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People... Please stop using foreign alphabets like that! It's a nightmare for those of us who know the alphabets. It took me a good 20 seconds to read the title
by axegon_ 6y ago
People... Please stop using foreign alphabets like that! It's a nightmare for those of us who know the alphabets. It took me a good 20 seconds to read the title. And it's magnitudes worse when someone uses cyrillic for instance and it's native to me.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoFwiw, it’s significantly easier to read on the actual site than on Hacker News. Something about the font. HN’s title should probably be changed.
- mastazi 6y ago"actmally rdrtable execmtable" that's more or less how it reads to someone who knows the Greek alphabet :-D (I might be partially wrong because I've studied Greek many years ago and my memory is not good)
- hvenev 6y agoIt's somehow worse than "toys ya us".
- keiferski 6y agoOr Nee (Nine Inch Nails: NIИ)
- api 6y agoWhoa... that means Trent Reznor is a Knight who says Nee!
- augustk 6y agoOr Stack Overflow's "We are less than three people who code."
- BrandonM 6y agoThis comment is the top Google result for "stack overflow we are less than three people who code". It's not clear to me what you mean.
- mastazi 6y agoI think it refers to this[1] page with the header "We <3 people who code" where <3 is supposed to be a heart. (Probably people from the "post-emoji generation" can't recognise <3 as well as us old people ahah) [1] https://pics.onsizzle.com/stack-overflow-where-dev-x-https-stackoverflow-com-stack-overflow-q-search-63607467.png https://pics.onsizzle.com/stack-overflow-where-dev-x-https-s...
- tgb 6y agoNo that's a reversed-R which happens to look identical like a Cyrillic letter. I don't think that's a problem any more than getting confused and trying to pronounce a circle in a logo as an "o". In contrast, the text here is trying to look Greek but doing it poorly.
- btilly 6y agoThat Cyrillic letter happens to be pronounced "ya".
- oleganza 6y agoanother offence is using sigma (∑) as a stylized "E" or uppercase lambda (Λ) as "A" (see NASA logo).
- hellectronic 6y agoΓορ μεμορι ις στιλλ γκουτ
- Gerrish 6y agoactmally r-thee-ta-blae execm-ta-blae
- numerobis 6y agoReally confusing that they use mu when upsilon is available...
- dspillett 6y agoNot really confusing when you assume the intention is to look clever - the more different the letterform you find while it still being recognisable as the one you are replacing, the more exaggerated your effect is without further reducing readability. (Yes, I know this isn't "just to try look clever", ala 1337-speak, and is trying to make a relevant reference to the cross audience understanding the is relevant to a cross platform executable, but the point still stands about choosing less similar but still similar enough glyphs)
- StavrosK 6y agoThat's an English p, not a Greek ρ.
- mastazi 6y agoyou are right, I assumed it was a rho but on closer inspection it's a lowercase p
- danilocesar 6y agonot to mention people using screen readers...
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoThis is a massive issue on Twitter when people use "vanity" display names as well.
- phlummox 6y agoIt's the Cyclopean, non-Euclidean display names that really grind my gears.
- 0-_-0 6y agoOh yes, the Cyclopean usernames of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror. Definitely not screen-reader friendly.
- marksomnian 6y agoThe ones that bother me more are all the mathematical characters, horribly abused.
- dhosek 6y agoI have at least one visually impaired Twitter follower (there may be more that I'm unaware of). This is why I don't do clever things with Unicode characters or post those text-picture memes and always type in alt text for my images. I'd like to think that I would be sensitive enough to do so without having him in my followers list, but I suspect that if I'm honest with myself, I probably wouldn't so I'm thankful for his presence to remind me to keep things accessible.
- blindm 6y agohttps://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/118149/can-screen-readers-interpret-unicode-styles-fonts-such-as-bold-and-italics https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/118149/can-screen-rea...
- ben_w 6y agoAgreed. It’s not even a particularly good example of the style, given υ could have been used instead of μ, ο instead of δ.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- amelius 6y agoAnd use lambda and pi.
- nurettin 6y agoForeign alphabet transliteration drama thread under the best hacking-grade article in years. Thanks, hn.
- learnstats2 6y agoYep - if you want people to focus on what you actually wrote, don't do this. I couldn't get past the title.
- StavrosK 6y agoSame here, it's extremely annoying. Other pet peeves include "grssk" and Beyoncé's documentary's monstrosity that I don't even care to recall.
- schwartzworld 6y agoThe most HN comment ever.
- elmo2you 6y agoMaybe be slightly more specific: If you want people who get their panties in a twist about anything unsubstantial and want only those who care about substance to read your article, please use this trick ;-) EDIT: you could call it a #snowflake-discriminator
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- p_l 6y agoPlay stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- boudin 6y agoIt's not great for accessibility neither.
