I fantasized last night about an algorithm that converts instance names or even full handles to a small set of emoji to give each a unique fingerprint that takes up little screen space but allows instant visual recognition.
does anyone think this would actually be a good idea?
@abgd The 'display name' Could possibly be used for that. One of many problems, though, is that it can contain only very few emojis.
@yair I haven't done the math yet, but considering how many emoji there are, I'm guessing three might be enough to encode a larger namespace than the fediverse would ever need.
@abgd True, but many emoji are utterly useless and translating literal puns to visual ones is something that I think is way beyond any current algorithm and better left as an exercise for the :poop: :envelope: er.
@yair Lol my first reading of that was "poop mailer".
But I was thinking this system would forego the puns and just represent each instance name as a unique set of 3 or 4 emoji...
@abgd See? Even with toot.cafe it took me a while to understand what @nolan is referring to, and shitposting is relatively easy as well. Now who is the weird flag, highrise building and pause button?
If the number was small you could memorize them, but these are not very memorable or distinguishable sequences.
@yair Yeah, true.
