Mobian

From Mobius, the fictional planet such characters would inhabit in some incarnations of their universe.

Now, their accents do in fact fit them well, and do represent (as someone said formerly) the fact that they're a group of Mobians from different cultural worlds..

1998 August 25, RazJMastrs, alt.fan.sonic-hedgehog (Usenet)

"Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble" (1995) has manifestations in both a comic book trilogy and as a video game. We'll simply make note of the saga's floating islands. “Panic in the Sky” starts off with a group of happy Mobians playing volleyball until interrupted by a shadow.

2015, Richard J. Heggen, Floating Islands: an Activity Book, published 2021, page 172

Both [the Pokemon and Sonic franchises] are home to a wide variety of creatures capable of feats of great strength and speed and elemental manipulation. The only difference is that those from the Sonic universe, also known as Mobians, can speak.

2023 February 4, Dexter Adams, “9 Pokemon That Look Like Sonic Characters”, in TheGamer

(fandom slang) An anthropomorphic character from, or in the style of, characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog universe.


backlinker

If this process gets held up (which it sometimes does for a number of reasons) the backlinker process will automatically resolve the problem when it runs (within 13 hours).

2001, Mark Foust, NetWare Administration: NetWare 4.0-6.0, page 353

(computing) A program or process that maintains backlinks (references to objects on another server).


fmt

en-verb

fmt (third-person singular simple present fmts, present participle fmting, simple past and past participle fmted)

fmts (present singular third-person)
fmting (participle present)
fmted (participle past)
fmted (past)


neededness

Such nested calls are a major source of difficulty in designing a fixpoint algorithm based on neededness analysis, because they are the reason for the dynamic nature of the neededness information.

1994, Niels Jørgensen, “Finding fixpoints in finite function spaces using neededness analysis and chaotic iteration”, in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, volume 864, Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany: Springer Science+Business Media, →DOI, →ISSN

(computer science) Dependency; the state of one segment of code requiring another segment to complete.


pirateware

Viruses may creep into your system if you download files from a bulletin board or communications service or if you install freeware, shareware, pirateware, or some other type of alternative software.

1992, Peter Norton, Judi N. Fernandez, Ruth Ashley, Peter Norton's Advanced DOS 5 Guide, page 270


divorced guy energy

Adapted from big divorce energy with reference to the stereotype of men reacting to divorce more negatively than women.

Elon Musk shot off a car into a void, a reeking-of-divorced-guy-energy Jeff Bezos recently announced he was into space colonies, and now NASA is planning on letting private companies sell extremely expensive tickets to the International Space Station.

2019 June 7, Harry Cheadle, “A Few Ideas for Those Rich People Who Have More Money Than They Can Spend”, in Vice

On this chaotic, overstuffed record, West’s divorced-guy energy cannot hide his declining artistry.

2021 August 31, Elliot Hoste, “Kanye West enters his dad-rap era with new album Donda”, in New Statesman

The Democrats’ Senate hopeful exudes a profound melancholy

2022, Cockburn, "Tim Ryan has big ‘divorced guy’ energy", The Spectator, 1 November 2022 (used in title only)

(slang, derogatory) A psychological state stereotypically characteristic of a recently-divorced man, often conceptualized as being pathetically arrogant or tryhard while also filled with anger, resentment, or melancholy.


blast 'em up

As destruction games go, Silkworm is fine. It's definitely a bit easy (I completed it after a dozen goes), but if you find the normal level of blast-'em-ups too difficult, this one should be rewarding. The two-player option is brilliant (one takes control of the jeep and the other the helicopter) and increases the addictivity.

1989, "Silkworm" (video game review) in Crash (issue 66, pages 24-25)

(video games) A shoot 'em up video game.


color banding

The presence of visibly disjointed gradients, caused by an inability to represent intermediate colors.


Tumblr sexyman

From Tumblr, referencing the microblogging platform and social network, and sexy + man.

The most iconic Tumblr sexymen of all Tumblr sexymen: The Onceler. Oh my god did the Onceler take Tumblr by its neck and wring it until it died horribly. I have never seen such a trend.

2021, Belle, "Tumblr Sexymen: A Never-Ending Cycle of Questionable Taste", LOCO Mag, 2 August 2021

“Timothee Chalamet Willy Wonka is what happens when a Hollywood focus group tries to create a Tumblr sexyman,” another remarked, referencing the famous 2010s blogging site.

