turns out that this comparison isn't totally fair._

[https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file- size/#app](https://tailwindcss.com/docs/controlling-file-size/#app)

<comment><USER47> But couldn't you also do the same to Bootstrap with PurgeCSS and still come out ahead of Tailwind?

<comment><USER32> Tailwind would come out ahead because there are fewer classes that contain the same declarations, so the total number of style declarations would be less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Here's a single-page cheatsheet I created for Tailwind, good for seeing Tailwind's utility classes at a glance: [https://derekphilipau.github.io/tailwindcss-cheatsheet- singl...](https://derekphilipau.github.io/tailwindcss-cheatsheet-single-page/)

</comment><comment><USER49> What percentage of software churn is based on developers being reluctant to call out mistakes by other developers on their own teams/in their own companies (while having no problems calling out flaws in internet strangers' code)?

'Curating' what developers are allowed to do has been the focus of the last few jobs I've declined. "The guys at the other office are too dumb to learn (React|Angular|CSS|tech X). Obviously, we need a team to invent something that uses (React|Angular|CSS|tech X) behind the scenes but has a totally different API and no easily searchable documentation or support outside of our company."

Tailwind looks like one of those escaping into the world, when telling your devs to pay attention to a style guide would have been the easier solution.

Technology does not have a glorious track record in solving cultural issues.

<comment><USER50> Not sure it totally applies to this situation but agree and think this is a great point. Technology doesn't solve cultural problems and often exacerbates them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Several people here say "this doesn't scale" but I'd be curious to find out:

\- The 'scale' at which they think a framework like this doesn't work (number of users, devs etc).

\- The scale of the projects they work on.

Who even says a framework needs to be adopted by tech giants or work at 'scale' to have any credibility?

A utility-based approach has been adopted at the last 2 companies I've worked for and it's been very effective, often when working with very complex designs on medium-sized sites (that serve less than 100k users/month).

Some of my previous colleagues and I work on [https://github.com/friendsthatcode/flavourcss](https://github.com/friendsthatcode/flavourcss), which was inspired but some of the ideas behind Tailwind and our own work.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've been saying for years that, in these days where all HTML is generated, CSS makes no sense and we might as well just style inline. You probably already have a "button" class in your UI framework that contains the HTML for rendering a button; put the styling there too.

<comment><USER53> So if you have a large number of buttons or other elements with the same class you will be repeating yourself over and over.

With elements with a large number of style rules, you add a lot of very long lines to your html.

This would be a nightmare to work on/maintain.

<comment><USER52> > So if you have a large number of buttons or other elements with the same > class you will be repeating yourself over and over.

In the HTML, sure. But so what? It gets compressed in transport so there won't be significant overhead there (similar to how remote desktop protocols that send images with compression turn out to be just as efficient as those that tried to send intelligent drawing commands), and the browser has to compute the final style for each element anyway so there's no overhead in-memory either.

> This would be a nightmare to work on/maintain.

HTML is an output format, you don't edit/maintain HTML any more than you edit/maintain binary machine code. And keeping the styles inline allows better encapsulation: the styling for each component lives in that component, you don't have the spooky action at a distance of child selectors.

<comment><USER54> What frameworks treat HTML as an output format, and what is the input? When I see samples of React code, all the HTML (in the form of JSX) is still handwritten, just combined dynamically.

<comment><USER52> Sure - you write the html snippets by hand (and those are still very maintainable if you use inline styles). But you don't maintain the final page that might have e.g. twenty buttons, so that's not a case to optimise for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Too much to read xD if anybody gets this far then remember this...

1\. People arguing against this are arguing against utility classes and not arguing against tailwind.

2\. Tailwind is different - it's a toolset allowing you to build your own framework - you can use the tailwind config to define your variables and use BEM or what ever you want.

3\. Tailwind is utility "first" - so it provides all the utilities you need, YOU decide how to use them, put them all in your HTML if you like, or make components out of them, include them into an existing project, etc.

So everybody here who is being negative towards tailwind regarding utilities is wrong - because they haven't understood tailwind. - your arguments may be valid for utility classes, but this topic is about tailwind, so your spreading misinformation.

</comment><comment><USER56> To address the author's "oh, another bootstrap site" line, Bootstrap offers a "css grid only" option. Which, I've found to be great when you don't want the Bootstrap look, but want a grid system in place to build with.

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't understand how this works.

Say you want a div to be a specific width: 135px, how do you make it without writing any CSS? Or you want a specific shade of a colour? Or you want to style things that are not in your html (third party widgets).

<comment><USER58> You treat your stylesheet as your style guide, design system, or single source of truth. That's where you define your fonts, colors scales etc.

So you actually don't have to think about specific widths while you're building, you reference a width that is already set up in your stylesheet!

I find that it improves the design to dev workflow. You experiment with design in a design tool like Sketch, and then translate your final idea or rules into a stylesheet, which is the basis for your live prototyping in editor & browser (wrapping HTML elements and referencing styles in your stylesheet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> These packages are really useful for small to medium sized projects where you need little to no customization! When you do need something greater than what the package can provide then I find it better to use something else because these tend to pollute the namespace and things in my experience get really complicated when you start adding your own stuff with them, or modifying them.

Even though they are compact you probably end up having lots of unused CSS code in your website.

</comment><comment><USER60> I've seen Tailwind pop up in some of the JAMstack starter kits, and I could have sworn it was some framework of yesteryear that I just missed that was now largely replaced by Bootstrap/Bulma/etc. Now that I've looked at the GitHub, I see v0.1.0 was released on Nov 1 2017! Some of these recent trends in web design really have me scratching my head, but I guess I'm just getting old.

</comment><comment><USER61> If you use Sass you get both the benefits of semantic html AND the ability to jam a million classes into an html element with @include and @extend.

</comment><comment><USER62> CSS has a bit of a learning curve, the probably most difficult to understand is the C (cascading ) part, and where something more specific over-rides something less specific. It's simple. Yet complex. But it's very powerful to be able to change the look of something, without touching the code that makes up the site/app content. And change theme by replacing the CSS-file.

