Unicode

Linknote — 30 August 2018 — 84 words

Some meaningless Japanese characters (known as ghost characters) have been included in Unicode — and no-one knows why. Although there are some pretty good theories.

[S]everal of the added characters had no obvious sources, and nobody could tell what they meant or how they should be pronounced. Nobody was sure where they came from. These are what came to be known as the ghost characters (幽霊文字).

Linknote — 20 August 2018 — 185 words

Current affairs — Technology

Big tech warns of ‘Japan’s millennium bug’ ahead of Akihito’s abdication

To be filed under ‘you learn something new every day’ — a series of potential millennium bug-style issues that could be faced when Emperor Akihito of Japan abdicates. Japanese calendars effectively begin from zero with a new era every time there is a new emperor.

Akihito has been on the throne for almost the entirety of the information age, meaning that many systems have never had to deal with a switchover in era.

Moreover, Unicode will have to create a new character to represent the new era — which has not yet been named. This clashes awkwardly with the planned release of Unicode 12.0.

But this is the most incredible scenario:

Many older computers, with aspects dating back to before the end of the Shōwa era in 1989, have never been updated to reflect the new era, and still think the year is Shōwa 93. That means Japan could face another mini Y2K problem in 2025, as those systems attempt to tick over to a three digit Shōwa year they can’t cope with.

Linknote — 2 January 2018 — 80 words

Digital

The great emoji debate

The Economist considers whether the Unicode consortium is wasting its time trying to standardise emoji when it could be focusing on “more scholarly matters” such as adding characters from ancient scripts.

Given the popularity — almost the ubiquity — of emoji in modern-day popular culture, I would argue that standardising this form of communication is much more important than trying to digitise seldom-used or dead scripts. Even if that means standardising a frowning pile of poo.