2021, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw, quoted in Andrew Court, "Twitter slams Timothée Chalamet’s ‘sexification’ of Willy Wonka", New York Post, 11 October 2021

Congratulations, Lucifer Morningstar, on joining the esteemed ranks of Tumblr Sexymen like Alastor, The Once-ler, Bill Cipher of "Gravity Falls," Waluigi, King Dice of "Cuphead," and for some reason, Sans from "Undertale."

2022 December 1, BJ Colangelo, “Why Animation Fans Are Going Wild For Hazbin Hotel's King Of Hell Read More”, in Slash Film

(fandom slang) A male fictional character (often conventionally unattractive or non-human) with a particularly devoted fanbase on Tumblr.

Papyrus (Undertale)
Sans (Undertale)
Undertale


Glup Shitto

From a September 2020 post by Tumblr user gomjabbar lampooning hardcore Star Wars fans and Star Wars character names: "every time a new Star War^([sic]) movie or show is announced all the fans are like 'OMG Glup Shitto is back 😭😭😭'.

When it works well, Mank feels like the inheritance and renovation of a range of craft competencies and attentions. And when it does not work well, it is the classical Hollywood nerd’s version of Glup Shitto. “OMG Ben Hecht is back!” Sometimes it does both at once.

2021 May 9, J. D. Connor, “Put Some 'Mank' on It”, in Los Angeles Review of Books

'The Book of Boba Fett' is a good example of this joke containing a few grains of truth. Boba Fett was, after all, the original Glup Shitto. He turned up in all of maybe three major scenes in 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi', died by accident, and was written off in the movies.

2022 June 1, Brian Lloyd, “This week's 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' sees the return of a familiar helmet”, in Entertainment.ie

I also questioned what characters might show up in this series, and while we haven’t seen a true Glup Shitto yet, we do get a reference to Quinlan Vos, a Jedi from the “Star Wars” novels who then appeared in “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.”

2022, Brandon Raglow, "Review | Episode three of ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ brings the Jedi master face to face with a certain former Padawan", The Pitt News (University of Pittsburgh), 8 June 2022

(Star Wars fandom slang) Any minor Star Wars character or one who features primarily in Extended Universe media unknown to casual fans.


main character

With his Jill Biden essay, Joseph Epstein became Twitter’s main character this month.

2020, Paul Farhi, "How the dusty old op-ed pages became the red-hot outrage-generating machine of 2020", The Washington Post, 28 December 2020 (image caption)

Unless you’re in the business of receiving hate clicks for profit, you never want to be the “main character” of Twitter.

2021 January 5, Dani Di Placido, “The Ballad Of ‘Bean Dad’ Shows The Cruel, Petty Side Of Twitter”, in Forbes

And while Trump, at least, now faces a reckoning over his most consequential tweets via the January 6 hearings, one final way to understand Elon Musk as our new main character is to consider the internet that has incentivized the rise of both men.

2022 July 14, Delia Cai, “How Elon Musk Became the Internet’s New Main Character”, in Vanity Fair

(Internet slang, idiomatic) A person who becomes a focal point of discussion on a social media platform (particularly Twitter).


EverQuester

en-noun

EverQuester or EverQuester (plural EverQuesters or EverQuesters)

EverQuester (canonical)
EverQuesters (plural)

Well, millions of Quake freaks would beg to differ, but there’s no doubting the depths of the Everquesters’ passions; already tales are circulating of companies’ banning the game from their in-house machines and college girlfriends stealing the discs from their boyfriends’ PCs.

1999 June 21, Michael Krantz, “Grab Your Breastplate!: Everquest reinvents the Web role-playing game”, in Time, volume 153, number 24, page 63

The new race and its new tracts of land have been welcomed with open arms by EverQuesters.

2000 September, Alex Handy, “EverQuest: Ruins of Kunark”, in Computer Gaming World, number 194, page 118

Such players, say the EverQuesters, discount the fun involved in questing and, due to their desire to get quality items, increase a propensity among players for camping near monster hotspots.

2001 April, “EQ Banned: eBay Cracks Down on Item Farmers”, in PC PowerPlay, number 59, page 13

Internet humor is abundant on EverQuest in particular, depicting the lifestyle of an EverQuester as a comical addict, hooked on “digital crack” or EverCrack.

2001 February 15, John VanDenburgh, “Caught in the web: Thousands of gamers have been bitten by online role-playing bug”, in The Arizona Republic, 111th year, number 273, page 35

Community is certainly something Gollop and his Codo cohorts are keen to build up, for while Nemesis won’t be offering the same kind of persistent world EverQuesters enjoy for 15 bucks a month, for the same price you will get six months of tactical gameplay, in which each battle won gradually gets you higher and higher up the Nemesis league table.

