[HN Gopher] Unicode Character "X" (U+1D54F)
___________________________________________________________________
Unicode Character "X" (U+1D54F)
Author : t0m44c
Score : 385 points
Date : 2023-07-24 11:22 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.compart.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.compart.com)
| 0x53 wrote:
| Can't find it now, but originally it was reported that Elon got
| the logo from someone who replied to his tweet and that it was
| the lid logo for someone's unsuccessful podcast.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Oh the Accessibility hawks at accounts like MathAbuse
| (https://twitter.com/MathAbuse) fighting Unicode 'fancy text' are
| gonna love this
| astrange wrote:
| It's strange they think computers don't have the ability to
| read text just because it looks fancier.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Not computers - humans with accessibility needs, screen
| readers and such. Someone posting "I'm trying to Tweet on the
| new X" will read in audio as "I'm trying to Tweet on the new
| mathematical symbol x".... think of how any of those fun
| tweet texts with fancy italicized words made from math
| symbols read like.... it's brutal
| astrange wrote:
| Sure, but they should just fix the screen reader instead of
| working around it.
| simbolit wrote:
| This.
|
| Convincing a dozen or so screen reader developers to deal
| with this is an achievable goal. It is much much much
| harder to bring millions of twitt...X users to change
| their typographic habits.
| samwillis wrote:
| It makes typesetting easer, pretty genius really! /s
|
| We're going to see a trend of companies using Unicode characters
| for their logo now aren't we?...
| bhouston wrote:
| I am not sure you can trademark the Unicode mark though.
| Doesn't this preclude trademarks then?
| gorlilla wrote:
| I still will prefer a mix of comic sans and wingdings.
| cubefox wrote:
| I mean, hugging face exists.
| tsukikage wrote:
| ...which leads, of course, to the question of whether, with the
| application of a suitable sum of money, one can get one's
| chosen logo added to the unicode standard.
| reneberlin wrote:
| Also the game: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM
| neom wrote:
| Anyone have any knowledge of how the new CEO and Elons
| relationship is regarding the business? I'd be curious how the
| conversation goes with her about this kinda stuff.
| spuz wrote:
| The BBC reports:
|
| > Ms Yaccarino wrote on the platform that the rebrand was an
| exciting new opportunity.
|
| > "Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we
| communicate," she said.
| TheCleric wrote:
| I'm assuming it's "I own the company, do this."
|
| Not saying I agree with his ownership style (I certainly
| don't), but if you become a CEO for a company owned by Musk,
| and are not expecting him to undermine and interfere, than you
| are fooling only yourself.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| He hired her a couple months ago. He has been public about
| building the X "everything app" for a while. Presumably she
| already knew about that when she took the role.
| brrtbrrt wrote:
| [dead]
| danso wrote:
| These tweets by @SawyerMerritt seem to have been the
| "inspiration" for X's logo:
|
| https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1683150433806692352
|
| _Correction to my previous reply: @ajtourville designed the
| thicker X logo below for our (now discontinued) @OfficialXPod.
| The thicker logo was inspired by a font he found online (bottom
| right). I created the video above using the font logo, adding a
| glow and little lines in the logo to make it look "imperfect. "_
|
| https://twitter.com/ajtourville/status/1683151957723160576
|
| _Correct. This is the logo I designed and, if @elonmusk wants,
| he can have it for free._
|
| Maybe I haven't had enough coffee, but the allegedly "designed"
| thicker X, "inspired by a font [Alex] found online", seems to be
| exactly the unicode X, but bold? And this Alex guy is taking the
| credit for designing it?
| yreg wrote:
| So what, it's still a logo design.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Also on codepoints.net:
|
| https://codepoints.net/U+1D54F
| ricardo81 wrote:
| A good bandwidth saver then, even for the 'share this' kind of
| plugins that exist.
| toxypol wrote:
| so musk was trolled?
| bsuvc wrote:
| No, Musk is the one doing the trolling.
|
| Just look at the attention he is getting.
|
| If you think Musk is somehow upset about this, you are wrong.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Wow I feel so trolled that he's lighting more of his money on
| fire. Buy an extremely well known brand for 44 billion and
| replace it with something you spend 5 minutes of effort on.
| [deleted]
| asveikau wrote:
| Right, it may look like he's making dumb decisions left and
| right and doesn't have anyone telling him how stupid he is to
| get him to stop, but he's really playing 4d chess.
|
| /s
| bsuvc wrote:
| I didn't say any of that.
| Taek wrote:
| This character was added to Unicode in 2001, which notably is
| after Elon acquired x.com
| isodev wrote:
| The character is used by another famous piece of software for
| what, 40 years?
|
| https://x.org/wiki/
| phkahler wrote:
| But X windows is dead or dying. Oh, so is Twitter?
| gpderetta wrote:
| I expect that X11 will survive twitter.
|
| edit: using proper typography.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Reports of X11's death have been greatly exaggerated as far
| as I can see; it's still clinging stubbornly on, and
| efforts to kill it have tended not to go well.
| Maken wrote:
| Wayland is still trying really hard.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I hope not. I'm still using XCompose.
| layer8 wrote:
| X.org doesn't use that character. But e.g. TeX probably did
| before Unicode.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| It has been used in mathematics for decades, if not centuries,
| before that.
| Symbiote wrote:
| See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_bold
| jojobas wrote:
| It was added as a part of the Latin (and also Greek) alphabet
| in various incarnations for mathematical use.
| alexruf wrote:
| Wow, this probably changes everything we thought we knew about
| this company, the product and its CEO.
|
| No, seriously, does he think no one notices that the new X logo
| still hides the same old Twitter crap?
| CodeCompost wrote:
| Ah so that's how we're supposed to Google for tweets now. "X
| something something".
| b800h wrote:
| No, you're supposed to go to X and search on there. And consume
| ads.
| voxadam wrote:
| X (U+1D54F) decomposes[0] to X (U+0058) meaning that if you
| search for X your search string will likely be automatically
| converted to the equivalent X.
|
| Of course, while a search engine _could_ conceivably index and
| search the entire Unicode codespace internet wide, such a task
| would likely be somewhat unrealistic and provide only limited
| upside.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_equivalence
| calderknight wrote:
| i presume x.com or site:x.com will get the trick done
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's already got to search 1000s of Chinese characters, a few
| more doesn't make a big difference.
| voxadam wrote:
| How do you decide which characters to index? The current
| Unicode release (15.0) includes 149,186 individual
| characters. I suppose you can _probably_ ignore U+237C
| (Right Angle with Downwards Zigzag Arrow) seeing as nobody
| seems to know what it denotes.[0][1]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31012865
|
| [1] https://ionathan.ch/2022/04/09/angzarr.html
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Most search engines for languages like English are
| indexing words as opposed to characters so choices as to
| what characters are indexed are made as part of deciding
| which words to index.
|
| Search engines for CJK languages do tend to work at the
| character level so a search for "Sona" on a certain site
| run by (I think) Chinese people will turn up result for
| "Persona".
|
| I was involved with an A.I. startup where we had lots of
| meetings about what to do about all the strange Unicode
| characters and right now in Mastodon there is a lot of
| concern that screen readers will choke on unicode bold
| characters while it doesn't seem that difficult to squash
| them down to ordinary characters or treat them exactly as
| <b>unicode bold characters</b>
| NoGravitas wrote:
| That is Ellis.
| layer8 wrote:
| The essential operation here is not decomposition, but
| compatibility normalization. Both NFKC and NFKD result in a
| regular "X".
| [deleted]
| teeray wrote:
| I can't wait for a Twitter vs. Xfinity trademark showdown.
| ectospheno wrote:
| x.com was a company he founded early 1999. He wanted an online
| bank. Wikipedia page on it is informative.