</comment><comment><USER63> [http://basscss.com/](http://basscss.com/) Is another tailwind type

</comment><comment><USER64> When I make something, I want _all_ and _just_ the relevant pieces of what I am doing in my face, and then I want them gone when I do the next task.

So if I were to every try to design a page, I want all the relevant design items there when I am figuring it out, and then when I am done, I don't want to see them again.

So if you spend a lot of time designing the html/css then this approach makes sense. I don't want to jump into the css file and then back in the html file.

However, if I want a particular look and feel for a site, and then knock out the css, then I want the css in a different file and then I want to focus on the layout and the logic.

So my guess is that the original author builds lots of new sites and moves on. My guess is that the original author does not build one large site for a large company that has a consistent look and feel for years (till the rebrand).

</comment><comment><USER65> For people who disagree, the CSS zen garden approach lives on on my blog-theme compilation: [https://classless.alhur.es/](https://classless.alhur.es/)

</comment><comment><USER66> There is similar project called Tacit — [http://yegor256.github.io/tacit/](http://yegor256.github.io/tacit/)

</comment><comment><USER67> I honestly do not see the point in giving each of my css properties a separate class and then sticking those in my HTML.

If I wanted to do that I would have used the 'style' tag.

</comment><comment><USER50> How is tailwind different than bootstrap or the multiple other css frameworks?

<comment><USER24> Well Bootstrap is a not a functional css framework like Tailwind. A better comparison would be Tachyons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> When your styling tool (CSS) doesn't do what you actually need (layouts).

</comment><comment><USER69> this is stupid, hard to maintain and ugly as well

</comment><comment><USER70> > Web design really isn't my strong suit [...] for probably like 12 years now > [...] and am making no efforts to improve

Is this ignorance common among those for whom functional CSS makes sense, or are there any CSS experts who like it? I'm bewildered by the popularity, as I am by several other fashions.

Sometimes I wonder if these choices come from blog-driven development. I used to feel a bit insecure that I didn't go to school for computer science. I tried to make up for that by reading books, many books, cover to cover. Reading a great book cover to cover gives you a coherent understanding of the beginning, middle, and end of a language or tool. Also I read references: the list of core PHP functions, the jQuery API, and the list of CSS attributes. I didn't memorize them. I just tried to understand the gist of each, filed in the back of my mind, enough to prod me to find it in the reference when I needed it. But if you are learning by blog and Stack Overflow, do you ever come to an overall, comfortable understanding of something?

I grant you that it will take some time, but so does learning these frameworks. The frameworks seem to fix one problem while planting three more. And Julia Evans is a technically minded person. She has written about Git and the Linux command line. Which is more complicated, Linux or CSS? I had always thought that HTML and CSS were meant to be softballs, for people who are geeky but maybe not full-fledged programmers. HTML and CSS were the first languages I learned, but my coworker stressed to me that they weren't full-on programming languages.

> It's 2018! All websites need to be responsive!

I wonder if responsiveness is another cause for this trend. I agree that making pages that shrink and fold for various screens might put some novices over the edge. But looking the simplicity of Julia's website, maybe all she needs is a viewport meta tag.

Another advantage I've had is my lifelong interest in graphic design. Before I knew CSS I knew about color, fonts, white space, etc. So I'm sure that made learning CSS easier for me. But for those who aren't into that, why aren't templates and stylesheets from other people enough? They've already chosen fonts and colors and margins and stuff that looks good together. They give classes for various kinds of pages and sections. Maybe you're somewhere in the middle, where you're not adept enough to write your whole CSS from scratch, but you want more customization than just using a general stylesheet. But why can't you tweak it? If you're smart enough to use Tailwind, aren't you smart enough to fiddle with some attributes in a stylesheet, make the corner rounder, make a font bigger, etc.?

I truly am interested in understanding, if possible. CSS has a few things that are mildly annoying, but just mildly. Nothing would ever make me want to do something like this. Truly I am bewildered!

One more thing: my attention is spread across many complex applications, thousands of lines of code, and I am in charge of the full stack (JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP, Apache, SQL). So it's not like I get to spend all my time focused on the front end. Yet my users have told me that my pages look nice. I'm spread thin, but I've never wanted to use anything but stylesheets, no BEM, no SASS, just good, old-fashioned selectors.

</comment><comment><USER71> I always liked to mix both, having somewhat "semantic" classes like _.message.error_ , but then also things like

        .w100 { width: 100%; }
        .nopad { padding: 0; }

etc. to modify the "semantic" classes where needed, in essence creating a mini-framework for every new project.</comment>


ESR banned from OSI over this email - <AUTHOR> https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021273.html <comment><USER2> ESR is right. Open Source is granting _everyone_ permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute software for _any_ purpose (with or without copy- left).

There are those who want to co-opt open source for political aims and grant licenses only to those who agree with them politically, but such limitations are anathema to Open Source and discussing such ought not even to be entertained on OSI lists.

Those wanting to deal in "My-worldview-only source" can go find themselves a different name.

<comment><USER3> > co-opt open source for political aims

Are they though? I just clicked on the first links on the ESD website linked elsewhere and landed here:

[https://firstdonoharm.dev](https://firstdonoharm.dev)

This is based entirely on the UN Charter of Human Rights. These are not political aims in the sense of "you can reasonably be on either side of this".

Society as a whole understands that freedom is one of a handful of fundamental values that need to be balanced against each other. That's why freedom of speech is not absolute [1]. The concrete question here isn't even about restricting freedom, but about the authors of software using their authorship as a platform for denouncing organizations [2], without actually stopping them from using the open source project. So it's strictly about how people, according to ESR, should or should not be allowed to speak their mind.

By refusing to even consider the legitimacy of this, and by harsh ad-hominem attacks on the other side ESR simply demonstrates in my mind that he hasn't thought very much about these wider issues.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions)

[2] [http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021237.html)

<comment><USER2> > This is based entirely on the UN Charter of Human Rights. These are not > political aims in the sense of "you can reasonably be on either side of > this".

