chiptune

From chip + tune, referring to a computer's sound chip; see chip (“electronic circuit”). Initially in the meaning of modules, as an antonym to 'real' chip music, then generalized/recontextualized.

(music, demoscene) Tracker modules simulating the sound of early 8-bit computers, like Commodore 64, usually small in size and often used in cracktros.


rickroll

en-verb

rickroll (third-person singular simple present rickrolls, present participle rickrolling, simple past and past participle rickrolled)

rickrolls (present singular third-person)
rickrolling (participle present)
rickrolled (participle past)
rickrolled (past)

4chan
Grand Theft Auto IV
Never Gonna Give You Up
Rick Astley
YouTube

The verb is a blend of Rick + duckroll, combining the name of the British pop singer and songwriter Rick Astley (born 1966) with a reference to the duckroll prank on the website 4chan, in which users tricked into clicking on a hyperlink were led to an image of a duck on wheels. The word was coined by the American YouTuber Shawn Cotter (born 1987) who, under the handle “cotter548”, uploaded the music video of Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up” (1987) to the online video-sharing service YouTube and then posted messages on 4chan on May 15, 2007 ostensibly with links to a trailer for the forthcoming game Grand Theft Auto IV. People who clicked on the links instead saw the Astley video with the caption “You just got Rickroll’d” scrolling across the screen. The noun is derived from the verb.

coinage

I try not to get rickrolled by sketchy YouTube links, but sometimes you let your guard down.

YouTube ‘Rickrolls’ Everyone [title] […] Let the Internet pranking begin! YouTube, capitalizing on the resurgence of a popular meme, has booby-trapped each of the “featured videos” on its homepage. Click on any of the showcased clips and you’ll be taken instead to a cheesy video of pop singer Rick Astley singing his late-’80s hit song, “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

2008 April 1, Jenna Wortham, “YouTube ‘Rickrolls’ Everyone”, in Wired, San Francisco, Calif.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2020-08-07

Once you start rickrolling people, and more importantly get a reputation for it, you're heading towards being the Zimbabwean dollar in the link economy: it doesn't matter how many you offer, people just aren't going to buy them.

2008 December 5, Charles Arthur, “Why rickrolling is bad for you”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-10-22

Despite its name, there is one thing the Vote Leave campaign should not have left for so long: registering a domain name. The delay by the anti-EU organisation meant that up to 100,000 people who tried to access voteleave.com, co.uk or .net were rickrolled – redirected to a YouTube clip of Rick Astley's 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. So far, so internet.

2016 April 20, Homa Khaleeli, “How Vote Leave got rickrolled”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-11-17

You send a Web link to someone, promising something exciting or compelling ("Is this you!?")—but the link actually takes your victim to a YouTube video of Rick Astley's 1987 music video, "Never Gonna Give You Up." That's it. That's the joke. Ha! You've been Rickrolled!

2020, David Pogue, “The Internet Celebrity Culture [Internet Memes 101: A Guide to Online Wackiness]”, in Social Media Influencers: Apps, Algorithms and Celebrities (In the Headlines), New York, N.Y.: New York Times Educational Publishing in association with The Rosen Publishing Group, page 14

(originally Internet slang) To mislead (someone) into following a seemingly innocuous hyperlink, or sometimes a QR code, that leads to a YouTube video of Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up".

瑞克搖

to mislead (someone) into following a seemingly innocuous hyperlink, or sometimes a QR code, that leads to a YouTube video of Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up”; to surprise or trick (someone) into hearing this song; to cause (someone) to unexpectedly engage with this song through an indirect method


cluestick

(Internet) Alternative spelling of clue stick


kernelization

en-noun

kernelization (countable and uncountable, plural kernelizations)

(computer science) A technique for creating algorithms for fixed-parameter tractable problems, involving a preprocessing stage in which inputs to the algorithm are replaced by a smaller input, called a kernel.


polytree

(graph theory) a graph with at most one undirected path between any two vertices. In other words, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) for which there are no undirected cycles either.


bitstring

(computing) a sequence of bits (binary digits)


semiautomaton

(mathematics, computer science) a multiplicative operation of a monoid on a set


anamorphism

functional programming
functional programming

(functional programming) A generalization of the list-producing unfolds known from functional programming to arbitrary abstract data types that can be described as final coalgebras.


pseudoforest

(graph theory) an undirected graph in which every connected component has at most one cycle


catamorphism

(functional programming) A generalization of the folds on lists known from functional programming to arbitrary abstract data types that can be described as initial algebras.


DTN

delay-tolerant networking
w:delay-tolerant networking

(computing) Initialism of delay-tolerant networking.


rubber duck

en-verb

rubber duck (third-person singular simple present rubber ducks, present participle rubber ducking, simple past and past participle rubber ducked)

rubber ducks (present singular third-person)
rubber ducking (participle present)
rubber ducked (participle past)
rubber ducked (past)

rubber duck debugging
rubber duck debugging

(transitive, programming) To act as a sounding board for a programmer that is debugging their code, facilitating rubber duck debugging.


roman font

It will automatically reduce the size of the subscripts identified by “sub” and will choose italic or roman fonts for the remaining characters as appropriate.

1988, Peter P. Silvester, The UNIXᵀᴹ System Guidebook, page 201

Moreover, most roman fonts offer italic counterparts, and italics offer another degree of interest.

1993, Mac, Word & Excel Desktop Companion, page 93

(chiefly computing) A font that is upright, as opposed to oblique or italic.

Although 1 byte is all that is needed for Roman fonts, 2 bytes are needed for other character sets.

1992, Daniel Carter, Writing Localizable Software for the Macintosh, page 30

CID fonts are basically the opposite of roman fonts. CID is short for Character IDentifier. CID fonts were developed for Asian markets and languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (what Adobe often refers to as CJK).

2008, Mordy Golding, Real World Adobe Illustrator CS4, page 261

The largest group is the Roman fonts. They are used to type languages that use the Roman (Latin) alphabet (A, B, C, and so on).

2013, Angie Taylor, Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist

When producing Roman fonts, about 256 characters should be designed. Whereas designing Korean fonts, around 2,500 widely used characters should be designed among the total 11,172 characters.

2017, James J. (Jong Hyuk) Park, Shu-Ching Chen, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Advanced Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering, page 289

(computing) A font supporting the characters of the Latin alphabet.


spryte

A spryte can include scan-lines with no pixels in them, and particular pixels within a spryte can be designated as transparent.

1995, David L. Needle, Robert Nical, Method for controlling a spryte rendering processor, US Patent 5596693

(computer graphics, rare) Alternative spelling of sprite (small image representing an entity in a video game)


jank

Ostensibly a back-formation from janky (“shoddy, poor quality”).

back-form

This also marks the first time I haven’t felt that Samsung jank on the phone, which deserves its own paragraph in its own right. That weird stuttering and pausing you’ve seen on so many Samsung phones seems to be almost completely gone on the Note 3 […]

In cases where you’re concerned about scrolling, the browser can manage the frame rate for you. But if you introduce a large amount of jank, then it won’t be able to do as good a job.

in order to hit this impressive frame rate, the “jank-free” Sky prioritizes the UI over other processes, meaning the app should stay smooth when it works heavily in the background.

2015, Bogdan Petrovan, Android Authority

Even though JavaScript will try to update the animation every frame, it will likely not be able to do that fast enough and will cause dropped frames (jank) to occur.

2018, Eli White, Facebook React Native Blog

(computing, slang, rare) Perceptible pause in the smooth rendering of a software application's user interface due to slow operations or poor interface design.

Bethesda’s jank made a PvP-centric experience hellish. Players kept finding exploits left and right.

2019, Patricia Hernandez, After the backlash, Bethesda is on a long quest to redeem Fallout 76, Polygon

Maybe Soulstorm is an ideal tribute to the PlayStation era, considering how much period-specific jank is in the code.

2021, Luke Winkle, Oddworld: Soulstorm review, PC Gamer

Jank is the understated secret sauce of game development. It can make a bad game good and a good game great.

2018, Ryan Cooper, The Joy of Jank, Unwinnable

The build I played was rough around the edges; I experienced a couple of hard crashes, as well as some placeholder assets and bugs that went beyond the charming old-school jank I was expecting.

2023, Jordan Oloman, STALKER 2 is a merciless trip down memory lane, Polygon

(video games, slang) Game mechanics of unconventional or flawed design or implementation, and the experience of such mechanics, as to ruin or disrupt play, or break immersion; e.g. bugs and glitches.

(by extension) A game, or games, with such mechanics.


jank

en-adj

jank (comparative more jank, superlative most jank)

more jank (comparative)
most jank (superlative)

Sadly, my new laptop is even more jank than my old one.


pickler

programming language
programming language

(programming) (in the Python programming language) A program or algorithm that performs serialization.


leecher

(Internet, file sharing) One who downloads material without uploading in exchange.


SAE

(machine learning) Initialism of sparse autoencoder.


swapper

(computing, demoscene) A group member responsible for acquiring and distributing new software releases.


power wall

(computing) The rapidly increasing loss of efficiency due to overheating as the power/speed of a CPU increases.


mandelbug

Blend of Mandelbrot + bug, in reference to the Mandelbrot set.

Try to determine as soon as you can if this is a problem you can solve, or whether it's a mandelbug that technical support needs to look at.

1997, David Hutchinson, The Internet Workbook for Health Professionals, page 145

(computing, informal) A software bug whose behaviour appears to be chaotic.


bohrbug

(computing) A software bug which manifests reliably under a well-defined, but possibly unknown, set of conditions.


schroedinbug

(computing, slang) A software bug which begins to manifest only when somebody debugging the code finds out that it should not work at all.


reroll

en-verb

reroll (third-person singular simple present rerolls, present participle rerolling, simple past and past participle rerolled)

rerolls (present singular third-person)
rerolling (participle present)
rerolled (participle past)
rerolled (past)

Their procedure is to unroll the loop once, trace schedule the two iterations, and then reroll the loop into one.

2012, Monica S. Lam, A Systolic Array Optimizing Compiler, page 143

(transitive, programming) To convert (an unrolled instruction sequence) back into a loop.


scheduler

(computer science) An operating system component responsible for allocating several resources, most commonly the use of processors by different concurrent processes or threads.


input device

(computing) Any of many hardware devices that provide input (from a user or elsewhere) to a computer.


heisenbug

(ca. 1983) Blend of Heisenberg + bug. Named for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states very roughly that any attempt to measure the position of a subatomic particle will disrupt its movement, making it harder to predict.

