{"generated_at":"2026-11-12T18:35:17.636Z","source":{"name":"Hacker News public API","url":"https://github.com/HackerNews/API","attribution":"Stories and comments are public Hacker News submissions by their respective authors. HackerHub is an independent reader, not affiliated with Y Combinator.","content_is_untrusted":true},"story_id":50459745,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50459745","total_comments":74,"returned":19,"scope":"Up to the requested number of top-level comments in Hacker News ranked order. Deleted comments are omitted. Nested replies are not fetched; this is not the complete thread.","comments":[{"id":50460625,"author":"snitty","created_at":"2026-11-11T23:40:46.000Z","text":"SIGBOVIK papers are almost always a delight\nEDIT: From their 2026 publication\n>Permission to make digital or hard copies of portions of this work for personal use is granted;\npermission to make digital or hard copies of portions of this work for classroom use is also granted,\nbut seems ill-advised","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50460625"},{"id":50460402,"author":"layer8","created_at":"2026-11-11T23:22:51.000Z","text":"Tangentially related, the only way for a Java properties file to be invalid is if it contains an invalid Unicode escape sequence (“\\u” not followed by four digits, and not preceded by an odd number of “\\”). After resolving Unicode escapes, any character sequence is a valid properties file.","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":1,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50460402"},{"id":50460250,"author":"gnabgib","created_at":"2026-11-11T23:07:52.000Z","text":"Popular in:\n2024 (515 points, 125 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40197013\n2021 (431 points, 165 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27929730","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":3,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50460250"},{"id":50459808,"author":"zenincognito","created_at":"2026-11-11T22:38:30.000Z","text":"The actual paper is also highly entertaining - https://www.mcmillen.dev/sigbovik/2019.pdf","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":5,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50459808"},{"id":50468634,"author":"jellevdv","created_at":"2026-11-12T15:10:51.000Z","text":"I created an interactive canvas to try it out with Tesseract and WebPerl. pretty funny that it actually works\nhttps://vandevliet.me/create-valid-perl-by-smearing-paint-on...","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50468634"},{"id":50465088,"author":"rurban","created_at":"2026-11-12T09:48:31.000Z","text":"That's with the flexible perl5 parser with a dynamic lexer, which allows everything. For my new faster perl backend perl11-p2 I am using a PEG parser, similar to raku, which needs static rules for everything. So I bet it will not accept most of the noise. But I still can run only 50% of all perl programs.","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50465088"},{"id":50468689,"author":"psnehanshu","created_at":"2026-11-12T15:13:10.000Z","text":"Why is this OCR program evaluation paint splatter as letters?","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":1,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50468689"},{"id":50462839,"author":"ideasphere","created_at":"2026-11-12T03:47:43.000Z","text":"I’m more interested in how the OCR missed that ‘Stitch & Shutter’ watermark in the third one.","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":2,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50462839"},{"id":50461190,"author":"baron3dl","created_at":"2026-11-12T00:32:12.000Z","text":"i loved programming perl. both the act, and the book. i long since gave it up, but i am still awed by how it could both be completely unceremonious and absurdly ceremonious. my $self = shift; for instance.","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50461190"},{"id":50461418,"author":"jacquesm","created_at":"2026-11-12T00:51:11.000Z","text":"Someone should reverse that and see how many paintings can be made to execute as Perl and what those programs do when invoked.","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":1,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50461418"},{"id":50461749,"author":"idlewords","created_at":"2026-11-12T01:22:58.000Z","text":"A whole new twist on \"Hackers and Painters\"","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50461749"},{"id":50463822,"author":"charcircuit","created_at":"2026-11-12T06:42:58.000Z","text":"This is more about a bad OCR than about paint splatters. They also tried multiple OCR settings until one worked. If you used more accurate OCR this would be very different.","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":1,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50463822"},{"id":50462724,"author":"SoraTakai","created_at":"2026-11-12T03:32:02.000Z","text":"It all depends on which OCR to use and therefore meaningless.\nIt is especially more meaningless since they do not establish the baseline (OCR \"pass\" % on random input).","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":1,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50462724"},{"id":50465031,"author":"isolay","created_at":"2026-11-12T09:38:56.000Z","text":"> fruitful procrastination\nIt is so rare to find proper appreciation for this creative skill.","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50465031"},{"id":50463532,"author":"notorandit","created_at":"2026-11-12T05:48:08.000Z","text":"The problem is the ocr, then.","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50463532"},{"id":50466508,"author":"dukoid","created_at":"2026-11-12T13:01:19.000Z","text":"Now I wonder if that holds for Objective C programs, too....","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50466508"},{"id":50471514,"author":"hcrisp","created_at":"2026-11-12T18:07:34.000Z","text":"Reminds me of the joke: \"Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption”","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50471514"},{"id":50460726,"author":"brisket_bronson","created_at":"2026-11-11T23:49:44.000Z","text":"Figure 6 represents the string\n“gggijgziifiiffif”, which by pure\ncoincidence happens to accurately\nrepresent the authors’ verbal reaction\nupon learning that “unquoted strings”\nwere a feature intentionally included in\nthe Perl language","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":3,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50460726"},{"id":50470662,"author":"ChaseRensberger","created_at":"2026-11-12T17:12:07.000Z","text":"> To be fair to Perl, when perlis run with\nthe -w flag to enable warnings, it does\nhelpfully inform the user that at some\npoint in the future, the Perl developers\nwill most likely pick gggijgziifiiffif\nas a new reserved word\nwhat a gem of a post","parent_id":50459745,"replies_count":0,"hn_url":"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50470662"}]}