The UDHR is a very broad and vague definition of human rights. The actual interpretation of it is an extremely legally complex and politically charged topic. Human rights cases usually takes years of court battles to resolve.

If you see the discussion around "Ethical Source", people want to ban Amazon from using their source because they're doing business with ICE. And BP for crimes against humanity. Others might want to ban any Israeli businesses, and again others wanting to ban anyone associated with the Palestinian Authority, because either or both are in their opinion violating human rights.

Anyone using ESD software would open themselves to insanely expensive lawsuits. It would be all too easy for anyone to come up with a claim that your business is somehow aiding in the violation of human rights in some fashion, and since the legalities are so complex, you can't easily have the suit dismissed. You'll have to spend months or even years fighting the claim in court, burning hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers.

<comment><USER3> That's a fair point, and I fully agree that there are many political issues around the UCHR. I am certain a lot of the business world would want to stay away from code that is licensed in this way, and I suspect that the authors of code licensed accordingly would be just fine with that.

My overall point though, that there are legitimate issues on balancing freedom and other values, stands. I think there is a good argument to be made that licenses are not the place to do this balancing act, but the naive "freedom maximalists" deny that there even is an issue to discuss here, quoting Paine, and what have you to take the grandest of stands.

Creative Commons for example allows for at least some of this type of fine tuning in the license. After all CC NC is a thing, and I haven't heard doom- sayers predicting the end of liberty because CC blessed the possibility that authors would want to restrict the use of their work in that direction, even while sharing it freely otherwise.

Seriously, look at the quoted message by ESR here:

[http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html)

I wouldn't choose ESD style licenses for many of the reasons noted. But I also support contributors ability to choose how to give away their contributions, and to actively shape the communities they participate in. I think it's legitimate that the OSI says that this does not meet their definition of an Open License.

But ESR is not arguing for that, he is seeing the very existence of people who don't share his "freedom maximalist" position (or like code of conducts, or...) as a grave threat that "his" culture needs to be protected from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The whole argument in that thread boils down to a disagreement over whether tolerance has limits. There is a fundamental paradox contained within the concept of _unconditional_ tolerance. Does one commit to tolerating the intolerant beliefs of others?

The 'social justice' movement contains a faction who ironically insist that the rest of society must tolerate their right to arbitrarily be intolerant of others ('de-platforming'). The idea of "safe spaces" is often used to weaponize a supposed requirement for tolerance as a real application of intolerance itself.

ESR was just being pointed and firm in his assertion that the opposing position was, in his opinion, no longer worth considering. The way he used the well-known idiom "to hell with you and the horse you rode in on" contains the word "you", but was attacking an idea, not a specific person. This tendency to frame deplatforming, which is intolerance itself, as a perverted way of supposedly defending tolerance, is very destructive to honest discourse.

</comment><comment><USER5> For reference, the ESD that is mentioned in another of ESR's messages (and the one that some argue costed him the ban): [https://ethicalsource.dev/definition/](https://ethicalsource.dev/definition/)

I am not sure how that would work. Point 5, "Creators have the right to solicit reasonable compensation from any commercial entity that benefits from the software" alone is a huge mess. What does solicit means? Or benefit? Can the commercial entity just answer "thanks for trying, but no"?

Quoting the movie Trolls, "that's not a plan, that's a wishlist".

<comment><USER6> This whole thread is referring to the Persona Non Grata clause: [http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021237.html)

Of course it's not open source but they're still trying to weasel it in.

<comment><USER5> That is even more ridiculous than the MongoDB license. (The ESD was the subject of his anger in a more colorful email that might have contributed to the ban as well).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He isn't entirely wrong but his tact could do with some work. This email isn't that bad but the others in the thread are less savory.

I agree with him in principal however, the persona non grata clauses have no place in open-source licenses.

IMO the problem with the political correctness debate is your are damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Even if everyone knows that is the motivation behind such an effort you can't call it out as such without becoming vilified - regardless how how you reason your argument. (not saying ESR did a good job here)

This results in many, myself included simply not taking place in such debates and eventually just not taking part in communities where this sort of discourse goes on.

There is a big difference between codifying the "don't be a dick rule" and making normal people feel like they are stepping on egg shells.

<comment><USER8> I agree with him in principle too, but he's actively hurting his cause by coming off as so unreasonable. There are better ways to make the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> According to this, the offending mail has been deleted from the list. [http://techrights.org/2020/02/29/getting-banned- osi/](http://techrights.org/2020/02/29/getting-banned-osi/)

<comment><USER6> You still can read it in this reply: [http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html)

<comment><USER10> Thanks. This 'under attack' and 'us vs them' really sucks. It would be unwise to form an opinion of the whole thing without actually reading all of the emails. Yes, there are ad-hominem attacks in the email you quoted, and even if ESR was right in everything, probably not the best way to express it.

Anyway, at least this outrage brought the issue into attention, now I'm super curious about this matter.

I'm reading his side first here: [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ESR posted a long string of emails, many worse than this. Saying this one is the reason he was banned is cherry picking things in his favor.

<comment><USER11> This one isn't bad at all. Would you mind pointing me to one that actually is?

<comment><USER12> [http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists....](http://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021328.html) quotes the email from him that apparently finally got him banned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ESR clearly blew a gasket and banning him, however temporarily, is a necessary thing.

He does, however, make a couple goodish points:

\- Zero tolerance CoCs are a disgrace for software because the friendly-or- else atmosphere they help create makes horrible-but-personable people thrive in places where they'd otherwise be laughed out of the room. Politicians excel at this game; see Congress' CoC forcing reps to call each other "my good friend" instead of (for example) "this baby murderer over here" no matter how horrible a proposal they made is.

This is a Hard Problem to solve though.

\- The ESD is a terrible, unusable license that shouldn't be called Open Source, for various reasons like how its "freedom" functionally depends on how litigious the creators of a software piece woke up that day waaay more than traditional OS licenses, giving authors a direct link between their personal values and their actual, inanimate work product.

Imagine being able to buy a yoga book, then getting sued because the author required you to be a vegan first.