I recently encountered a particularly infuriating Heisenbug. A large program, when given a large input, was just mysteriously dying. Of course, I ran it under the debugger. The mystery deepened: the program returned quietly to the debugger.

1987 January 4, Don Lindsay, “More Heisen-debugs”, in RISKS Digest, volume 4, number 36

Except for pointer messups in C on my side, the Heisenbugs I've come across were hardly ever caused by _me_.

1994 January 20, Heinz Wrobel, “'Heisenbugs'”, in comp.programming (Usenet), message-ID <heinz.0i4s@hwg.muc.de>

There are multiple perf related issues like this that are hard to track down. They are borderline heisenbugs that are possibly race conditions, so bisecting doesn't work and even things like enablibg ftrace will make the issue go away (or crash ftrace itself).

2014 December 8, Vince Weaver, “Re: Linux 3.18 released”, in linux-kernel mailing list, message-ID <alpine.DEB.2.10.1412081331580.28373@pianoman.cluster.toy>

(computing) A software bug which fails to manifest itself or manifests differently during debugging.


laggy

en-adj

laggy (comparative laggier, superlative laggiest)

laggier (comparative)
laggiest (superlative)

I've given up trying to play on that laggy server.

(computing, Internet, video games, informal) Tending to lag, or respond slowly because of network latency.


notebook computer

en-noun

notebook computer (plural notebook computers)

(computing) A class of laptop computer that is around the size of a spiral-bound notebook with A4 or letter-sized pages.


portable computer

portable computer (plural portable computers)

(computing) A microcomputer powered by batteries with an integral display screen and integral input device (such as a keyboard) that can be used on the move.


So called because it is the 11th version of the X Window System.

(computing) A windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.


JDBC

(databases, Java programming language) Initialism of Java Database Connectivity.


window manager

graphical user interface
graphical user interface

(graphical user interface) A piece of software that manages the layout of windows on the user's display.


DVI

device independent file format
w:device independent file format

(computing) Initialism of device independent file format.


tablet computer

tablet computer (plural tablet computers)

(computing) A hand-held portable computer characterized by a tablet form factor and a touchscreen interface.

ܚܲܫܘܼܒ݂ܵܐ ܠܘܼܚܵܝܵܐ

ḥašūḇā luḥḥāyā


VGA

Video Graphics Array
w:Video Graphics Array

(computer graphics) Initialism of Video Graphics Array, an obsolete computer display standard that superseded CGA and EGA, with a resolution of 640 × 480 pixels, and supporting up to 256 colours on screen from a palette of 262,144.


MacBook

A trademark; apparently a blend of Macintosh + notebook.

Hooo, boy! Sometimes I just can't let things rest. I have the new MacBook Pro.

2006, Maria Langer, Miraz Jordan, WordPress 2, page 135

The faux hippie dude working on his top-of-the-line seventeen-inch MacBook Pro looked way annoyed.

2007, Paul Ruditis, Everyone's a Critic, Simon and Schuster,, page 52

In Bayard's nonreading utopia the printing press would never have been invented, let alone penicillin or the MacBook.

2007 November 11, Jay McInerney, “Faking It”, in New York Times

I felt like such a wimp, sitting there with my MacBook and a 2 percent, decaf latte.

2008, Stephen James, David Thomas, How to Hit a Curve Ball, Grill the Perfect Steak, and Become a Real Man, Tyndale House Publishers,, page 114

2008 March 18, “Now Blogging: Israel's Secret Service”, Bryant Park Project, National Public Radio
Now, normally, you would trip, you'd get back up, but apparently he was carrying his fancy new MacBook Air, and he was trying to save the MacBook Air from falling […]

A MacBook-brand notebook computer, manufactured by Apple Computer.


human-computer interaction

The study of interaction between people and computers.


HCI

HCI (countable and uncountable, plural HCIs)

human-computer interaction
human-computer interaction#English

(computing) Initialism of human-computer interaction.

(computing) Initialism of host-controller interface.


gaymer

You're a gaymer aintcha? :)

2003, Gorf, “FA:Fzero Jap”, in uk.games.video.gamecube (Usenet)

> Are you a gaymer then?
No, I'm just a gay man that enjoys computer games in exactly the same way that non-gay men enjoy computer games.

2003, Nick, “Gaymers”, in uk.games.video.gamecube (Usenet)

How is this self-ostracism? Is anyone who would choose to post there thus prevented from posting here, or to any of the planet* websites Gamespy owns? Or to any of the publisher/developer forums available for discussion? I post to a mailing list for gay gaymers, and yet I post here. How am I ostracized?

2003, Julie d'Aubigny, “Gaymers”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (Usenet)

(slang, video games) A homosexual gamer.


out-of-band

One great way of solving the phishing problem is doing out-of-band authentication.

2007, Simon Willison, Google Tech Talks: The Implications of OpenID, archived from the original on 2008-05-13

Defaulting to chaos still causes a lot of disruption, and would require out-of-band social coordination to resolve, but it places a much larger barrier in front of the attacker, and makes attackers much less confident that they will be able to get away with a clean victory, making them much less motivated to even try to start an attack.

2020, Vitalik Buterin, “A Philosophy of Blockchain Validation”, in vitalik.ca, archived from the original on 2020-09-21

(computer security) Relating to communication, such as identity verification, via a method other than the primary means of accessing the software.

kaistan ulkopuolinen

computer security: via a method other than the primary means of accessing the software

(programming) Referring to a value returned by a function that is not in its natural range of return values, but rather signals an exception.


bit decay

(computing, less common) Synonym of bit rot


monome

From mono- + -ome; compare binomial, polynomial.

(mathematics, logic, computing) An expression with a single term, such as a product of numeric variables (with no addition) or a conjunction of possibly negated Boolean variables (with no disjunction).


hypervisor

The hypervisor is the component that translates the virtual machines into the underlying hardware. There are two types of hypervisors: The type 1 hypervisor runs directly on the host hardware; the type 2 or hosted hypervisor runs in software.

2011, Edward Whalen, Oracle VM Implementation and Administration Guide, McGraw Hill Professional, page 17

(computing) A firmware or software system that provides a virtual machine and allows it to operate directly on underlying hardware (instead of via emulation), but within specified constraints.


bit rot

The rise of gaming has its own place in the story of digital culture, but Cerf warns that important political and historical documents will also be lost to bit rot.

2015 February 13, Ian Sample, “Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk”, in The Guardian

(computing) The putative tendency of content in storage to become corrupt over time.

(computing) The tendency of software in storage to develop bugs over time due to minor incompatibilities with newer operating environments.


food pyramid

The food pyramid surprised me by showing that we should eat lots of cheese.

(nutrition, US) Any pyramidal diagram giving advice on how to eat healthily, particularly those widely publicized by the United States government.

食物金字塔

pyramidal diagram giving advice for healthy eating


ATB

(video games) Initialism of active time battle.


unhide

en-verb

unhide (third-person singular simple present unhides, present participle unhiding, simple past unhid, past participle unhidden)

unhides (present singular third-person)
unhiding (participle present)
unhid (past)
unhidden (participle past)

How do I unhide the editing toolbar? I need to use those commands again.

(transitive, graphical user interface) To restore to visibility from being hidden; to show again.


expert system

“For each different kind of problem,” said Minsky, “the construction of expert systems had to start all over again, because they didn't accumulate common-sense knowledge.”

2003 May 13, Mark Baard, quoting Marvin Minsky, “AI Founder Blasts Modern Research”, in Wired, →ISSN

artificial intelligence
artificial intelligence

artificially intelligent
artificial intelligence

(artificial intelligence) A type of artificially intelligent software system, which stores expertise concerning some subject matter in a knowledge base and attempts to answer questions or solve problems in a manner which simulates the thought processes of a human expert.


subpattern

A pattern that is contained in another, larger pattern.


sharding

en-noun

sharding (countable and uncountable, plural shardings)

A storage volume with many different potential shardings is analyzed more rapidly by the reuse of calculations made on neighboring vertices in the directed graph.

2006, A Merchant, M Kallahalla, R Swaminathan, Sharding method and apparatus using directed graphs, US Patent 7,043,621

2007, T Brants, AC Popat, P Xu, FJ Och, J Dean, "Large Language Models in Machine Translation", in Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Empirical Methods in
A sharding function determines which shard (chunk of data in the MapReduce framework) the pair is sent to.

(databases) A decomposition of a database into multiple smaller units that can handle requests individually.


legacy system

(computing) An old computer system or application program that continues to be used because the user (typically an organization) does not want to replace or redesign it.


legacy code

(computing) Source code that relates to an obsolete operating system or other obsolete technology.

祖传代码

Source code that relates to obsolete technology


Quotron

Originally a proprietary name. From quote + -tron?

(computing, finance) A computer system or service that provides stock market quotations


line noise

(computing) Spurious characters due to signal noise in a communications link.

(programming) Data that looks random, as when outputting a binary file as text.

2000, Simon Cozens, Ten Perl Myths, perl.com,
In short, Perl doesn't write illegible Perl, people do. If you can stop yourself being one of them, we can agree that Perl's reputation for looking like line noise is no more than a myth.

(computing, derogatory) Incomprehensible source code or other textual material (often due to terseness or overuse of operators).


GDC

Graphic display calculator
graphic display calculator#English


brain-damaged

en-adj

brain-damaged (comparative more brain-damaged, superlative most brain-damaged)

more brain-damaged (comparative)
most brain-damaged (superlative)

Generalization of “Honeywell Brain Damage” (HBD), a notional disease invented to explain certain poor design decisions in Honeywell Multics.

(computing, slang, derogatory) Poorly designed; obviously wrong.


Hamiltonian

(mathematics, graph theory, of a cycle/path) That visits each vertex exactly once.

(mathematics, graph theory, of a graph) Containing a Hamiltonian cycle.


writable

writable (comparative more writable, superlative most writable)

more writable (comparative)
most writable (superlative)

The file is writable only for users in the admin group.

I burned my family's vacation photos onto a writable CD.

The following code snippet shows how to check whether a writable database already exists, and if not, create an editable copy.

