English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

2:00 PM

@AndrewLeach okay you really do want another example where you can't possibly remark anything.

> All the 11 blocks of the district have been covered under tribal sub-plan with three micro projects in operation for the pre-literate indigenous tribal communities.

RegDwigнt

Berlin

Berlin (/bərˈlɪn/; German pronunciation: [bɛɐ̯ˈliːn] ( )) is the capital city of Germany and one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million people, Berlin is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union, and is Germany's largest city. Located in northeastern Germany on the River Spree, it is the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which has about 4.5 million residents from over 180 nations. Due to its location in the European Plain, Berlin is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. Around one third of...

tchrist

This pre-literacy thing must be spreading.

RegDwigнt

> Berlin is a city in the Berlin area of the Berlin region in the Berlin federal state of Germany.

tchrist

Where is Ford Prefect again?

> The topography of Rayagada gives a prefect platform for the tribals in sustaining their ethno-cultural identity in the district.

Andrew Leach

2:01 PM

@RegDwigнt That all seems perfectly reasonable.

tchrist

@skullpatrol Don’t call him a DC. It annoys him.

RegDwigнt

Washington DC is actually nice since it's nowhere near Washington.

@AndrewLeach and yet it does not say that.

Because it'd be rubbish writing.

skullpatrol

Sorry @tchrist :-)

RegDwigнt

But poor Rayagada doesn't get anywhere as many dedication as Berlin.

tchrist

> In the ethno-cultural map of Odisha, two tribes stand out quite prominently for their education backwardness and continuing ethnic and cultural identity, the Kandhas and the Souras.

RegDwigнt

2:03 PM

Meh, gotta work now. BBL

skullpatrol

Later

tchrist

> The Sati Kunda Goddess Majhi Ghairani and the mudfort around it speaks much about its evidence.

Talk of the town.

> Besides these, small- and mid-scale industries enrich economy of Rayagada

They fail to identify pineapples as a principeople export.

skullpatrol

Just like black slaves were.

tchrist

They also seem to collect faecal deposits.

> The jeypore sugars was established by the British which attracted loads of people from nearby states to Rayagada.

> Rayagada, the district of many charms, is a thrill to the searching eyes. It has the facilities to serve as a base for visiting the nearby place of interest.

Your minds at even their most manically expansive moments are insufficient to envision the grandeur of my joy and delight that I shall no longer be plagued by Byzantine stultification in my new job.

skullpatrol

@tchrist would you mind changing your user name to "uncle tom" :D

tchrist

2:09 PM

SE forbad me from making the change of my desire.

skullpatrol

Which was?

tchrist

9

Q: Can’t change username to an all-alphabetic word

Summary: The alphabetic check is erroneously checking UTF-16 code units not Unicode code points! I attempted to change my username to the Gothic version, and I received the rather rudely rubicund retort of: Now, the string in question was 𐌸𐍇𐍂𐌹𐍃𐍄, which as you can plainly see, is entirel...

It’s cause their POS C# coder-wannabes can’t tell the difference between a character and a two-byte word.

Apparently 𐌸𐍇𐍂𐌹𐍃𐍄 was a thorn in their sides.

Or at least, on the left-hand side.

skullpatrol

Uncle Tom is 🆒

Andrew Leach

I just get six boxes with numbers in.

tchrist

@AndrewLeach dommage

Andrew Leach

2:14 PM

Romans 15:1.

skullpatrol

🙈🙉🙊

tchrist

Yes, rabbi.

It is composed of six letters and nothing else.

Perhaps they have a religious objection.

Actually, the Gothic thorn is named THIUTH, which is close to THOTH, which is just like so cool.

Andrew Leach

Possible, but I've no idea how things are implemented. I saw that image in the question.

Cerberus

@tchrist Haha, well, that decision wasn't up to my date!

skullpatrol

💒

tchrist

2:18 PM

@AndrewLeach It’s because they are using the wrong API.

Andrew Leach

I'd guess that since some clients can't cope, SE make sure that they're not asked to.

tchrist

No, this is something else.

It is passing a 16-bit physical code unit instead of a logical 21-bit logical code point.

So you lose 5 bits and it ends up looking non-alphanumunderish.

There are places where this can be misused to one’s apparent advantage.

