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The pistol emoji ― 🔫 ― is being phasered out, or turned into a water pistol:
Google is the latest company to ditch the pistol with a new emoji update for Android users. The switch to a bright orange and yellow water gun, rolling out now, mimics changes made by Apple, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Samsung over the last few years. That leaves Microsoft as the only major platform with the realistic handgun emoji. True, Facebook still uses it, but a spokesperson for the company confirmed to Emojipedia that it would also be replacing its gun emoji with a toy water gun. The Verge has reached out to Microsoft for comment.
[...] Ironically, Microsoft initially displayed the gun emoji as a toy, but changed it to a revolver in 2016 as part of its emoji redesign project. With Google's (and Facebook's) latest move, Microsoft's gun emoji puts it at philosophical odds with the other giant tech companies based in the US where gun violence is a major concern. As we previously noted, in 2016 Apple successfully pushed to remove the rifle icon from the standardized collection of emoji.
However, later on the day The Verge's article was published, Microsoft revealed that it is jumping on the trend as well:
We are in the process of evolving our emojis to reflect our values and the feedback we've received. Here's a preview: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbqXVKBU0AAdXLk.jpg
Previously: Apple Changes "Pistol" Emoji From Revolver to Toy Water Gun
Apple Urged to Rethink Gun Emoji Change
Twitter Changes Revolver Emoji to Water Pistol Emoji
Related: Kids Are Facing Criminal Charges for Using Emoji
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday April 27 2018, @06:58PM (13 children)
Until just a few days ago I took it for granted that Emoji rendering was always in color. Color seems like a huge part of what makes them useful, or at least, fun. I see colored emoji everywhere under OS X. In the shell, in IRC, on the web, etc.
But I learned that under some operating systems, these are rendered as font glyphs, in the color of the current font.
That was a real TIL moment for me.
The bowdlerizing of the gun emoji doesn't surprise me a bit. They did it for you / the children, Special Butterflies.
On the plus side, I might just seriously intend to shoot you with a water pistol. Loaded with actual water. I have huge ammo reserves for these wetly weapons. Spray and pray, man, spray and pray. :)
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday April 27 2018, @07:05PM
Yellow and green, eh? Ur-ine trouble, mister.
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(Score: 2) by KiloByte on Friday April 27 2018, @07:20PM (1 child)
That's so called "emoji presentation" vs "text presentation". The Unicode standard instead of specifying solid rules when to use either, instead requires user agents to rely on magic pixies and mind reading. Even worse are optional features, like ZWJ sequences.
The pistol (🔫 U+1F52B) and rifle (🥆 U+1F946) glyphs also provide a nice way to tell operating systems meant for children vs those for grown-ups. I just searched fonts shipped in Debian, and didn't find one that displays a toy for either of these codepoints.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @11:10PM
The next update of SystemD will fix that.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday April 27 2018, @08:24PM
Well they already sucked all the colors out of the MSN logo butterfly.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Friday April 27 2018, @08:43PM (8 children)
Emoji are glyphs which happen to be rendered using bitmaps by some operating systems or ui tool kits. Personally I think they are fucking stupid for the most part especialyl when you can use them in file names. I once joking named a script 💩.sh ... Which BTW, is why I think they are fucking stupid; how do you prevent file/path name abuse if you can't type them? Oh right, I'm getting old and my grandpas computers [urbandictionary.com] giant keyboard doesnt have a cute little tappy key thing. Maybe we'll one day have 106 key keyboards with an emoji button. Then we can link that to the $1000 Optimus maximus keyboard so the keys can display the glyphs for us old geezers while we wear our visors, arm garters, vests and bow-ties typing codes on our archaic machines.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday April 27 2018, @08:57PM (7 children)
Here's a nickel kid, get yourself a better computer. ☺
If your outdated platform lacks a compose key, upgrade to one that does. No I don't know if there is one for the poop emoji yet but I just typed [COMPOSE] : ) and it inserted the smiley. There are hundreds of others. What else does one do with those otherwise useless "Windows" keys? Emojis are stupid, a waste and a regression toward the hieroglyphics that failed; but a lot of other useful symbols beyond the 94 printable ASCII glyphs are handy. Like °, ×, ÷, µ, ±, accented characters for the peeps outside the U.S. English areas of the world, etc.
So the Tech Titans have stated their "values". Now let Americans state theirs by replacing those faggot typefaces with ones more suited to a Free People.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday April 27 2018, @09:13PM
That I can agree with.
(Score: 3, Touché) by fyngyrz on Friday April 27 2018, @11:38PM (3 children)
中国人会不同意你的看法. ☺️
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:21AM (1 child)
中国人很难读写，他们可能会同意
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:21AM
中国人以中国文字为荣. 它非常漂亮.
我喜歡舊式的寫作. 它更美麗.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday April 28 2018, @08:22PM
Yea, now look at a Chinese datasheet and realize why it is a failure. They can't add easily new symbols and thus can't add new words, Chinese is therefore as dead as Latin, just for a different reason. Using a sequence of existing glyphs is merely taking the worst of their current system and merging the worst parts of our system. There are just too many Chinese speakers and a Communist government that can simply outlaw what would otherwise happen, a slow abandonment of a bad idea. If you have to insert English words into a document (other than trademarks and such) it is a bad sign.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:54AM (1 child)
As far as I can tell, there wasn't much reason to add emojis to Unicode other than "Why not?! We've got the space!"
All standards go from identifying subsets of existing systems (e.g., What symbols are in actual widespread use by humans?) to becoming the stupidly committee-piloted driving force behind all systems (e.g., Hey, what cool new things can we add to drive the sale of smartphones?).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:07AM
It gives the Unicode Consortium something to do that more people care about than adding something like the Tangut script [wikipedia.org].
It standardized a set of symbols that were being used by competing mobile providers. 📱📞
It gives you a set of useful symbols that you can add in web applications. ⚠ 💾
It even gives people something to complain about (not to mention that movie). There's really no downside. 👌😂
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