Live data from Hacker News

Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

cs.cmu.edu

121–130 of 160 posts

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#121
I love how different the conversations were on the internet then.

Now adays, if a thread came about to propose the ':-)', people would devolve into a debate about the proper use of the parenthesis, and at least one user would claim that '(-:' was a better choice, though it is the darkhorse option for the community.

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#122
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emojis are in Unicode. They aren't parsed or converted to multiple glyphs anymore, the text editor will provide them directly. http://unicode.org/emoji/charts/full-emoji-list.html I was doubtful of emojis at first, but now I'm loving the concept. They really help me communicate emotions that I wouldn't put into actual words. Smileys can't really do that. Culturally I see it as a the first universal (limited) language…

As a college student, I use emoji constantly to communicate all sorts of abstract sentiments, but in my experience they can also be irritatingly ambiguous and highly dependent on cultural norms and interpretation. Take the thumbs up emoji - within my social circles, the exact same emoji can be interpreted both as a enthusiastic agreement ("Sure!") and also as a sarcastic affirmation ("Good for you."). It's often diff…

We need an emoji to represent sarcasm that we would put at the end of the message, like the use of "/s". And I think this would count as grammar.

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which had already been used in the days of the telegraph. The first use of OMG (oh my god) and other such initialisms was 19th. C. I would imagine that includes :)

Also interesting, there is a set of telegraphic codes used to decrease the size of messages due to cost: http://people.eku.edu/styere/Encrypt/ABC4/ Definitely has to be one of the earliest examples of electronic signal compression.

Even beyond explicit codebooks, telegraph operators extensively used standardized abbreviations, meaning what they actually sent/received was remarkably similar to SMS text-speak, for obvious reasons! "Wr r ty gg r 9" => "Where are they going for No. 9?": http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2015/05/11/history_of_t...

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#124
post #27

It makes me a bit of a luddite (and a heck of a curmudgeon), but it always makes me a little sad when good ol' ASCII smileys are rendered all fancy-like. There's something charming and hackerish about showing it as a 7-bit glyph. I think the Internet fundamentally changed when that happened. Tangentially-related, I can't fathom why someone would post YouTube videos of `telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl`.

My workaround is a nose :^)

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a woman on a pedestal, like the expression: "women should be placed upon a pedestal." The phrase is usually understood to mean that men should treat women with respect, treating them as if they are more important than themselves.

Wow, that's a lot of downvotes. Mind telling me why?

Well first, that's not an expression that anyone uses. If there is one, it's the opposite of that. Also, your interpretation of that is incorrect.

Putting something on a pedestal is bad. It's pretending that it's perfect. If you put a person on a pedestal, you remove their humanity and flaws and aren't treating them like a person.

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#126
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand "{#}" and "\__/". Are they supposed to be arbitrary markers, or interpreted in some way?

"{#}" was proposed because it looks like teeth showing. "\_/" was proposed because it looks like a smile.

I'm trying to visualise the first one, but the only thing which comes to mind is Jaws from the old James Bond films.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/jamesbond/images/8/86/Ja...

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a woman on a pedestal, like the expression: "women should be placed upon a pedestal." The phrase is usually understood to mean that men should treat women with respect, treating them as if they are more important than themselves.

Wow, that's a lot of downvotes. Mind telling me why?

I didn't down vote you, and I have no special insight into why others have, but my guess would be that at least some of those votes were meant to indicate disagreement with your interpretation: I think more people see the equal sign as representing legs, rather than a pedestal.

If I were to speculate further, I would suspect that some people are wary of interpretations of ambiguous texts that unnecessarily imply sexist/culturally fraught meanings.

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#129
I... now find myself morbidly curious as to whether you could use Unicode diacritic abuse to draw actual pictures.

Pasted in example stolen from Glitchr, mainly to see how well HN renders them:

̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍ ̎̏̐̑̒̚ ̕̚҉ ̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̿̿̿̚̕̕̚̕̚͡ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎ ̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̚̕̚҉ ̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̿̿̿̚̕̕̚̕̚͡ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎ ̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̚̕̚҉ ̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓ٴٴٴٴٴٴٴٴ -ٴٴٴٴٴٴه ٴٴٴٴٴٴٴٴٴ ٴٴ...

Re: Original bulletin board thread in which ‘:-)’ was proposed

#130
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest problem with this is when the images auto-replacing your text emotes convey a completely different expression, and you have no control over it. Skype is the worst offender, where for example the ":3" cat-face gets replaced by an image of a whole cat, without a face at all. If you disable this "feature" in your options, it's only disabled on YOUR end. The receiving client will still convert your text into i…

The worst is if you are trying to do a letter-indexed list of items and B) gets coverted to a guy with sunglasses.

J
Post reply on HN