2002 January, Richie Shoemaker, “Laser Squad Nemesis”, in PC Zone, number 111, page 89

Want to spend hours just chatting with and annoying other EverQuesters? It’s your call.

2003 January, Shane Bettenhausen, “EverQuest Online Adventures”, in Electronic Gaming Monthly, number 162, page 86

That places the playtime of the 400,000-strong nation of EverQuesters higher than that created by the full-time work of countries such as Syria, Egypt and China.

2003, New Scientist and Science Journal, page 44

Hard-core EverQuesters will see new challenges, keeping many of the great elements that were integrated over the years, but other MOGs have helped improve the genre since EverQuest’s release as a first-generation MOG, and EQII takes advantage of some of those improvements, as well.

2004, CopperAngel, Sharkdog, “EverQuest I to EverQuest II”, in EverQuest II: Prima Official Game Guide, Prima Games, page 6

Friends and family members of EverQuesters often feel abandoned and angry about the amount of time (nearly one day a week for the average player) that their loved ones spend with the game.

Monk says, “Bye bye Everquesters ... monk gona go FD [feign death is a monk specific ability used to fool monsters that you are dead] one last time in Qeynos [one of the hometowns] .... if i knew you, well met ...... see you on EQ2 [Everquest 2] or WoW [World of Warcraft]”

2006, Mikael Jakobsson, “Questing for Knowledge—Virtual Worlds as Dynamic Processes of Social Interaction”, in Ralph Schroeder, Ann-Sofie Axelsson, editors, Avatars at Work and Play: Collaboration and Interaction in Shared Virtual Environments (Computer Supported Cooperative Work; volume 34), Springer, page 218

Some Everquesters gave up their day jobs to turn pro, building up virtual collections to sell

2008 August, Kate Berens, Geoff Howard, The Rough Guide to Videogames, Rough Guides, pages 40–41

In the magical realm of “Everquesters,” where players from around the world create characters who travel through different “planes of power,” there are graduated levels of shawl quests involving ever-more powerful textiles.

2011, Beverly Gordon, Textiles: The Whole Story: Uses, Meanings, Significance, Thames & Hudson, page 262

A player of the 3D fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game EverQuest.


type class

A type class is defined with a trait that defines the abstraction. It can have any extension (instance) methods, as well as type-level members, meaning across instances.

2021, Dean Wampler, chapter 5, in Programming Scala, 3rd edition, O'Reilly

(programming) A type system construct that supports ad hoc polymorphism (independent of the type hierarchy), first pioneered in Haskell.


uptree

(computing theory) Higher in a tree data structure.


uptree

The principal idea of [JAF 82] is that nodes do not start to update their routing table until all nodes in uptrees are notified.

1986, Wei-Tek Tsai, Control and Management of Large and Dynamic Networks, page 73

The maximum number of such left or right up-trees that we could scan is O(log N).

2006, Association for Computing Machinery, Twenty-fifth ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, page 241

(computing theory) A subtree of a tree data structure that is rooted at a child of the current node (where the root node is considered to be the bottom of a tree).


downpointer

Except at level zero, the downpointer always points down.

1969, Information Processing: Proceedings of the IFIP Congress, page 1249

[…] this data structure differs from the tree […] illustrated in Fig. 1, only by having downpointers replaced by downtrees.

1985, Society for Industrial, Applied Mathematics, SIAM Journal on Computing, volume 14, page 244

By using the so-called functional approach to data structures Chazelle [1988] developed a compression scheme to encode the downpointers used by Willard [1985] to reduce further the space requirement.

2004, Allen B. Tucker, Computer Science Handbook, pages 11–25

(computing theory) A pointer in a hierarchical data structure that points to the node that is down from the current node.


downtree

(computing theory) Lower in a tree data structure.


downtree

[…] these ancestors represent down-trees that were removed.

(computing theory) A subtree of a tree data structure that is immediately below (closer to the tree root) the current node.


DICOM

(medicine, software) Acronym of Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine. A standard for the interchange of radiological imagery and associated notations


HIS

(medicine, software) Initialism of hospital information system.


delimited continuation

delimited continuation (plural delimited continuations)

So named because they capture only a portion of the call stack.

An interesting alternative, which addresses some of the modularity problems, is a delimited continuation; for example, a delimited continuation might capture just a portion of the evaluation stack, up to a delimiter that works a bit like long-label, and turn it into a function.