So for example, with the minimum length requirements on comments.

𝔼𝕒𝕤𝕪-𝕡𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕪.

Andrew Leach

That's less of an issue than usernames, though. You can't @-quote a collection of boxes.

And that worked, by the way.

skullpatrol

All I see is nine empty boxes

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@AndrewLeach you can't @-quote any valid username if you can't enter its characters.

on ELL Reg's name starts with that cyrillic backwards R. I can't type that, so no @quoting him for me.

tchrist

2:23 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It autocompletes and you can paste.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist it only auto-completes if you can manage to trigger the auto-completion with something.

Paste works fine though.

tchrist

@AndrewLeach Most boxes these days do support the math letters.

skullpatrol

✖️➕➖➗

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I can imagine, however, that SE might not care to support character ranges that 99% of the world's computers can't display, even if that lack of display is merely due to lack of installed fonts.

tchrist

I just thought it was cool that TH and CH were both single characters in Gothic, but it won’t let me use it because it is using the wrong API to determine a character. People who confuse bytes and characters probably also confuse pointers and integers. It’s the same class of stumble.

I thought of this while doing something with the Chi Rho page from Kells.

Basically, the SE programmers are treating code units as code points, which is a programming bug.

George Pompidou

2:26 PM

> probably also confuse pointers and integers.

an integer is just a pointer that doesn't point to anything.

Robusto

Gawd, why do I ever engage with pineapples?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Not necessarily. They might be fully supporting it, but just didn't allow that particular character range to meet their filter criteria.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 All evidence points to my hypothesis being right, and I have so far from no evidence that it is not.

It’s like when they say how many characters you have left, or to go or whatever. That too is wrong.

In short, they are in some places treating variable-length UTF-16 as fixed-width UCS-2, and this is messing stuff up.

At least, that is what everything I can throw at it comes back suggesting.

And nothing to the contrary.

skullpatrol

@Robusto some pineapples are sweeter than others.

tchrist

@Robusto Masochismo!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:31 PM

@tchrist Well, the characters-left thing is tricky. Because it's not about display space but about storage room, usually. They allocate a certain size of field in a DB and that size boils down to bytes. So those gothic letters will take twice as much space as the latin ones.

@tchrist You are probably right of course. I bet they don't really see a use-case for the UTF-16 scripts.

skullpatrol

An integer is a numerical expression that names a particular number @George Pompidou

George Pompidou

nope.

wrong.

skullpatrol

why?

George Pompidou

an integer is a horse but with roast beef sandwiches instead of wheels.

sorry, but you're just wrong.

an integer is just what it is. an integer.

skullpatrol

That is exactly what I'm saying.

Mitch

2:40 PM

@tchrist what's the difference between Unicode and this new google 'noto' fonts thing? Is notot a suggested replacement for Unicode, or is it orthogonal?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

An integer is a sour liquid you put on fish and chips.

@Mitch uhoh

@Mitch you're, um, going to wake Cthulhu

Mitch

ha ha. nice doggy.

Matt Эллен

@Mitch it's a font family that aims to support all of unicode in one go

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I do understand that, but I feel like I’m being fibbed to.

skullpatrol

No diggity no doubt

Mitch

2:42 PM

so orthogonal, or an add-on. something extra that makes unicode better?

Matt Эллен

@Mitch it's like arial or verdana

George Pompidou

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I think this is a question of Canadian English vs. American English. we generally refer to the horse from which the liquid is made as the integer whereas the liquid is freedom sauce.

Matt Эллен

but with more available characters

Mitch

oh. I'm dumb. that's pretty different.

Robusto

@MattЭллен But go in Japanese means 5. So it's already more than one.

Matt Эллен

2:44 PM

@Robusto just thinking about that makes me itchy

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Well, you might be. I'm just pointing out that there are other possible explanations.

Robusto

You have an itchy knee, son? Yawn. Go.

Matt Эллен

@Robusto coincidentally...

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You mean the 16 astral planes, I realize. The BMP is less than ¹⁄₁₇ of the legal code points (rather than exactly, since you can’t count surrogates). That leaves more than ¹⁶⁄₁₇ code points unaccounted for.

