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Source for theguardian.com (github.com/guardian)
251 points by zorkw4rg on Sept 3, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 97 comments



The docs include a recipe for Breton crêpes. :)

[1] https://github.com/guardian/frontend/blob/master/docs/99-arc...


This is not even close to bretonne crêpes.

Either you use buckwheat floor and water, in which case you are making Galettes. Either you use plain white wheat floor, in which case it's crêpes you are doing.

Under no circumstances you can put sugar in it, it's only added at the end. And of course, it's missing the most important ingredient: butter. #notevenclose


I am the author of this file. As one of the comments guessed, I was making them for my team.

Agreed about the butter, very important! That's why the recipe mentions "paint the crêpe with butter".

This is a family recipe carried over generations from the Pays du Léon. There are many sub regions in Brittany so I would not be surprised if your family's recipe differs.

The other part of my family comes from Rennes, where galettes (buckwheat crêpes) come from. There are also many recipes for the batter of galettes.

In other words: please try my family's recipe! My grandmother who just passed away would have loved to hear what you think :) (she must have made thousands of them along her life!)


I will test this recipe as I just came back from the south of Normandy with some packs of "Farine de blé noir" for this purpose. The timing is perfect. With respect to the recipes, this is one thing I really enjoy, cooking with the family recipes of other people, especially the ones which are about 3 to 4 generation old.

These old recipes allow me to enjoy the taste of something across the years, I like it. I will enjoy the taste of your grandmother crêpes. And of course, I will open a bottle of cidre with them :)


> I will test this recipe

But does this recipe have tests?


I can attest, this man surely knows his Galette-Saucisse stuff !

I'm sorry for your loss, take care!


> Either you use buckwheat floor and water, in which case you are making Galettes. Either you use plain white wheat floor, in which case it's crêpes you are doing.

Since we're already being pedantic, I just want to point out that you should never add flooring to crêpes (nor anything you intend to eat for that matter) :p


I've known a few toddlers who respectfully beg to differ about not eating floored food. And non-food, for that matter.


I feel very stupid but what is "flooring"? Is it just a different spelling of "flour"? I didn't manage to Google it.


flooring as in the floor under your feet. flooring, especially wood, is sold in "panels". therefore you get wood flooring panels. no idea why the guy spelled 'flour' like 'floor'.


Since they commented about a French recipe, they're probably French (like me) and this is a really easy mistake to make as a French person. (Keep in mind that here on HN, foreigners are used to speak English about computers and other technical topics but not especially about cooking or other common-life stuff)


Autocorrect?


I hadn't thought about that, but I suppose it's possible if he was on mobile. However his unusual use of Either twice also makes me wonder if maybe he's foreign and is as confused by English as native speakers are. This language is crazy


> his unusual use of Either twice also makes me wonder if maybe he's foreign and is as confused by English as native speakers are

Non native speaking can be terrible. It's as if American's don't have the letter 'u' on a keyboard.


Americans use the letter 'u' for the 'u' sound. (Hahaha, contradicted myself within one word.)

Anyway, I am reminded of an exchange in the comments of Language Log. A British actor wanted to practice American rhotic accents. He said he was having trouble figuring out how Americans insert the 'r' sound. Someone explained that Americans use the 'r' sound where there is an 'r' in the word. He responded that he was baffled that the rule was that simple.


English is my first language and I barely manage to string together a coherent sentence. It honestly impresses me when people learn English as a second / third / whatever language.

But then on the other hand I can code in more than a dozen different computer languages; so I guess my parents didn't compile me to communicate with other humans.


This recipe is pretty close to the one given when you buy a bilig (the Breton name for what's called «crêpière» in the recipe) from Krampouz (the most common brand). So I guess it's counts as a legit crêpe recipe :). Of course you don't put too much buckwheat floor, just a tiny bit (a spoon or so) to give just a little bit of taste. And yes, there's sugar in it.

And when it comes to salted crêpes made with buckwheat, there's two variants depending on the region you're in :

- Galettes, from eastern Brittany (Rennes) they are indeed made with just buckwheat floor, water and salt. They are around 1mm thick and have a soft texture. There's traditionally eaten with sausage, in kind of a wrap, and called «galette-saucisse».