| croes wrote:
| Possibly related
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36845492
| marmitesmuggler wrote:
| Strongly reminds me of the X11 logo (one of my favourite
| designs).
| gjvc wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System yup
| simplicio wrote:
| Yea, kinda feels like X.org would have a decent trademark case
| if they wanted to pursue it. Both the name and logo are really
| similar, and it seems like both companies are operating in
| similar enough categories that its not too hard to imagine
| there being confusion between the two.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Musk has the deeper pockets. I'm more worried about him suing
| x.org and winning.
| pwdisswordfishc wrote:
| I'm more worried about him suing x.org and losing, but
| still managing to bankrupt the foundation with legal
| expenses.
| Delk wrote:
| My first thought when simplicio mentioned trademark was
| that The Open Group -- which would seem to own the X Window
| System logo -- might _need_ to try and protect their
| trademark. If they don 't, it's easy to foresee how down
| the road the similarity could become their problem, not
| Musk's.
|
| The X.Org Foundation might need to do the same for their X
| logo even though it's a bit different (and I'm not sure if
| it's trademarked in the first place).
|
| IANAL, but you do need to defend a trademark in order to
| maintain it after all.
|
| Of course fighting to protect it would probably be costly
| and financially risky even if they did have a case.
| petercooper wrote:
| Does this affect the potential for trademarking the logo?
| samwillis wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| They can probably trade mark it for social media (unless
| someone already has), but are highly unlikely to be able to
| trademark it broadly, which clearly is the intention.
| EspressoGPT wrote:
| Isn't a trademark always tied to its respective business
| domain?
| samwillis wrote:
| Yes, but those "classes" can be quite wide, there is for
| example no way they could trademark it for "Class 9:
| Computer and software products and electrical and
| scientific products."
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Wait until you find out about "apple" and "windows".
| samwillis wrote:
| Apple and windows are trademarks for software. You would
| be unable to get the trademark "Apple" for a company
| selling fruit, or "windows" for a window fitter, and
| neither could Apple or Microsoft.
|
| X is a pre-existing symbol used by, and part of a
| standard character set for, software. You could probably
| get a trademark on it for a company selling apples, but I
| highly doubt you could for a software company.
| bawolff wrote:
| > X is a pre-existing symbol used by
|
| "used by" is pretty debatable. Its a fairly obscure
| character. I don't think being in unicode by itself is
| sufficient enough to count.
| _flux wrote:
| There is also https://www.x.org/ which seems quite slow.
| I wonder if it's receiving more traffic than usually..
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > its respective business domain
|
| Or to any number of business domains. See the trademark
| registration for "Wagatha Christie":
|
| https://trademarks.ipo.gov.uk/ipo-
| tmcase/page/Results/1/UK00...
| tiborsaas wrote:
| I don't see a problem with this, it's a generic character
| used in mathematics. If nobody trademarked it before, it
| shouldn't cause any issues. If using greek letters like l in
| brands is not a problem, then this should fly too.
|
| They could also apply for multiple trademarks with small
| additions if they launch a new product:
|
| X[?][?]
| samwillis wrote:
| Trademarks are against a "class", these can be quite wide.
| They would clearly want to own that exact symbol for "Class
| 9: Computer and software products and electrical and
| scientific products."
|
| Unicode already contains _exactly_ it, it 's a
| mathematical/scientific symbol, even if they did get the
| trademark in that category (which I doubt) they will never
| be able to enforce it. With trade marks, if you don't
| successfully protect them, you loose them.
| peyton wrote:
| It's totally enforceable. It's a trademark. Who else is
| doing business with the Unicode doublestruck X?
| aequitas wrote:
| https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.Org_Server
| redeux wrote:
| I think this would seriously confuse his core audience, so
| I doubt that's the intention. Then again, I think
| rebranding Twitter to X is a terrible idea, so what do I
| know.
| KingShabibo wrote:
| It is a problem, because if theoretically Musk were to
| trademark that character (improbable), Unicode would likely
| be forced to remove that character and break every instance
| of it across the internet. Not to mention that anybody
| using that symbol, which already has an established meaning
| in mathematics, would be infringing on that trademark.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Trademark should be possible, but a copyright will depend if
| the whole logo surpasses the Threshold of Originality. Ordinary
| typefaces, plus colors and effects, are below this threshold.
| dizzydes wrote:
| Musk can seem to do no right atm, I see a lot of hate out there
| with this name change and planned product expansion but I can't
| quite understand why. He's taking an underperforming social
| network and trying to make it work. It might prove fatal, but it
| would have died a slow boring death in its old form. Perhaps its
| just that people don't like his personality, which shouldn't come
| into it.
|
| Fwiw even prior to his defunding moderation it felt like one of
| the meanest places on the internet, I don't see much of a change.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| > He's taking an underperforming social network and trying to
| make it work.
|
| Few would argue that it works better now than before
|
| > Perhaps its just that people don't like his personality, I
| suppose it's more complicated:
|
| - he promised "freedom of speech" and Twitter has rather become
| "freedom of hate"
|
| - he is taking constantly controversial political positions,
| usually favoring dictators, and this doesn't resonate very well
| in the western world
|
| Maybe people just wish he would have stayed the way he was: a
| sort of fascinating "Doc Brown" rather than yet another average
| billionaire pushing political ideas through his wealth and
| popularity.
| [deleted]
| nancyhn wrote:
| It is better for favoring free speech over censorship.
| Dictators don't favor free speech whatsoever. You've been
| gaslight into believing the opposite. Tyrants censor people
| with any justification they can get their hands on, including
| "hate speech".
|
| We accept speech we don't like to avoid this very trap.
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| Oh, bosh. Don't be absurd. Elon demonstrably isn't
| "favoring free speech over censorship." He's just choosing
| different speech to favor and to censor.
|
| Oddly enough, he tends to favor hate groups and dictators:
| "Twitter's compliance with government demands for
| censorship or surveillance has risen [during Musk's tenure]
| to over 80%, from around 50%."
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/elon-
| musk-...
|
| https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna81961
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/06/elon-musk-free-
| speec...
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zm9q/elon-musk-twitter-
| naz...
| asguy wrote:
| > Few would argue that it works better now than before
|
| Maybe in the social circles you stick to, but there are
| plenty of /other/ people (i.e. more than a "few") that are
| quite happy that the 80% of employees doing their jobs were
| let go. [1]
|
| https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394
| kibwen wrote:
| Is Matt Taibbi implied to be one of those happy people?
|
| _' Matt Taibbi, a journalist who worked on the "Twitter
| Files" series of articles about old business decisions at
| Twitter, has said he'll no longer use the social media
| platform. Taibbi is apparently frustrated by Twitter's
| recent decision to heavily restrict all links and tweets
| about Substack following that company's announcement it
| would be launching Substack Notes, a short form social
| network and potential competitor to Twitter. Any Twitter
| user who even tries to retweet a post from Substack is met
| with a notification, "some actions on this Tweet have been
| disabled by Twitter," a move that has angered many users,
| including Taibbi._
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/04/07/twitter-
| fi...
| asguy wrote:
| > Is Matt Taibbi implied to be one of those happy people?
|
| Not specifically. That's why I linked to content from
| him, and not his profile page.
| drcongo wrote:
| You answered your own questions really with " _Musk can seem to
| do no right atm_ " - for some of us, it's just incredibly funny
| to watch the hubris of a self-proclaimed genius cause them to
| fail so often in such a short space of time. A seemingly
| endless string of stupid decisions because he's surrounded by
| boot lickers and sycophants with not one of them willing to put
| their hand up and tell him he's not a genius.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| wccrawford wrote:
| For me it's not funny so much as shocking, and sad. He had a
| hand, of some sort, in at least a few great things, and it's
| upsetting to watch it falling apart. I often think of the
| quote:
|
| "You either die a hero, or live to see yourself become a
| villain."