2013, Patrick Alessi, Professional iOS Database Application Programming

(computing, of a file, storage device, etc.) Capable of being written to.

In general, writable variables must have unique instances per processor executing a shader and therefore cannot be shared.

2009, Randi J. Rost, Bill M. Licea-Kane, Dan Ginsburg, OpenGL Shading Language


multitasker

From multitask + -er or multi- + tasker.

This week we take a close look at four top contenders in the multitasking arena […] Other bolt-on multitaskers for PCs not included in this comparison include VM/386, Omniview, and Double DOS.

1990, InfoWorld, volume 12, number 39, page 63

(computing) A computer system that multitasks.


LTA

en-noun

LTA (countable and uncountable, plural LTAs)

long-term abuse
w:Wikipedia:Long-term abuse

(Wikimedia jargon) Initialism of long-term abuse.


semantic analysis

semantic analysis (plural semantic analyses)

(computing) The phase in which a compiler adds semantic information to the parse tree and builds the symbol table.


mathematical semantics

denotational semantics
denotational semantics

(computer science) A study of formal semantics of computer languages, such as denotational semantics.


divitis

(web design, usually derogatory) The practice of authoring web-page code with many div elements in place of meaningful semantic HTML elements.


background processing

(computing) The execution of a subsidiary operation by a computer while the user works with another application.


botter

It is estimated by industry and leading botters that only around 1 in 10 players using bots make a profit, mainly in low-stakes games.

2008, New Scientist, volume 200, numbers 2682-2688, page 28

(Internet) One who operates a bot (automated software process).


webbook

(Internet) A book that may be read via the Internet.

(computing) Any of several portable computers (or similar) that have access to the Internet and are primarily used to read such books.


draggable

(graphical user interface) Capable of being dragged.


draggable

(graphical user interface) An item that can be dragged by the user.


wireless adapter

wireless adapter (plural wireless adapters)

(computing) Any of several devices that allow connectivity from a PC or PDA to a wireless network.


destructor

object-oriented programming
object-oriented programming

(object-oriented programming) A function that runs when an object is no longer required, used to release any resources that it was using.


crashy

en-adj

crashy (comparative crashier, superlative crashiest)

crashier (comparative)
crashiest (superlative)


pop-under

pop-up advertisement
pop-up advertisement

(Internet) A pop-up advertisement that appears behind the window that triggers its appearance, and thus cannot initially be seen.


bag of words

You can then use the bag of words to train classifiers, a special kind of algorithm used to break words down into categories.

2023, John Paul Mueller, Luca Massaron, Python for Data Science For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, page 132

computational linguistics
computational linguistics

(computational linguistics) The collection of words from an unprocessed text without regard to grammar; a collection of word unigrams.


IP in IP

Contraction of IP in IP encapsulation used in rfc:2003, which specified the protocol.

IP in IP is an unusual mechanism: not only does it use two network layers, it uses the same protocol on both.

Although IP in IP incurs an overhead, as the size of the headers is doubled, it may allow you to create a connection between two hosts that would otherwise be blocked by a firewall.

(Internet) A protocol for sending IP packets over an existing IP network.


traverse

en-verb

traverse (third-person singular simple present traverses, present participle traversing, simple past and past participle traversed)

traverses (present singular third-person)
traversing (participle present)
traversed (participle past)
traversed (past)

From Middle English traversen, from Old French traverser, from Latin trans (“across”) + versus (“turned”), perfect passive participle of Latin vertere (“to turn”).

to traverse all nodes in a network

(transitive, computing) To visit all parts of; to explore thoroughly.

at traversere

computing: to visit all parts of; to explore thoroughly


NLQ

near letter-quality
near letter-quality#English

(typography, computing) Initialism of near letter-quality.


NLQ

natural language
natural language#English

(artificial intelligence) Initialism of natural language query.


embedded system

en-noun

embedded system (plural embedded systems)

(computing) A computer system with a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electrical system, often with real-time computing constraints.


statistical semantics

(computational linguistics) The study of estimation of the meanings of words by looking at patterns of words in huge collections of texts, using statistical methods.


cluster analysis

cluster analysis (countable and uncountable, plural cluster analyses)

(artificial intelligence, statistics) The classification of objects into different groups, or more precisely, the partitioning of a data set into subsets (clusters), so that the data in each subset (ideally) share some common trait - often proximity according to some defined distance measure.


SWIFT

(computing) Acronym of Simple Web Interface Toolset.


bps

(computing) Initialism of bit per second, a measure of speed of digital communication.

bit per second

In most digital systems using binary code, 1 Baud = 1 bps. https://newhavendisplay.com/blog/baud-rate/#difference


virtualization

storage virtualization

CPU virtualization

(computing) Creating a virtual version of common computing hardware at the same abstraction level.


sanitizer

sanitizer (countable and uncountable, plural sanitizers)

Coordinate term: linter

memory sanitizer

Sanitizers have been available for a while with the Clang compiler and were later also introduced into the GCC toolset.

2018, Radovan Bast, Roberto Di Remigio, CMake Cookbook: Building, testing, and packaging modular software with modern CMake, Packt Publishing Ltd, page 218

(software) A program to detect errors in code, usually integrated into a compiler.


virtual machine

virtual machine (plural virtual machines)

(computing) A software emulation of a computer that runs in an isolated partition of a real computer.

(computing) A computer system that is implemented in software rather than hardware and that runs bytecode.


jit

en-verb

jit (third-person singular simple present jits, present participle jitting, simple past and past participle jitted)

jits (present singular third-person)
jitting (participle present)
jitted (participle past)
jitted (past)

if you call f(1.0) you get a newly jitted version that is specialized for Float64

2012 May 23, Stefan Karpinski, “Julia compiles the script every time?”, in Stack Overflow

(computing, transitive) To compile (program code for a virtual machine) immediately when needed, as part of the execution process.


cycler

When the last cycler has run for 200ms we pass control back to the first one and begin again.

(computing) A task in a cycle of tasks where the status of being active task is passed around the loop.


LOLWUT

From lol + wut, a corruption of LOL and what.

LucasArts says old adventure games "impossible" on DS, SCUMM says lolwut?

Oh Hai! Icahn Haz a Blog? LOLWUT??

(Internet, Internet slang) A confused or sardonic response to a statement that is confusing, exaggerated, or idiotic.


scientific calculator

en-noun

scientific calculator (plural scientific calculators)

(mathematics, computing) An electronic calculator that can handle trigonometric, exponential and often other advanced functions, and can show its output in scientific notation and sometimes in hexadecimal, octal or binary.


symlink

en-verb

symlink (third-person singular simple present symlinks, present participle symlinking, simple past and past participle symlinked)

symlinks (present singular third-person)
symlinking (participle present)
symlinked (participle past)
symlinked (past)

(computing, transitive) To make accessible by means of a symbolic link.


pointee

(computing) The data or object referenced by a pointer.


most significant bit

en-noun

most significant bit (plural most significant bits)

(computing) The bit that represents the largest fraction of a value, its position depending on the endianness of the system.


bitwise

(computing) Treating a value as a series of bits rather than a numerical quantity.


type-safe

en-adj

type-safe (comparative more type-safe, superlative most type-safe)

more type-safe (comparative)
most type-safe (superlative)

Narrow performs a type-safe conversion into an instance of a subclass.

(programming) Not susceptible to the class of programming errors that could lead to items of one data type being incorrectly treated as another type.


multicast

Coordinate term: broadcast

multicast address

On an LAN, each host's network interface monitors the LAN and accepts packets addressed to the multicast address that defines the host group to which the packets belong. Unlike broadcasting, multicasting allows each host to choose whether it wants to accept multicast packets.

2009, Robert Rümmler, Alexander Daniel Gluhak, Hamid Aghvami, Multicast in Third-Generation Mobile Networks: Services, Mechanisms and Performance, John Wiley & Sons, page 14

(computing, networking) The simultaneous transmission of data to several destinations on a network.


multicast

The result is a new multicast delegate that invokes both of the original implementing methods.

2005, Jesse Liberty, Programming C#: Building .NET Applications with C#

(programming, of a delegate) Having multiple targets, such that a call to the delegate triggers a call to each target.


write-only

(computing) Capable of being written but not read.


unhandled

(computing) Of an event, exception, etc.: not having a handler.


mouse over

en-verb

mouse over (third-person singular simple present mouses over, present participle mousing over, simple past and past participle moused over)

mouses over (present singular third-person)
mousing over (participle present)
moused over (participle past)
moused over (past)

(computing) To move a computer mouse pointer over (an element of the display).


opcode

When the microprocessor decodes the JSR opcode, it stores the operand into the TEMP register and pushes the current contents of the PC ($00 0128) onto the stack.

1992, Michael A. Miller, The 68000 Microprocessor Family: Architecture, Programming, and Applications, page 47

In the tradition of other low-level languages, many CIL opcodes tend to be cryptic and completely unpronounceable by us mere humans.

2010, Andrew Troelsen, Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform, page 655

(computing) A mnemonic used to refer to a microprocessor instruction in assembly language.


lookahead

en-noun

lookahead (countable and uncountable, plural lookaheads)

Our computer chess program uses lookahead to avoid difficult endgames.

(computing, software compilation) The analysis in advance of subsequent decisions that would be made if a particular branch of an algorithm was followed.

(regular expressions) The analysis of the subsequent characters before the regular expression is matched.


rethrow

en-verb

rethrow (third-person singular simple present rethrows, present participle rethrowing, simple past rethrew, past participle rethrown)

rethrows (present singular third-person)
rethrowing (participle present)
rethrew (past)
rethrown (participle past)

(programming, transitive) To throw (an exception) again.


rethrow

(programming) The act of throwing an exception again.


memoize

memoize (third-person singular simple present memoizes, present participle memoizing, simple past and past participle memoized)

memoizes (present singular third-person)
memoizing (participle present)
memoized (participle past)
memoized (past)

(transitive, computing) To store (the result of a computation) so that it can be subsequently retrieved without repeating the computation.


nullability

en-noun

nullability (countable and uncountable, plural nullabilities)

When this is not explicitly defined, a user-defined data type or a column definition will use the default setting for nullability.

1999, Brad McGehee, SQL Server 7 Administration, page 174

Because nullability is one of a number of attributes of any particular database field, and because dealing with changes in nullability is no different from dealing with name and data type changes, the idea of making a value type nullable in C# when it isn't nullable in the database just in case the underlying database schema changes makes little sense.

