Just the other day I learnt about the hairy heart emoji in Android 4.4, which was actually misinterpreted from a black-and-white hatched heart in unicode that used the dots to indicate yellow, per this wiki article.
I am constantly shocked that this is the company that basically revolutionized the internet at some point. Lately I've been marveling at their decision on Maps to take up a third of the screen with a button to change the color of the arrow that represents the driver's vehicle. Do Google employees simply hate Google?
"""I worked at Google. Google has an internal philosophy of “Don’t complain, fix things”. This is, on the face of it, a proactive and positive philosophy that empowers people to make changes in the workplace.
It’s not. It’s a horrible, coercive, tool of abuse that is a fairly central part of why it only took me six months at Google before I burned out hard and had to quit for the sake of my mental health.
The problem with an attitude of “Don’t complain, fix things” is that it means you can’t point out problems without taking on an obligation to fix them. This means that you can’t point out problems that are too large for you to fix, and that you’re reluctant to point out even problems that you could in theory fix because it increases your workload.
The result, at least in the part of Google that I was in, was very much a culture where people had learned not to notice problems."""
This sounds like the kind of thing that is good for startups, where everyone sits at the same table, including the big boss. But once a large corporate structure sets in, it degenerates.
In spirit, "don't complain, fix things" means you can do things without asking for permission, as in "don't complain if you can fix things instead". If your software crashes because it misses a null check, just add that check and move on. Don't request to have it included in the next sprint, assign it points, have it prioritized by some manager, only to have it assigned to someone else who will then call you back for explanation. Here "don't complain" means something more like "you don't have to write a ticket".
But once the corporate hierarchy comes up, fixing something without telling managers becomes unacceptable, how are they going to meet their KPIs if your work doesn't show up on their dashboards? The saying stays, but it becomes perverted into "don't complain unless you can fix it", which is the complete opposite of the previous idea.
I'm not sure that was responsible for this particular "bug"; a horrible "UX" designer overruling everyone else's decisions is more likely, as the current trend seems to be driving UI density to new levels of spaced-out uselessness.
I'd guess that's down to both Renaissance artists and early graphic designers faced the same difficulties in trying to make symbolic reference to things without access to colors/paints/dyes that would otherwise be used. (As in the case, say, of a family with a colorful crest that wanted a copper crest to replace their cloth one. The colors have important meanings but the copper could not be colored so they needed a way to preserve the symbolism of the colors in the copper version)
We see a similar thing in games like DwarfFortress where the designer doesn't have access to dwarf/goblin/dragon/water/grass/etc sprites and so has to decide upon a stand-in.
I can't find anything pointing directly to her using heraldic patterning, but it seems her primary reference was Henry Dreyfuss’s Symbol Sourcebook (1972) [limitted preview on archive.org, full available for sale and elsewhere].
And while the book does not specifically feature heraldry or the hatching specifically, several of the examples in the text do contain very similar dot and line patterns as fill in various shapes. Pages 50/1 feature several iconic patterns to indicate earth, rock, natural rubble, rubble, cast stone, marble, slate, brick, common brick, face brick, fire brick, glass, grass, various woods etc in arhcitectural drawings.
There's a surprising durability and universality to certain symbolism. A stick person engraved in the pyramid is reckognized today. Hatching and cross hatching have been used to indicate shadows for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years.
As someone who writes about heraldry, I'm happy to see this here. I'm a little surprised, though. What about this is interesting for the Hacker News crowd?
A program doesn't even need a GUI to have an aesthetic, and many here will spend hours or days chasing that just-right look in their projects.
Many hackers/devs that do not work directly in graphical design are surprisingly passionate about colors, fonts, angles, curves, animations...
There are many many projects that are forks of something else with a different skin on it or forked to allow the user to apply their own skin, many change the font of their terminals, hell entire linux distros are maintained entirely or almost entirely for purely aesthetic reasons.
Hell, a significant number of us have strong opinions about the visual shape of (fixed-font, usually monospaced) text in our code (eg, the various indentation style wars) or prose (eg, Knuth et al's anti-river typesetting algorithms).
This is exactly why I knew what the article was about before clicking the link. I never thought there would be standards for colors though.
I wonder if ancient computer graphics systems for things like plotters or vector screens would interpret color as different hachure patterns. Maybe Tektronix can still accept a patch for PLOT 10.
A mix of interest in the various ways images can be represented in alternative formats and then applied artistically. I can't speak to why, but every time I see one of these techniques I'm fascinated by it, and want to play with it[1]. There's a regular stream of related posts that come up on dithering, half tones, etc, and tools people build off of them. I find everything from the history/why, the details of the techniques, and the artistic uses of them (in modern UI/prints that no longer _need_ them) all fun and interesting.
Niche topics are often fascinating in their own way, even if you've had nothing to do with that niche before or won't have anything to do with it afterward.
Just the other day I learnt about the hairy heart emoji in Android 4.4, which was actually misinterpreted from a black-and-white hatched heart in unicode that used the dots to indicate yellow, per this wiki article.
https://emojipedia.org/google/android-4.4/yellow-heart
https://thenextweb.com/news/pink-hairy-hart-emoji
https://youtu.be/6cQ3f13Oq7c?t=116
I am constantly shocked that this is the company that basically revolutionized the internet at some point. Lately I've been marveling at their decision on Maps to take up a third of the screen with a button to change the color of the arrow that represents the driver's vehicle. Do Google employees simply hate Google?
From https://drmaciver.com/2020/06/you-should-complain-about-it/ :
"""I worked at Google. Google has an internal philosophy of “Don’t complain, fix things”. This is, on the face of it, a proactive and positive philosophy that empowers people to make changes in the workplace.
