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Comment by sant0sk1 | Hacker News Reader

Nice easter egg!

Title is a bit misleading as I clicked on the article thinking Digg had open-sourced the site (which would be pretty rad). The source code in question is the HTML source, not the code that outputs said HTML.

Perhaps it would better read "Secret message in Digg's HTML markup".

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Hahahah same thing happened here. "Secret message in Digg's HTML" works well.

Hmm I couldn't help but notice that he uses cutenews. That script hasn't been updated in a while and is vulnerable to script kiddies and ugly cracker people. :(

You mean HTML. Saying HTML markup is rather redundant.

No, I don't think it is. The noun "L" in HTML is "Language", so "HTML markup" means that the markup is written in the HyperText Markup Language. Now, "HTML Language" would be redundant.

Uh?... Isn't HyperText Markup Language markup redundant?

No, you can have markup in plenty of other languages. Thus, the modifier "HTML" adds information to its subject, the "markup". The subject of the modifier is also important, as it makes clear that you are talking about some specific markup written in HTML and not HTML in general.

You're wrong, it's redundant, saying hyper text markup language markup sounds ignorant. Your defense makes zero sense.

Guys, what do you say we dial down the whole power-nerd thing a little bit, okay? This really doesn't matter.

Agreed, redundant duplicates saying the same thing them both pose no problem to clear communication.

edit: http://xkcd.com/386/

it's hilarious. don't ruin it.

You're being silly. I meant that "Secret in Digg's HTML" is better of course, not "Secret in Digg's markup", which is obviously less precise. But "Secret in Digg's HTML markup" is blatantly redundant.

edit: Wouldn't you agree that "Digg's HTML" provides exactly as much information as "Digg's HTML markup"? If so then "markup" is clearly redundant. You're really missing the point by saying that not all markup is HTML. All HTML is markup, it's the HyperText Markup Language. Damn.

edit-ps: It's really annoying that I only see my own message when editing, I should see at least the immediate parent also.

edit2: "HTML" does add information to "markup", but markup doesn't add information to "HTML". "HTML" is a "strict subset" of "markup".

It might not be an elegant choice of words, but it is not redundant in the same way that "PIN number" is redundant.

It is redundant in precisely the same way.

It is different. "PIN Number" repeats the noun twice. "HTML Markup" uses "markup" twice, but the first instance is a different use than the second instance. In the first instance, it is used as a descriptor for the language. In the second instance, it is used to describe the thing that is written in the language.

Now the question is, can HTML be used in a sentence about something other than markup, thereby making the use of "markup" in "HTML markup" redundant? I think it can, because one can discuss HTML in general (the rules, the state of the latest version, etc) without referring to some specific markup under discussion.

So, I don't think it is the same kind of thing as "PIN Number" or "HTML Language".

In the latter instance, the term you are looking for is not 'Markup' it is 'source' or 'text'.

I think "Digg's HTML" would actually be wrong. HTML is a language, and the secret isn't hidden at the language but at a markup written in such language. Say the language is called X. Then we'd say: Digg's X markup. Why would it be different with X=HTML?

What I aggre though, is that "HTML markup" is redundant in a sense: something written in HTML is a markup, as HTML is a language for markups. So we'd rather say something more general like "HTML code" or "HTML text", as we don't need to specify markup again. But it isn't very important anyway.

Which one would you remove?

Secret message in Digg's HyperText Markup Language

Secret message in Digg's HyperText Language Markup

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