- yreg 6y agoOPs compaints fall into the accessibility bucket. The site makes itself less accessible since some people (greek alphabet users) have trouble consuming the content.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pedroaraujo 6y agoNot to mention it is terrible for searching.
- pgtan 6y agoThanks a lot! It annoys me extremely every time I have to read such mess.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- d__k 6y ago1) актуалли портабле екзекутабле 2) αcτµαlly pδrταblε εxεcµταblε What is easier to comprehend?
- marksomnian 6y ago3) Actually Portable Executable There's a better option.
- OOPMan 6y agoAPE audio might come a knocking though and I'm not you sure you want to make them angry. You won't like them when they're angry...
- saagarjha 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Enhancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_Enhancer might too, if Apple hadn't restricted Input Manager plugins ;)
- shakna 6y agoMy screenreader can pronounce Greek. Which means the first is far easier to comprehend.
- zhenyakovalyov 6y agoMy contribution to your #1 астиа11у рогтаЬ1е ехеситаЬ1е
- Shorel 6y agoNo, please no.
- simias 6y agoI could ready #1 immediately and thought "hey, I can actually read faux-cyrillic a lot better that I thought" and then I realized that you used a semi-proper transliteration. Case in point I guess.
- loxs 6y agoYou need to see when me and my friends start chatting in English written in Cyrillic. It's epic and utterly frustrating for the first hours, then becomes like native ;)
- axegon_ 6y agoOne of the other things that bugs the hell out of me is when in the late 90's during the boom of irc, here in Bulgaria everyone was writing in Bulgarian with latin script. And to make matters worse: 4 = ch 6 = sh And some people keep on doing it. I can understand it when you have to switch between scripts every 2 seconds but most commonly that isn't the case and you are either having a conversation with someone or leaving it for later when you have time or when you feel like it...
- loxs 6y agoЙес, съмтаймс уи ду дис то каунтър шльокавица ин партикюлър. Edit: for the non initiates. It's this written in Cyrillic: "Yes, sometimes we do this to counter shlyokavitsa in particular" Shlyokavitsa is the name of the forementioned style of writing Bulgarian with latin letters. The original meaning of the word is "low quality, self-made alcohol", possibly even poisonous because of methanol
- lazyasciiart 6y agoI'm really pleased to hear this, because I've kept scratch notes in english text written in the greek alphabet for decades, and every so often I wondered if it was more readable than I expected if someone who read greek happened to glance at it :) (It's not secrets - more like a habit of stream-of-consciousness writing while listening to someone talk, that would probably look bizarre).
- murbard2 6y agoIt's cringe, but I don't find it hard to read, anymore than knowning numbers precludes me from reading "4c7u411y p0274813 3x3cu74813".
- NeutronStar 6y agoMaybe you first language isn't numbers?
- ehnto 6y agoI guess I'm not as l33t as I thought I was, because I couldn't read that without having to figure out what each number was supposed to be individually.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vikramkr 6y agoI'm not sure what precluded me from reading that, but I don't think not knowing numbers would have helped me figure out that portable is p0274813 without context clues. Might need a more readily parseable example there.
- blooalien 6y agoIt's horrible to some of us that don't know the foreign alphabet too. While I had no problem reading the title it still makes my eyes bleed and my brain hurt to see it. ;)
- afarviral 6y agoI personally think its kind of creative, and looks cool. Though the author might like to be aware of the discontent it causes certain individuals. This is mean but it comes accross as though you are just wanting to show off you knowledge of a different alphabet...a complainbrag. Seems unlikely you'd take the effort to bother but thats my perception.
- Razengan 6y ago> This is mean but it comes accross as though you are just wanting to show off you knowledge of a different alphabet There are people whose native languages are in those alphabets. Quick: How would you pronounce СССР? Hint: It would be completely wrong, because it's not English.
- jcelerier 6y agobold of you to assume the existence of an objective right or wrong mapping from characters to sounds
- elmo2you 6y agoOne might argue that "context" is a valid discriminator for that, but your point certainly has validity too. They are just two different arguments. The argument of arrogance in claiming an absolute right from wrong, and the argument that context can make one interpretation more correct because it relates to the meaning and not just the description of something.
- Razengan 6y agoThat is actually one of my hinderances in learning Russian, because I keep reading the identical Cyrillic letters as English.
- jonathanstrange 6y agoΙ ⅼіκе іτ аɴԁ аⅼѡауѕ геϲоⅿⅿеɴԁ τо реорⅼе τо τаκе ⅿоге аԁⅴаɴτаɡе оғ ⋃ɴіϲоԁе.
- knolax 6y agoTʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ ᴅᴇᴅɪᴄᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀs ғᴏʀ sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘs
- Koshkin 6y ago‘ғ‘ looks slightly weird though.
- knolax 6y agoYeah apparently the converter I used used a Cyrillic character, the actual "LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL F" is ꜰ. Also apparently there's a "LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL *" for every letter except X[0][1]. [0] https://unicode-table.com/en/search/?q=small+capital https://unicode-table.com/en/search/?q=small+capital [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps#Unicode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps#Unicode
- Shorel 6y agoНе ми харесба.