- «Crêpes de blé noir», from western Brittany (Quimper), which are made with buckwheat floor, eggs, milk, butter and salt. It can also contains wheat floor. Those are really thin, and have a crispy texture, and are commonly eaten «complètes» with ham, cheese and an egg on top.


Like every comment on youtube recipe videos, here's another random person telling us how wrong everyone else is and how to do it better.



Hilarious! What the heck is it doing here?



I prefer it over the suicide.mp3 we found in a proprietary software's code base


Umm... Do you mind if I ask for some context there?


I dont really have any. All context I can provide is that someone told me to go look at that expensive frameworks sourcecode and search for a suicide.mp3.

All it contains is a loud scream I think, and the framework provider pretends the file is not there


Did you listen to it?


Looks like an employee on their way out was asked for their crepes recipe. Probably made it regularly for his team.


One more reason to support them. Even if you don't always agree with their opinions, it's nice to move away from commercial journalism and keep things as open and transparent as possible.


The Guardian is commercial journalism. It is set up as a completely ordinary company. Historically the newspaper has been keenly interested in the concerns of the working classes, but that has not extended towards some kind of alternative non-commercial structure for it.

(The Scott Trust does not make much of a difference here. A business can have such a way to remain free of outside pressures but still be a straightforwardly commercial company.)


It's nice to move away from commercial journalism, I agree. But the Guardian is very much commercial journalism. See http://expressiveegg.org/2017/02/07/guardian-bothering/ and https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2015-03-03/hsbc-and-the-s...


>it's nice to move away from commercial journalism and keep things as open and transparent as possible.

Open and transparent as possible is still not open or transparent.

There is no way to verify that what they published is actually what is running on their server... so publishing a repo means nothing in regards to "openness and transparency," for this or any other website. All of them are proprietary black boxes as far as the end user is concerned.


The Guardian is both commercial and pretty left wing, i prefer a more balanced view of my news.


There’s no such thing as balance when it comes to the truth.


And how would you know the truth?


The Guardian is one of the most balanced news providers out there and you'd be hard pressed to find a more balanced English-speaking organization.

A recent, concrete example of this is all the breathless reporting about Chinese camps containing a "million" Muslims. The story was complete hogwash [1] that was breathlessly hyped by every American news organization. The Guardian provided the most restrained and actually facts-based reporting by far. There are plenty of other cases like this -- see similar examples involving Iraq and Iran.

I could imagine how not being fully committed to the pro-America hegemony might be confused with being left-wing though. It's the sort of thing where the problem is the problem, as they say.

[1] https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/08/23/un-did-not-report-chi...


WSJ, Economist, FT and New Yorker are all western publications, and way closer to providing an balanced journalism. Guardian destroyed their own reputation in the last two years by openly publishing paid pieces and propaganda, even advocating for property seizure (see all their articles on “nationalization” of FB). Economist/New Yorker on the other hand are great examples of a quality left-biased publication.


I would have never though that I will see WSJ and balanced in same sentence.


They were pretty consistent in their critic of polices of both GOP and democratic governments, and are usually pretty open in addressing issues in business from all sides. What do you find to be unbalanced in their reporting?


> see all their articles on “nationalization” of FB

Are you talking about the articles labeled "Opinion"?


I used to trust The Guardian, but those days are long gone. A glaring example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/10/romanias-corru...

This is not journalism. The whole article quotes a paper published by a neocon think tank with ties to lobby groups payed by wealthy corrupt under investigation by the (Romanian) DNA. The article even hilariously uses references to recentnews.ro, long proven a fake news site, part of a network of fake news sites that launched the infamous "Pope shocks the world endorsing Trump".

Another example: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/the-guardians-summary-of...


The first link is an opinion piece, you do have to take those for what they are: opinion, not fact.

Usually the Guardian opinion pieces tilt to the left/progressive viewpoint, but not always. This is something I appreciate, not being always stuck inside a bubble.