2006, Eric Gunnerson, A Programmer's Introduction to C# 2.0, page 271

We know that Kotlin requires us to explicitly define references that can hold null values. Java on the other hand is much more lenient about nullability, so we may wonder how Kotlin handles types coming from Java (basically the whole Android SDK and libraries written in Java).

2017, Marcin Moskala, Android Development with Kotlin, page 43

(computing) The state or property of being nullable.


decidability

decidability (countable and uncountable, plural decidabilities)

(logic, computer science) The state or condition of being decidable.


subfolder

(computing) A folder within another folder.


light pen

(computer hardware) A pen-like device allowing a computer user to interact with the screen display.


least significant bit

least significant bit (plural least significant bits)

(computing) The bit (binary digit) that represents the smallest fraction of a value, its position depending on the endianness of the system.


pre-render

en-verb

pre-render (third-person singular simple present pre-renders, present participle pre-rendering, simple past and past participle pre-rendered)

pre-renders (present singular third-person)
pre-rendering (participle present)
pre-rendered (participle past)
pre-rendered (past)

(transitive, computer graphics) To render (a complex image) in advance.


miswrite

From Middle English miswriten, from Old English miswrītan, misƿrītan (“to write incorrectly; make a mistake in writing; miswrite”), equivalent to mis- + write.

Line fluctuations can cause misreads and miswrites.

1983, Lawrence Calmus, The business guide to small computers, page 143


Speccy

TETRIS (Mirrorsoft)
Yes, it's the game that makes Amiga and ST owners look at your Spectrum with real jealousy, 'cos the Speccy version of this classic Russian reaction-tester out performs the 16-bit ports every time.

1991, Stuart Campbell, "The YS Top 100 Speccy Games of All Time (Ever!)" (in Your Sinclair magazine)

Before you sit down in front of your Speccy to play an adventure, equip yourself with a pencil, eraser and plenty of paper. This so that you may draw a 'map' of the adventure as you move around.

1992 October, Larry Horsfield, “The SU Guide to Playing and Writing Adventure Games”, in Sinclair User, number 128

1998, Bongo, “Emulation under threat (yes, Speccies too)”, in comp.sys.sinclair (Usenet):

Developers wasted no time making games for the Speccy.

2003, Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games

(computing, colloquial, chiefly UK) A Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer.


finalizer

(programming) A function that runs when an object is garbage collected, similar to a destructor.


multiload

The finished game will be a multiload, with the first load allowing players to select which aircraft they'd like to fly.

1989 May, “A Rock Star Ate My Computer”, in Crash, number 64

If it is a multiload game, then you will probably only get the main game part, not the levels […]
[…] sometimes possible to obtain the loader code, and change it to a suitable format that the emulators will use (called LLT multiloads - Load Level Trap) where the emulator looks for a certain 12 byte loader command to be called up.

1999, Seamus Ross, Ann Gow, Digital Archaeology: The Recovery of Digital Materials at Risk

(computing, dated) A computer program that loads its code and data in a number of separate stages, typically to work around memory constraints.


multiload

multiload (third-person singular simple present multiloads, present participle multiloading, simple past and past participle multiloaded)

multiloads (present singular third-person)
multiloading (participle present)
multiloaded (participle past)
multiloaded (past)

The best games like Midnight Resistance made use of the 128 memory and did not multiload (unlike other discontinuous RAM sized machines, like the C64/128 or the Beeb, many Spectrum games used the 128 memory if available, so don't go on about how 128k made no difference and all games multiloaded).

1995, Joseph Kelleher, “Hey Joe, ...with that PD software in your hand?”, in comp.sys.acorn.games (Usenet)

(computing, dated, intransitive) To load in separate stages.


microdrive

From micro- + drive. In the sense of "miniature hard disk", originally a trademark.

One-inch disks typically held about 8 to 10 GB and microdrives were either 2 or 4 GB.

2011, Geoff Varrall, Making Telecoms Work

1984, Alison Maguire, interviewed in SINCLAIR talks... (in Crash magazine, issue 3, April 1984) http://www.crashonline.org.uk/03/sinclair.htm
There are lots of things that will benefit from being on a microdrive cartridge but if you release something on microdrive you're only going to sell it to people with microdrive.

The Spectrum has its own inexpensive mass storage unit - the microdrive which starts at about £150 for 100k of storage, but this may not be suitable in all cases, since the storage unit may be damaged if turned on with the disc in position.

1986, African Energy Programme (Commonwealth Science Council), Renewable energy development in Africa (volume 2, page 161)

Disk interfaces have been around since the year dot, as people soon realised that the microdrive was unreliable, unstable and generally rubbish for the storage of anything, useless except as a rather small beermat.

1989 June, Phil South, “Rage Hard”, in Your Sinclair, archived from the original on 2012-03-10

(computing, historical) An early computer storage system using cartridges of looped tape.


skinnable

en-adj

skinnable (comparative more skinnable, superlative most skinnable)

more skinnable (comparative)
most skinnable (superlative)

(computing, of software with user interface) Having support for skins (user interface customizations).


supertype

(computing) The data type represented by a superclass.


supertype

en-verb

supertype (third-person singular simple present supertypes, present participle supertyping, simple past and past participle supertyped)

supertypes (present singular third-person)
supertyping (participle present)
supertyped (participle past)
supertyped (past)

(computing) To categorize as a supertype.


cross-browser

(Internet) Compatible with more than one Web browser.


source control

(computing) A technology that handles access to computer files containing source code so that several users can work on the files without interfering with each other's changes.


telefrag

telefrag (third-person singular simple present telefrags, present participle telefragging, simple past and past participle telefragged)

telefrags (present singular third-person)
telefragging (participle present)
telefragged (participle past)
telefragged (past)

(video games, first-person shooter) To frag (a player) by teleporting into the other player.


telefrag

(video games, first-person shooter) A frag caused by teleporting into the other player.


bit shift

(computing) A bitwise operation in which the bits in a value are shifted left or right.


bit shift

bit shift (third-person singular simple present bit shifts, present participle bit shifting, simple past and past participle bit shifted)

bit shifts (present singular third-person)
bit shifting (participle present)
bit shifted (participle past)
bit shifted (past)


hit counter

(Internet) A numerical display on a web page indicating the number of times the page has been accessed.

besoekersteller

a numerical display on a web page indicating the number of times the page has been accessed


bitmask

(computing) A pattern of bits indicating which bits in a second pattern are to be modified.


bitmask

bitmask (third-person singular simple present bitmasks, present participle bitmasking, simple past and past participle bitmasked)

bitmasks (present singular third-person)
bitmasking (participle present)
bitmasked (participle past)
bitmasked (past)

(computing, transitive) To mask (a value) using a bitmask.


image map

Once you have a good idea of how to divide your image map, you're ready to move to the next step, adding the necessary HTML tags to your Web page.

1997, Andrew Bryce Shafran, Creating Your Own Web Pages, page 162

Keep in mind that some people choose not to (or cannot) view images, so image maps alone won't always work for navigation. Be sure to include text-based links to supplement your image map.

2004, Emily A. Vander Veer, Doug Lowe, Eric J. Ray, Creating Web Pages All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies

(Internet) An image on a web page that is divided into shaped portions, each of which has an associated hyperlink.


cybercrime

en-noun

cybercrime (countable and uncountable, plural cybercrimes)

Crime committed using computer networks.


text adventure

(computer games) A computer game in which the player is given a textual description of the environment and uses a command line to interact with it.


alpha blending

(computing) A computer graphics technique that simulates translucency by combining colours.


crosspost

(Internet) An electronic message posted to multiple newsgroups or forums simultaneously.

(computing, indexing) An instance of crossposting, or the post thus created.


crosspost

en-verb

crosspost (third-person singular simple present crossposts, present participle crossposting, simple past and past participle crossposted)

crossposts (present singular third-person)
crossposting (participle present)
crossposted (participle past)
crossposted (past)

(Internet, transitive, intransitive) To post (a message) to multiple newsgroups or forums simultaneously.


webring

The site had the look of an old Geocities page. Black background, ASCII art, novelty GIFs, visitor counters. There’s a link to the “badday webring” and an audio-only file of the video.

2018 January 12, Joe Veix, “The Strange History of One of the Internet's First Viral Videos”, in Wired, →ISSN

Each of the member websites in a webring had a navigation area at the bottom of the page that had “next” and “previous” buttons directing surfers to other sites in the ring.

2020, Lisa Levenstein, They Didn't See Us Coming

(Internet, dated) A collection of related websites which are interlinked in a circular structure, each site having links to the previous and next site in the ring.


autosave

en-noun

autosave (countable and uncountable, plural autosaves)

/ˈɔːtəʊˌseɪv/

Thanks to autosave, I was able to recover most of my unsaved thesis after a power cut.

(computing) A software facility that saves an open document periodically to avoid the risk of data loss.

Only the three most recent autosaves are preserved, to save disk space.

(computing, countable) A copy of a file or document saved automatically by such a facility.


autosave

en-verb

autosave (third-person singular simple present autosaves, present participle autosaving, simple past and past participle autosaved)

autosaves (present singular third-person)
autosaving (participle present)
autosaved (participle past)
autosaved (past)

/ˈɔːtəʊˌseɪv/

(computing, transitive) To save (data) automatically.


top-post

(Internet, dated) A post on an online forum whose contents are placed above a quoted message which is being replied to.


top-post

top-post (third-person singular simple present top-posts, present participle top-posting, simple past and past participle top-posted)

top-posts (present singular third-person)
top-posting (participle present)
top-posted (participle past)
top-posted (past)

(transitive, intransitive, Internet, dated) To make a top-post.


alpha channel

Coined by Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull in the 1970s. Smith writes: "We called it that because of the classic linear interpolation formula αA+(1-α)B that uses the Greek letter α (alpha) to control the amount of interpolation between, in this case, two images A and B". That is, when compositing image A atop image B, the value of α in the formula is A's alpha channel.

(computer graphics) A numerical value specifying a level of translucency to be applied to a colour.


platformer

Conceptually speaking, the platformer may be the most archetypal video-game genre.