|
| Far too many icons outlive their hero phase, and it's kind of
| depressing.
|
| Edit: Or rather, the hero phase fails to live long enough to
| outlive the person.
| jeltz wrote:
| The reality is that the hero likely never existed.
| izzdrasil wrote:
| He certainly had his wallet involved with some interesting
| things but I think it's a stretch to say he had any
| beneficial hands-on involvement.
| lazide wrote:
| He's produced a lot of value for a lot of people over the
| years, and many things some of us see every day (like
| Teslas) are only the way they are/have been successful
| the way they are because of his influence.
|
| It's always been more as a promoter and image seller, but
| he has also been willing to make big calls and take risks
| others won't which has allowed them to grow. That is
| valuable. And he has been hands on in some areas
| sometimes in ways that have been instrumental in shaping
| things. For better or worse.
|
| He's far from perfect. But no one is, and honesty is
| important.
|
| I suspect the big issue here is something typical of
| narcissists - he's gotten older, and he can't keep up his
| game convincingly enough anymore to fool a large enough
| percentage of the public, so he's downward spiraling. And
| internally he can feel it, which makes it worse.
|
| It would explain a lot, especially the often bizarre and
| destructive attacks on anyone who says anything he
| doesn't like. The over the top edgy/controversial
| behavior to get reactions, etc.
| lazide wrote:
| Which is a natural state when the one in charge is insecure
| about their own actual weaknesses.
|
| They'll attack anyone who tells them the actual truth, and
| end up surrounded by those who either can't see the truth
| (due to incompetence or delusion), or are willing to actively
| lie about it (manipulators). By process of elimination, if
| not by active choice.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| It's very hard _not_ to take his personality into it since he
| chooses to force it in there. However, trying to be a bit
| dispassionate for a second, I 'd say the haphazard nature of
| the changes are what really gets to people. Especially those
| who depend on Twitter as a tool, not knowing what it will be
| called tomorrow, how it will function, which parts will work
| and which wont, etc. is quite a deal-breaker.
| outsidetheparty wrote:
| Because he keeps having these late-night binges of bizarre,
| brand-destroying decision making. Twitter is underperforming as
| a result of his previous rounds of bizarre, brand- and product-
| destroying decision making. Twitter wasn't dying until he came
| along to "fix" it.
|
| Yeah, his personality is plenty objectionable too, but it's
| mostly the way he's seemingly intentionally running the company
| into the ground that I object to.
| rlglwx wrote:
| Twitter was doing fine. By taking it private, he saddled it
| with massive debt its current revenue couldn't service. And
| every decision thereafter has been half baked and poorly
| executed. So by trying to "save" it, he's killing it much
| quicker than if it had just been left alone.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Twitter was doing fine.
|
| It was losing $4 million per day.
| jeltz wrote:
| That is not at all what looking at their financials say.
| Twitter was a very profitable company which over hired like
| crazy in 2021. This could have been solved without gong
| crazy like Musk did. Just do responsible layoffs.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/delisted/TWTR/twitter/eb
| i...
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/delisted/TWTR/twitter/nu
| m...
| [deleted]
| nickthegreek wrote:
| There are no articles to confirm that it was losing $4m a
| day prior to the acquisition. This is a number that Elon
| put out (post acquisition) to justify layoffs.
| TheCleric wrote:
| Here's why this particular choice was foolish:
|
| 1) He's going to lose a TON of brand recognition overnight.
|
| 2) He seems to have gone from "I'm thinking about doing this"
| to "We're going live" over the course of a weekend. This is
| both rushed and more based on reaction than actual thought and
| research. I don't see any of his customers wanting this.
|
| 3) Morale for employees there already seems to be terrible.
| Having them implement a rebrand over a weekend on a whim makes
| him seem like a dictator.
|
| 4) From a practical perspective the name X is foolish. The word
| "tweeted" is a verb used every day on the news. Companies would
| kill to have that level of their product within the culture.
| Now they will say what? "exed"? No one will say that because
| the audience won't know what it means and it has the negative
| connotation of something you've moved away from (ex-husband,
| ex-girlfriend, etc.).
| gemstones wrote:
| Out of curiosity, why shouldn't his personality come into it?
|
| There's no moral or ethical basis to not consider his
| personality when evaluating Twitter, and even if you have one
| I'm not obligated to share it.
|
| You don't have to understand things for them to still be valid!
| To me, he's an offputting guy doing a bad job, and those two
| things are valid to consider when thinking of his company
| according to my moral values. That's subjective, but it's
| clearly a view that many share with me.
| jdub wrote:
| He's taken an okay performing social network, laden it with
| debt, absolutely obliterated its reputation and value by
| screwing around with it like a coke-addled toddler (with some
| kind of fascination for fascist-adjacent politics), and now
| he's destroying a globally-recognised brand to play out a
| decades-old fantasy that he should've grown out of the first
| time it blew up in his face.
| astrange wrote:
| > Fwiw even prior to his defunding moderation it felt like one
| of the meanest places on the internet, I don't see much of a
| change.
|
| The meanest place on the internet is EJMR, the forum economists
| use to find job offers. Not joking.
|
| The reason for this is unclear except that it's the most
| conservative social science.
| KingLancelot wrote:
| [dead]
| jonas-w wrote:
| You can also access x.com when using the Unicode Character
| https://xn--971h.com (X.com)
| N19PEDL2 wrote:
| Also https://xn--u1a.com is for sale (where kh is a Cyrillic
| letter, see [0]).
|
| Would be funny to buy it and make a redirect to threads.net.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kha_(Cyrillic)
| jonas-w wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36844079
|
| Also https://xn--vm8a.com which is on sale for $91M
| notatoad wrote:
| i thought all non-latin punycode domains were forbidden for
| purchase on .com?
|
| edit - i looked up the whois, just because it's parked at
| godaddy doesn't mean it's for sale
|
| Name: XN--U1A.COM
|
| Internationalized Domain Name: kh.com
|
| Registry Domain ID: 106236037_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
|
| Domain Status:
|
| clientDeleteProhibited
|
| clientRenewProhibited
|
| clientTransferProhibited
|
| clientUpdateProhibited
| mkl wrote:
| Are you sure? When I type https://xn--971h.com in it doesn't
| work, but clicking the link in your comment does because HN has
| made the href x.com. The browser converts X.com to x.com before
| going there too. Moreover, X and X are treated as equivalent
| characters in this context, so whois X.com looks up x.com, and
| X.com's punycode encoding is x.com:
| https://www.whatsmydns.net/idn-punycode-converter?q=%F0%9D%9...
|
| whois xn--971h.com returns the same thing as an unregistered
| domain.
| jonas-w wrote:
| HN automatically converts these urls to punycode, maybe this
| is a bug and it automatically converts everything to punycode
| even though it doesn't make sense?
| mkl wrote:
| I think so. Then I'm not right about the punycode encoding
| of X.com - it's that it isn't even needed. I've emailed
| dang about it.
| yreg wrote:
| It's unrelated to HN. Copy pasting X.com into the address
| bar still leads to x.com
|
| related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack
| mkl wrote:
| I already mentioned that, and it's not what they mean.
| Hover your mouse over a https://xn--971h.com link in a
| comment on HN and notice that it's pointing to
| https://x.com. This does seem to be an HN thing; see
| here: https://jsfiddle.net/rtfhejdy/
| dom96 wrote:
| Looks like it's also not possible to register xn--971h.com (I
| tried both Namecheap and Cloudflare).
| mikea1 wrote:
| Yeah, it's explicitly disallowed by ICANN to register a
| domain with this unicode character (along with numerous
| other characters):
|
| https://www.verisign.com/assets/icannrestricted/idn-icann-
| re...
