4 ms·

So they're using the same character space, and just changing the graphic to a squirtgun? That'll go over well. "Hey, after school we should sneak up and [squi

by RIMR 10y ago

So they're using the same character space, and just changing the graphic to a squirtgun? That'll go over well. "Hey, after school we should sneak up and [squirtgun] John, Mary and Pete!" sent on an iOS devices will turn into "Hey, after school we should sneak up and [handgun] John, Mary and Pete!" on other devices. One of these statements implies a prank. The other implies murder. Maybe Apple should work with the Unicode Consortium to declare additional emoji, such as a squirtgun, so that they can drop the handgun emoji from their keyboard and replace it with the squirtgun. As it stands now, they're just swapping the graphic of a lethal weapon with a children's toy and crossing their fingers that no horrific misunderstandings occur...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
I agree with you, it adds ambiguity to the meaning. Can you imagine a court interpreting two completely different meanings based on sender/receiver device graphics? The original definition is actually "PISTOL" (U+1F52B) with alternative definitions as "GUN." Apple isn't making the world a safer place by pretending guns/pistols aren't a reality. What next, remove the word "pistol" from their spellchecker?
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  > What next, remove the word "pistol" from their spellchecker? That, and any other ungood words. Helps prevent crimethink.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    So, Orwell was a bit off and Newspeak is actually going to be emoji based.
0x0 10y ago
Are they ACTUALLY replacing U+1F52B with this new graphic, or are they using a new codepoint? Because at least OSX 10.11 has a real gun/pistol in U+1F52B. You'll even get mixups if an iOS10/OSX10.12 user sends an emoji to an iOS9/OSX10.11 user in that case.
- jakobegger 10y ago
  I just created a note containing the Pistol emoji on macOS 10.11 (old school pistol) and it shows up as a squirt gun on iOS 10 beta 4, so it seems they are reusing the same code point.
  - 0x0 10y ago
    That's crazy.
sp332 10y ago
The gun is facing the opposite direction, so it would be "get shot by John, Mary and Pete".
j4_james 10y ago
I'm not sure this is that big a deal considering the default Windows representation of the pistol emoji has always been a toy gun rather than a realistic depiction of a firearm. It looks more like a ray-gun to me rather than a water pistol, so you're unlikely to say "we should [ray-gun] John after school", but there's clearly opportunity for misinterpretation if you're trying to communicate with these symbols. But I would have thought the obvious solution was to avoid using emoji as a form of communication. They're always going to vary from one platform to the next, so you never really know exactly what the recipient is going to see.
- majewsky 10y ago
  > I'm not sure this is that big a deal considering the default Windows representation of the pistol emoji has always been a toy gun rather than a realistic depiction of a firearm. Except that they're changing it to a handgun with the Anniversary Update: http://emojipedia.org/pistol/ http://emojipedia.org/pistol/
  - j4_james 10y ago
    That's good to know - I think that's a sensible move, and I agree with those that think Apple's change is a bit silly. However, my point still stands that emoji have always been a source of miscommunication [1] and will continue to be so, with or without this change. [1] http://www.dailydot.com/debug/emoji-miscommunicate/ http://www.dailydot.com/debug/emoji-miscommunicate/

by RIMR 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago

I agree with you, it adds ambiguity to the meaning. Can you imagine a court interpreting two completely different meanings based on sender/receiver device graphics? The original definition is actually "PISTOL" (U+1F52B) with alternative definitions as "GUN." Apple isn't making the world a safer place by pretending guns/pistols aren't a reality. What next, remove the word "pistol" from their spellchecker?

Freak_NL 10y ago
> What next, remove the word "pistol" from their spellchecker? That, and any other ungood words. Helps prevent crimethink.
- protomyth 10y ago
  So, Orwell was a bit off and Newspeak is actually going to be emoji based.

0x0 10y ago

Are they ACTUALLY replacing U+1F52B with this new graphic, or are they using a new codepoint? Because at least OSX 10.11 has a real gun/pistol in U+1F52B. You'll even get mixups if an iOS10/OSX10.12 user sends an emoji to an iOS9/OSX10.11 user in that case.

jakobegger 10y ago
I just created a note containing the Pistol emoji on macOS 10.11 (old school pistol) and it shows up as a squirt gun on iOS 10 beta 4, so it seems they are reusing the same code point.
- 0x0 10y ago
  That's crazy.

sp332 10y ago

The gun is facing the opposite direction, so it would be "get shot by John, Mary and Pete".

j4_james 10y ago

I'm not sure this is that big a deal considering the default Windows representation of the pistol emoji has always been a toy gun rather than a realistic depiction of a firearm. It looks more like a ray-gun to me rather than a water pistol, so you're unlikely to say "we should [ray-gun] John after school", but there's clearly opportunity for misinterpretation if you're trying to communicate with these symbols. But I would have thought the obvious solution was to avoid using emoji as a form of communication. They're always going to vary from one platform to the next, so you never really know exactly what the recipient is going to see.

majewsky 10y ago
> I'm not sure this is that big a deal considering the default Windows representation of the pistol emoji has always been a toy gun rather than a realistic depiction of a firearm. Except that they're changing it to a handgun with the Anniversary Update: http://emojipedia.org/pistol/ http://emojipedia.org/pistol/
- j4_james 10y ago
  That's good to know - I think that's a sensible move, and I agree with those that think Apple's change is a bit silly. However, my point still stands that emoji have always been a source of miscommunication [1] and will continue to be so, with or without this change. [1] http://www.dailydot.com/debug/emoji-miscommunicate/ http://www.dailydot.com/debug/emoji-miscommunicate/