2010, Tom Bissell, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, page 97

(video games, informal) A platform game.


copy protection

A software or hardware mechanism designed to prevent copying.


ray tracing

(computer graphics) A technique that produces realistically shaded images by projecting imaginary light rays to determine which parts of an object should be illuminated.


software deployment

en-noun

software deployment (countable and uncountable, plural software deployments)

(computing) All the activities employed in making software ready for use.


POD

POD (countable and uncountable, plural PODs)

(uncountable, programming) Initialism of plain old data.


migratable

en-adj

migratable (comparative more migratable, superlative most migratable)

more migratable (comparative)
most migratable (superlative)

(computing, marketing) Suitable for being migrated.


ULA

Uncommitted Logic Array
uncommitted logic array#English

(computing, electronics) Initialism of Uncommitted Logic Array.


multiuser

(computing, telecommunications) Of an operating system, etc., having capabilities for serving many users simultaneously.


light gun

(video games) A device resembling a gun that allows the player of a video game to target a point on the screen.


collision detection

en-noun

collision detection (countable and uncountable, plural collision detections)

(computing, chiefly video games) The process or mechanism of determining whether two shapes are partially occupying the same space.

(networking) A mechanism in Ethernet to detect when two computers are sending frames at the same time, and also to deal with such collisions when they happen.


hylomorphism

hylomorphism (countable and uncountable, plural hylomorphisms)

Hylomorphism (computer science)
hylomorphism

functional programming
functional programming

(functional programming) Composition of an anamorphism and a catamorphism.


call stack

The details of the call stack are hidden from general view. As a Lua programmer, you want to keep in mind that a stack is being used behind the scenes to make sure that function calls work as expected, but in general you won't need to be aware of its implementation or details.

2007, Kurt Jung, Aaron Brown, Beginning Lua Programming, John Wiley & Sons, page 216

(computing) A stack that stores details of the functions called by a program in sequence, so that each function can return on completion to the code that called it.


informatisation

Probably borrowed from French informatisation. By surface analysis, information + -isation or informatise + -ation.

surf

information technology
information technology

The process of becoming based on information and information technology.

informatització

the process of becoming based on information and information technology


valueness

Coordinate term: referenceness

(programming, rare) The quality of being a value or a value type.


connected graph

en-noun

connected graph (plural connected graphs)

(mathematics) A graph in which there is a route of edges and nodes connecting any two nodes.


GG

(online gaming, slang) Good game; commonly used at the end of a gaming match; also sometimes used to end an argument.


game with a purpose

game with a purpose (plural games with a purpose)

Coined by Luis von Ahn in 2008, see citations.

(video games) A computer game that serves some purpose for the people setting up the game by harnessing human abilities in an entertaining setting.


webtop

Web services are on the rise, favoring the "webtop" over the desktop in much new development.

2007, Paul J. Deitel, C++ How to Program, page 34

(computing) Integration of desktop office-productivity applications with Web-based information and application delivery.


fixed-point

(computing) Being or using an internal number representation with a fixed number of decimal places (as opposed to floating-point).


file allocation table

file allocation table (plural file allocation tables)

[…], although their access involves traversing the indirection in the file allocation table.

2006, Dhananjay M. Dhamdhere, Operating Systems: A Concept-based Approach, 2nd edition, Tata McGraw-Hill, page 346

The file allocation table needs just a single entry for each file, […]

2008, A. A. Puntambekar, I. A. Dhotre, Systems Programming, 3ʳᵈ revised edition, Technical Publications Pune, page 13:20

For the file allocation table type of file systems, an entire file system allocation table is large and requires many disk sectors to store, […]

2008, Bruce Jacob, Spencer W. Ng, David T. Wang, Memory Systems: Cache, DRAM, Disk, Morgan Kaufmann, page 691

(computing) A table used internally by the operating system to keep track of the structure of a disk and where files are stored on it.

文件配置表

a computer file system architecture and industry standard


clutron

From clue (“idea, inkling”) + -tron (“suffix used to form names of elementary particles”).

(computing, slang) A cluon (hypothetical particle of cluefulness).


SES

Simple Email Service
w:Amazon Web Services

(cloud computing) Initialism of Simple Email Service.


cluon

from clue (“idea, inkling”) + -on (“suffix used to form names of elementary particles or fundamental units”)

(computing, slang) The imaginary elementary particle of cluefulness; the anti-particle to the bogon.


cyclomatic

(graph theory) Used to describe the number of edges that must be removed from a graph to ensure that no graph cycle remains; equal to the number of edges, minus the number of nodes plus one.

This finding reveals that the drawing of a CFG for a given program or component is not necessary in the cyclomatic analysis.

2007, Yingxu Wang, Software Engineering Foundations: A Software Science Perspective, CRC Press, page 820

software engineering
software engineering

(software engineering) Of or relating to a software metric that measures the complexity of a program based on the number of linearly independent paths through the source code.


bogon

From bogus (“fake, phony”) + -on (“suffix used to form names of elementary particles or fundamental units”).

Chain book sellers are, by and large, bogon and bozon emitters like nothing you've ever seen.

1996, John Novak, “Re: TOR is Fucking with Us All”, in rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan (Usenet)

(computing, slang) The imaginary elementary particle of bogosity; the anti-particle to the cluon.

(networking, slang) An invalid Internet Protocol packet, particularly one sent from an address that is not in use.


tribrid modeller

tribrid modeller (plural tribrid modellers)

(computing) A CAD system that is capable of modelling three-dimensional objects as combinations of surfaces, solids and polygons


MITM

Man-in-the-middle attack
Meet-in-the-middle attack

(computer security) Initialism of man-in-the-middle attack: Computer network crime where the criminal passes on messages between two communicating parties without them knowing it. The victims e.g. think they use a secure connection, but they don't know that this connection leads to the 'man in the middle' who relays the messages.

man-in-the-middle attack

(cryptography) Initialism of meet-in-the-middle attack: Cryptographic attack that attempts to find a value in each of the ranges and domains of the composition of two functions such that the forward mapping of one through the first function is the same as the inverse image of the other through the second function


front-end

front-end developer

front-end framework

(computing) Relating to the front end or user interface of a hardware or software system.


back-end

back-end database

back-end developer

(computing) Relating to the back end part of a hardware or software system.


front end

(computing) That part of a hardware or software system that is conceptually closest to the user; the user interface.

frontal

that part of a hardware or software system that is closest to the user


reference implementation

reference implementation (plural reference implementations)

(computing) A piece of software that implements a specification of requirements and whose main purpose is to help in the creation of other software implementations of the specification by serving as a point of reference rather than being put to directly productive use.


wireless modem

(computing) A modem fitted with an antenna that transmits and receives using radio waves


OSI

ITU-T
International Telecommunications Union

(networking) Initialism of Open Systems Interconnection. An International Standard ISO/IEC 7894:1994(E) subtitled Basic Reference Model. A four-part document that contains a formal description of an idealized computer network architecture. The document is also published as ITU-T Recommendation X.200

Open Systems Interconnection

Open Source Initiative
w:Open Source Initiative

(software, organisation) Initialism of Open Source Initiative.


microformat

This type of microformat is, according to microformats.org, “a minimal solution to a single problem, built from standard XHTML elements.” More complex microformats that are built from elemental microformats and often also other HTML […]

2007, John Allsopp, Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0, Apress, page 95

(computing) A simple data format that can be embedded in a webpage.


EFI

Extensible Firmware Interface
w:EFI system partition

(computing) Initialism of Extensible Firmware Interface.


preconfigure

en-verb

preconfigure (third-person singular simple present preconfigures, present participle preconfiguring, simple past and past participle preconfigured)

preconfigures (present singular third-person)
preconfiguring (participle present)
preconfigured (participle past)
preconfigured (past)

(transitive, computing) To set up or configure a software system or hardware device with standard settings before selling or implementing it.


SRS

en-noun

SRS (countable and uncountable, plural SRSes)

(software engineering) Initialism of software requirement specification.

(education, software) Initialism of spaced repetition software.


access modifier

access modifier (plural access modifiers)

(software, object-oriented programming) An access specifier.


access specifier

access specifier (plural access specifiers)

Examples of access specifiers in C# are internal, private, protected, and public.

Java has the access specifiers private, protected, public, and the default specifier package that does not have a keyword.

(software, object-oriented programming) A keyword applied to a variable, method, etc. that indicates which other parts of the program are permitted to access it.


ETL

Coordinate term: ELT

extract, transform, load
w:extract, transform, load

(computing, data warehousing) Initialism of extract, transform, load.


zero one infinity rule

(computing, informal) The rule that a database, a user interface, etc. should allow for either zero, one, or an indefinite number of an entity.


queue up

en-verb

queue up (third-person singular simple present queues up, present participle queueing up or queuing up, simple past and past participle queued up)

queues up (present singular third-person)
queueing up (participle present)
queuing up (participle present)
queued up (participle past)
queued up (past)

(computing, informal, transitive) To enqueue (something): to add (it) to a queue.


chanop

Perhaps I might now add one more piece of etiquette advice, for which all chanops will thank me. If you want ops on a channel, don't beg for them […]

1995, Stuart H. Harris, The IRC Survival Guide, page 121


multigraph

(graph theory) A set V (whose elements are called vertices or nodes), taken together with a multiset E, each of whose elements (called an edge or line) is a cardinality-two multisubset of V.

(graph theory, less commonly) A set V (as before), taken together with a multiset E, each of whose elements is a cardinality-two subset of V.


autoboxing

Coordinate term: unboxing

Autoboxing and unboxing are typically used for collections of primitives. Autoboxing involves the dynamic allocation of memory and initialization of an object for each primitive.

2014, Robert Liguori, Patricia Liguori, Java 8 Pocket Guide, O'Reilly, page 28

(object-oriented programming) Automatic boxing, the implicit conversion of primitive data types to wrapper objects.


IDM

en-noun

IDM (countable and uncountable, plural IDMs)

Alternative form: IdM

identity management
w:identity management

(design, software) Initialism of identity management.


next generation networking

next generation networking (uncountable)

(networking) The transmission of voice, data, video and any other form of information in packets over the same network.


JFTR

(Internet) Initialism of just for the record.


TBF

(Internet, text messaging) Initialism of to be fair.


enregister

en-verb

enregister (third-person singular simple present enregisters, present participle enregistering, simple past and past participle enregistered)

enregisters (present singular third-person)
enregistering (participle present)
enregistered (participle past)
enregistered (past)

Enregistering a value during compilation of a program may improve runtime performance.