It’s not. It’s a horrible, coercive, tool of abuse that is a fairly central part of why it only took me six months at Google before I burned out hard and had to quit for the sake of my mental health.
The problem with an attitude of “Don’t complain, fix things” is that it means you can’t point out problems without taking on an obligation to fix them. This means that you can’t point out problems that are too large for you to fix, and that you’re reluctant to point out even problems that you could in theory fix because it increases your workload.
The result, at least in the part of Google that I was in, was very much a culture where people had learned not to notice problems."""
This sounds like the kind of thing that is good for startups, where everyone sits at the same table, including the big boss. But once a large corporate structure sets in, it degenerates.
In spirit, "don't complain, fix things" means you can do things without asking for permission, as in "don't complain if you can fix things instead". If your software crashes because it misses a null check, just add that check and move on. Don't request to have it included in the next sprint, assign it points, have it prioritized by some manager, only to have it assigned to someone else who will then call you back for explanation. Here "don't complain" means something more like "you don't have to write a ticket".
But once the corporate hierarchy comes up, fixing something without telling managers becomes unacceptable, how are they going to meet their KPIs if your work doesn't show up on their dashboards? The saying stays, but it becomes perverted into "don't complain unless you can fix it", which is the complete opposite of the previous idea.
I'm not sure that was responsible for this particular "bug"; a horrible "UX" designer overruling everyone else's decisions is more likely, as the current trend seems to be driving UI density to new levels of spaced-out uselessness.
Soon: "Short-press to activate AI-enhanced UI feature. Long-press for legacy UI feature."
Ah yes, the button that summons the "cannot edit avatar while driving" toast upon accidental press.
Thank god they let us know instead of doing something relevant!
I haven’t seen any references to heraldry in MacPaint/Susan Kare lore, but this certainly reminds me of those patterns and textures.
I'd guess that's down to both Renaissance artists and early graphic designers faced the same difficulties in trying to make symbolic reference to things without access to colors/paints/dyes that would otherwise be used. (As in the case, say, of a family with a colorful crest that wanted a copper crest to replace their cloth one. The colors have important meanings but the copper could not be colored so they needed a way to preserve the symbolism of the colors in the copper version)
We see a similar thing in games like DwarfFortress where the designer doesn't have access to dwarf/goblin/dragon/water/grass/etc sprites and so has to decide upon a stand-in.
I can't find anything pointing directly to her using heraldic patterning, but it seems her primary reference was Henry Dreyfuss’s Symbol Sourcebook (1972) [limitted preview on archive.org, full available for sale and elsewhere].
And while the book does not specifically feature heraldry or the hatching specifically, several of the examples in the text do contain very similar dot and line patterns as fill in various shapes. Pages 50/1 feature several iconic patterns to indicate earth, rock, natural rubble, rubble, cast stone, marble, slate, brick, common brick, face brick, fire brick, glass, grass, various woods etc in arhcitectural drawings.
There's a surprising durability and universality to certain symbolism. A stick person engraved in the pyramid is reckognized today. Hatching and cross hatching have been used to indicate shadows for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years.
> A stick person engraved in the pyramid is reckognized today
What's that? Do you maybe imagine that this is the hieroglyph for pharaoh?
As someone who writes about heraldry, I'm happy to see this here. I'm a little surprised, though. What about this is interesting for the Hacker News crowd?
A program doesn't even need a GUI to have an aesthetic, and many here will spend hours or days chasing that just-right look in their projects.
Many hackers/devs that do not work directly in graphical design are surprisingly passionate about colors, fonts, angles, curves, animations...
There are many many projects that are forks of something else with a different skin on it or forked to allow the user to apply their own skin, many change the font of their terminals, hell entire linux distros are maintained entirely or almost entirely for purely aesthetic reasons.
Hell, a significant number of us have strong opinions about the visual shape of (fixed-font, usually monospaced) text in our code (eg, the various indentation style wars) or prose (eg, Knuth et al's anti-river typesetting algorithms).
Proper keming is a noble hill to die on.
Amen
I think the yellow heart situation brought it to a lot of people's attention. that was years ago but it was going around recently:
https://apatheticlexicographer.tumblr.com/post/7628346069794...
It seems there's a similar system in technical drawing to represent metals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatching#Representation_of_mat...
This is exactly why I knew what the article was about before clicking the link. I never thought there would be standards for colors though.
I wonder if ancient computer graphics systems for things like plotters or vector screens would interpret color as different hachure patterns. Maybe Tektronix can still accept a patch for PLOT 10.
A mix of interest in the various ways images can be represented in alternative formats and then applied artistically. I can't speak to why, but every time I see one of these techniques I'm fascinated by it, and want to play with it[1]. There's a regular stream of related posts that come up on dithering, half tones, etc, and tools people build off of them. I find everything from the history/why, the details of the techniques, and the artistic uses of them (in modern UI/prints that no longer _need_ them) all fun and interesting.
[1]: https://cloverich.github.io/artifacts/horizon-plate/dist/hor...
It's an interesting solution to a technical problem (conveying color via a monochrome medium)
What are your 2 favorite blog post about heraldy written by you?
What are your 2 favorite blog post about heraldy written by someone else?
Niche topics are often fascinating in their own way, even if you've had nothing to do with that niche before or won't have anything to do with it afterward.
Scroll to the hairy heart. And some forms of ASCII art can be considered a form of E.
I know that hatching is also used to describe the texturing on rifle stocks.
Whoa. This just unlocked a long forgotten memory.
If you were using Windows 3.1 and MS paint on a black and white screen the fill tool would use heraldry patterns? Is that right?