The second link offers a summary and analysis of an interview of Assange, the original piece is linked, and while I didn't read all 3 articles completely I didn't see any massive distortion jump out.


No, that is not opinion. It's payed lobby masquerading as opinion. For anyone who is up-to-date with the tense political and social situation in Romania, that article is a tendentious, vile manipulation, at a time when many Romanians look to the west for support in the fight against corruption.


I’m in the same situation. I used the Guardian as one of my main new sources but it’s become painfully bias towards the left.

I long for a source that gives solid middle ground information and analysis.


This is also my issue with TheGuardian. Their reporting on internal issues in foreign countries is lacking in impartiality. It is not clear to me whether this is intentional or whether it is just that they put trust in the wrong foreign sources. I suspect the latter. Nonetheless they end up publishing some really ignorant and biased pieces about counties that Britons have no clue about, and thus cannot hold the paper accountable for.


Fox News :D


Haha, how any of you state side manage to watch Fox has always been a mystery for me.


Pro wrestling is also popular here.


Yeah, but people know that's fake...


I think it would be more accurate to say they don't care whether its fake or not


Based on the documented reaction of people to Trump admitting having paid off an adult film star (that is, not being surprised or caring), I'm starting to think "They don't know it's fake" is too easy of a reach.

The alternative exists that they really know the more strident bits of conservative media are fake, and just don't care. And indeed, delight in it because of its outlandishness.


IANAL, but this seems to collide with their EULA with Commercial Type [1], since third party hosting of the font files is "strictly prohibited" and the font files are in fact all available in the repo, which certainly doesn't sound like "reasonable effort to prevent access/use by unlicensed parties".

[1] https://github.com/guardian/frontend/blob/88cfa609c73545085c...


Though I'll not make any judgement towards "prevent access", the main license file[0] does state:

> All fonts are the property of Schwartzco, Inc., t/a Commercial Type (https://commercialtype.com/), and may not be reproduced without permission.

As a side tangent, it constantly surprises me how deep the creative industries manage to sink their claws into IP and licensing. I don't understand how artistic commissions manage to hold onto ownership. If I told my a prospective client that the websites they'd be paying me to build would forever more be —essentially— mine, they'd fire me pretty quickly. Same goes for most work product with employers.

The Guardian commissioned these faces. Why would they accept such a crappy license?

[0]: https://github.com/guardian/frontend/blob/master/LICENSE


A font family with the weights and other options a newspaper needs is a major undertaking. It's maybe 5 to 10 person-years of rather specialised work. For a publication constantly fighting to even break even, the costs aren't trivial.

So, the answer obviously is: the Guardian got the font far cheaper by allowing it to be sold to other customers, and (relevant here) not paying for a license that allows sub-licensing (which would be completely useless to them, anyway).

I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually a deal where no money changed hands, with the foundry getting the Guardian name for PR, and constant feedback during the design process.

As to web design: unless otherwise specified, web design is covered by the same copyright rules as fonts (or movies, or books,...). The correct analogy actually is a customer selling your design to some third party, something that probably would upset quite a few designers.

As for the customer changing a design: that's an infringement of the creator's so-called "moral rights". Its legality varies between jurisdictions, I believe.


> A font family with the weights and other options a newspaper needs is a major undertaking. It's maybe 5 to 10 person-years of rather specialised work

I'd love to hear more about this and why it's such an undertaking. Is it the "Font family" aspect that takes so long, because the designers are expected to produce a never ending line of similar fonts and symbols? Do the font designers have to consider printing costs ("if we make that exclamation mark one degree thicker, it'll use fifteen incremental litres of black ink per year")?


For the lettershapes themselves it won't likely be a matter of "printed area", depending on the news paper it will be printed at a far lower dot grain density than your average print product.

There are although numerous things to consider when designing a font for small printed copy, like how tight you can make a corner before ink would start to trap in it and bleed over the detail.

But there are many aspects of creating a full font family that make it a huge amount of work - not only do you need to fit all supported characters to different weights, essentially re-drawing the glyphs for every weight to make them balanced within their shape. You'll also have to do the kerning, tweaking individual spacings for all possible letter combinations at every weight. And that is all after having created & perfected every shape of every glyph to work together and have a distinguishable look and fashion.


