Hacker News Reader

Comment by chris_wot | Hacker News Reader

This is why I love open source. In LibreOffice, cruft like this is often removed due to the embarrassment factor.

It was removed from Microsoft code too. This is an old snapshot of the code, almost two decades old.

Since the 2002 TWC initiative, anything from easter eggs to things like that are all very strongly banned, and actively get removed as they're discovered.

Not surprising. No fun is allowed anywhere anymore. just dull flat interfaces with grey and black colors. people can say what they want about windows xp and vista but they had soul. todays OSes are souless. Looking at you windows 10..

Looking at you Reddit...

You can configure the colours in Windows 10 to make it look fun and childish.

I dunno. I certainly keep my comments family-friendly and clear, but these comments resemble my own in their dry wit. I also use emojis as icons in internal tools, since they don't require finding images, but this had the side effect of people reporting "sad cat" errors and the like.

What is TWC?

TrustWorthy Computing.

In this context it refers to the early 2000s memo/paradigm shift at Microsoft as well as the now-defunct centralized infosec group.

Afaik easter eggs got banned because MS wanted to gain certification for government/military use, and in order to get that, all functions/features must be documented and previously specified..

But a bit of googling shows it was part of TWC: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/larryosterman...

I assume in the modern day of git and code review on commit diffs, its harder to slip things in than it was in the 90's.

I wasn't aware of this.

Indeed. One of the first things I did after adopting a package was remove a well understood and unnecessary exploitive. One person noticed and gave it the looking eyes emoji.

> well understood and unnecessary exploitive

Probably not what you intended to say. "Expletive" or "exploit"?

Expletive.

lol LibreOffice codebase is cruft on top of cruft.

Indeed, it is an ancient codebase. It is being constantly refactored.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com