| ricardo81 wrote:
| $ curl -i 'https://xn--971h.com'
|
| curl: (6) Could not resolve host: xn--971h.com
| yreg wrote:
| $ curl X.com <html> <head><title>400 Bad
| Request</title></head> <body> <center><h1>400
| Bad Request</h1></center>
| <hr><center>cloudflare</center> </body>
| </html>
| ricardo81 wrote:
| What's that all about then? I'd expect curl to deal with
| either/or
|
| curl should especially live with a punycode version.
|
| Unless the punycode from the OP is incorrect? From basic
| online tools, it looks like it simply converts to x.com
| jrockway wrote:
| I get: $ curl http://X.com -v *
| Trying 34.102.136.180:80... * Connected to X.com
| (34.102.136.180) port 80 (#0) > GET / HTTP/1.1
| > Host: x.com > User-Agent: curl/8.1.2 >
| Accept: */* > < HTTP/1.1 200 OK
|
| No https, though. (OpenSSL SSL_connect: Connection reset
| by peer in connection to x.com:443)
| ranting-moth wrote:
| I wonder what Elon paid for x.com?
| qingcharles wrote:
| I'm not sure. There was a short period when you could
| register one letter dotcoms before about 1994. He's owned it
| since forever that I know of. His first company was called X,
| which became PayPal.
|
| I spent a long time in the mid-90s trying to persuade
| INTERNIC to let me register b.com.
| contingencies wrote:
| Shame. That would have made a great Chinese porn site.
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%e5%b1%84
| dietrichepp wrote:
| This is for math.
|
| In Latex, you get these symbols with \mathbb{}. They are most
| commonly used to represent to represent number sets, like the set
| of all integers Z (from the German), set of all natural numbers
| N, set of complex numbers C, set of all real numbers R, rationals
| Q (for "quotient"), set of quaternions H (named after Hamilton),
| or an unknown set F (for "field"). This explains why many of the
| letters in this series exist in the basic multilingual plane--
| because R is very commonly used, but A is not. You can find R in
| the basic multilingual plane at U+211D.
|
| I don't know why people are interested in the X symbol. It's just
| there to complete the alphabet. There are many other ranges like
| this used for writing mathematical formulas, like the range of
| bold letters, fraktur, script, etc.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Cause "X" is a cool letter. Just ask David X. Cohen.
| snarfy wrote:
| They are an accessibility nightmare. I read a comment here
| recently from a blind person that had to give up on math
| education entirely due to all of the symbols not being
| supported by screen readers. It was pretty sad.
| hfkwer wrote:
| That's on screen readers developers. And I don't know when
| that comment you seem to remember dates back to, but I have
| had several blind students in my math lectures over the past
| decade. They seemed did fine.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| One blind mathematician I know prefers reading LaTeX over pdf
| math for exactly this reason.
| blincoln wrote:
| I avoid using oddball Unicode characters for this reason,[1]
| but I also feel like at this point the can of worms has been
| unleashed, and the screen reader authors are going to have to
| adapt to a more hostile environment.
|
| It seems like one approach might be something like this,
| assuming none of them are doing it already. If this is TLDR,
| the key feature relating to the topic at hand is the point
| about handling mathematical symbols, so skip everything
| except that one.
|
| * Pre-parse the entire page and count the number of
| characters that would be read using a multi-word description.
| While doing this, create sub-counts of characters that fall
| into each Unicode script (Latin, Cyrillic, mathematical
| notation, etc.).
|
| * If the number of characters that would be read using a
| multi-word description exceeds a user-specified threshold,
| prompt the user for how to proceed.
|
| * First, tell the user how many different Unicode scripts
| (and blocks if necessary[2]) are contained on the page. For
| each set, prompt using the following logic if the user hasn't
| already set a default:
|
| ** If a script/block/whatever consists of abstract symbols,
| like the mathematical set, offer to read it using the closest
| approximation in the character set it's derived from. e.g.
| for X, read it as "X" instead of "mathematical double-struck
| capital X". Read both as "gamma" instead of their lengthy
| "mathematical..." descriptions.
|
| ** If a script/block/whatever represents a spoken language,
| offer to do one of the following:
|
| ** Read it as if spoken by someone fluent in the language.
|
| ** Precede it with "the following [n] [script name]
| characters" and read each one individually, without any
| leading per-letter indicators, e.g. for "ABGD", "the
| following four Greek characters: alpha, beta, gamma, delta".
| Optionally include per-letter capitalization indication, but
| only if the user has previous enabled that option.
|
| ** Replace it with a count and the script name, e.g. "five
| hundred characters of Chinese script". Provide a way for the
| user to interrupt the narration and expand that section
| instead of omitting it.
|
| * Allow the user to store all of the prompt answers as
| defaults and not prompt them again unless the user resets the
| option. e.g. "always read mathematical symbols as the closest
| Latin letter approximation".
|
| * Maybe remind the user that it is an option in edge cases
| like "this entire page would be read as 'a series of 53,198
| symbols you've suppressed reading'".
|
| [1] One of my first full-time jobs, decades ago, was doing UI
| development with a focus on accessibility.
|
| [2] Pretty unbelievable that the Unicode consortium has taken
| the position that an apparently unlimited number of stylistic
| variations on Latin letters should get their own Unicode
| renditions, but that basically every other culture's
| character sets gets merged into one style of character even
| if there are extensive historical reasons to have different
| renderings, and also has the time to keep adding corner-case
| emojis, but can't be bothered to provide a single way to
| easily differentiate "Cyrillic" from "Latin" as well as
| differentiate "mathematical notation" from "Latin".
| eesmith wrote:
| Ooh, I found a use in the wild!
| https://www.ams.org/books/memo/1023/ The
| central theme of this paper is the variational analysis of
| homeomorphisms $h \colon \mathbb X \xrightarrow
| []{{}_{\!\!\mathrm {onto}\!\!}}\mathbb Y$ between two
| given domains $\mathbb X , \mathbb Y \subset \mathbb
| R^n$.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The "bb" in "mathbb" isn't for "math, baby" (although
| accurate), but short for "blackboard bold". These letterforms
| don't originate with blackboards though, using outlines for
| thick verticals goes back centuries. They're sometimes called
| open face.
| [deleted]
| tmccrary55 wrote:
| [flagged]
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _Because Elmo_
|
| Please do not sully the good name of the Muppet by
| associating him with the tech billionaire...
| krger wrote:
| Elmo (and specifically the value-extraction-by-merchandise
| craze CTW created around him) pretty much single-handedly
| destroyed the original ensemble cast spirit of Sesame
| Street, so it's actually pretty apt.
| masukomi wrote:
| because elon renamed twitter to "x corp", bought the x.com
| domain and shoved this character on it.
| dietrichepp wrote:
| The bird is a lot more recognizable, no? Maybe even
| beautiful?