Being outside the business, I found it surprising as well! The fonts are named GuardianTextWeb, GuardianSansWeb, etc., suggesting to me they have been purposely commissioned by The Guardian to obtain a differentiated look and feel.

However the license is non-exclusive and revocable, and restrictive to the point that only web seems to be allowed. The fonts are indeed available for purchase: https://commercialtype.com/catalog/guardian which from the point of view of protecting the look and feel of your brand that you just commissioned seems a bit weird.


It really depends on what you're paying for. If I buy a piece of proprietary software I buy a licence to use it and I wouldn't expect to own the source code.

So the real question is are you paying for the developers / artists service (ie paying for their time) or are you buying the product itself? That's a discussion that has to happen between the customer and the company selling their services.

For what it's worth, I've used photographers and other creative services before where they only charged one flat fee and you retained copyright ownership on anything produced. I have also worked at web shops where the company retained ownership of the code, however in that instance we also did the hosting, support, etc so we provided the service. Essentially SaaS but before SaaS really took off as a buzzword.


If I was paying for a developer to write the software for me, I would expect to own the portions that were written as part of that comission.

It's not what can happen (you can contract all sorts of conditions), it's that retaining ownership seems to be the standard for comissioned creative work.


The Guardian font seems to not be exclusive to Guardian: https://commercialtype.com/catalog/guardian


I've found that for instance Berlingske in Denmark uses the Guardian font pack: https://www.b.dk/


I used to work at the Guardian. My understanding is that the font was commissioned specifically for the Guardian, and they had exclusive usage rights for a few years only.


I was surprised that they chose Make for the frontend assets, but sticked to SBT for the scala app. Wouldn't it make sens to have everything under one build system, _especially_ because SBT is an absolute pain to work with?

This comment is a subjective personal view. If you like SBT, please say it out loud.


Make is a pretty decent way to put all your build commands under one very widely understood format. There are commands in there that run bash scripts, node, etc.


Great idea for recruitment. Also, didn't knew it is mostly Scala with server-side templates, though their comment system must be something like React or plain JS.


Yet another over engineered site.


I see they're using Scala/Play stack for the backend, excellent choice.


Interesting that this seems to be very liberally licensed under Apache v2.


So is the the guardian considered a monolithic app? Does this source include CMS components?


The frontend repository above is only for the user-facing front-end website (aka the guardian.com). Other back-end components such as the content API and the content creation tool (Composer) are separate projects in their own private repos (not open source). That said the Guardian has many other open source projects on their GitHub org [1], including their image management tool for instance [2].

[1] https://github.com/guardian [2] https://github.com/guardian/grid


The Guardian has moved to a voluntary-subscription model for revenue - a gentle nagware if you like. No adblocker-blocking and (relatively) few actual adverts on the pages.

I don't always agree with their opinions or editorials, but I do respect the quality of the journalism and the fact that they are a non-profit [0]

I can't see more commercially-oriented paper/website open-sourcing any of their code, even if it's a (good imho) recruitment ploy.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/the-scott-trust/2015/jul/26/the-...


>> I don't always agree with their opinions or editorials

I really don't know why this always has to be pointed out when it comes to classic mass media. I would say: "Good thing" because if you'd always agree, they would be doing a lousy job. Newspapers shouldn't be worldview-repeaters, especially in the op-eds. Lots of people look for validation of their already existing worldviews instead of critically reflecting other opinions.


It's not about the newspaper quality, it's about signaling that the speaker is not a card-carrying supporter of the political faction the newspaper is traditionally associated with. So for the Guardian it translates to "please don't assume I'm a Labour/Green supporter just because I read the Guardian".

With the Telegraph it would be Tories/UKIP; and with The Independent (or whatever it's called now) it would be Russian Oligarchs Living In London.


This pretty much matches my intent in the OP (whether that came across clearly is, of course, another matter...)

In a possibly vain attempt to try and avoid being trapped inside an echo-chamber of my own views I try and make myself read both the Guardian and the Telegraph alongside the BBC. Similarly CNN and Fox News for US news. Just to try and be exposed to alternate views.

