Is Android Unicode Yet?


Fontforge showing the version is from 2013.

Google's Android platform has dreadful support for Unicode. Even the most recent Android versions are missing out on languages, characters, and symbols which were added to Unicode in the last decade. Back in 2013, Google created the "Noto" project. Its aim? To include "all the world's languages". They wanted to banish "tofu" - the little white blocks □ which indicate a missing character - hence the name "No Tofu" / "Noto". There was great flurry and excitement which has, thankfully, been s…

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DMCA as a vector for pornographic spam?


To: Webmaster of https://shkspr.mobi/, Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of the material found on your site allegedly infringes upon the copyrights of others. We’re in the process of removing the allegedly unlawful materials from Google Search results. The notice that we received, with any personally identifying information removed, may be found on the website of Lumen, a third-party aggregator of legal complaint notices, at https://lumendatabase.org/notices/42788513.

There's a law in the USA called the DMCA - Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Amongst its myriad provisions is the ability for copyright holders to send takedown notices to service providers. If someone has ripped off your content, you can send them a legal letter saying "take that down". People often send DMCA requests to Google saying "this site has stolen my copyrighted content - please remove that page from Google." Google, to their credit, let me know that they'd recently received a…

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Inconsistency is a feature, not a bug


Homescreen filled with multicoloured icons of various shapes.

Some of my best friends are designers. But I think we can all agree that - however well-meaning - they can be a little obsessive. Whether it is fretting over tiny details, or trying to align to a grid which doesn't exist, or spending time removing useful affordances in the name of æsthetics - they always find a way to make something prettier at the expense of usability. Google used to have some beautiful logos for its apps. Each had a distinct shape, style, and colour. Then, someone decided …

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Notes on installing GrapheneOS on a Pixel 8 Pro - some bugs & oddities


Pop up saying it was unable to fetch a list of apps.

These are notes to myself - and anyone else who finds them useful. Before starting, I booted the Google OS to install the latest firmware and an eSIM. After a few days of enduring Google's naggy software, I was ready to commit to installing something better. I tried using the Web Installer. It managed to flash some of the partitions and then failed with: Failed to execute 'claimInterface' on 'USBDevice' So I used the CLI instructions which were comprehensive. Worth re-reading them a few…

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Google Books - search results confuse reviewers with authors


Google Books Search Results page.

Google Books is one of many projects that Google has forgotten about. There's no support available and, of course, it's impossible to send them a bug report. The best anyone can do is write a ranty blog post and hope it gets noticed. When I search for my name in Google Books, it returns books I have reviewed. These aren't books that I've written. They don't mention, quote, or cite me. My reviews don't appear on the dust-jacket. Google has got confused. Here's an example. Go to the Google…

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I don't think you need to be civil to puppy-smashers


AI generated image of a small industrial machine crushing a cute puppy.

My good friend Jess wrote this a little while ago: Jessica Rose@jesslynnroseThe function of a system is its output.If you have dog grooming machine that sometimes smashes puppies and you keep running it, you're in the dog smashing business.If you work for a mass surveillance company that keeps enabling genocide and undermining democracy...❤️ 2,711💬 26♻️ 013:19 - Thu 07 January 2021 The whole thread is worth reading. One thing she doesn't cover is how you should respond when someone proposes to…

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The Future of the Web is VNC


The HTML5 Logo.

Many gallons of digital ink spilled at Google's plans for "Web Environment Integrity" which - depending on who you believe - is either an entirely reasonable proposal to protect users or a devious plan to add DRM to the entire web. (It's the latter, obviously.) We'll never know exactly whether users want this because Google is pathologically adverse to performing or publishing user research. Anyway, I have a solution to all of Google's problems. Forget this notion of untrusted "user agents" …

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A weird (trap?) artefact in Google Maps


Screenshot of Google maps. in the middle of Mayfair is an entry for an Ancient Metal Vault.

Cartographers occasionally sneak deliberate mistakes into their maps. Known as trap streets they are a simple "copyright trap". If someone copies their map without permission, the fake street shows evidence of the source of plagiarism. Google do this sometimes. They once proclaimed that Argleton was a real place - despite its non-existence. While I was looking for something to do in London recently, I came across this curious entry. Why does Google think there is an "Ancient Metal Vault" in …

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Gardening & Time Travel with Google Earth


Row of photos going back a decade.

There's no one dafter than the previous owner of your property. Over the years we've found dodgy wiring, horrificly bodged plaster, and things plumbed in backwards. We've started re-doing our garden recently. The hideous decking was quickly rotting away and needed removing. But what would we find under there? Google's StreetView for the web lets you take a short trip back in time - if you're lucky, you might catch a glimpse of what your garden looked like over the year. (That's a random…

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The new .zip TLD is going to cause some problems


Many years ago, Google applied for the .zip Top Level Domain. ICANN, in its infinite wisdom, granted it. And now, I think, bad things are going to happen. You see computers try to be helpful. They see you wrote "visit example.com" and autolink the thing which looks like a domain name. That's handy - especially as most people don't have the time or skill to write HTML. So what happens when things which are not domain names look like they are domain names? I've been worrying about this for a…

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Reddit is Dropping AMP


Whoops - looks like some of the changes we were planning got out of the bag a bit early - yes, the change to compact and i.reddit.com is part of this project. We also intend to deprecate the amp platform this year. We are making these changes in an effort to streamline the experience and reduce the number of ways you can access Reddit on the web. This is part of our broader effort to simplify reddit talked about earlier this month. The changes that happened today to i.reddit.com and compact, and the ones coming to amp do not impact old.reddit.

As part of its continuing quest to alienate all its long-time users provide a better user experience to everyone, Reddit recently announced a slew of changes. Buried in amongst all the hullabaloo from whinging ungrateful brats thoughtful comments from people with justifiable concerns, was this snippet from a Reddit employee: An Improved Web Experience - Reddit Long time readers will remember that I resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee having been a long time critic of the…

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Who is the author "JC Shakespeare"?


Screenshot of Google Scholar results. Shakespeare has, apparently, written about law, technology, wine, and an article in German.

Knowledge graphs are tricky beasts to create. Trying to extract semantic metadata from documents is a gargantuan task. Mix them together and you have a recipe for disaster. While yak-shaving for my MSc, I found an interesting looking research paper authored by one JC Shakespeare. As you can probably tell from that snippet, there is something a bit hinkey going on here. Here's the page that Google Scholar has scraped: It's pretty easy to see what has happened here. The algorithm (whether …

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