Where does the German ä, ö, ü, and ß come from?

German has four unique characters, Ä/ä, Ö/ö, Ü/ü, and ß (called long s, or sz) which doesn't have an uppercase. None of these are considered part of the alphabet (unlike the Danish Ø), so if you're in school in Germany you say the alphabet from A to Z, then you say these at the end "ä, ö, ü und ß". In a library you'll find book titles starting with Ä mixed in with book titles starting with A.

The umlaut characters (ä, ö, ü) indicate a change in sound, and shouldn't be confused with the diaeresis which indicate a break in a syllable (usually in French and Spanish). In German, these characters began in the 16th century began using using the vowel paired with an E (ae, oe, ue, like seen in some old German last names), but over the centuries the e shifted above the letter, then slowly faded into the two dots we see today.

The ß is a symbols formed by mixing the old s, ſ, (as seen in the word Congreſs), and a cursive z. This pair of symbols were mixed together until it became a symbol of it's own.

Hacking a Brother printer - Response

We have Tommy over here forcing a Brother printer with only black ink to print in greyscale. He puts electric tape on the cartridge "window", but I didn't even have the empty colour cartridges any more, so I put duct tape directly onto the light sensor. 

DCP-130C

Just one cartridge needs to work

1 - Full Black Cartridge
2 - Yellow Cartridge
3 - Cyan
4 - Magenta
5 - you can see the right side of the light sensor. It appears only one side needs to blocked out, the tape underside works fine

SUCCESS!

This is what I call a $41 fix.

I learned about fatalism today. I don't really get it. No as me not understanding the concept, rather me not understanding how it is any more relevant than the concept of Hard Determinism. Those two concepts are so similar that when I read a description of each I had no idea there was any difference. The ladder is not only a theory that I've accepted a long time ago, but it seems more logical to me.

Fatalism

“you aren't in command of your choices and neither do your actions have any effect”

Hard Determinism

“your mind is part of the machinery of the brain, and acts a distinctive way because of this machinery and not because of your decisions”

Fatalism is a little depressing isn't it?

I saw this in the condensation on the window of a bus so I jotted it down quickly 

I thought about this kind of concept since I was about 8. I didn't really ponder it in my adult life until after watching “WakingLife” which had a scene that describes the concept in my head to a T. (It's pretty good movie about philosophy, very interesting visually movie, but has no plot and despite being an intelligent film I wouldn't say it's better than A Scanner Darkly) It is a strange way of looking at the world, but it isn't a concept that should actually change the way you act or think. There is physically no difference between a person who makes a decision, and another who understands all of their decisions are a result of their minds predisposition for specific choices. It's merely a way of thinking about the world, in my opinion similar to Gaia or Kharma.