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I thought the same thing. The bird is endearing.
|
| Changing it to X is something some edgy teenager would do.
| I can't help but wonder if he's trying to destroy twitter
| on purpose.
| solardev wrote:
| This whole Twitter saga is like what happens when a cat
| catches a bird and doesn't know what to do with it so
| just slowly tortures it to death for the hell of it
| yurodivuie wrote:
| It sounds like Elon had the domain and it was burning a
| hole in his pocket. That's the only explanation, honestly.
|
| Twitter as a brand becomes less valuable the more he alters
| it, since he's such a polarizing figure, so changing the
| brand to break continuity seems pretty counterproductive.
| It just reminds people that Elon is still fiddling with it.
| nerdbert wrote:
| > It sounds like Elon had the domain and it was burning a
| hole in his pocket.
|
| Yeah I wonder if he "sold" it to Twitter, and if so, for
| how much.
| kergonath wrote:
| > It sounds like Elon had the domain and it was burning a
| hole in his pocket. That's the only explanation,
| honestly.
|
| I think he just thinks he's getting his revenge and that
| everyone will see how his terrible idea of x.com was
| actually genius back in the day. Like a particularly
| expensive midlife crisis. A bit like some dudes who start
| playing guitar because they could not back in the day,
| when it was a useful tool to make friends and look cool.
| jona-f wrote:
| Hey, I started playing guitar as an adult and it's one of
| the biggest pleasures in my life. Also, I'm very
| mediocre.
| kergonath wrote:
| Haha sorry, no offense meant. Some people don't do it for
| bad reasons ;)
| kergonath wrote:
| Yeah, but not kewl enough.
| simplicio wrote:
| Also people less likely to assume its the brand for a
| pornography site? Feel like people have developed a habit
| of avoiding (or seeking out) anything with a prominent "X"
| in the name on the Internets.
| NoNotTheDuo wrote:
| Not only the bird, but all of the associated verbiage. For
| example, Tweet and Retweet. Do those go away after changing
| the name and logo?
| solardev wrote:
| Yeah lol, Musk wants to call them xs now. Like "your x
| last night was pretty great" or "will you share your x
| with me again?"
|
| Not even kidding. https://apnews.com/article/twitter-x-
| logo-blue-bird-musk-068...
|
| > In response to questions about what tweets would be
| called when the rebranding is done, Musk said they would
| be called Xs.
| account42 wrote:
| By coincidence, a lot of people I know have already been
| calling them twats.
| brazzledazzle wrote:
| Clearly none of the marketing or branding people stayed
| on. Or he ignores them.
| treve wrote:
| I imagine the former will become xcrete.
| mkl wrote:
| He (or a company of his) has had the x.com domain for
| decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com
| spread_love wrote:
| No, it changed ownership many times since 1999.
|
| > On July 5 2017, Musk repurchased the domain name X.com
| from PayPal
|
| They even took a little jab at him when it happened
|
| > "We are delighted to sell the domain x.com back to its
| previous owner"
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| [flagged]
| deadbunny wrote:
| > On July 5 2017
|
| 2017 is not 1999
| gilleain wrote:
| Given the start of this thread was about N, C, X etc ...
|
| We could even say "2017 > 1999", giving an ordering over
| these numbers.
| mkl wrote:
| I think you missed the point: the domain has not been in
| Musk's control that whole time, as I had thought. His
| company X.com had it, then PayPal got it when it was
| created in the merger of X.com and Confinity, and PayPal
| kept it after Musk left, but then Musk got it back.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| This doesn't contradict what you're saying, but note that
| the company was only re-branded to PayPal after Musk left
| it. I think it was just named Confinity after the merger.
| spread_love wrote:
| I'm delighted to let you know that you missed the point.
| It was a very short comment.
| misnome wrote:
| I'm sorry to be the one to let you know but 2017 was
| under two decades ago.
| RoryH wrote:
| Was this message posted on x.com?
| onesphere wrote:
| I get a 'godaddy parked' page for x.com (not even a 'y' or
| a 'z'): https://thetaplane.com/x.com
| MisterTea wrote:
| Am I crazy or was x.com at one point x-drive, the early
| online storage company?
| coev wrote:
| He owned x.com decades ago and it was part of paypal's
| acquisition, then they sold the name back to elon a few years
| ago
| jhoechtl wrote:
| > I don't know why people are interested in the X symbol.
|
| It's the new symbol for and domain name of the social? network
| formerly known as twitter.
| astrange wrote:
| Not to mention the X.org logo.
| plagiarist wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Can you please not break the site guidelines by
| fulminating, name-calling, snarking, and so on? It's not
| what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| You may not owe $CEO better, but you owe this community
| better if you're participating in it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| orlp wrote:
| X is used as a symbol for a generic metric space. E.g. if your
| result is generic over R2, C3, etc, you can write X.
| dietrichepp wrote:
| Thanks! I am always a little curious about how these symbols
| are used. That makes perfect sense to me.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| I'm a PhD student in algebraic geometry and have seldom seen
| this. IME "X" is a generic name for all kinds of spaces
| (metric, topological, complex analytic, algebraic...), but I
| don't remember ever having seen "X".
|
| That said, in principal everyone is free to call their spaces
| how they like. It just makes it easier to read if one sticks
| to familiar notation.
| orlp wrote:
| You're right I should've used "as a symbol" not "as the
| symbol". It's not terribly common.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Now that I think about it, most double stroked characters
| really represent "concrete" objects, not generic ones.
| Like P for projective space, or A for affine space. Also
| F is often used together with an index F_q for _the_
| field with q elements.
|
| On the other hand, Wikipedia[1] agrees with you, that X
| is "occasionally" used for metric spaces.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_bold
| dietrichepp wrote:
| My experience with F is "vector space over a field F",
| which is not a concrete object, but I have probably seen
| F written in a normal italic style more often.
| ginnungagap wrote:
| In set theory blackboard bold P, Q and C are very often
| used for arbitrary (forcing) posets
| dataflow wrote:
| I've seen P used for probability.
| runarberg wrote:
| I've also seen d as the differential operator and E(X) as
| the expected value of X. I think I've also seen 1_x, and
| i, and j but I don't remember for what.
| brewmarche wrote:
| I know 1_X as the indicator function (also called
| characteristic function) of X in measure theory and
| probability theory, but I've also seen 1_X or kh_X.
|
| i and j can be basis vectors or imaginary units although
| I've never seen them in blackboard bold in my lectures.
| orlp wrote:
| As a counterpoint, F when not fixed to a particular size
| is arguably still generic over "any field", and G is most
| definitely generic for "any group", even if fixed to a
| particular size.
| enriquto wrote:
| > This is for math.
|
| Heh.
|
| The "tabs vs spaces" debate of mathematical typography is
| whether these symbols should be used at all in printing, or
| reserved for actual blackboards. In LaTeX you can have actual
| boldface letters, so you should write a boldface letter R to
| represent the real numbers and so on. Using "blackboard bold"
| in print looks terribly off to some (many?) people.
| mcphage wrote:
| > In LaTeX you can have actual boldface letters, so you
| should write a boldface letter R to represent the real
| numbers and so on.
|
| Why use the wrong symbol, when you can just use the correct
| (ie, blackboard bold) symbol?
| computerfriend wrote:
| Do you have a source for this? I have never come across this
| debate and personally find the blackboard bold convention to
| be useful, as well as very visually elegant.
| enriquto wrote:
| It seems to me that it is part of the folklore. Note: not
| the folklore of math! The folklore of mathematical
| typesetting, which is a tiny community.
|
| You can find many old and new math texts using either
| convention. Most often readers won't even notice. There are
| authors who are adamant against blackboard bold, most
| famously Donald Knuth and Jean-Pierre Serre. Others simply
| use regular boldface because of tradition, or because it's
| the default style of the journal. Most people don't care
| too much. But I have also heard people expressing strong
| opinions on each side, that's why I made the analogy with
| tabs-vs-spaces. Nothing too serious.
|
| Elegance is entirely subjective. I have the opposite
| opinion: if we can do real boldface in print, which is the
| original usage, what's the point of using a black-board
| version? We have the real thing! But I also understand the
| opposite opinion, voiced elsewhere in this thread, that
| open bold lettering is a new case, like italics or fraktur,
| and we can use it freely in print.
| Skeime wrote:
| I strongly disagree that the bold symbols are better, even
| though they're what blackboard bold was originally conceived
| to approximate. The reason: Bold font draws attention (ask a
| typographer about type color), but usually, the bolder
| symbols are not the ones requiring that attention. (If I read
| a text about real analysis, I know that the domains and
| codomains will be the real numbers, for example.) The
| blackboard bold versions stick out much less when looking at
| the greater composition of the page.