2022, Norman Ramsey, Programming Languages: Build, Prove, and Compare, Cambridge University Press, page 243

functional programming
functional programming

(functional programming) A continuation that returns a value and can be composed.


wavedash

A technique within competitive Super Smash Bros. performed by air dodging diagonally into the ground.


ASN

autonomous system number
autonomous system number#English

(telecommunications networking, Internet) Initialism of autonomous system number.


themer

This structure organizes and streamlines theme development to create a solid ground for themers (theme developers) to further build and extend, much like in object-oriented programming.

graphical user interface
graphical user interface

(graphical user interface) One who develops a visual theme for software.


gameware

It is very likely that children's use of computers in public libraries is similar to their home use – more for entertainment than for learning. Because recreation is a legitimate part of the public library mission, librarians need not be concerned to present only purely educational gameware but will exercise judgment in selecting materials in this area as in all other formats.

1995, Holly G. Willett, Public Library Youth Services: A Public Policy Approach, Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, page 52

(software, video games) Video game software.


TikTokification

Even before Zuckerberg doubled down on it Wednesday, the increasing TikTokification of Instagram was stirring users’ ire.

2022 July 27, Brian Contreras, “Facebook is in trouble. Its escape plan: Turn into TikTok”, in Los Angeles Times

The process of becoming more like TikTok.

Detractors might say that 30-second songs can only say so much, and that they only contribute to the TikTokification of youth culture.

2020, Lance Conzett, "Best Hip-Hop EP: Lackhoney, Sweets", Nashville Scene, 15 October 2020 - 28 October 2020, page 124

If we’re looking at the long road of the TikTokification of crime stories, the case of the Idaho murders marks a juncture where online theories have begun to regularly crystallize into real-world consequences.

2023 January 19, Delia Cai, “In the Age of TikTok, True Crime Goes Live”, in Vanity Fair

The process of being influenced by TikTok.


KinkTok

KinkTok is also helping to accurately reflect what a kinky relationship really “looks” like.

2020 August 27, Sophie Wilson, “KinkTok is Filling the Void Left Behind By NSFW Tumblr”, in Vice

Kinktok was a major awakening for many people, myself included.

2022, Anonymous, "The Wonderful World of Kinktok", Ram! (Lincoln University), March 2022, page 24

With the growth of Kinktok came backlash which instead of focusing on the community as a whole, focused on specific creators or fetishes that they deemed unacceptable and taboo.

2022, Nic Cloyd, "Anti-Pornography Feminism, KinkTok, and Consent: What We Can Learn from The Sex Wars and Leather/Sadomasochistic History", thesis submitted to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln on 9 March 2022, page 23

(Internet slang) The community of kinksters and BDSM enthusiasts on TikTok.


left shift

(computing) A bit shift to the left, in which all of the bits of an operand are shifted by a given number of positions to the left.

(computing) The left shift operator; often given as << or <<<.


left shift

en-verb

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

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

(computing) To perform a left shift bitwise operation.


right shift

(computing) A bit shift to the right, in which all of the bits of an operand are shifted by a given number of positions to the right.

(computing) The right shift operator; often given as >> or >>>


right shift

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

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

(computing) To perform a right shift bitwise operation.


enshittification

/ɪnˌʃɪtɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/

/ɛnˌʃɪtɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/

From en- (“caused”) + shittification (“becoming shitty”). As a designation for a particular phenomenon affecting online platforms, coined by Canadian-British-American blogger, journalist, and science fiction author Cory Doctorow in 2022.

coin

Ultimately, it doesn't matter if Amazon's enshittification is because [Jeff] Bezos was a cynic or because he sold out. Once Amazon could make more money by screwing its customers, that screw-job became a fait accompli.

2022 November 28, Cory Doctorow, “How monopoly enshittified Amazon”, in Pluralistic, archived from the original on 2023-03-26

Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification

2023 January 28, Cory Doctorow, “The 'Enshittification' of TikTok”, in Wired, archived from the original on 2024-01-20

Both switching costs and network effects tend to lead to enshittification because platform providers see early adopters as an investment in future profits.

2023 March 3, Tim Harford, “The enshittification of apps is real. But is it bad?”, in Financial Times, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-03-05

But it's not just users who are effectively incarcerated by enshittification. The advertisers and vendors who are the real customers of tech platforms are also prisoners.