Give ESR a couple days rest, knock on his door and have a proper chat? Maybe this can actually be resolved with actual honesty for one.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is an important issue that is critical for the future of FOSS and the sustainability of the tech ecosystem in general.

At a basic level, the ESD group represents bureaucracy, and the bureaucratization of FOSS. It is importing an intolerant minority into the FOSS community to hijack it for other purposes.

They should fork their own distributions and produce things people need, and when nobody wants them, they should consider whether they are in fact just or virtuous at all.

</comment><comment><USER15> As someone who has no idea about the context and doesn't know about ESR, can someone explain what's going on here?

<comment><USER16> I think the goal here is to prevent a toxic atmosphere in Open Source communities. The problem is that to enforce this it may remove freedoms that some Open Source advocates feel is important. Thus we have heated conversations between those for and against the Personal Non Grata.

I could be wrong on the whole thing. I'm not well versed in what is going on but based on what I see this is my understanding.

[https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists...](https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- discuss_lists.opensource.org/2020-February/021237.html)

<comment><USER17> ESR is right, and his banning, ironically, proves his point. To hell with the sanctimonious bastards in the OSI who did this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel the cause is worth fighting for, but this is surely the wrong solution.

This is because:

1\. It doesn't prevent subcontracting out. Amazon can merely push the egregious behavior to a spin-off or a contractor who likely will not have as many qualms about it.

2\. Easy forking. It's not clear that a PNG clause will help. Given the resources of Russia/Iran/China/Amazon/Microsoft/Google, it's likely the most popular projects could just be forked anyway with a more compliant license.

3\. Not everyone in Amazon/Iran/etc. are evil. Only certain people are.

4\. Do we really want to encourage "Fuck You" licenses by naming names? It's the scarlet letter of licensing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why the hell these important discussion are always "flagged"?!

<comment><USER3> Maybe because the link is highly misleading. The linked email is not very offensive, and was not the reason for the ban, apparently. The EMails that were, were removed from the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "You may have freedom, and you may have freedom - but _you_ may not have freedom!"

vs.

"You have freedom, I have freedom, and that means I'm free to call you a <pejorative> if I want to."

The issue seems to be that some people want the freedom to remove the freedom of those who use <pejorative> to express their freedom...

</comment><comment><USER20> Cancel culture at it again. They could've told him to knock it off and that other people are on the other end of email privately, at least. Ban everyone and create a useless safe space where nothing happens.

<comment><USER21> He has been told that many, many times, over the course of years.

The problem isn't that nobody told ESR to knock it off, the problem is that ESR believes this style is perfectly okay and there's no reason to change.

<comment><USER20> Okay. Thank you for elucidating. _Sigh._ Perhaps he needs a different forum/community for misfits where necessary roughness is permitted and similar folks can violently agree or disagree in their own way.

<comment><USER21> I don't think you understand the extent of the problem.

He regularly argues things like that blacks have too low an IQ to be taught things like correct handling of weapons, he posits the existence of honey traps, where activist women try to seduce him and other leading Open Source figures, in order to accuse them of sex crimes. It goes on and on.

"Roughness" or being a "misfit" is not how I would characterize the problem.

I'm sure he knows how to admin his own mailing list with other people like him. But I wouldn't expect any mainstream project or club to tolerate garbage like that indefinitely.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Ultimate Guide to Remote Working - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-working/

<comment><USER2> Probably a good idea to remove that "we're hiring" message if there are no open positions anymore.</comment>


Will the Official Steve Jobs Biography Tell All? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/189434/will_the_official_steve_jobs_biography_tell_all.html

<comment><USER2> The sad part is that I think a biography would be a waste, but a book on his approach to product design would be a classic.</comment>


Lockheed's F-35 logistics system revolutionary but risky - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/16/us-lockheed-fighter-logistics-idUSBRE8AF09L20121116

<comment><USER2> _One concern: Lockheed shored up political backing for the F-35 <by choosing suppliers in nearly every U.S. state>. But having such a large and widely dispersed group increases exposure to cyber attacks, said Ben Freeman, national security investigator with the non-profit Project on Government Oversight.

"Even if Lockheed has top-notch cyber security, it's still vulnerable if its subcontractors are vulnerable," he said._

\-- WOW. Just. WOW.</comment>


Microsoft Decided to Support Opus, Vorbis and VP9 in IE - <AUTHOR> https://wpdev.uservoice.com/forums/257854-microsoft-edge-developer/suggestions/6513488-ogg-vorbis-and-opus-audio-formats-support-firefox

<comment><AUTHOR> See:

* [http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/opusaudiocodec/](http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/opusaudiocodec/)

* [http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/vorbisaudiocodec/](http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/vorbisaudiocodec/)

* [http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/vp9videocodec/](http://dev.modern.ie/platform/status/vp9videocodec/)

Really great news. Now only Apple will be a roadblock for wider free codecs usage.

<comment><USER2> Am I reading that correctly, that VP9 support is further along than the audio codecs? That seems surprising.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, that's the first time I saw it. Quite unexpected given their past stance.

But I think some legal shifts helped there. Patent trolling cases which tried to attack VPx were repealed (like one from Nokia), so may be MS feels less threatened now (and new CEO helps as well I guess).

VPx also got some good theoretical legal backing like this: [http://www.duanemorris.com/memo/VP8Compilation.pdf](http://www.duanemorris.com/memo/VP8Compilation.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Steve Jobs to Valleywag Why are You So Bitter? - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2010/05/15/steve-jobs-to-valleywag-why-are-you-so-bitter/

<comment><USER3> Money quote: "By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?"

<comment><USER4> As was pointed out the last couple times this article was posted, this is an ad hominem fallacy.

Criticism should be judged on its merit, not based on ones opinion of critics.

Jose Canseco is completely nuts and an asshole to boot (go check his Twitter feed for a few minutes of fun), but that doesn't mean his claims about the steroid era in baseball are meritless.

<comment><USER3> Well, first, most of the ranting on both sides is specious and fallacious. One of the lines in all this grandstanding, though, is pretty funny. This isn't dialectical interrogation of Truth going on here.

