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  • I had some physical therapy sessions back in 2021, and during that time, I discovered the myths of Procrustes and his infamous bed. I shared the profile of Procrustes with the doctor of PT, and he was thrilled. He will probably get a tattoo of that guy.

    Perhaps every month I should bestow a Procrustean Award on some Show HN like this. I hereby proclaim the September 2026 Procrustean Award goes to vantezzen for their 11-bit flag-encoding.

    I will also point out that flags change over time, and there may be more than one flag in use by an entity (the latter is something that Unicode ignores.)

    And my favorite flag drama of the 2020s is when Wikipedia "discovered" that its Vatican Flag image was "wrong"... after distributing it far and wide: https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/wikipedia-had-the-wrong-va...

    by ButlerianJihad
  • Spoiler: after all this work only 128 flags were encoded to some degree, 67 left out. Dunno that I’d call an encoding scheme that can only represent 66% of its target set (and even so, with self admitted limitations) successful in any way.
    by loloquwowndueo
  • There are exactly 64 flags excluded for having custom glyphs/seals/symbols/icons, which is crying out for an “appendix” lookup table to complete the encoding. The positions look very regular too, you could probably fit the positioning in the remaining 2 bits of a u8.
    by fwlr
  • Surprised this didn’t mention heraldry, which has what’s basically a DSL for coats-of-arms:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blazon

    by pimlottc
  • This reminds me of a great series on YouTube called "Can You Draw Every Flag in Powerpoint?"[1] and the guy does his darnedest to do it precisely, and in the process you learn just how specific (and sometimes non-specific) flags are!

    [1] Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5QSVhgrqVE

    by blixt
  • Loved the title. I was like "that's 10 bits too many for a flag!" Haha
    by mabster
  • A jack is a flag flown from a jackstaff, wot is found at the back of a ship or boat.

    The UK flag is called the Union Flag (it's a flag and it is a union of various flags and possibly nations too!) but let's face it, given how many people think its called the Union Jack, it doesn't really matter.

    If your flag pole at home is somewhat canted then I think you can call it a jackstaff, with a similar justification to the Royal Navy managing to designate their shore bases as ships. For example just up the road is HMS Heron (His Majesty's Ship: Heron).

    The Union Flag/Jack is only the flag of the UK by convention and not law. It's a bit wooley, just like our Constitution but it still all works.

    My point is that whilst I do enjoy this encoding scheme and it is jolly clever, reality is way more complicated. The UK's flag is pretty complicated but not alone. I'm pretty sure several flags have tassels, which I suppose strays into the coat of arms territory.

    How hard do you want to squint!

    by gerdesj
  • In case anyone else was curious about using a lookup table: there are there are fewer than 256 recognized countries or territories [1], so 8 bits should be enough for a key.

    This would be superior to the 11-bit encoding presented here because it handles complexities such as coats of arms. It would also handle bizarre situations such as two countries having almost identical flags [2].

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territor...

    [2] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/country-flags-that-resem...

    by kjgkjhfkjf

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