Matt Эллен

scratches knee

@Robusto that's what she said

tchrist

2:45 PM

@Robusto I have a knee that wakes me up in the middle of the night, screaming.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist yes, apologies if I'm not 100% precise in my unicode terminology ;)

Robusto

@tchrist Get the metal. It's hell at first, but much better later.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

But considering that SE is English first, there isn't much need for them to support the non-BMP characters.

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You will never be 100% precise in that terminology. And you will be judged!

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If you were entering UTF-8 (which in fact most people are), then it would be exactly like counting the bytes left and calling them characters. It’s sloppy language or sloppy coding or both. And yes, you cannot know in advance how many are left. You can only know after the fact how many you entered. I understand that.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:46 PM

@Robusto I plead insanity.

skullpatrol

Temporary?

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If you're not part of the delusion, you're part of the problem.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist Actually it doesn't matter what encoding people are entering, but rather what encoding you use on the back end.

Johan Larsson

There is always anti-sanity.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don’t think they should be calling code units characters.

Mitch

2:48 PM

@JohanLarsson Das ist Unsinn.

tchrist

It’s like calling bytes characters because it works with ASCII and UTF-8 both.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist no doubt. But they are constrained by their platform in some regards, which is .Net.

tchrist

But only when that UTF-8 is ASCII.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 They could call a spade a spade instead of a heart or a diamond.

Robusto

ASCII and ye shall not reçeive.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist how's this for annoying. where I work, we store strings in UTF-8. But the db columns are sized in bytes.

Mitch

2:49 PM

@tchrist They should call it a trowel. The other word is an epithet.

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Does that ever cause conniptions or hiccups?

Mitch

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 it's the db that is stuck in the cobol age.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@tchrist no, but our "how much space do you have left" thing was made intentionally vague because we don't know how much space they have left, except in a useless metric.

@Mitch Well, it is. But also it had to be migrated TO UTF-8 from whatever it was before.

Mitch

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 but it's close, right?

Matt Эллен

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 "About 3 hours of mp3s"

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:52 PM

@Mitch well, we could guess, I suppose, if all the characters they're using use the same number of bytes so far, probably they'll keep using characters from that range of codepoints, and then maybe we can accurately guess how many characters they need? But in practice we just count the bytes, and Chinese typists fill it up 3x as fast.

Mitch

@MattЭллен We transfer all mp3s via the text in twitter messages.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен lol. We could just say that. "You can type 357 mL more letters"

Matt Эллен

@Mitch now I wonder how twitter counts characters...

nosmoking

Who could explain me briefly what means stochastic?

Mitch

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's what I'm saying...if you know it's chinese then divide by 3 (or multiply)

nosmoking

2:53 PM

and ergodic too

tchrist

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, that’s the problem with the SE messages. They are exact, not fuzzy. And wrong.

Mitch

@MattЭллен It's probably a question on SE.

Matt Эллен

@Mitch good point

tchrist

@MattЭллен Easy to test. Wanna bet they do not count characters?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Mitch we don't bother doing that. For one thing, our use case is Spanish, where the count of characters IS the bytes, except the accented characters, and we don't bother predicting that.

nosmoking

2:54 PM

Greek stochastikos skillful in aiming, from stochazesthai to aim at, guess at, from stochos target, aim, guess

Matt Эллен

@nosmoking stochastic

Mitch

@tchrist Don't they enforce 140 somethings?

Robusto

@nosmoking What was the probability someone would ask a question like that?

tchrist

They may also do an NFC transform. they should.

@Mitch 140 whathings?

nosmoking

@Robusto not null at least

Matt Эллен

2:54 PM

@nosmoking ergodic

Mitch

@tchrist Exactly.

Robusto

It was a random question anyway.

nosmoking

Stockholm = aim +lm ( stokhos 'aim')

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十一二三四五六七八九十

Tweeted by MrShinyAndNew on August 11, 2014 at 2:55 PM

Twitter lets me post 140 chinese characters

Matt Эллен

how many bytes is that?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

2:56 PM

But those are all BMP

nosmoking

一二三 = 123 ?

