Unicode Character “𝕏” (U+1D54F)

https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+1D54F

by t0m44c • 3 years ago

414 275 3 years ago

compart.com

toxypol• 3 years ago

so musk was trolled?

bsuvc2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

asveikau• 3 years ago

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.

Taek• 3 years ago

This character was added to Unicode in 2001, which notably is after Elon acquired x.com

isodev• 3 years ago

The character is used by another famous piece of software for what, 40 years?

https://x.org/wiki/

phkahler• 3 years ago

But X windows is dead or dying. Oh, so is Twitter?

layer82• 3 years ago

X.org doesn’t use that character. But e.g. TeX probably did before Unicode.

Denvercoder9• 3 years ago

It has been used in mathematics for decades, if not centuries, before that.

Symbiote• 3 years ago

jojobas• 3 years ago

It was added as a part of the Latin (and also Greek) alphabet in various incarnations for mathematical use.

CodeCompost• 3 years ago

Ah so that's how we're supposed to Google for tweets now. "𝕏 something something".

voxadam2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

i presume x.com or site:x.com will get the trick done

PaulHoule4• 3 years ago

It’s already got to search 1000s of Chinese characters, a few more doesn’t make a big difference.

layer82• 3 years ago

The essential operation here is not decomposition, but compatibility normalization. Both NFKC and NFKD result in a regular “X”.

b800h• 3 years ago

No, you're supposed to go to X and search on there. And consume ads.

croes• 3 years ago

Possibly related

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36845492

marmitesmuggler• 3 years ago

Strongly reminds me of the X11 logo (one of my favourite designs).

gjvc• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System yup

simplicio2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Musk has the deeper pockets. I'm more worried about him suing x.org and winning.

petercooper• 3 years ago

Does this affect the potential for trademarking the logo?

samwillis5• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Isn't a trademark always tied to its respective business domain?

tiborsaas• 3 years ago

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 λ 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:

𝕏ₚₐᵧ

NoZebra120vClip2• 3 years ago

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.

jonas-w3• 3 years ago

You can also access x.com when using the Unicode Character https://xn--971h.com (𝕏.com)

mkl4• 3 years ago

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-w3• 3 years ago

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?

dom96• 3 years ago

Looks like it's also not possible to register xn--971h.com (I tried both Namecheap and Cloudflare).

ricardo813• 3 years ago

$ curl -i 'https://xn--971h.com'

curl: (6) Could not resolve host: xn--971h.com

yreg3• 3 years ago

    $ 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>

N19PEDL2• 3 years ago

Also https://xn--u1a.com is for sale (where х 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-w3• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36844079

Also https://xn--vm8a.com which is on sale for $91M

notatoad• 3 years ago

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: х.com

Registry Domain ID: 106236037_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN

Domain Status:

clientDeleteProhibited

clientRenewProhibited

clientTransferProhibited

clientUpdateProhibited

ranting-moth• 3 years ago

I wonder what Elon paid for x.com?

qingcharles3• 3 years ago

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.

dietrichepp6• 3 years ago

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.

masukomi• 3 years ago

because elon renamed twitter to "x corp", bought the x.com domain and shoved this character on it.

mkl4• 3 years ago

He (or a company of his) has had the x.com domain for decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com

coev• 3 years ago

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

dietrichepp6• 3 years ago

The bird is a lot more recognizable, no? Maybe even beautiful?

orlp3• 3 years ago

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.

dietrichepp6• 3 years ago

Thanks! I am always a little curious about how these symbols are used. That makes perfect sense to me.

red_trumpet3• 3 years ago

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.

dclowd9901• 3 years ago

Cause “X” is a cool letter. Just ask David X. Cohen.

jhoechtl• 3 years ago

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.

astrange4• 3 years ago

Not to mention the X.org logo.

formerly_proven• 3 years ago

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.

enriquto7• 3 years ago

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.

folkrav2• 3 years ago

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"?

jdrek1• 3 years ago

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.

mcphage• 3 years ago

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?

marcelluspye• 3 years ago

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.