(programming) To store in a register of the CPU.


radix sort

(computing) Any of various sorting algorithms in which items are processed according to the value of each digit or character in turn


formal semantics

(computer science) the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages


non-breaking

(computing) Not generating a line break, as in non-breaking space or non-breaking hyphen.


hash collision

(computing) The situation where two or more inputs to a hash function produce identical output.


textmode

(computing, chiefly attributive) A display that supports text but not graphics.


interop

Using CLR types with classic C++ libraries is an example of C++ interop, which is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 12.

2007, Gordon Hogenson, C++/CLI: The Visual C++ Language for .NET, page 92

Generally, we will want to avoid doing heavy image processing in WPF without C++ interop because of performance issues. After all, we are looping through and applying operations to over 2 million pixels, 30 times a second!

2017, Mansib Rahman, Beginning Microsoft Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0, page 56


loading screen

The color graphic loading screens are some of the best I've seen on a C64 and serve their purpose well — to distract the subscriber while the slow 1541 drive transfers the program into the C64's RAM.

1986, Mike Cane, The Computer Phone Book: Guide to using online systems

So, as long as you don't mind the substantial lack of 'player involvement', and the strange purple-skinned people on the loading screen, Tie-Break is a neatly put-together and enjoyable game.

1990, Adidas Championship Tie-Break (game review in Your Sinclair magazine issue 59, November 1990)

(computing, dated) A graphical display shown while a program loads (e.g. from cassette tape), comparable to the splash screen in modern software.

tela de carregamento

computing: a graphical display shown while a program loads


register variable

en-noun

register variable (plural register variables)

(programming) A variable whose value is stored directly in a register for faster access.


turboload

Even headerless LOADs will work with the Sprint, though be warned, it can't cope with the now common turboload.

1985, Speed Trials (in Your Spectrum issue 14, May 1985)

Saboteur and Turbo Esprit (I bought both) have one turboload side and one ordinary load. So if you do have problems with the fast load, you can load in the other side.

1986, “Lloyd Mangram's Forum”, in Crash, number 29

I don't think the Server64 is being taken any further, the programmer was losing interest when I emailed him a few months ago and it can't accept turboloads […]

1997, Jason, “c64 Server64 Question”, in comp.sys.cbm (Usenet)

(computing, historical) A software mechanism that loads data from cassette tape more rapidly than usual, saving time and making software piracy more difficult.


screengrab

"Let's boot out @GNRailUK and bring in @TfL to run our line," he tweeted later that year on June 25, sharing a screengrab of the latter's proposals.

2019 November 20, Daniel Puddicombe, “Should Transport for London take over suburban services?”, in Rail, page 34


screengrab

en-verb

screengrab (third-person singular simple present screengrabs, present participle screengrabbing, simple past and past participle screengrabbed)

screengrabs (present singular third-person)
screengrabbing (participle present)
screengrabbed (participle past)
screengrabbed (past)


denial-of-service attack

en-noun

denial-of-service attack (plural denial-of-service attacks)

(computer security) A type of network computer attack that attempts to render a particular service (e.g. web site) unavailable to its audience.

ataque de negação de serviço m ataque de DDoS


Snake

en-proper noun

Snake (countable and uncountable, plural Snakes)

en:Snake (disambiguation)
en:Snake (zodiac)
en:Snake River

(video games) An early computer game, later popular on mobile phones, in which the player attempts to manoeuvre a perpetually growing snake so as to collect food items and avoid colliding with walls or the snake's tail.


line break

(computing) A character indicating that subsequent characters should appear on a separate line of text.


determinize

en-verb

determinize (third-person singular simple present determinizes, present participle determinizing, simple past and past participle determinized)

determinizes (present singular third-person)
determinizing (participle present)
determinized (participle past)
determinized (past)

(computer science) To remove non-determinism in an automaton; to convert a non-deterministic automaton to a deterministic one.


miniboss

One of MadWorld's minibosses is about to turn our hero into a flapjack.

2009, Nintendo Power, volumes 237-239, page 58

(video games) A minor or incidental boss in a video game.


copy constructor

en-noun

copy constructor (plural copy constructors)

(object-oriented programming) A constructor that takes an existing instance as a parameter and copies its values.


blit

From BitBLT, the name of a computer graphics operation which stands for bit-block transfer and is pronounced bit blit.

(computer graphics) A logical operation in which a block of data is rapidly moved or copied in memory, most commonly used to animate two-dimensional graphics.


blit

en-verb

blit (third-person singular simple present blits, present participle blitting, simple past and past participle blitted)

blits (present singular third-person)
blitting (participle present)
blitted (participle past)
blitted (past)

(computing, transitive) To transfer by a blit operation.


uninstaller

(computing) A program that uninstalls software.


Gouraud shading

en-noun

Gouraud shading (usually uncountable, plural Gouraud shadings)

/ɡuːˈɹəʊ ʃeɪdɪŋ/

/ɡuːˈɹoʊ ʃeɪdɪŋ/

From Henri Gouraud, French computer scientist.

(computer graphics) A method of simulating the effects of light and colour across the surface of an object, based on estimates of the surface normal of each vertex in a polygonal 3D model.


OFM

orthodox file manager
orthodox file manager#English

(computing) Initialism of orthodox file manager.


NTP

Network Time Protocol
w:en:Network Time Protocol

(computing) Initialism of Network Time Protocol.


fanlisting

I have yet to join a fanlisting, I don't exactly have an all-about-me webpage that would necessitate advertisement like this.

2005, Carl Whithaus, Teaching and evaluating writing in the age of computers and high-stakes testing, page 125

I always assume if I don't know someone, it's because they don't have access to the internet. Even Kat and Lori met each other on an internet fanlisting for folk/alt/country/rock singer Ani DiFranco.

2007, Allyson Beatrice, Will the Vampire People Please Leave the Lobby?, page 182

(Internet) A website listing the submitted names of fans of a celebrity, film, or other topic.


hotlink

(Internet) A direct embedding of, or a hyperlink to, a resource on another server, particularly images or video.


logic diagram

Any schematic display of the logical relationships of project activities.


griefer

First, be a tree; in other words, ignore the griefer. This approach can be very effective because most griefers want you to get pissed off, and if you don't, they may move on to more fertile targets.

2007, Brian A. White, Second Life: A Guide to Your Virtual World, Que Publishing

Julian Dibbell's description of griefer culture demonstrates a high degree of congruence with Huizinga's description of the spoilsport. The griefers have indeed “made a new community,” loosely organized on somethingawful.com and the /b/ forum of 4chan.org

2011, Kristie Miller, Marlene Clark, Dating: Philosophy for Everyone, John Wiley & Sons

“[…]Maybe we can set up a trap for the griefer.” “That's an amazing idea!” said Kyra. “ What type of trap?” asked Steve. “We can create something very valuable that the griefer might want to steal or destroy and we can wait by it until the griefer arrives.

2015, Winter Morgan, The Mystery of the Griefer's Mark: An Unofficial Gamer's Novel, Simon and Schuster

(online gaming) One who griefs: a player who plays a game primarily to reduce other players’ enjoyment of it.


pling

This illustrates the order in which bytes are poked into memory with the pling operator.

1989, John Littler, John Maher, Computers in the laboratory: a student guide to microprocessor interfacing

IMO, prefixing a directory name with a pling so that a program within it is run when you double click on it is a rather untidy way to do things.

1994, C.P. Brown, “HAhAhA”, in comp.sys.acorn.advocacy (Usenet)

Make sure that you consider ISO 9660 restrictions on the use of characters in disc, directory and file names. Only upper case alpha and numeric characters plus the underscore (_) and pling (!) can be used as legal characters.

1994, Stewart Palmer, Mark Moir, Developing CD-ROM products for Acorn machines

Acorn Computing used to be big offenders when it came to referring to applications by their pling-inclusive names. They loved it. Unfortunately it made their articles sound silly (for want of a better adjective).

1996, Tim Wiser, “Pling thing revisited”, in comp.sys.acorn.apps (Usenet)

(computing, dated) The symbol ! (an exclamation mark).


massively multiplayer online game

massively multiplayer online game (plural massively multiplayer online games)

massively multiplayer online games (plural)

(online gaming) A computer game in which a large number of players can simultaneously interact in a persistent world.

massively multiplayer online role-playing game


XP

Extreme Programming
extreme programming#English

(software engineering) Initialism of Extreme Programming.


XP

(computing) Ellipsis of Windows XP (standing for experience).


technology tree

technology tree (plural technology trees)

(video games) A hierarchical representation of technology that may be researched and implemented for the whole faction by the player, most often in real-time strategy games.


skill tree

(video games) A hierarchical visual representation of customizations a player can make to their character. Skill trees can either branch out or eventually fold back to a single point depending on the game. Typically some form of skill point is used as opposed to spending experience points.


skill point

(video games) One of the points allocated to a player character, often when leveling up, to purchase abilities on their skill tree.

(video games) A renewable energy point that may be used alongside magic points, to separate magical and physical abilities.


content key

downloadable content
downloadable content

(video games) A downloadable content file that unlocks items, characters, levels, or other content that was included with a video game but not immediately accessible (if at all through normal gameplay).


save point

(video games) A location found in a video game that allows the player to save their game, often found in non-overworld areas such as towns and dungeons, where saving anywhere is not allowed. Gameplay resumes from the save point used.


2-up (countable and uncountable, plural 2-ups)

(video games) An item that grants the player two extra lives in the game.

Before any player registers points, the PAC-MAN scoring table displays in white "1 UP" and "2 UP" where the scores will appear.

1982, Harlington Wood, Jr., Atari v. North American Philips Consumer Electronics Corp., 672 F.2d 607, n. 2 (7th Cir. 1982)

(video games, uncountable) In a game with multiple players, an indicator or identifier of player 2.


survival horror

survival horror (countable and uncountable, plural survival horrors)

Calque of Japanese サバイバルホラー (sabaibaru horā), from English survival + horror.

cal

(video games, uncountable) A video game genre that emphasizes scarcity of resources (such as health or ammunition refills) in a dangerous setting like that of a horror film.