Second, it's not fallacious if the point of the discussion is to explore what makes success. The criticism is, "You're not a revolution." Jobs' point is: OK, so show me what is.

Lastly, to the extend this is a debate, Jobs beasted him on that question: Apple created app warehousing that seems to work. Having seen the collapse of such models in the past, and seeing so many people scramble to get on the gravy-train, I'd say the shift is pretty revolutionary.

<comment><USER4> Pointing out a logical fallacy that, when used by an accomplished person against a critic who is not accomplished in the same field, is quite heavy handed, does not mean I'm engaged in "a dialectical interrogation of Truth".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "freedom from porn"?!

I'm speechless.

What's the next freedom we are to enjoy? Freedom from controversial arguments? Freedom from dissent? Freedom from bad taste?

<comment><USER6> It is, for the first time in history, a garden of pure ideology.

<comment><USER7> Not really. I'm pretty sure Disney keeps their theme parks as porn-free as they can. I bet Target, Walmart, and Toys-R-Us do a pretty good job of keeping their stores porn-free. The App Store isn't doing anything that brick-and- mortar businesses haven't been doing for a long time.

<comment><USER5> It's squashing our hopes that in this brave new world of the global internet things could be different than they have been.

<comment><USER7> "Different than they have been"...

...so y'all have hopes of disposing of the status quo of being able to take your daughter shopping without having to explain to her why those three men in the picture were filling all holes on that nice lady?

Speaking as someone who has no issue with porn, and who has shamelessly rubbed a few out to some in my day, I've got to say that being able to point mobile Safari anywhere I want to, and to sync pictures and movies if I'm so inclined, is sufficient for me.

Not having porn in the App Store is no more a blow against high hopes for the internet than is not having porn at overstock.com.

<comment><USER5> It's not like that. Unless you actively seek porn, you won't find it, be it in the web, be it in mobile applications for platforms other than Apple's.

The right analogy is your daughter being unable to find porn when she actively and deliberately seeks and want it because some authority deemed it immoral and banned its production.

This is not what I expected from Apple and not what I want for the future.

<comment><USER7> Even if you buy the claim that there is no keyword overlap between porn & non- porn queries (which I don't) and that porn purveyors don't love to spam keyword space (which I don't) you still have to consider this:

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_top_100_search_term...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_top_100_search_terms_queried_by_kids.php)

...and that if a parent busts their child searching for it and finding it, the puritan parent is as likely to go after the store as they are to deal with their child.

Allowing porn apps into the store is a messy business proposition. I'm only surprised it didn't get shot down sooner. Not expecting the same policy from _any_ brand of their magnitude is naïve.

And, I have to say, desiring to have porn distributed as executable code is a crazy thing to wish for. I wouldn't even trust it in a sandbox. No industry abuses APIs more than those guys.

<comment><USER5> > the puritan parent is as likely to go after the store as they are to deal > with their child.

And that is one of the dangerous slopes we can see. It's not the store owner's responsibility to educate the kid - that's what parents are for. And the puritan parent has no right to prevent my kids from getting what I allow them to get.

And it's not only about porn. Apple must clearly draw the line it will not cross. Today it's porn, emulators and anything that's cross-compiled. A cartoonist was blocked already (and unblocked after that). Would a network anonymizer be allowed? For how long?

<comment><USER7> Ok, think of it this way: imagine that you're pitching the idea of allowing porn apps into the App Store. How do you convince the board of directors that porn should be associated with the brand? You'll have to do better than slippery slope alarmism. So what do you say to make your business case?

<comment><USER5> The only reason they would be associated with porn now is that they took a stance against porn in the first place.

Of all apps, only a small fraction of them would end up being porn - <USER2> approval process could still happen. Adult content would also be segregated into an adult store - with separate authorization processes so if puritan parents decide to make it difficult for their offspring to get porn, difficult it would be.

And, most of all, this is not about porn - it's about the notion of a walled garden as being desirable. It's, like someone mentioned, that garden of pure ideology.

Jobs, now, is the Big Brother on the screen. It's up to us to wield the hammers.

<comment><USER7> _The only reason they would be associated with porn now is that they took a stance against porn in the first place._

That directly contradicts this:

 _Adult content would also be segregated into an adult store_

You can't operate an adult store and avoid it becoming associated with your brand. Unless it has no customers - in which case: why operate it?

<comment><USER5> I see no contradiction. All you would see is applications the account owner deem appropriate for you. It would be no more associated with porn than it is with, say, books.

Or farting applications.

<comment><USER7> I guess that's why you're not in charge of brand management.

Among the tech-geek demographic the iPhone is already associated with farting applications. It's a common way to deride the quality of apps at the store when someone gets their knickers in a twist about the reasons Jobs gave for section 3.3.1 - and that's just a current event.

Imagine running an adult store for a decade. People talk. People read. Hiding an adult store behind an individual's preferences would not prevent word from getting out.

I guarantee you that if Disney tried to run a triple-X store in the way you suggest that knowledge of it would get out and it would cause an enormous shit-storm.

Everything any customer experiences that fires a neuron linked to your name or your logo or your products is associated with your brand.

<comment><USER5> Disney aims their brand towards family and kid-friendly audiences. Apple doesn't.

There is no pink iPhone with mouse ears. There is no "Hello Kitty" special edition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Lots of very good discussion on this email exchange here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1350885>

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I'm missing something here but it seems that lately it has been pretty popular to post other peoples e-mail conversations (see the whole TechCrunch vs. Fortune post a while back). I'm starting to think you shouldn't e-mail anyone who runs a major tech blog unless you want to see it made public.

<comment><USER10> Quite right, but expand that to you shouldn't send anything over the Internet unless either:

a) the privacy of it is guaranteed and that guarantee can be legally enforced

or

b) you don't mind it being made public

<comment><USER5> And, most of all, when you are an important public figure, you must be very careful with what you express to anyone but your closest friends.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Steve Jobs seems in denial about the jackboots kicking in doors over his IP claims.