Skeime• 3 years ago

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.

account422• 3 years ago

Then there's always that one prof that uses both on the blackboard. Also Fraktur. Also bold Fraktur.

computerfriend• 3 years ago

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.

snarfy• 3 years ago

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.

thebooktocome• 3 years ago

One blind mathematician I know prefers reading LaTeX over pdf math for exactly this reason.

blincoln• 3 years ago

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 𝜸 ℾ 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 "ΑΒΓΔ", "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".

hfkwer• 3 years ago

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.

eesmith• 3 years ago

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 $\mathbb X ,
  \mathbb Y \subset \mathbb R^n$.

albybisy• 3 years ago

so it can't be copyrighted.

Zambyte2• 3 years ago

Logos never could be. You're thinking of trademark.

papercrane• 3 years ago

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.

gorlilla2• 3 years ago

It can be probably be trademarked though.

GaggiX• 3 years ago

I use this X character in my name on Telegram, now everyone will think I'm an Elon stan.

Zambyte2• 3 years ago

Just change your name to the Twitter bird

kevin_thibedeau• 3 years ago

The Fail Finch?

Y-bar• 3 years ago

"No way! Why should he change? Musk’s the one who sucks!"

wigster• 3 years ago

appropriate the new name is the universal symbol for close application

NoZebra120vClip2• 3 years ago

I've started telling people to "just 𝕏 out that window." You can hear the outline typeface in my voice.

yaakov34• 3 years ago

Can someone explain what we are talking about here? Something having to do with Musk's son's name?

superhumanuser• 3 years ago

Twitter is rebranding to X.

ulfw• 3 years ago

$44,000,000,000 well spent

PaulHoule4• 3 years ago

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. ;-)

Azrael3000• 3 years ago

No it's about the renaming of Twitter.

[0] https://nitter.net/elonmusk

0xblinq• 3 years ago

So it’s about Musk’s son name

spiffistan• 3 years ago

Twitter has been rebranded as 'X'. Elon has the domain x.com and I suppose he wants to use it

optimalsolver• 3 years ago

Is this like when that Roman emperor named his horse as a senator, or are we not quite there yet?

samwillis5• 3 years ago

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?...

gorlilla2• 3 years ago

I still will prefer a mix of comic sans and wingdings.

bhouston2• 3 years ago

I am not sure you can trademark the Unicode mark though. Doesn’t this preclude trademarks then?

cubefox3• 3 years ago

I mean, hugging face exists.

tsukikage• 3 years ago

...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• 3 years ago

Also the game: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-COM

spread_love2• 3 years ago

I can see users misreading this as a "close" icon in the "share on..." section of every article

lifthrasiir• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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?

bhouston2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Because it's trendy to hate on Elon.

neom• 3 years ago

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.

TheCleric2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

spuz• 3 years ago

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.

teeray• 3 years ago

I can't wait for a Twitter vs. Xfinity trademark showdown.

ectospheno• 3 years ago

x.com was a company he founded early 1999. He wanted an online bank. Wikipedia page on it is informative.

dizzydes• 3 years ago

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.

oneeyedpigeon• 3 years ago

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.

outsidetheparty2• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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_Machine4• 3 years ago

Twitter was doing fine.

It was losing $4 million per day.

gemstones• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

WinstonSmith84• 3 years ago

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.

asguy2• 3 years ago

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

nancyhn• 3 years ago

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.

drcongo• 3 years ago

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.

wccrawford2• 3 years ago

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.

lazide2• 3 years ago

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.

TheCleric2• 3 years ago

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.).

astrange4• 3 years ago

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.

phito• 3 years ago

Why is this a thread and not just a comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36845111 ?

myfonj• 3 years ago

Interestingly, [w3.org Math Double struck] shows example glyph rendering with swapped double stroke stem ("//" + "\" instead of "\\" + "/").