| enriquto wrote:
| I respect your opinion, and agree that with some
| particularly "thin" fonts (most notably, Computer Modern
| and its variants), the associated bold symbols are too
| exaggerated and produce and ugly effect.
|
| But there is certainly some dependency on the font. For
| example, the Baskerville used by the Publications de l'IHES
| is a much thicker font, and the bold letters flow very
| naturally. Look for example here
|
| http://www.numdam.org/item/PMIHES/
|
| The publications in the sixties and seventies, which are
| scanned, are very beautiful and the bold letters mix
| smoothly in the text. You cannot see them "from far away"
| as happens with Computer Modern.
|
| Curiously, the modern pdfs look slightly different, with
| apparently thinner fonts. This may be an effect of
| printing, that smears the ink a bit and produces slightly
| thicker type?
| marcelluspye wrote:
| I hated when textbooks/papers did this. Half the time you
| can't tell if they meant to use the bold letter or if the
| printer was just being generous on that character. Made
| legibility quite a bit more difficult. BB letters are
| unambiguous.
| jdrek1 wrote:
| > In LaTeX you can have actual boldface letters, so you
| should write a boldface letter R to represent the real
| numbers and so on.
|
| Almost [1] every single student absolutely hates that
| notation in scripts. Bold is used to draw attention, it
| should not be abused as being part of the variable/type. Just
| use the proper symbol.
|
| [1] And I'm only saying "almost" to account for the
| possibility of there being like 5 super weird people on this
| planet that think otherwise. I don't know a single person who
| thinks this is a good idea, even the professors writing their
| scripts like that think it's stupid and are only doing it due
| to some nonsense fear of it otherwise not printing correctly
| due to one single bad experience with a shitty printer in
| 1950. Or maybe there's some other historical reason for this,
| but in 2023 I'd classify not using the better notation as
| malicious.
| account42 wrote:
| Then there's always that one prof that uses both on the
| blackboard. Also Fraktur. Also bold Fraktur.
| folkrav wrote:
| Funny. Coming from a non-math background, having only one
| symbol to deal with feels less confusing than switching
| around symbols based on the medium it happens to be written
| on. Did one of the symbols come "first"?
| enriquto wrote:
| Here you have the whole history:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_bold
|
| Summary: boldface came first, in print, and was widely
| used. Much later, some mathematicians started to write
| blackboard bold on blackboards (because actual bold would
| be very untoward to write on a blackboard). Then, the usage
| was backported to print.
|
| I find it ugly, a sort of breaking "suspension of
| disbelief", I don't know how to explain why. Some sort of
| "anachronistic" feeling, like watching a movie about the
| roman empire and some soldiers wear watches.
|
| EDIT: as for having "different symbols", this is not the
| case. They are exactly the same symbol, with different
| faces. Like when you write the letters "a" or "g" very
| different on a blackboard as they appear on print.
| skoob wrote:
| That's pretty typical for how typography develops.
| Majuscule and miniscule letters were just two different
| styles of writing the same letter. But eventually, people
| started using majuscule (i.e uppercase) letters to give
| emphasis to the beginning of sentences or certain words,
| like names.
|
| Italic typefaces were created by Italian type designers
| to mimic the cursive handwriting of the time. They
| weren't meant to be mixed with roman style typefaces.
| However, typesetters who had access to both roman and
| italic fonts started to use italic for emphasis when
| typesetting texts in roman type.
|
| And of course blackletter is also just a style that
| originally tried to mimic earlier handwriting.
| catiopatio wrote:
| It's a useful convention; I'm not sure why you dislike it
| other than some invalid conception of purity.
| enriquto wrote:
| Maybe because my favorite math books do not use this
| convention, but another equally valid and useful
| convention: regular boldface.
| catiopatio wrote:
| The point isn't to be "right" -- whatever you define that
| as.
|
| The point is to be understood.
|
| Use blackboard bold when it's what people are most
| familiar with and will engender the least confusion.
|
| You call this the "tabs vs spaces" debate, but I've
| literally never heard anyone advocate your position until
| you did, just now.
| enriquto wrote:
| > I've literally never heard anyone advocate your
| position until you did, just now
|
| Many mathematicians concerned by typography use real
| boldface. For example: Terence Tao's blog, Donald Knuth,
| Paul Halmos (author of "how to write mathematics"), and
| the famous journal "Publications Mathematiques de l'IHES"
| which is the undisputed gold standard in mathematical
| typography. They use real boldface for the number sets N,
| Z, Q, T, R, C.
|
| I've never seen a boldface R to mean a set different than
| the real numbers.
| BlackFingolfin wrote:
| > "Publications Mathematiques de l'IHES" which is the
| undisputed gold standard in mathematical typography.
|
| It is? Do you have any supporting evidence for this
| claim?
|
| I just had a look at a bunch of recent articles, and I
| would very much dispute it. I saw nothing extraordinary,
| and found the fonts they used rather ugly (though of
| course that is highly subjective). The use of bold face
| to highlight theorem/definition/etc. numbers is IMHO very
| questionable. The boldface letters you praise stick out
| like a sore thumb, feeling as if they were being
| emphasized and highlighted when they clearly are not
| meant to be.
| enriquto wrote:
| > It is? Do you have any supporting evidence for this
| claim?
|
| I don't have any evidence to support this claim. I always
| thought about it as self-evident, because it was in that
| journal that Grothendieck published his work, and the
| same style is used in by the legendary Hermann editor
| from Paris and by Bourbaki. But I cannot find any non-
| partisan source of my claim. As for non-neutral sources,
| you have for example the congratulations on the
| typesetting by Dieudonnee [0] (who was a member of the
| IHES), or a more recent article by Haralambous about the
| Baskerville variant used by the institute [1]. I will
| retire my claim of "undisputed" if you find a source that
| says that the pinnacle of mathematical typesetting is
| something else :)
|
| [0] https://expo-patrimoine.ihes.fr/?page=9&lang=en
|
| [1] http://www.numdam.org/item/CG_1999___32_5_0/
|
| You also have this semi-anonymous blog post [2], that
| laments the decline in quality when the journal in
| question was acquired by Springer. Quote:
|
| > How good was the typeface? It was so good, some people
| submitted their papers to IHES precisely for the beauty
| of the typesetting
|
| [2] https://www.galoisrepresentations.com/2014/08/15/the-
| decline...
| tel wrote:
| People use both, for reasons of tradition, ergonomics,
| practicality, available toolset. Boldface is obviously
| common in places where BB is unavailable, more
| restrictive, more difficult. Web publishing is a great
| example.
|
| BB is common, in my experience, in hand-written text
| where bold isn't really an option. It is, to my
| tradition, the most common and recognizable way to
| indicate the most common field sets and also generally is
| a good stand-in for any "large category" of interest.
|
| Bold is used intermittently in my experience, probably
| due to its inability to be hand-written. To me, it tends
| to mean "vector" or "matrix" much more than set. In hand-
| written forms, I sometimes see "arrow hats" instead,
| especially for vectors.
| dietrichepp wrote:
| It sounds similar to the division between "math" and
| "maths". It looks wrong depending on where you grew up.
| dataflow wrote:
| We can compromise by switching to mathematic.
| dietrichepp wrote:
| I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical.
| BobMackay wrote:
| I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical!
| bamfly wrote:
| Seems like you've got a solid math grounding. If you're
| looking to expand on your history knowledge, I'd
| recommend taking a look at Creasy:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifteen_Decisive_Battle
| s_o...
| chungy wrote:
| They were spoofing Modern Major General.
| bamfly wrote:
| So was I :-)
| irrational wrote:
| Don't you mean mathematics?
| paulddraper wrote:
| > having only one symbol to deal with feels less confusing
| than switching around symbols based on the medium it
| happens to be written on
|
| See: the entire Latin alphabet.
|
| Sans-serif symbols for screens, serif symbols for print.