It's possible to find interesting (again, not necessarily ones that I agree with) articles from all of the above media outlets. Some days this is harder than others. Some days I find an article hilarious at first reading, only to think a little, and then feel slightly terrified that someone might actually hold the stated opinions.

(And I realise that the above aren't all encompassing by any means, just more than I might otherwise look at).


>> "please don't assume I'm a Labour/Green supporter just because I read the Guardian"

So, its essentially an apology for being an open minded conservative... Sounds pretty much like a premature capitulation to the bigots. But at least I know where its coming from. I've been questioned: "What? you are reading FAZ?!?!?"[0] (with undertones of "how dare you" and "what kind of leftist are you?"). Its a shitty state of affairs, when you are judged based on the sources you read.

I think it is very important for everyone to be confronted with opinions that don't fit into ones already established narratives. And nobody should ever issue an apology for that. The alternative would be to renounce your intellectual curiosity and feed of a self-reinforcing feedback loop...

[0]: The leading conservative newspaper in Germany.


> Its a shitty state of affairs, when you are judged based on the sources you read.

I think it's a natural state: sources inevitably influence your view of the world, and most people only consume one source for any given media, so it's not illogical to desume that you will be influenced primarily by that one source.

I completely agree that consuming a multiplicity of sources is a Good Thing.


Completely agree, but it doesn't stop me thinking that others are likely judging me for what media I consume.


many Guardian opinion articles are designed to provoke the sort of people that read that guardian. To get them angry, or riled up, or uncomfortable.

As a result, in the same way that some right wing newspaper editorials (e.g. katie hopkins) are much more extreme than normal readers of those papers, Guardian editorials often make fairly left wing people uncomfortable. This is to encourage sharing and try to create viral articles that people will tweet about.

At the same time, the British left is in a phase where different factions are tearing eachother apart (which is why the current government is able to survive). For example the current debate around antisemistism. Or the anti-transexual feminist group that invaded the london gay pride march. Both sides of these debaes are reflected in the newspapers editorials, and few people would want to be assosiated with both sides at the same time.

In short Guardian oppinion articles are devisive, both for buisness reasons and reflecting social issues. People might distance themselves from them for reasons other than what you suggest.


Having worked in publishing, their effort and the NYT (particularly Bostock) to open up the code to the community is notable and admirable. I’ve tried to push for open source projects at similar business scales to no avail. Deaf ears.

It’s a shame that it’s viewed largely as a means to an end. Yet the very same companies used to work with printers to produce innovations. Digital media seems to be viewed much more as a commodity to many in the industry, unfortunately—in spite of it being the most effective and paradigm-shifting medium for mass communication since the television, radio, or platen press.


> Digital media seems to be viewed much more as a commodity [...] in spite of it being the most effective and paradigm-shifting medium

Or rather because: digital media is now so easy to produce and distribute, that its intrinsic value has now dropped to zero.


I’m not sure that’s it. I think that might be the perception, but users often speak out about the desire for higher quality content. Particularly content that is more interactive and engaging.

But many media groups see it as a means to an end, like I’ve noted. Throw up WordPress with a CDN for images and host every brand you own on one to five instances and that’s it. They understand those words: WordPress, CMS, CDN, enterprise-grade. They don’t know anything else about them, and don’t care. They, probably out of sincere financial need, prioritize analytics over all else in the tech space.

I think the split off from what you’ve noted is this:

Where they might have paid attention to improvements in colour mixing in print tech, etc, for the effects it would have on published photography they cannot see the benefits to investing in a more refined digital publishing platform or output. Just put a skin on whatever’s free and out there already—then have your engineers spend countless hours just putting out fires and patching holes with proverbial PHP bubblegum. Don’t get me started on data hygiene...

To wit: I’ve always worked outside of those teams looking in. Except for the data side—nightmare-inducing stuff.


