fuzztester 3 days ago

>The Jargon File also mentions that German hackers had in turn developed their own versions of the blinkenlights poster, in broken English:[1]

    ATTENTION
    This room is fullfilled mit special electronische equippment.
    Fingergrabbing and pressing the cnoeppkes from the computers is allowed for die experts only!
    So all the "lefthanders" stay away and do not disturben the brainstorming von here working intelligencies.
    Otherwise you will be out thrown and kicked anderswhere!
    Also: please keep still and only watchen astaunished the blinkenlights.
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  • graemep 3 days ago

    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.

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  • wizzwizz4 3 days ago

    I have never been able to track down what "cnoeppkes" is supposed to mean.

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    • wongarsu 3 days ago

      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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      • master-lincoln 3 days ago

        > 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)

        Not quite. The -ke ending here is just another regional variant of the diminutive. The s at the end is a colloquial plural form.

        So the transformation from German to this weird german-english would be:

        Knöpfe - Knöpfchen - Knöppkes - Cnoeppkes

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    • kemitchell 3 days ago

      Кнопки (k-nope-key) is Russian for "buttons". Maybe related.

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      • pavel_lishin 3 days ago

        There are so many words in our language that are very clear loan-words from German!

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jansan 3 days ago

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 :)

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  • boznz 3 days ago

    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.

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danielbln 3 days ago

I would also use "die" instead of "das* for Blinkslights, since it's plural.

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Over2Chars 4 days ago

@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.

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not2b 4 days ago

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.

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emmelaich 4 days ago

obvious? that's the fun of it.

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distantsounds 3 days ago

welcome to hackernews, where every article posted has something made up about it and the points don't matter

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