Been looking what the "opf" in the `&Xopf;` 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

stOneskull• 3 years ago

an exception to every rule..

look at these beauties..

https://www.fontspace.com/category/blackboard-bold

transatlantic cruise is super swell

mlochbaum2• 3 years ago

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

claudiawerner• 3 years ago

That's funny; I immediately thought of BQN when I saw this character pop up on HN :)

hoosieree• 3 years ago

Haha, same here. I think my brain actually translated the title to "Unicode Character (right argument as a function)".

mlochbaum2• 3 years ago

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.

creativeembassy• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

You're not wrong though; see.. https://mlochbaum.github.io/BQN/tutorial/variable.html#modif... I guess

depereo• 3 years ago

Off by Fibonacci, rather than off by 1, I guess.

tracker1• 3 years ago

LOL, was literally going to try entering it on the new MS terminal, and realizing I don't have a windows system readily available to use. Why don't other OSes support ALT+(numpadcode) input for special characters? No idea how to do this on mac or linux.

Anyone else want to try to copy/paste into the new Windows Terminal? It does appear to work fine on MacOS under Tabby (terminal).

0x53• 3 years ago

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.

ricardo813• 3 years ago

A good bandwidth saver then, even for the 'share this' kind of plugins that exist.

golemotron• 3 years ago

The Southern Poverty Law Center will declare this a hate symbol shortly. Mark my words.

jjgreen• 3 years ago

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_...

cubefox3• 3 years ago

When it comes to logos, I'm all in favor of laziness. People get way too hung up on something that unimportant.

illwrks2• 3 years ago

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?

quietbritishjim• 3 years ago

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.

evan_• 3 years ago

This tweet has the graphic it’s talking about, and explains better than the referenced article:

https://twitter.com/keewa/status/1683378941732728832?s=20

AntonyGarand• 3 years ago

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.

jccalhoun• 3 years ago

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)

spiffytech• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

app4soft• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

Beautiful. :):):):)

pluc• 3 years ago

I can't wait to x about this. Y'all re-x me when you see it.

qingcharles3• 3 years ago

I tried hitting the X button to re-x you but the browser window closed.

numpad0• 3 years ago

Am I supposed to not notice this mastodon in the room...

danso• 3 years ago

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?

yreg3• 3 years ago

So what, it's still a logo design.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

Oh the Accessibility hawks at accounts like MathAbuse (https://twitter.com/MathAbuse) fighting Unicode 'fancy text' are gonna love this

astrange4• 3 years ago

It's strange they think computers don't have the ability to read text just because it looks fancier.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

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

deafpolygon• 3 years ago

Might want to hide this character from Elon... shh.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

So Elon can copy write this?

ZachSaucier• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

alexruf• 3 years ago

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?

hcarvalhoalves• 3 years ago

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.

pwdisswordfishc2• 3 years ago

In other words, X is the new blockchain.

Dig1t• 3 years ago

Basically Google

morkalork• 3 years ago

gmail, gmaps, gmeet, gchat...

floren• 3 years ago

https://zombo.com/

You can do anything at X.com, anything at all!

tiltowait• 3 years ago

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.

hakfoo• 3 years ago

I'd love to see someone explain the WeChat mystique for people who aren't in its target ecosystem.

It seems like, if you're making something flexible enough to handle payments, various social and interactive services, and yet somehow fall short of being a full web browser, haven't you just reinvented Prodigy for the 2020s?

I assume at this point it largely runs on momentum in a Facebookesque way-- it no longer has to be particularly food at any given service because the sheer mass of its userbase will make it a major player in every market it goes near.

But that doesn't explain initial success. Was it catapulted by a specific environmental condition (i. e. they got zero-rated at a point where mobile data was too expensive to just choose random websites to browse?) or a dramatically better ergonomic experience?

pionerkotik• 3 years ago

𝕋𝕎𝕀𝕋𝕋𝔼ℝ

jheriko• 3 years ago

i refuse to upvote this whilst its on 314 points...

im not sure why this is of import either. blackboard X, so what?

PeterCorless• 3 years ago

This latest kerfuffle is as silly as the time someone actually got a trademark on π.

https://www.wired.com/2014/05/pi-takedown/

gweinberg• 3 years ago

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.

cushpush• 3 years ago

it's actually unicode?!

michaelsbradley• 3 years ago

Also on codepoints.net:

https://codepoints.net/U+1D54F

Unicode Character “𝕏” (U+1D54F)

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