| spread_love wrote:
| I can see users misreading this as a "close" icon in the "share
| on..." section of every article
| albybisy wrote:
| so it can't be copyrighted.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Logos never could be. You're thinking of trademark.
| papercrane wrote:
| Some logos can be copyrighted. Most logos however don't meet
| the threshold of originality. The Copyright Office will
| reject copyrights for stylized letters (see IBM logo), or
| logos of simple geometric shapes. With the modern aesthetic
| for logos to be as simple as possible this means nearly all
| the logos you see are not copyrighted.
| gorlilla wrote:
| It can be probably be trademarked though.
| pohl wrote:
| But, you know, in his heart of hearts Elmo's new logo is U+5350.
| petesergeant wrote:
| That's a swastika for anyone who doesn't particularly want it
| to show up on their screen in a public place
| NoGravitas wrote:
| I thought it was U+130B8.
| pohl wrote:
| Getting a proposal for a sufficiently flaccid variant
| approved by the Unicode Technical Committee was too big a
| lift.
| phito wrote:
| Why is this a thread and not just a comment on
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36845111 ?
| PeterCorless wrote:
| This latest kerfuffle is as silly as the time someone actually
| got a trademark on p.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2014/05/pi-takedown/
| app4soft wrote:
| > _Looking forward to #Musk trying to trademark a Unicode symbol,
| in this case X :) Maybe we should start using #x1D54F as the new
| Hashtag for everything #Twitter and #X #X :)_ [0]
|
| [0] https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/110768919254064477
| gabugabu wrote:
| Beautiful. :):):):)
| cushpush wrote:
| it's actually unicode?!
| pluc wrote:
| I can't wait to x about this. Y'all re-x me when you see it.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I tried hitting the X button to re-x you but the browser window
| closed.
| GaggiX wrote:
| I use this X character in my name on Telegram, now everyone will
| think I'm an Elon stan.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Just change your name to the Twitter bird
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Fail Finch?
| Y-bar wrote:
| "No way! Why should he change? Musk's the one who sucks!"
| [deleted]
| deafpolygon wrote:
| Might want to hide this character from Elon... shh.
| [deleted]
| gweinberg wrote:
| I see on the page there are also unicode symbols for roman
| numerals IX, X, and XI. I can see an argument for having a
| separate character for roman numeral X as opposed to just using a
| capital X like a normal person would, but where do they get off
| calling IX and XI numerals? They are two-character sequences, and
| adding characters for the combinations sounds like all pain and
| no gain.
| myfonj wrote:
| Interestingly, [w3.org Math Double struck] shows example glyph
| rendering with swapped double stroke stem ("//" + "\" instead of
| "\\\" + "/").
|
| Been looking what the "opf" in the `𝕏` HTML entity name of
| this kind of character means, and apparently it is "Open Face".
|
| It is referenced at [wikipedia Blackboard bold] that mentions
| that "X Occasionally used to denote an arbitrary metric space. "
|
| [w3.org Math Double struck]:
| https://www.w3.org/Math/characters/double-struck.html [wikipedia
| Blackboard bold]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_bold
| wigster wrote:
| appropriate the new name is the universal symbol for close
| application
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I've started telling people to "just X out that window." You
| can hear the outline typeface in my voice.
| [deleted]
| golemotron wrote:
| The Southern Poverty Law Center will declare this a hate symbol
| shortly. Mark my words.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Am I supposed to not notice this mastodon in the room...
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| It's actually time for someone to adopt this character [1] at the
| gold level ($5,000), which is only allowed for the single entity
| and doesn't expire---so that X.com doesn't have a chance to
| sponsor the character at the same level.
|
| [1] https://home.unicode.org/adopt-a-character/about-adopt-a-
| cha...
| exegete wrote:
| >All sponsors are acknowledged in Sponsors of Adopted
| Characters and our public Twitter feed and will receive a
| custom digital badge for their character.
|
| Wait, do they mean their public X feed?
| bhouston wrote:
| Who cares if x.com sponsors it? In fact they should because
| emojis are so popular on it and Unicode could use the fund. Why
| should someone try to get this? What is their benefit?
| Izkata wrote:
| Because it's trendy to hate on Elon.
| dsr_ wrote:
| If he stopped making egregiously terrible decisions in
| public, the attention would stop.
| max51 wrote:
| going out of your way and spending 5k$ to try make fun of
| him publicly is not how you make the attention stop.
|
| This is the trump situation all over again. They hate him
| but they write articles about him every day and make sure
| we all know what he's up to even when we are actively
| trying to avoid him and twitter.
| adolph wrote:
| Thus far there is a positive correlation between
| "egregiously terrible decisions" (ETD) and attention.
| From a naive perspective the attention is caused by ETD.
| However it may be worthwhile to test the alternative
| hypothesis that ETD are attempts to increase attention.
| Maybe ETD fit within a larger set of "Attention Seeking
| Behavior" (ASB).
|
| To the degree that ASB is "rewarded" with any feedback at
| all, even negative, then it will be reenforced.
|
| _Enjoying the attention of others is socially acceptable
| in some situations. However, an excessive need for
| attention can lead to difficulties in interpersonal
| relationships. However, as a tactical method, it is often
| used in combat, theatre (upstaging) and it is fundamental
| to marketing. One strategy often used by teachers and
| behavior analysts to counter various types of attention-
| seeking behavior is planned or tactical ignoring._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_seeking
| pionerkotik wrote:
| TWITTER
| yaakov34 wrote:
| Can someone explain what we are talking about here? Something
| having to do with Musk's son's name?
| superhumanuser wrote:
| Twitter is rebranding to X.
| ulfw wrote:
| $44,000,000,000 well spent
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Does this have anything to do with the cage fight/dick
| measuring content with Zuckerberg? I think almost everybody
| thought renaming Facebook to Meta was a bad idea, but maybe
| Musk knows something we don't. ;-)
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| > I think almost everybody thought renaming Facebook to
| Meta was a bad idea
|
| Do they? Why?
|
| I don't see how it did any harm, and people are way more
| willing to admit an association with Meta than with
| Facebook.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| When it first happened I thought they were trying to
| evade Facebook's bad reputation for privacy and politics
| and made a point to keep calling it Facebook.
|
| After about a year "Meta" had the same stink of death
| around it as NFTs and I figured I'd be doing it no favor
| by calling it by its preferred name.
| tehbeard wrote:
| I thought 'Meta' was the same shuffle Google did with
| 'Alphabet', some of financial / legal shenanigans..
|
| Though speaking of while trawling the wiki page on
| Alphabet....
|
| > X (formerly Google X) is an American semi-secret
| research and development facility and organization
| founded by Google in January 2010.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Does this have anything to do with the cage fight /dock
| measuring content with Zuckerberg?_
|
| They're both the results of a sad man's extremely public
| midlife crisis, so yes.
| Azrael3000 wrote:
| No it's about the renaming of Twitter.
|
| [0] https://nitter.net/elonmusk
| 0xblinq wrote:
| So it's about Musk's son name
| kimbernator wrote:
| Given that Musk's obsession with the "X" moniker goes back
| to the 90s at least, I imagine it would be more accurate to
| say his son's name and this rebrand are both branches from
| the same tree (see: x.com -> paypal, SpaceX, Tesla model X)
| spiffistan wrote:
| Twitter has been rebranded as 'X'. Elon has the domain x.com
| and I suppose he wants to use it
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Is this like when that Roman emperor named his horse as a
| senator, or are we not quite there yet?
| paganel wrote:
| The US is already there, with an almost brain-dead 90-year
| old Senator being as good as gone, so that a privately-
| owned company doing whatever its largest owner thinks fit
| for the good of the company going forward doesn't even get
| close to that.
| bhaak wrote:
| The most sane interpretation is that Elon Musk was payed to
| dilute or destroy Twitter. I can't think of anything else
| that would make sense.