2023 March 11, John Naughton, “Users, advertisers – we are all trapped in the 'enshittification' of the internet”, in The Observer, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-04-19

Musk perceived instantly that he had one of the perfect conditions for enshittification. Twitter had a multi-million-strong user base, who had built up relationships and reputations among themselves over years.

2023 November 25, Jane Cassidy, “Matheson might just be the latest victim of ongoing ‘platform decay’”, in The National, Glasgow, page 20

(neologism, Internet, vulgar) The phenomenon of online platforms gradually degrading the quality of their services, often by promoting advertisements and sponsored content, in order to increase profits.


skill floor

Coordinate term: skill ceiling

Hey, I like all the VS, it's just the skill ceiling may not be as high as on some other games. But I feel the difference is far enough from the floor that it provides a decent spread among players in the area. The problem comes in when the skill ceiling is close to or even ON the skill floor.

1999 February 21, Kid Vid, “VS=Good Game”, in alt.games.sf2 (Usenet)

Yeah, just you. If we set 3-ball cascade as the skill floor of juggling, 5 ball cascade is not an extremely low level.

2004 February 29, Scott Kurland, “poi/juggling communication invitation”, in rec.juggling (Usenet)

There's an old game design maxim: good games take minutes to learn but a lifetime to master. Another way to say this is "low skill floor, high skill ceiling."

2009, Steve Swink, Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation, Boca Raton, F.L.: CRC Press, page 302

Enter Gnar, Azir, Kalista and the upcoming Rek'Sai. These are champions with considerably elevated skill floors – they’re simply difficult to play any kind of competently.

2015 December 5, Julian Aidan, “Complex Champions Means Longer Life For League Of Legends”, in Hardcore Gamer, archived from the original on 2022-01-23

There may be no better example of how low the skill floor can go than getting literal toddlers to play Mario Kart and actually exercise a modicum of control over what's happening on screen: Kinect is the only other platform for which I can imagine that happening.

2018 January 9, Dave Thier, “It Turns Out You Can Get A Baby To Play 'Mario Kart 8' On Nintendo Switch”, in Forbes, New York, N.Y.: Forbes Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2020-11-09

Designing a game with a high skill ceiling (where players must invest significant time and effort to achieve maximum skill) often results in a game with a relatively high skill floor as well.

2019 June 13, Game Design Snacks: Easily Digestible Game Design Wisdom, Pittsburgh, P.A.: ETC Press, page 111

This is to say that I'm not predisposed to sticking to Valorant due to its genre. I'd tried my hand at both Counter-Strike and CS:GO and found that between the aesthetics and a high skill floor, neither of them really got their hooks into me.

2020 October 21, Ricardo Contreras, “'Valorant' Is the Tactical Shooter I Needed to Get Into Tactical Shooters”, in VICE, archived from the original on 2022-12-07

I'm always here for lowering the skill floor while preserving a high ceiling. Many developers have tried to make unwelcoming genres like real-time strategy and fighting games friendlier, and I want to see devs continue to try.

2022 June 9, Alice O'Connor, “Former Blizzard folks announce free-to-play RTS Stormgate”, in Rock Paper Shotgun, archived from the original on 2022-08-14

[…] we're also working on lowering the skill floor for our game by providing easier ways to take certain actions, such as building our equivalent of a barracks.

2022 June 21, Andy Brown, “Frost Giant Studios CEO Tim Morten on 'Stormgate': "The RTS genre's best days are ahead"”, in NME, archived from the original on 2022-06-29

(chiefly video games) The minimum amount of skill required to be considered competent at some game or activity.


worst timeline

Millennials/Gen-Xers like me […] may feel like we're living in quite possibly the worst timeline, where the economy is uncertain, politicians are lying to us, and it seems radical groups are running amok and gaining notoriety in the process.

2018, Emily Prokop, The Story Behind: The Extraordinary History Behind Ordinary Objects, unnumbered page

It’s like when people on Twitter said that “this is the worst timeline” in response to Jeff Bezos likely becoming the first trillionaire because of COVID.

2021 May 2, Johnny Hayes, “Commentary: Wrestling with the ghosts of COVID past”, in The San Diego Union-Tribune

I had high hopes for 2021, after a year that fundamentally changed our way of life. I thought vaccines would bring life back to normalcy by now. That obviously didn't happen. As with any situation, there are two sides to the story. A pessimistic view would suggest that this continues to be the worst timeline. But I want to be optimistic for once.