"Extra life" sense borrowed from Japanese 1UP (wan appu) and perhaps popularized by Super Mario Bros. (1985); but the term existed earlier in multi-player pinball and other arcade games in the 1960s, where "1Up" and "2Up" were used as flashing notifications to indicate who would play next (or who was "up" next in order). See https://www.inverse.com/gaming/1up-meaning-origin-definition-gaming.

(video games) An item that grants the player an extra life in the game, staving off game over by one more try.

This is the players turn (1-up or 2-up)

1998, Sega Genesis, Frogger 1998 - Walkthrough

(video games) In a game with multiple players, an indicator or identifier of player 1.


cut scene

Coined by game designer Ron Gilbert to describe non-interactive cinematic sequences in the 1987 adventure game Maniac Mansion, in reference to the cuts between scenes in films.

(video games) A typically non-interactive portion of cinematic narrative shown during a video game to advance the story. Cut scenes may be presented with full motion video or may be done with the game engine, in which case they may allow some interactivity.


level cap

(video games) The maximum attainable level of the player character, often in role-playing video games. Level caps may be raised in subsequent playthroughs or expansion packs/downloadable content.


list box

graphical user interface
graphical user interface

(graphical user interface) A GUI widget that allows the user to select one or more items from a list contained within a static, multiple line text box.


dropdown list

(graphical user interface) A user interface control GUI element similar to a list box which allows the user to choose one value from a list.


instance dungeon

en-noun

instance dungeon (plural instance dungeons)

massively multiplayer online game
massively multiplayer online game

(online gaming) In massively multiplayer online games an instance of a given dungeon generated exclusively for a specific player or party of players; contrast to the overworld, shared by all players on the server.


storage device

(computer hardware) A piece of hardware whose main function is to store data.


PnP

(computing) Initialism of plug and play.


biocuration

(biology, computing) The organization, representation and making accessible of biological data to both humans and computers


haptic interface

haptic interface (plural haptic interfaces)

(computing) A user interface that allows a user to receive tactile feedback through the movement of a limb or the head.


LJ

During the years that I lived abroad without access to the Internet and LJ […]

2006, Henrike Schmidt, Katy Teubener, Natalja Konradova, Control and Shift: Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet

[…] various roles where the "real" person is not necessarily much like her LJ persona.

2006, Karen Hellekson, Kristina Busse, Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet

She put a banner for the One Campaign, an effort to eradicate poverty in the third world led by U2's singer Bono, on her LJ […]

2007, Anastasia Goodstein, Totally Wired

(Internet) Initialism of LiveJournal, a blogging service or any of the individual blogs kept on it.


haptics

Future work of this research field will include two issues: the safety and psychology of haptics.

2003, Julie A. Jacko, Andrew Sears, editors, The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, page 218

2008, Manuel Ferre (editor), Haptics: Perception, Devices and Scenarios: 6th International Conference: EuroHaptics, Madrid, Spain, June 2008: Proceedings, LNCS 5024.

However haptics is more than that. Haptic perceptions range from minor interactions in everyday life, eg, drinking from a glass or writing this text, to a means of social communication, eg shaking hands

2009, Thorsten A. Kern, Engineering Haptic Devices: A Beginner's Guide for Engineers, page 5

(computing) The study of user interfaces that use the sense of touch.

haptiikka

computing: study of user interfaces with sense of touch


email bankruptcy

email bankruptcy (countable and uncountable, plural email bankruptcies)

(Internet) A decision to close an e-mail account, wipe it clean, or ignore all the incoming messages, possibly sending automatic replies to the senders that a bankruptcy has been declared, due to an overwhelming receipt of messages.


barnstar

There are many different Wikipedia barnstars that connote different things.

2008, Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It, page 290

(Wikimedia jargon) An image posted on a wiki user's personal page by another user, as an informal award or form of recognition.


red ring of death

red ring of death (plural red rings of death)

Derived from blue screen of death, a type of failure on a personal computer running Microsoft Windows.

(video games) A fatal hardware exception in the Microsoft Xbox 360 video game console characterised by three or four red indicator LEDs around the power button.

Xbox 360 technical problems#General Hardware Failure errors


Google bomb

An attempt to influence the ranking of a web page within the Google search engine by linking to it from many other pages.


sidequest

Completion of a sidequest often results in the acquisition of money or items that are otherwise unavailable, or unlocks another sidequest.

The following items are either the objects of a quest or vital components of an optional sidequest.

2003, Bryan Stratton, Stephen Stratton, The Legend of Zelda®: The Wind Waker, Prima Games, page 19

Two tasks I want to discuss are mentioned several times within this chapter: sidequests and adventure paths. These tasks are unique because they offer students a challenge beyond the required work within Michael's classroom. Sidequests are projects that students complete to deepen their understanding of the content.

2022, Adam Moreno, Purpose-Driven Learning: Unlocking and Empowering Our Students’ Innate Passion for Learning, Taylor & Francis

(video games) A quest given to the player that has no direct bearing on the main story/campaign of the game.


imageboard

An imageboard is a type of posting board centered around the posting of images. A very famous imageboard is 4chan.org.

2014, Jessica L. Beyer, Expect Us: Online Communities and Political Mobilization, Oxford University Press

The concept for Anonymous began when American-run imageboard 4chan, a website created in 2003 for sharing images with accompanying comments, followed in the footsteps of the Japanese imageboard 2channel by allowing an anti-signup system where comment posters could remain anonymous.

2018, Barney Warf, The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet, SAGE

(Internet) A type of message board that revolves around the posting of images, with optional associated text, often characterized by the near lack of moderation and by the freedom to discuss any topic.


ninja loot

en-verb

ninja loot (third-person singular simple present ninja loots, present participle ninja looting, simple past and past participle ninja looted)

ninja loots (present singular third-person)
ninja looting (participle present)
ninja looted (participle past)
ninja looted (past)

(online gaming) To unfairly loot the corpse of a fallen enemy before other members of the party can divvy the spoils.


save slot

(video games) One of a set of programmer-determined slots (such as files or memory addresses) for creating a saved game.


multi-user dungeon

en-noun

multi-user dungeon (plural multi-user dungeons)

(computer games) A text-based online game in which players enter instructions on a command line to jointly engage in role-playing. MUDs are a precursor to the massively multiplayer online game.


bind on pickup

(online gaming) Describing an item that becomes bound to the player that loots it. The player cannot transfer it to another player; they may only sell it to an in-game vendor or discard it, destroying the item. Used mainly on quest MacGuffins and rare drops. Compare to bind on equip.


bind on pickup

en-verb

bind on pickup (third-person singular simple present binds on pickup, present participle binding on pickup, simple past and past participle bound on pickup)

binds on pickup (present singular third-person)
binding on pickup (participle present)
bound on pickup (participle past)
bound on pickup (past)

(online gaming, of a piece of equipment) To become permanently associated with a player character upon being picked up.


bind on equip

(online gaming) Describing a piece of equipment (armor, weapons, accessories) that becomes bound to a player character when equipped by them. The player may sell/trade/give it to another character so long as they have not used it. After use, the player may only sell it to an in-game vendor or discard it, destroying the item. Used mainly on quest rewards and moderate to rare drops. Compare to bind on pickup.


bind on equip

bind on equip (third-person singular simple present binds on equip, present participle binding on equip, simple past and past participle bound on equip)

binds on equip (present singular third-person)
binding on equip (participle present)
bound on equip (participle past)
bound on equip (past)

(online gaming, of a piece of equipment) To become permanently associated with a player character upon being equipped.


arcade game

Luckily for fans, these arcade games (as the good old classic titles are now called) used to have rather simple mechanics, and most players could learn to play them, despite their poor or non-existent knowledge of English.

2014, Miguel Á. Bernal-Merino, Translation and Localisation in Video Games

(video games) A coin-operated video game or amusement device.

арка́дна игра́

‘They’re Twitch Games,’ he grinned, ‘arcade games. An adventure game is one where you use your mind; if you can type, you can play an adventure. If you require anything other than that, you’ve got a twitch game — an arcade game — where your skill of movement is more important than your thinking. […]

1985, Scott Adams, quoted in Graeme Kidd, Great Scott!, in Crash issue 15

It's not an arcade game—there is no crack of the bat or roar of the crowd or even much in the way of a screen display—but for the true fan, there is the excitement of mathematically structured matchups of real current and past teams with a more-than-passing resemblance to real-life outcomes.

1985, PC Mag, volume 4, number 14, page 51

(video games) A game for a computer or console that shares traits of coin-operated video games, such as short levels, simple and intuitive controls, and rapidly increasing difficulty.


typonese

(humorous, Internet, neologism) The writing of language with typographical errors, as though that were a language in its own right.


metropolitan area network

en-noun

metropolitan area network (plural metropolitan area networks)

a network that covers a large geographical area such as a city.


websafe

(Internet, computer graphics, historical) Of colours used in the design of a web page: not liable to be dithered on any system, thus appearing the same to all visitors to the website.


minigame

If you collect 100 coins, you get to play a balloon-popping minigame.

I promise to enter next time, if you keep the compo like it is now ;-) Or... why not alternating between a minigame compo and a minidemo comp ?

2002, Fabrice Frances, “2002 MiniGame Compo - download and vote!”, in comp.sys.oric (Usenet)

(video games) A small and simple game, especially an incidental game within a larger video game.


treebank

If one wants to use a treebank for linguistic investigation, […]

2003, Diana Santos, “Timber! Issues in treebank building and use” in Computational Processing of the Portuguese Language, eds. Nuno J. Mamede, Jorge Baptista, Isabel Trancoso, Maria das Gracas Volpe Nunes, p. 152

computational linguistics
computational linguistics

(linguistics, computational linguistics) A database of sentences which are annotated with syntactic information, often in the form of a tree.


treebank

en-verb

treebank (third-person singular simple present treebanks, present participle treebanking, simple past and past participle treebanked)

treebanks (present singular third-person)
treebanking (participle present)
treebanked (participle past)
treebanked (past)

(linguistics, computational linguistics) To parse and annotate sentences according to a treebank.


respawn

respawn (third-person singular simple present respawns, present participle respawning, simple past and past participle respawned)

respawns (present singular third-person)
respawning (participle present)
respawned (participle past)
respawned (past)

(video games, of a collected item, weapon or other pickup, or enemy) To reappear at its spawn point.

weapon or other pickup; or enemy; weapon or other pickup; or enemy

Some top 100 websites are circumventing user deletion of HTTP cookies by respawning them using Flash cookies with identical values, […]

2009 September 17, Pinsent Masons, “Hidden Flash cookies track even opt-out users on web's biggest sites”, in Out-law, retrieved 2014-04-24

How and why he gets stuck in this constant respawn cycle is a bit unclear, […]

2014 March 25, Angela Watercutter, “Tom Cruise Respawns Into Alien War in New Edge of Tomorrow Trailer”, in Wired, retrieved 2014-04-24

“Everything in this cult of personality is fragile,” Borkowski said, but added that Musk had proven before that he can “re-spawn” when he encountered difficulties.

