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User: Edward+Coffin

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  1. Two Dots Too Many on Variation in Depiction of Same Emoji on Different Platforms Can Lead To Miscommunication · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This reminds me of an incident in Turkey back in 2008, described and analyzed in Language Log: Two Dots Too Many. Due to a cellphone being improperly localized, a normal letter i was substituted for the Turkish back unrounded i (which I cannot figure out how to display here, ironically enough), altering the meaning of a text message, leading to a tragic misunderstanding, which resulted in a group attack on the sender who then murdered the recipient and subsequently committed suicide.

  2. Re:hp 3 button mouse on Ask Slashdot: Where Can You Get a Good 3-Button Mouse Today? · · Score: 2

    I second the HP DY651A. It was apparently unavailable for a while: all the online stores I looked for it in were listing it as out of stock or unavailable for the last few months of 2014, and it was something like $50 on eBay and the like. However, recently it became available again. I ordered mine three weeks ago and got it a few days later, for under $20 Canadian. Multiple online stores (newegg, NCIX, etc) are listing it for under $20, some as low as $12.

  3. Re:Whisky not Whiskey on Iain M. Banks Gets Asteroid Named After Him · · Score: 1

    Strangely, the quoted text was apparently not cut-and-pasted, since both the linked article and the IAU page correctly use the word whisky. The incorrect whiskey only appears here.

  4. Greg Egan on Ask Slashdot: Mathematical Fiction? · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try something by Greg Egan. His short story Glory (pdf) is online.

  5. Open ended on What's In an Educational Game? · · Score: 1

    I recommend that you read Brain Rot by Theodore Grey and Jerry Glynn. Among other things, it discusses this very topic. The summary I took away from it is you should make the game open-ended, giving full freedom to the player to go down the wrong paths, rather than being led down the right path.

    Interesting snippets:

    Software should not be unnecessarily hard to use, but neither should it shy away from or disguise the inherent richness of the subject matter. It should be open-ended, deep, and capable of doing senseless things if asked.

    In a continuation of the above point, in a discussion of programs to teach geometry:
    If students decide to build a completely useless geometrical construction, the program won't stop them. It lets them discover for themselves that their construction is uninteresting. This is very important: By allowing freedom to go off in the wrong direction, the software is giving students the opportunity to learn.