Pruning and Polishing: Keeping OpenBSD Modern

[protomyth]

http://www.openbsd.org/papers/pruning.html

[legulere]

> A second example are the simplelock locks once prevalent in the kernel. These locks, which were really macros which expanded to nothing, were introduced long before the kernel was actually capable of multiprocessor operation in a case of premature optimism. When SMP support was finally added, intervening code changes meant that many of the lock and unlock operations were incorrectly placed.

This is a good example for that code that is neither used nor tested is useless.

[atmosx]

I deeply admire the dedication and passion these guys put in polishing and improving OpenBSD.

[Canada]

Ted Unangst writes great stuff.

[RexRollman → Canada]

Agreed. His blog is good too:

http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/

[bijay_jayaswal]

Excellent and to the point! Every coder would benefit from this.

[pipeep]

Well played:

    <script>
    document.getElementById("bonus").innerHTML = 'body { font-family: "Comic Sans MS", "Chalkboard SE", "Comic Neue", cursive, sans-serif; }'
    window.onscroll = function() {
    document.getElementById("bonus").innerHTML = 'body { font-family: serif; }'
    window.onscroll = null
    }
    </script>

[sj4nz → pipeep]

Thanks for this, I wouldn't have noticed this gag because I don't have any of the fonts in question installed. :)

[clort → sj4nz]

Can you explain the gag, for those of us who do not include HTML & CSS in our area of expertise?

I see that the font changes to serif, when the text is scrolled. Is that funny? How does this HTML work?

[maxerickson → clort]

There is an ongoing gag of using Comic Sans to hassle people that complain about fonts.

This gag rewards people who read more than the first couple of lines before bouncing just because of the ugly font.

[_5x9g → maxerickson]

Well, browsing with NoScript, I wasn't even aware of this gag until I returned to read HN comments some 20 hours later (as it looks, the Comic Sans is firstly set via JavaScript, along with the subsequent flip back to the 'normal' serif.)

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but even if just an unintentional byproduct - isn't that a nice "additional" reward for people that don't allow running unnecessary scripts on random web sites?

[nailer → maxerickson]

To the point where LibreSSL and other OpenBSD sites use Comic Sans in their 'logos'.

Note The OpenBSD Foundation does not ;^).

[snoopybbt → pipeep]

That made me wonder too! Well played Ted, well played.

[mjevans → pipeep]

While I don't notice it because I, by default, deny all scripts.