> they cannot see the benefits to investing in a more refined digital publishing platform

Isn't that "our" fault, in a way, as technologists? Ever since the internet appeared, we've told them that the only thing that matters is speed: a fast but pixelated jpeg is better than a heavy one; a fast and simple homepage is better than a detailed one; and this in an industry that already valued "scooping" over everything else... On top of that, we churn tech stack every year or two: Perl! ASP! PHP! Java! Ruby! Python! XML! jquery! React! RSS! Forums! Socials! ...

So they build the fastest way they can, with the minimum amount of quality they can get away with and the minimum of investment in the most "standard" tech available, and then concentrate on their core business -- which has always been advertising.


That's definitely an arguable point. I'm sure it has weight in a lot of ways. We definitely advertise simplicity over comprehensivity because it sells a little more easily.

Alternatively, my experience in publishing has been there's a lot of focus on the quality of photography and images. Compression is attempted, but usually not at the cost of quality. They'll happily serve a 10MB photo, if photography is the purpose of the content.

I guess I'm speaking more to data-based features—mainly content delivery pipelines, general system architecture, and down to integrated interactive featurettes. In my experience there hasn't been a lot of pursuit after trendy tech. Quite the opposite. They're more willing to go for external contracts with "enterprise-grade" companies that offer "we do it all" services that under deliver and are host to poor archival practices for a medium that is traditionally archived.

Your latter point is spot on up until the advertising remark. Editorial and journalistic staff take their stuff very seriously and are often at odds with corporate and other managerial staff and are typically more into innovating (I rather like working with them and art teams... outside of lifestyle brands, anyway). Managing editors tend to want expediency and quality and don't mind one way or the other. The corporate and business management end are certainly consumed with sales, advertising, and analytics.


> I can't see more commercially-oriented paper/website open-sourcing any of their code, even if it's a (good imho) recruitment ploy.

  https://github.com/nytimes
  https://github.com/BostonGlobe
  https://github.com/npr & https://github.com/nprapps
  https://github.com/theatlantic
  https://github.com/wsj
  ...
I really wish people wouldn't always assume the worst of the media. Especially when it takes about two seconds to verify (disprove) one's prejudice. I know one such post isn't going to have much of an effect. But considering every tangential mention of "mainstream media" brings out a thousand cynics, being an underpaid journalist trying to keep our society's discourse somewhat together must be endlessly frustrating.

Plus, of course, it's just impossible to make informed decisions in a democracy when all trust in the media has been eroded by this hysteria.


I would recommend to double check those links to the github orgs, I’m sorry to say they are small projects. Can’t compare with publishing the whole frontend, their image managing library and their text editor.


The NYT has 65 projects, most of which have a few hundred stars, and many in the thousands.

It's lower for some of the others. But it still seems to me that these publishers default to publishing their code.

BUT: most publishers probably do not run an entirely home-grown system. Indeed, you will find many Wordpress plugins or rails gems among those published projects. And for the homespun solutions, it's likely that they are too specific to a publisher to be usefully open-sourced without a major investment of resources, like the Guardian's undertaking.



I can't see more commercially-oriented paper/website open-sourcing any of their code, even if it's a (good imho) recruitment ploy.

There's very little cost to opening it up, and a huge benefit (recruitment as you say, openness, community engagement, maybe even bug fixes..). Why not open up the code?


opening up publishes all your vulnerabilities, bugs, hacks and swearwords in the code as well. Thats plenty of reasons to not go open source


Security by obscurity really isn’t a great place to stay on long term. There is also an entire backend to this. I can only see great positives long term here, even if it means someone nefarious finds a bug in the short term.


Those are reasons to open the code up. You'll be motivated to improve it.


Aside: seems they still have this component deployed, but for some reason it is not the same in master as it is on the site.

https://github.com/guardian/thrashers/commit/dd4b41d48e71cb8...


I hope this doesn't contradict journalistic ethics to not reveal their source!


This deserves an upvote and extra points for creativity.


Both of these comments belong on reddit, not here.


Why?


The first one is fine, it's humorous and relevant to the topic. The reply is pointless though, it's only talking about moderation of the topic.


Guidelines say that talking about votes is pointless and therefore against the rules.

“Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.”


Always nice to see Scala being used for something like this




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