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steve1977yesterday at 2:21 PM1 replyview on HN

Fun fact: The one morse code that most people probably know, SOS, is not actually sent as three letters S-O-S but as one distinct code.

I.e. it's more akin to something like a linefeed control character that could also be represented as \n.

It also had no meaning initally, so meanings like "save our souls" are backronyms (it's originally a German signal anyway).


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amenhotepyesterday at 2:43 PM

Huh! I'd always accepted the backronym without even thinking about it, but it makes so much more sense as arbitrary letters associated with sequences that are very easy to remember and distinguish than as a real weird acronym that just happens to have that property. You have reorganised my world in a slightly more reasonable way.

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