Comment by croes
4 days ago
Nitpicking
Blinkenlights isn’t a german word it’s pseudo german for Blinklicht originating from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights#:~:text=on%20the...
But the Chaos Computer Club built light installations called
>The Jargon File also mentions that German hackers had in turn developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster, in broken English:[1]
That is funny (I do not know German but it still made me laugh) for exactly the same reason as the Blinkelights version - the similarities between German and English that make so many works almost recognisable.
I have never been able to track down what "cnoeppkes" is supposed to mean.
My guess is "Knöpfchen" (German for "little button"). The "chen" suffix is difficult to pronounce for English speakers, so it's replaced by the word "keys" (as in the buttons of a keyboard)
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Кнопки (k-nope-key) is Russian for "buttons". Maybe related.
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Definitely means buttons. Source: am German
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Knob? https://www.etymonline.com/word/knob#etymonline_v_1916
I wrote "I love you" on the CCC Blinkenlights in Berlin to my then girlfriend, who has been my wife now for 20 years. The most romantic thing I ever did :)
In 1985 I made a similar panel which had 16 lights and mechanical switches and installed it in a rack in an operations center in GCHQ just to make it a bit more colorful. One day I came back from leave and the boss was really mad at me as they had been showing around some VIP, who stopped at the panel and asked the area director what it did. As all the technicians had been evacuated for the tour, nobody had a clue.
I would also use "die" instead of "das* for Blinkslights, since it's plural.
@croes I was thinking the same thing (knowing no german, but having a hunch).
And the CCC project was a whole building.
For his example, I was expecting a whole cage with some tricked out lights, maybe some smoke effects (I can see new colo signs being updated "no cardboard,no smoke machines allowed"), a sub-woofer playing some chiptunes, etc.
I saw a version of that sign a very long time ago in a government lab at my high school summer intern job, attached to a PDP-11 that came with blinkenlights.
First time I saw it was 1981 on the front of a DEC-10
PDP-10 Was awesome. There is a nice version of the console you can buy here => https://hackaday.io/project/170111-pidp-10
Also Kindergarten is German :)
obvious? that's the fun of it.
The linked article begins with "[Blinkenlights] Probably the only German word I know"
Ironically the author likely knows some actual German words like Schadenfreude and Kindergarten.
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welcome to hackernews, where every article posted has something made up about it and the points don't matter
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