Yaksplained – All the SerenityOS Yaks, explained!

This heavily relates to SerenityOS.

On Yakshaving and Serenity's Love of Yaks

Yakshaving refers to doing work that seems pointless but is necessary to achieve a goal later down the line. In the SerenityOS developer community on Discord, yakshaving is pretty prevalent (after all, building a new operating system requires a bunch of seemingly pointless gruntwork). Yak kind of became synonymous with just "the thing that I'm working on" or "the Serenity-intenal project I have". Therefore, the entire yak thing got out of hand and quite quickly, the Unicode bison emoji (the closest thing to a yak) wasn't enough anymore. So people created more yak emojis. And more yak emojis. And more yak emojis...

All the Yaks Explained

Note that most of this is based on my personal observations, and while I can remember about half of these being created, I'll most certainly be wrong in how they are used in one place or another. Order is alphabetical.

• 8bityak
• Angelyak
• Babyak
• Buffyak
• Goldyak
• Hairyak
• Hyperyakkie
• Imminentyakshave
• Neoyak
• Ninyak
• Partyak
• Reyakted
• Shavedyak
• Skeleyak
• Sleepyak
• Thousandyakstare
• Xmasyak
• Yak
• Yakbait
• Yakbane
• Yakblush
• Yakbrain
• Yakchain
• Yakchill
• Yakcowboy
• Yakea
• Yakfire
• Yakfused
• Yakgone
• Yakid2
• Yakketysax
• Yakkie
• Yakking
• Yakkiss
• Yakmagnet
• Yakmail
• Yakmando
• Yakminus
• Yakoverflow
• Yakping
• Yakplus
• Yakrage
• Yakring
• Yaksad
• Yakshed
• Yakshrug
• Yakslice
• Yakslow
• Yakspeed
• Yaksplode
• Yakstack
• Yaksteps
• Yaksticker
• Yaktangle
• Yakthink
• Yakthonk
• Yaktoberfest
• Yaktrap
• Yowl

Regarding private channel links

Some complaints have come up about the links to private channels which explain the origins of various emojis. We have decided that providing any evidence here is better than providing no evidence, even if the only evidence is not publicly available. If you have a good reason, we (in particular kleines Filmröllchen) can provide you possibly censored screenshots of mentioned conversations.

Api

All yaks in this list can be queried alongside their metadata using a JSON api:

https://yaksplained.org/api/v1/$name.json

8bityak: *chiptune starts playing*

A retro yak for all your nostalgia needs.

Created by Sam on or before February 28th, 2013, added as an emoji by Andreas on January 6th, 2022. The yak was created by Sam for his yak game (play online if you have flash) as part of a game jam in 2013, and Andreas uncovered it on the date he created the emoji (this message (private channel)).

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD13

Angelyak: *choir sounds*

A holy yak. Used when someone did something really amazing or just saved your day, similar to :goldyak:.

Created by Andreas on January 31st, 2022. Reason: unknown, but in response to the :yak: discussion.

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD1B

Babyak: it's so cuuute

A baby-faced yak that represents very young people (or yaks, for that matter).

Created by Andreas on January 8th, 2022. Reason: in a discussion, he noticed that someone was less than 15 years old (private channel), to which Daniel responded with ":babyak:" and Andreas created the emoji.

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD67

Buffyak: *flexes muscles*

A yak with muscular arms, used for strong or impressive achievements as well as generally in relation to the Jakt programming language.

Created by MacDue on June 6th, 2022. Reason: After a lot of discussion and proposals of possible logos for the then very new Jakt language, MacDue half-jokingly created :buffyak: with the comment "(Real) Jakt logo just leaked".

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD25

Goldyak: shineh shineh trophey

A trophy-like shiny yak, for giving out awards when someone shaved a difficult yak.

Created by Andreas on October 3rd, 2021. Reason: In response to (probably) some bug fix description, he wrote "if it works, that's a golden yak for you". Apparently it did work, because shortly after that, he posted the newly-created :goldyak:. The details here are a bit fuzzy, see this message.

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD0B

Hairyak: How did this grow so fast?

This one's a hairy yak to shave. Used for particularly difficult/cumbersome/long-winded problems.

Created by Agni on August 24th, 2021. Reason: Andreas requested a "particularly hairy yak" (first message in the chain).

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD00

Hyperyakkie: HYPERPOGGIES

An extreme version of :yakkie:, where the yak has gained laser eyes in the tradition of "hyper" emojis.

Created by Andreas on October 29th, 2022. Reason: unknown, shared with Linus with the comment "oh btw I made this thing", first public appearance.

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD6B

Imminentyakshave: This yak's about to be shaved.

Shave incoming. Used for when you're about to solve/currently solving a problem. Or if you noticed a problem and want to solve it right now.

Created by Agni on July 17th, 2021. Reason: requested by Andreas. Also relevant: the associated meme.

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD01

Neoyak: Hax0r

Hacker terminal or coding-themed yak, for all your hacker needs. Used in conjunction with Terminal or pop culture hacker-related things. Also used as a ninja yak when something ninja-related comes up.

Created by Agni on June 6th, 2021. Reason: symbols for the bot's LibJS test262 runner status. Here, it is used for all the tests that caused a runner exception. Starting with this message, and with encouragement by networkException a conversation commenced that led to the creation of custom emojis for all the test runner results. These emojis will be referred to here as the neoyak group.

Use in SerenityOS: U+10CD15

Ninyak: It hides in the shadows... and it's always faster than you.

A ninja yak. The standard ninja emoji (:ninja:) has been in use for some time, also with the :ninjamerge: custom emoji, to express when somebody else was faster at something than you; you were "ninja'd". :ninjamerge: in particular is used when your PR was merged unexpectedly / unexpectedly fast.

Created by k