2024 April 3, Dan Milmo, quoting Mark Borkowski, “How much is Elon Musk to blame for Tesla sales slip?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

(video games, of a character) To re-enter play after being killed, often where the game was last saved.


respawn

The race controller will check for a trigger hit between this player's collider and the start/finish line trigger, but this script has an OnTriggerEnter function to check for triggers used to force a respawn.

2014, Jeff W. Murray, C# Game Programming Cookbook for Unity 3D, page 339

(video games) The reappearance of an item or enemy; the situation where something is respawned.


observability

en-noun

observability (countable and uncountable, plural observabilities)

“In 2018, we saw many companies that are cloud-native and in the tech sector talking about observability,” he said. “Last year, we saw this becoming more mainstream, with large organizations adopting cloud-native technologies and becoming interested in observability.”

2021 February 18, Scott Carey, quoting Spiros Xanthos, “Observability: What IT should know as the technology heats up”, in InfoWorld

Observability is defined as the ability to understand the internal state of a system by only looking at external outputs of the system. […] Observability builds on monitoring and enables you to gain insights about the internal state of your application.

2021, Brendan Creane, Amit Gupta, Kubernetes Security and Observability, O'Reilly, page 72

In other words, SREs are directly responsible for the effectiveness of observability.

2023, Jeremy Proffitt, Rod Anami, Becoming a Rockstar SRE: Electrify your site reliability engineering mindset to build reliable, resilient, and efficient systems, Packt Publishing Ltd, page 59

distributed computing
distributed computing

(computing, distributed computing) The ability to collect data about the execution of distributed programs, especially the interaction among its components.


digital rights management

(computing) A set of access control technologies that restrict the use of proprietary hardware and digital files by an end user, so as to enforce copyright restrictions.

デジタル著作権管理

でじたるちょさくけんかんり


blitter

Not only is the Amiga blitter fully integrated with and supported by the system as a whole, it also has access to its own direct memory channel […]

1986 December 8, InfoWorld, volume 8, number 49, page 46

Using the hardware blitter to move bitmaps from VRAM to VRAM is much faster than moving them from system memory to VRAM.

2002, André LaMothe, Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus, page 315

(computing) A software or hardware mechanism that blits.


Yahtzee

Milton Bradley Company
Yacht (dice game)
Yahtzee

Trademarked by the Milton Bradley Company in 1956, as an alteration of "Yatzie", derived from yacht (see Yacht (dice game)).


gamerscore

gamerscore (countable and uncountable, plural gamerscores)

From the trademark Gamerscore, from gamer + score.

(video games) Points accumulated by earning achievements in Xbox video games.


co-recursive

Co-recursive algorithms allow infinite large objects to be used without necessarily running out of memory.

(computing) Describing a definition, particularly of an algorithm, given in terms of its output, rather than its input.


JRPG

From J- (“Japanese”) + RPG (“role-playing game”).

prefix

role-playing game
role-playing game#English

role-playing video game
role-playing video game

(video games) Initialism of Japanese role-playing game, a traditional genre of role-playing video game generally understood as involving a pre-determined story and player characters, a party of multiple controllable characters, and an emphasis on narrative and storytelling.


I started creating 8-bit music around 2002 when I picked up nanoloop[…]

2007, Nick Collins, Julio d'Escriván, The Cambridge companion to electronic music, page 189

(computing, of a word size, or an integer) Represented using units of 8 bits (1 byte)

Typically far more complex than the songs of the 8-bit games, songs in Amiga games had a highly varied structure, but usually followed the same basic principles seen in the 8-bit games (shorter loops with fewer distinct sections for battle music, and longer loops with more distinct sections for in-game music).

2008 January 1, Karen Collins, Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design, MIT Press

Much of La-Mulanas 8-bit' aesthetic is tied to its self-imposed graphical limitations. To start, the native resolution of 256 × 192 pixels is (as we would expect) much less than that of contemporary standards[…]

2008 November 12, Brett Camper, “Retro Reflexivity: La-Mulana”, in Bernard Perron, Mark J.P. Wolf, editors, The Video Game Theory Reader 2, Routledge

(computer graphics, music) Originating from or resembling the art or music of the 8-bit computer era.


debuff

From de- + buff (“to make a player or item stronger”).

(roleplaying games, video games) An effect that makes a game character weaker; a negative status effect.


debuff

en-verb

debuff (third-person singular simple present debuffs, present participle debuffing, simple past and past participle debuffed)

debuffs (present singular third-person)
debuffing (participle present)
debuffed (participle past)
debuffed (past)

(roleplaying games, video games) To make a character or unit weaker.


paravirtualization

en-noun

paravirtualization (countable and uncountable, plural paravirtualizations)

(computing) An approximate virtualization in which the emulated operating system has been modified for convenience or efficiency.


Xbox

From "DirectX box". In use since the announcement of the original Xbox in 2000.

The Xbox or the Arcade Game Box? That's weird. They knocked off the look of the Xbox with the PlayStation controller.

2015 June 24, “Top 10 Chinese Knockoffs of Foreign Products” (00:01:45 from the start), in China Uncensored, spoken by himself (Chris Chappell), New Tang Dynasty Television, via New Tang Dynasty Television

(video games, trademark) Any of the home consoles in Microsoft's Xbox product line, especially the original Xbox.

Xbox

video game console manufactured and distributed by Microsoft


Xbox

en-verb

Xbox (third-person singular simple present Xboxes, present participle Xboxing, simple past and past participle Xboxed)

Xboxes (present singular third-person)
Xboxing (participle present)
Xboxed (participle past)
Xboxed (past)

There's a time and a place for mindless activities (we don't need to make them a big deal) but, if done excessively, they don't exactly deliver what they promise. In other words, Xboxing for hours at a time may give you an illusion of rejuvenation but it doesn't truly make you feel rested.

2018, Shelley Aggarwal, Signe Darpinian, Wendy Sterling, No Weigh!: A Teen's Guide to Positive Body Image, Food, and Emotional Wisdom, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, page 49

(intransitive, video games, informal) To play a video game using an Xbox home console.


saved game

(video games) A block of saved data, representing the player's progress in a game, that can be restored at a later time for continued play.


cross compiler

(computing) A compiler that generates code for a platform other than the one it runs on.


tokenize

tokenize (third-person singular simple present tokenizes, present participle tokenizing, simple past and past participle tokenized)

tokenizes (present singular third-person)
tokenizing (participle present)
tokenized (participle past)
tokenized (past)

(transitive, computing) To reduce to a set of tokens by lexical analysis.

(transitive, computing) To substitute sensitive data with meaningless placeholders.


savegame

(computing, sometimes chess) A saved game.


in-engine

(video games, especially of a cut scene) Rendered in real-time or pre-rendered by the game engine.


playthrough

(video games) The act, or a recording, of playing a game from start to finish.


bitplane

Alternative form: bit plane

(computing) The set of bits stored at the same relative position in each byte and thus having comparable effects on the overall data, used for sound and image processing, etc.


savestate

(computing, video games) A file that contains an emulator's or virtualizer's state at the moment it was saved to disk. The file contains the contents of the memory, registers and other pertinent data that allows the user to resume the application from the moment the file was created.


virtualizer

(computing) Software that provides virtualization services.


clock speed

en-noun

clock speed (countable and uncountable, plural clock speeds)

(computing, computer hardware) The rate, measured in hertz, at which a processor performs its fundamental operations.


d-pad

(video games) A plus-shaped directional input pad on a video game controller that allows for eight degrees of movement, now largely superseded by the thumbstick.


kickban

en-verb

kickban (third-person singular simple present kickbans, present participle kickbanning, simple past and past participle kickbanned)

kickbans (present singular third-person)
kickbanning (participle present)
kickbanned (participle past)
kickbanned (past)

As soon as the admin arrived I was kickbanned from the channel with no explanation.

(transitive, Internet) To kick and ban (a user) from an Internet activity, such as IRC.


option button

(graphical user interface) A radio button.


cyberstalker

(Internet) A stalker who operates online.


metastring

The $D metastring expands to the current date and time.

(computing, rare) A string of characters used as a placeholder for a variable data item.


scriptable

(computing) That can be extended or automated through scripting.


scriptable

The Ark engine itself has a module for Lua scriptables, and in particular the animation files (.anm) are defined with the Lua module.

2003, Tom Gutschmidt, Game Programming with Python, Lua, and Ruby, page 290

(computing) Something that can be extended or automated through scripting.


metacharacter

This chapter moves on to look at several regular expression metacharacters and modifiers. Metacharacters can be combined with literal characters and quantifiers, which were discussed in Chapter 3, to create more complex regular expression patterns.

2005, Andrew Watt, Beginning Regular Expressions, John Wiley & Sons, page 73

You can't enter invisible characters—such as tab characters, line-end characters, or carriage returns—in the Find What or Change To fields. To get around this, you enter codes—known as “metacharacters”—representing those characters.]

[2006, Olav Martin Kvern, David Blatner, Real World Adobe InDesign CS2, Peachpit Press, page 224

(computing) A character used to signify something other than its literal form, such as the asterisk when used as a wildcard.


gold farmer

(online gaming) A person who plays an online game to resell in-game currency and items for profit outside of the game; one who engages in gold farming.


volatile memory

en-noun

volatile memory (countable and uncountable, plural volatile memories)

(computer hardware) Computer memory (such as RAM) that requires a constant electrical charge to maintain its contents.

haihtuva muisti

computer memory requiring constant charge


unoptimized

(chiefly computing, management) Not optimized.


in-line expansion

in-line expansion (countable and uncountable, plural in-line expansions)

(software compilation) The replacement by a compiler of a function call with a copy of the entire function body, sometimes used as an optimization.