Matt Эллен

google translate: "123,456,789 23,456,789 eleven eleven eleven 23,456,789 23,456,789 2,345,678 ninety eleven 123,456,789 23,456,789 eleven eleven eleven 23,456,789 23,456,789 2,345,678 ninety eleven 123,456,789 23,456,789 eleven eleven eleven 23,456,789 2,345,678 ninety"

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉𓀀𓀁𓀂𓀃𓀄𓀅𓀆𓀇𓀈𓀉

Tweeted by MrShinyAndNew on August 11, 2014 at 2:57 PM

nosmoking

wow I remember something from my Chinese course

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

And that is 140 hieroglyphs

nosmoking

2:57 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 perfect squares on Chrome

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MattЭллен yeah. um. close enough!

@nosmoking yeah. well, SMP support sucks.

nosmoking

@Robusto my behaviour is stochastic

Matt Эллен

who needs to speak hieroglyph?

nosmoking

egyptians

Mitch

@MattЭллен "even though Twitter has a 140-character limit, Twitter users in China can easily express in-depth thoughts because the Chinese language allows Twitter users to express 140 words on Twitter and not just 140 characters."

Matt Эллен

2:59 PM

@Mitch nice

nosmoking

Chinese characters is a character compression so?

Robusto

@Mitch That still does not make me want to (a) learn Chinese or (b) use Twitter.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto you can just use Kanji

Robusto

Still don't want to use Twitter.

nosmoking

Is it risky to have a glass near a laptop? yes, let's put at least 50cm

Mitch

3:00 PM

@Robusto but it does mean that twitter does not work with bytes but with a character encoding

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

yeah me neither

I have a twitter account strictly because I needed to post a snarky tweet in response to my sister-in-law's snarky tweet

Robusto

Aug 3 at 12:06, by Robusto

I am left unmoved.

Mitch

@nosmoking If your laptop is underwater already there is no additional risk at all.

nosmoking

@Mitch good catch

Mitch

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I created a web app called snark. it is basically twitter but with a message of length of 0. And the header just says 'snark'.

Robusto

3:02 PM

@Mitch Also, it depends on the type of glass. A looking glass, for example, poses little risk.

Mitch

@nosmoking Oh. If you do that then you'll save your long island iced tea from spilling all over your keyboard.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

If Mars was actually the God of War, I feel like he would have conquered a better planet.

Tweeted by SarcasticRover on August 7, 2014 at 9:22 PM

Mitch

snark

Nice! It works!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Landing on Mars was like a surprise party. Because I assume all surprise parties begin with terrified plummeting. http://t.co/ui87eLwlpp

Tweeted by SarcasticRover on August 5, 2014 at 5:18 PM

Robusto

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But Venus is totally hot.

nosmoking

3:06 PM

ergodic

Matt Эллен

@nosmoking some echo in here

nosmoking

@MattЭллен I'm watching this actually youtube.com/watch?v=R6ToVjLcEgQ very fun but in French

Is the solar system ergodic?

Matt Эллен

14 mins ago, by Matt Эллен

@nosmoking ergodic

nosmoking

@MattЭллен ok thanks

Matt Эллен

I must be getting closer to the sauce. the echo is getting faster

nosmoking

3:10 PM

@MattЭллен My vision got noisy sorry, I couldn't see it

Matt Эллен

@nosmoking no worries

Robusto

3:38 PM

On this day in 1942, "Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil receive a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi."

nosmoking

3:48 PM

Wee-Fee

Robusto

3:59 PM

@Cerberus: TIL Benghazi is derived from the Greek Berenike (Pherenike, 'bringer of victory').

nosmoking

Bérénice

George Pompidou

4:25 PM

@nosmoking it's actually spelled Beyoncé

the office at my apartment building keeps asking me to sign for two packages that don't exist every time I go pick up a package (someone twice accidentally entered a package twice in the system). I always refuse because I'm not going to sign for a package that doesn't exist, but I also want them to stop spamming me that I have two unpicked up packages… and they are baffled by my refusal of what seems to them to be the only solution to the problem.

they ask me to sign that I picked up non-existent things, I refuse, and I'm the weird one.

is living in a Kafka book

Robusto

4:47 PM

@GeorgePompidou Which one? In The Penal Colony? The Trial? The Hunger Artist?

Mitch

@GeorgePompidou a book that doesn't open at either end

@GeorgePompidou Is it only the second one that doesn't exist or is it the first one too?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@GeorgePompidou sign it with a nonexistent pen

Mitch

Like a check for $0.