- miki123211 6y agoAlso a nightmare for screen reader users, who can't read the title at all and need to click the article.
- talamown 6y ago¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For me, it always takes some time to see it as face and still hard to understand what emotion this face presents.
- airstrike 6y agoshrug
- OOPMan 6y agoNever mind the fact that it's just super pretentious
- whiddershins 6y agoI hear your pain. I wish this wasn’t the top voted comment. Things that are subversive, clever, mind bending, tongue in cheek ... tend to get criticized around these parts for not being simple, plain, and literal.
- remram 6y agoIt's not even that, why does this headline deserve to stick out from others on the HN front page? What's the next step, make your title bold or twenty lines long for an unfair click advantage? > 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 I'd rather see submissions stand out for their content.
- IE6 6y agoI guess for HN OP should have refactored the title to be "Actually Portable Executable" but I thought the whole point of the title was that it's something we can interpret that has been "written in something else" which is fitting given what the article discusses? It's a direct copy/paste from the source and I don't think OP was trying to stand out in any unfair way.
- remram 6y agoI'm not blaming the HN submitter, but you can also see how bloggers can easily abuse this if whatever unicode characters they put in their title are allowed in the HN submission on the grounds of "it's a direct copy/paste".
- piyush_soni 6y agoFWIW, the title stands out, but at least for me it's not working in the favor of the article. Unless it was for the content ("actually portable executable"), I would actually stay away from articles with such strange fonts.
- phlummox 6y ago> What's the next step, make your title bold or twenty lines long for an unfair click advantage? Hm. Not a bad idea. Files away as an Unethical LifeHack You can expect a bold, Cyrillic, ZALGO!͇̺̫̞̤͇̼͋̆̂-fied post about my next paper shortly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dang 6y agoPeople have of course been pulling such tricks for years. We don't allow it generally, and in fact are pretty strict about that. But all such rules have exceptions. The quality of this post is so high that it doesn't feel right to override any aspect of what the author created, including quirks like the title. There may be a superficial similarity to garden-variety title pimping, but as someone who bathes in spam every day I can tell you how rarely such gimmicks come attached to first-class feats of hacking prowess. Respect for content requires looking closely enough to detect truly unusual cases, pick them out of the mud, and give them a special place. Another principle applies here too: it's good for readers to have to work a little (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22work%20a%20little%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). If a title like that appears at #1 on HN, there are two possibilities: (1) this is dreck that somehow managed to evade all of the standard moderation; or (2) something's happening here and you don't know what it is. Actually, either possibility is rather interesting, and it's not hard for any HN reader to do the bit of work to figure it out. Even if it takes 20 seconds.
- ljm 6y agoI've learned some degree of Russian (and certainly enough to roughly read Greek) and even that's enough for me to have to take a few passes to parse it as English. The only boundary this transcends is readability and is ironically not portable at all. edit for readability: тхе онлу боундары тхис трансцендс ис реадабилиты анд ис ироницаллы нот портабле ат алл.
- Koshkin 6y agoИ вхолехеартедлы агрее.
- blindm 6y agohttps://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/118149/can-screen-readers-interpret-unicode-styles-fonts-such-as-bold-and-italics https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/118149/can-screen-rea...
- lnanek2 6y agoIt's a bad thing to do for attention, like hacker elite speak using numbers would be, but is that why the author did that? Did you read the article? It's about a file that can be read by all Unix, Windows, and MacOS. Part of how that happens is one OS mistakes some other text for executable code while the other OS doesn't. Therefore the title of the article written in multiple language letters and somewhat readable in one language despite that is a good introduction.
- scotu 6y agoI would argue you could write an informative title, and reserve the problematic text for the article text, where you can explain why you are doing that. Just like the comment you were responding to I can't imagine screen reader users are super stoked by how "appropriate" this title is
- pinkfoot 6y agoReally? You didn't find it clever enough to muster a little smile? The things that bother some people.
- danShumway 6y agoTo that note, would it be possible to change the title of the submission to "Actually Portable Executable"? It would help people focus more on the content of the article, make the submission more accessible for non-English & blind readers, and feel less spammy and exploitative, all at the same time. I doubt the author of this article or the submitter wants this to be the top thing people are discussing about their article anyway. And that is the title -- if you go to the library source code[0], its graphical banner is using the normal English letters. The unicode weirdness here is only being used typographically, the author isn't claiming that their title should be pronounced differently or something. [0]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jart/cosmopolitan/467504308a103865c058f9a0ac858cc22e72240e/ape/ape.S https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jart/cosmopolitan/46750430...
- mattbee 6y agoBsuthuncs has a lot to answer for.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zelly 6y agoIt's also not accessible whatsoever to screen readers.