Some people will just never get it as long as it's not their door.

<comment><USER12> 1\. The police are not jackboots. Please don't Godwin a thread right off the bat.

2\. If you are speaking of the search of a Gizmodo editors premises, this was conducted to gather evidence with respect to the alleged purchase of stolen physical property, not over IP.

As far as "it" is concerned, I'm with Steve. If you traffic in stolen physical objects, I want the police to investigate thoroughly. If you aren't home when they arrive with the search warrant, I expect them to behave exactly the same way with your door as they would with anyone else.

The whole busting in the door thing would be far more effective rhetoric if the editor in question had been home and the police had burst in with guns drawn and executed a high-risk takedown. That isn't what happened. They knocked, there was no-one home, they entered the property to execute their search warrent.

<comment><USER13> _Please don't Godwin a thread right off the bat._

Hee hee.

 _If you traffic in stolen physical objects, I want the police to investigate thoroughly._

You're probably right, but the objection I agree with is the _priority_ that Jobs/Apple got because of who Steve is. They wouldn't bust down the door for just anyone. If some small startup complained that a prototype was stolen, the police would not have acted so promptly and decisively.

And that's the problem I have with this. The response should have been proportional to the crime: it should have been "well, we have a lot of other complaints right now, and this isn't going to affect much of anything. Sorry." -- not "SIR YES SIR! We'll bust that door down forthwith, sir!"

<comment><USER11> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting use of a postscript at the _beginning_ of a reply.

<comment><USER15> I believe the postscript was more of an addendum to the previous email...</comment></comment>


The Koch Attack on Solar Energy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/opinion/sunday/the-koch-attack-on-solar-energy.html

<comment><USER2> While by no means trying to defend what the Koch's and their ilk are trying to achieve, there is a real underlying econmoic issue at play.

Simply put, transmission networks (aka the grid) were never built with thought that local residential providers would input into said grid. While this sounds trivial, when you add a significant new input into the infrastructure especially local end points that are only one-way flows, serious investment is required to ensure this continues to work (ie no blackouts).

Similarly, solar supply is not consistent and scheduled. The system is built for coal to provide a strong baseline where peaks are met by on demand providers (typically gas). This is significantly more expensive than coal. The flip side is that a coal plant can require 6-12 hours to 'warm up'. That the cost of supplying electricity with unscheduled solar is not a fallacy.

I, for one, completely agree and demand that solar should be part of the mix (and can end up being a replacement for coal). That should be the long term goal. Legislatures should be working towards that. Unfortunately, as in most public policy issues today, this is an incredibly complex and difficult area to make progress and will require more detailed analysis and hard decisions. This is the opening that the Koch's are using and will require more commitment to push them back.

<comment><USER3> There is a problem in what the market will do if this is allowed to proceed. The TLDR is simple : if solar power buildouts are allowed to proceed the way they've been going, we will lose grid power entirely. Why ? Market forces. The problem ? Believe it or not, a lot of people can't install solar panels (apartments, "the poor", factories that need way more power than solar can ever provide, ...). Furthermore people with solar panels still need grid power. So grid power is a necessity in the solar era just as it was before. But look at the economics of grid power in the solar space.

First, let's look at a solar power plant. Before it's built it will sign long- term power delivery contracts for, let's say 50-80% of it's capacity. That's what finances the construction. This means 50-80% of the power generation capacity never enters the market at all, and powers, say, an apple datacenter, and never anything else. Not good for electricity producers, but impact is limited. Then there's the rest. They may sign a few more contracts, but really the majority overflow capacity is going to the spot market. What happens on the spot market ?

Well : marginal cost of producing available electricity for a solar power plant = nil, zero, nada. Now wait, why not maintenance ? Well, solar panels need maintenance whether or not they're in use, since weather is responsible for most of the damage. There's going to be some amount, but ... it's more or less zero (and has been calculated into those construction contracts anyway). This means when solar panels are working (ie. the day, when industrial customers use electricity), grid power's price is going towards zero. Great, right ? Well ...

Now of course during the night you can't buy solar power at any price. So you have to buy them from traditional power plants. At what price ? Well since these plants can't quickly shut down (meaning they have a few hours where they have to compete with solar power's 0 price) it's going to be a factor > 1, because you need to pay for the fact that they have to destroy electricity during the day. For coal and nuclear it's going to be at least 3-4 (since they can't shut down or even throttle back at all, that was never designed into most of the existing plants, they were designed baseload generators). 3-4 ? Yes, given lots of solar, you can expect power to be available in most places for ~16 hours.

So calculate. If you buy power during the night, it costs the utility 3x the price it does now to provide that power (once for the power you actually use, twice for the power they need to destroy during the daytime when they can't compete with solar).

So if solar power is allowed to work the market without interference, then here's the result : during the day (ie. when people don't generally need it if they have a job), electricity is effectively free. During the night it will cost 5x the current day price or more (in some locales 20x has been observed due to a few factors), and due to an inverse Jevon's paradox, this will lead to existing plants closing, meaning after sufficient time passes, no power will be available at all during the night.

There is the additional problem that utilities' contracts generally do not allow for unlimited price difference between day and night. So, on those contracts, electricity prices would have to double or triple due to the presence of solar elsewhere on the market ... Do we want that ? I'd say no. Even where you do have separate pricing for day/night, would you really want to pay 20x more during the night ? I'm thinking, again, no you don't.

And most people don't have a choice, not having the money do install solar panels (yes, most, look at average income in America, cost of solar panels + installation and you'll see it's more than 50%. If you allow the market to force people to work with batteries, it's going to be worse).

These taxes are being introduced to prevent that from happening. Is that unreasonable ? No (in my humble opinion). They have to get a whole lot bigger to have the desired effect (stable 24h power at a reasonable price). I would expect these taxes to get a whole lot bigger, and for people to start taxing solar panels whether or not they're grid connected.