|
| Throwing 44 billion dollars on a company and then gutting
| it for everything that was valuable including a unique
| brand that had even its own verb?
|
| But the sad reality is probably that a 12 years old
| narcissist edgelord in the body of a billionaire wanted a
| vanity plate.
| toast0 wrote:
| This would explain things, if there was a credible
| suggestion for who's pulling the strings.
|
| The theory of Elop destroying Nokia (consumer) makes
| sense, because he was at Microsoft, went to Nokia sold it
| to Microsoft at diminished value and stayed there for a
| good amount of time. But who would pay Musk for this? And
| how will he be compensated? Afaik, he's lighting a bunch
| of his own money on fire. Although, there has been a lot
| less news from him on Tesla and SpaceX, so maybe it was
| all a plan to keep him out of those spaces.
| pferde wrote:
| I've seen theories about Saudis paying for this in order
| to prevent the next Arab Spring, in which Twitter played
| a key role for the protesters to organize themselves.
| Seems a bit far-fetched, but these days, who knows?
| [deleted]
| bamfly wrote:
| The initially-too-high offer plus downturn in his stock
| value right after, meant a deal structure that damn-near
| doomed the company anyway (tons of debt).
|
| Best-case (for him), Twitter as we knew it dies and he
| manages to turn the burnt-down ashes into something
| profitable enough to overcome that hurdle. Twitter _per
| se_ cannot reasonably get out of the hole he 's dug for
| it.
|
| Though, arguably, the brand itself was a huge part of the
| value, and he just threw that in the trash.
|
| You know a guy's going down a weird path when all
| defenses of his behavior amount to "I know the last
| twenty things he's done have looked insane and none of
| it's made any money, but he's got a secret genius plan, I
| swear! 5D chess!"
| tegmark wrote:
| [flagged]
| uptown wrote:
| Seems like a reasonable theory if it's the price to be
| paid by those in power to avoid future revolutions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Revolution
| samr71 wrote:
| Or to foment one of his own ;)
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| > X is the future state of unlimited interactivity - centered in
| audio, video, messaging, payments/banking - creating a global
| marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.
| Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we're just beginning
| to imagine.
|
| Audio, Video, Messaging, Payments and AI, all in a single product
| pitch.
|
| I guess then "X" is an appropriate brand for something that even
| the owner doesn't know WTF is about.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Basically Google
| morkalork wrote:
| gmail, gmaps, gmeet, gchat...
| floren wrote:
| https://zombo.com/
|
| You can do anything at X.com, anything at all!
| tiltowait wrote:
| An "everything app" sounds a lot like what I understand WeChat
| to be. Can't say I want it, but it's not without precedent,
| apparently.
| pwdisswordfishc wrote:
| In other words, X is the new blockchain.
| jjgreen wrote:
| Interesting comment on the Register (by Jedit):
|
| _However, it 's also exactly identical to Unicode character
| 1D54F - because that's all it is. And if you examine the full "X"
| logo in detail, you'll notice that the scratch in the background
| doesn't reach the X because all the logo creator did was put
| U+1D54F in a black square and slap it onto the backdrop. It's the
| epitome of laziness._
|
| https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2023/07/24/twitter_...
| cubefox wrote:
| When it comes to logos, I'm all in favor of laziness. People
| get way too hung up on something that unimportant.
| illwrks wrote:
| In most instances it's unimportant, until there's a legal
| requirement for it to be unique and trademarked. What's to
| stop me mass-producing merchandise with that symbol on it
| right now?
| cubefox wrote:
| But Twitter, I mean X, doesn't sell anything which could be
| confused with an imitate.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| > you'll notice that the scratch in the background doesn't
| reach the X
|
| What does this mean?
|
| I've tried finding various images of the X logo on news sites
| and twitter.com itself and I don't see anything resembling a
| "scratch in the background" but maybe I'm just missing
| something obvious.
| [deleted]
| evan_ wrote:
| This tweet has the graphic it's talking about, and explains
| better than the referenced article:
|
| https://twitter.com/keewa/status/1683378941732728832?s=20
| dundarious wrote:
| That mockup appears to have been created by @ch1w33th3d0g
| -- I haven't seen any official X version of https://twitter
| .com/elonmusk/status/1682970592159358976/phot.... So
| there's no point in making complaints about laziness from
| Musk in this case.
| AntonyGarand wrote:
| I believe they mean the marbling: The background surrounding
| the X is pure black, while the rest of the box is black with
| a bit of white marbling.
| spiffytech wrote:
| Fun fact: this has happened before!
|
| > Apple's adaptation of the [[?]] symbol -- encoded in Unicode
| at U+2318 -- was derived in part from its use in Nordic
| countries as an indicator of cultural locations and places of
| interest.
|
| > ...
|
| > She was browsing through a symbol dictionary when she came
| across the cloverleaf-like symbol
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_key
| pavlov wrote:
| That's not really the same thing?
|
| It's not like Apple's corporate logo was scanned from a
| Swedish symbol dictionary by some random person who passed it
| off as their work. Which is effectively what happened to
| X-Twitter.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| That's what happens when you fire everyone but programmers. I'm
| surprised it isn't AI generated (isn't Musk starting an AI
| company? So maybe it actually is)
| m3kw9 wrote:
| So Elon can copy write this?
| ZachSaucier wrote:
| As far as I know, for something like this you can only
| copyright the specific application. So for example it couldn't
| be used for social media sites.
| laserbeam wrote:
| Copyright, no. Trademark, maybe, but won't be easy.
| jheriko wrote:
| i refuse to upvote this whilst its on 314 points...
|
| im not sure why this is of import either. blackboard X, so what?
| mlochbaum wrote:
| I'm responsible for this character being supported in Iosevka,
| JetBrains Mono, 3270, and Cozette, looks like. For arguments I
| wanted to stick to mathematical convention like f(x) without
| looking like a regular variable. While the lowercase x (subject
| role) is more common, uppercase makes it a function and is useful
| in functional programming. More visibility for the character is
| helpful if it means wider font support, although the real
| sticking point has been lousy UTF-16 handling on Windows. Like
| most emoji, these characters need to be represented as a
| surrogate pair in UTF-16, and terminals in particular often don't
| handle it.
|
| https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/fonts.html
|
| https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/help/rightargument.html
| creativeembassy wrote:
| I wasn't familiar with BQN. Clicked through, reminded me of
| APL. "OH", I thought, "I see how you came up with the name."
| There was a (disproven) urban legend about Arthur C. Clarke's
| 2001, where "HAL" was secretly a reference to "IBM", where you
| transpose each letter by one.
|
| H + 1 = I
|
| A + 1 = B
|
| L + 1 = M
|
| Man, BQN is a clever name. Because,
|
| A + 1 = B
|
| P + 1 = Q
|
| L + 1 = M...
|
| ...well crap. That theory didn't pan out at all. Needlessly
| disappointed myself upon hearing that it's short for "Big
| Questions Notation".
| dzaima wrote:
| You're not wrong though; see.. https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQ
| N/tutorial/variable.html#modif... I guess
| depereo wrote:
| Off by Fibonacci, rather than off by 1, I guess.
| [deleted]
| claudiawerner wrote:
| That's funny; I immediately thought of BQN when I saw this
| character pop up on HN :)
| hoosieree wrote:
| Haha, same here. I think my brain actually translated the
| title to "Unicode Character (right argument as a function)".
| mlochbaum wrote:
| Misremembered about Iosevka: I requested support for a few
| other BQN characters after noticing it already had the double-
| struck ones (https://github.com/be5invis/Iosevka/issues/870).
| The other three were requests or contributions (drew 3270's X
| myself!) explicitly in connection with BQN.
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(page generated 2023-07-24 23:02 UTC)