I'm not necessarily putting forth a position for or against these taxes, but if you're not looking from a strictly individualist point of view (with the individual quite rich ...) there is a very good case to be made here. The extreme interpretation is that without government interference, solar power will take grid electricity away from the poor, due to a 5x or larger price increase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They have found the perverse solution to the innovators dilemma. Having seen the new market developing, and having decided on its inevitability, instead of joining it, they're fighting it legislatively. I would love to hear Clay Christiansen's take on this.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't like the Koch brothers. And decentralized solar will surely become a large part of any future energy plan.

That said, this article is also pretty unfair to the utilities. They're totally not just pulling the implementation costs of decentralized solar production out of their asses. It's a real thing. The swing towards decentralization, without the increase in decentralized energy storage means utilities still have to keep significant amount of plants sitting around to deal with solar irregularities. Maybe the costs are exaggerated, but they're surely there.

And their arguments are largely sound. If there is a cost to decentralizing, you have a choice of how to spread that cost around. Tautologically, if you do not place that cost completely on the backs of those decentralizing, then you are increasing the burden on those not participating.

Now, it's clearly a complicated topic. There is potential for net system savings given a large scale move towards decentralization. But there's also easily a potential for net system increases. And honestly, nearly none of us are equipped to actually answer that question, unless you happen to work in the industry. And given the complex profiles of North American utilities across the continent, it's not even a given that what holds for one location will hold for another.

So, that was rather long winded, but the point is that yes, there are shenanigans going on. But decentralized solar isn't all sunshine and lollipops, and adding some sort of surcharge/fee/tax on feeding back into the network may be the right course of action.

</comment><comment><USER6> Koch Brothers are behind every liberal conspiracy theory.

</comment><comment><USER7> How about a Kickstarter for buying coal plants and turning them off.

<comment><USER8> I'd prefer to put my money behind replacing coal plants with solar. Such as subsidies to solar suppliers for installing and running their plant, at least equivalent in scale to the subsidies offered to coal power plants through fuel rebates, special zoning to reduce land taxes, low rent for digging up the coal in the first place, and many more.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. The first step for replacement is decommissioning existing coal plants.

As there's no (or little) political will to do this, the private sector (and specifically those that recognize the problem) can act directly.

And since it's the 21st century, it seems like Kickstarter is the way the private sector can do it.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: DronaHQ – Non-Techies' platform to build and manage enterprise mobile app - <AUTHOR> http://www.dronahq.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi This is Kinjal from DronaHQ. We are in mobility since 7 years now. Evolving from Mobile Learning to Engagement and now a full-fledged SaaS Mobility Platform. We have been working with medium to large enterprises all the while; and have observed that Business unit head have to cross many hurdles from ideation- prototyping- user experience- enterprise security- IT approvals- technical resources- testing- go live- scaling;to embrace mobility. DronaHQ is an effort to make this process simpler and help businesses easily embrace mobility for Sales, HR, LnD, Internal Communication, Customer Engagement, Investor Relations and many more functions.

Keeping aside complex SDKs, MADP, MBAAS systems to build, integrate and manage cross-platform enterprise apps for simpler functions thus reducing total cost of ownership.

We want to simplify the tasks for managers who want to embrace mobility.

I would really welcome your feedback on experience on the platform, and any thoughts and suggestions for us.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hey! I'm from the team of DronaHQ. We hope you find it useful. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks!</comment>


Dog vs. cat: New data show which pet brings you more joy - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/ <comment><USER2> Title on the article is "Dog owners are much happier than cat owners, survey finds".

And the article goes into correlation vs causation, highlighting that there are likely other causes influencing the survey results including "...survey data show that dog owners, for instance, are more likely to be married and own their own homes than cat owners, both factors known to affect happiness and life satisfaction"

Got to go and walk the dog and be happy.

</comment><comment><USER3> here's a good link: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/05/dog- owner...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/05/dog-owners-are- much-happier-than-cat-owners-survey-finds/)

</comment><comment><USER4> broken link</comment>


Meet the Campaign Connecting Affluent Techies with Progressive Candidates - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/8/17092684/great-slate-fundraising-congressional-campaign <comment><USER3> Thanks for your great work Maciej! I'm impressed with how well you're able to mobilize people and dollars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! The people and dollars have been self-mobilizing; I think all people needed was a specific list of candidates to rally around. Working with these campaigns has been a real privilege and a strong antidote to feelings of political despair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know some people running for public office. Can't even get them to use Signal, much less a dongle. I would welcome an Intro to Privacy for Campaigns MOOC though; maybe that would teach them? Are there any concise refernces for how to securely communicate yet remain flexible and welcoming?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the training outline we use: [https://techsolidarity.org/resources/congressional_howto.htm...](https://techsolidarity.org/resources/congressional_howto.html)

<comment><USER5> > Use Google Chrome as your default browser on your laptop. We should have > installed this and set it up during the training. Avoid Safari and Firefox.

Why the advice to avoid Firefox for non-techies?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every election I get that California "my vote doesn't count" feeling. Glad this is out there as an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER7> love it, thanks for all your hard work, and I will continue to donate!

</comment><comment><USER8> From recent headlines, I'd think California could put that money to better use.

Homelessness, water problems, filthy sidewalks, no housing, etc.

Why export the money?

</comment><comment><USER9> This is everyting that is wrong with the electoral system in the US and the attempt (often successful) of many people to buy elections. It's one thing when you live in an area, vote in it, and work at that level. It is another when you have no real connection to an area, have no real idea about what the struggles of the peole in that area face, or their local issues, but are willing to do anything you can do influence who they vote for because of your desire to change things nationally for your own interests.

<comment><AUTHOR> Congress makes laws that affect everyone in the United States.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      He doesn't even own a laptop or smartphone.

This is a definition of "progressive" with which I was previously unfamiliar.

      Spencer doesn't take PAC money.

How is Great Slate itself not a PAC, in the general sense?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because the Great Slate is an effort to persuade people to make individual contributions to political campaigns. That is a different animal than a political action committee.

You should look up the history of "progressive" in the political context. It has nothing to do with keeping up to date with technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting article, shame to see the continuing pattern of demonising the DCCC for being pragmatic.

If someone could unlock a way for idealists and pragmatists anywhere to the left of fascism to work together better then the government would far better reflect the views of the population (which, polling tells us, are all in line with the Democrat platform). It's only gamesmanship from the Republicans, and apathy from everyone else that keeps them and their unpopular ideas in power.

<comment><USER12> > the population (which, polling tells us, are all in line with the Democrat > platform)

In Arkansas? Citation, please.

Here, Democrats have to be very careful not to align themselves too closely with the social platform of the DNC, while Republicans have to dance around the issue of farm subsidies.

> their [Republicans] unpopular ideas

Yeah... about that. In Arkansas, our incumbent GOP governor has a single primary challenger - Jan Morgan. Morgan is best known for running a shooting range and vocally defending it as a "Muslim Free Zone". Here are her words: [http://janmorganmedia.com/2014/09/business-muslim-free- zone/](http://janmorganmedia.com/2014/09/business-muslim-free-zone/)

Arkansas is moving to the right, not to the left. I have no doubt that your assessment accurately reflects the realities of the areas around most HN readers, but it's dramatically incorrect when applied to this state.

For what it's worth, I've not seen any polling to know for sure how Morgan is doing against Hutchinson, but the impression I have is that she will lose to him but that his public stance will shift further to the right in response to her primary challenge. Some fairly clear signs of that started to manifest around the first of this year: [http://www.guns.com/2017/12/29/arkansas- governor-weighs-in-o...](http://www.guns.com/2017/12/29/arkansas-governor- weighs-in-on-open-carry-in-the-state/)

<comment><USER11> I was talking about the nation as a whole. Arkansas accounts for about 1% of that population but even there I think my point holds true.

There's measures and processes that can ensure politics better reflects the will of the people. I would guess that in Arkansas, like many other places, it's Republican's who are fighting against these things, and Democrats that are fighting for them. Why? Because the Democrats know that in general, the people support their policies, and the Republicans know in general, the people don't support theirs.

I just googled "Arkansas Voter Suppression" and found this recent story:

[http://fortune.com/2017/03/25/arkansas-voter-id- law/](http://fortune.com/2017/03/25/arkansas-voter-id-law/)

 _" Arkansas' governor signed a measure Friday requiring voters to show photo identification before casting a ballot, reinstating a voter ID law that was struck down by the state's highest court more than two years ago.

...

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit that led to the previous law being stricken, said the latest measure raises the same concerns that voters will be disenfranchised. Holly Dickson, legal director for the ACLU of Arkansas, said the sworn statement provision in the latest law is an improvement but that the measure still will risk hurting voters.

"Of course we have concerns that voter ID is going to do harm because that's been Arkansas' experience so far with voter ID," Dickson said."_

Extreme primary challenges like you mention only really have an effect in first-past-the-post systems, because the party thinks it can win with 30% of the vote and has no need to reach across the aisle to work with the other 70% if they can get a small group motivated enough to vote. Obviously targetted voter suppression makes this even easier, while moves to require votes, or just make it easier to vote complicate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If 2016 was the year 4chan won the US presidency maybe 2018 will be the year HN wins an election? Almost everyone quoted in this story is a well known HN account...

 _It doesn't help that Ceglowski is insistent on giving the candidates briefings on information security. He carries YubiKeys — hardware authentication devices that are the gold standard of two-factor authentication — with him to meetings with those running for office. Beefing up security practices in political campaigns is important, especially given the email hacking that dominated the 2016 cycle — but a strange man showing up to explain two-factor authentication to you is probably a little off-putting nonetheless. After raising nearly a million dollars combined last quarter, "they're being a lot friendlier to me," says Ceglowski._

This ia great, but sad that it takes a million dollars to make people use two- factor.

 _A good chunk of that was driven by security researcher Thomas Ptacek's promise to stop tweeting about Eric S. Raymond, a notorious figure in the open-source community whose bizarre and abundant ramblings on everything including race and sex could be considered early forerunners of current alt- right strains in the tech community._

I don't really know what to say...

<comment><USER12> > If 2016 was the year 4chan won the US presidency maybe 2018 will be the year > HN wins an election?

I suppose it's possible, but I seriously doubt it.

I live in Arkansas. I was born here, grew up here, and recently bought a house and moved back after living five years in Charlottesville, VA. While I'm not in Spencer's district I know several people who are.

From my perspective, this article is going to be a millstone around Spencer's candidacy. It will do substantially more damage to his campaign than the money will bring him benefit. There is a strong GOP majority there, and being able to point to this article and say "Look! My competitor's campaign is being financed by California liberals!" will all but guarantee that incumbent French Hill will be able to consolidate and energize his base.

The district flipped in 2010, after the retirement of seven-term incumbent Democrat Vic Snyder. It was successfully handed off to another GOP candidate in 2014 when the previous incumbent gave up his seat to run for governor.

Further, in light of Trump's recent rapidly changing stance on gun rights, I anticipate that will be polarizing issue of the 2018 midterms. Of the 435 current members of the House, Hill received the most money from the NRA[1] - just over $1m, split between ads supportive of Hill and opposing his opponent. According the Great Slate website[2] they raised $938k in Q4 of last year, which was divided amongst nine candidates. That's less than 10% of what the NRA alone provided to Hill last election cycle, while it sounds like it constitutes the majority of Spencer's war chest.

In short, while the approach taken by the Great Slate is valid and could have had a significant impact, this article probably eliminated what little chance Spencer had in this election.

1: [http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/lawmakers-nra- money/story?id=...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/lawmakers-nra- money/story?id=53230001)

2: [https://secure.actblue.com/donate/great_slate](https://secure.actblue.com/donate/great_slate)

<comment><USER8> I have no idea why people down-vote this post.

Yeesh. Some people.

<comment><USER12> Now that this has fallen off the front page, I'll go ahead and mention - <USER2> people have downvoted that comment, an equal number have upvoted it. Its score is "1 point".

<comment><USER13> And I'm at -2, but I'm pretty sure that's just the 4chan alt-right people who get annoyed at being called out. _Shurg_

You must be getting downvotes too, because I upvoted you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>