2021 September 29, Jennifer Sun, “In-Person Event Planning: Expect the Unexpected”, in UltraVires, University of Toronto, page 21

darkest timeline
darkest timeline#English

(Internet slang, humorous) Synonym of darkest timeline.


darkest timeline

Referencing the episode "Remedial Chaos Theory" (2011) of the sitcom Community, which depicts seven alternate universes resulting from a die roll to decide which friend should collect a pizza delivery, including "The Darkest Timeline" in which chaos and destruction ensue.

I still can't believe that there is a President Trump and this really does feel like the darkest timeline, but there is nothing that can be done.

2016 November 17, Mandy Marciniak, “President Trump? Really?”, in The Frontenac Gazette, Frontenac, ON, page 11

You know we're in the darkest timeline when there are multimillion-dollar corporations roleplaying as people working through a depressive episode.

2019 February 19, Jordan Levy, “Parodying people for profit: When brands act like one of us”, in The Daily Targum, Rutgers University, page 8

Living as we all do now in The Darkest Timeline™, it's tough to come up with a plot that exceeds the implausibility and dystopia of reality.

2019, Jessica Bryce Young, in "Selections", Orlando Weekly, 13 March 2019 - 19 March 2019, page 43

(Internet slang, humorous) The circumstances of the present moment in history, viewed as bleak, frightening, ridiculous, or the worst of all possibilities.

Community (TV series)
Remedial Chaos Theory


interblag

Coined by American cartoonist, author and engineer Randall Munroe in 2006 in his webcomic xkcd as a spoof of Internet jargon. Equivalent to inter- + blag (“blog”).

I heard about it on the interblag!

2006 November 8, Randall Munroe, “Interblag”, in xkcd, archived from the original on 2023-03-17


skill ceiling

Coordinate term: skill floor

Chess has an extremely high skill ceiling. Even the best chess-playing programs are constantly being improved.

A fighting game with a low skill ceiling will quickly get boring after one masters its mechanics.

Among 10 and 11-year-old children, boys' games have a higher 'skill ceiling', and are more competitive and longer-lasting than those of girls.

1984, Peter K. Smith, editor, Play in Animals and Humans, Oxford, Oxfordshire, New York, NY: Basil Blackwell, page 284

The really fantastic thing about this "visible suits" idea is that it would have a negligible effect upon the skill floor – the additional information would not have to be used, whereas its effect on the skill ceiling would be considerable.

2010 August 18, Markgm, “game theory and design”, in alt.math.recreational (Usenet)

I think the appeal is the high skill ceiling mixed with ample opportunities for fun lucky shots.

2017 May 9, Toby Newman, “Free Rocket League for the weekend & sale on steam”, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (Usenet)

However, the beauty of Rocket League as a competitive game and esport is that the skill ceiling is limitless. Take a look at the best goals from last season's World Championship and you'll see what I mean.

2018 December 26, Max Thielmeyer, “Brand New To 'Rocket League'? Here's How To Get Good Quick”, in Forbes, New York, N.Y.: Forbes Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2020-11-08

NRG Apex Legends pro player Brandon 'Ace' Winn explained the inherent pitfalls that come with using a keyboard and mouse as well as a controller, comparing the skill ceilings and floors that the peripherals provide for players.

2020 January 22, Alan Bernal, “Apex Legends' Ace explains why controller players have higher skill floor”, in Dexerto, archived from the original on 2022-05-17

I'm a huge fan of movement glitches (strafe-jumping and ramp-jumping made Quake 2 for me) so I hope CDPR don't patch this out, especially as it's a singleplayer game. It raises the skill ceiling without causing harm, other than perhaps to immersion - but that's already shattered by bugs like pedestrians disappearing when you turn around or, as seen in this video, cars which appear on the horizon then vanish as you draw near.

2021 January 5, Alice O'Connor, “Cyberpunk 2077 bunnyhopping is a bug I hope they don't fix”, in Rock Paper Shotgun, archived from the original on 2022-09-07

This is another heavy hitter from Nintendo with a sound gameplay loop and a decent skill ceiling.

2021 June 28, Jordan Oloman, “'Mario Golf Super Rush' review: Another delightfully different Nintendo Switch sports game”, in NME, archived from the original on 2023-01-05

[…] SSX Tricky is the kind of game that makes you feel cool in a number of ways which are all equally important. There's the low skill ceiling - you get to feel cool with very little, and you can invest in your skill and become really good at the game, a feeling I didn't really get to experience in other sports games until then.

2022 May 22, Malindy Hetfeld, “Few games obsessed me like SSX Tricky”, in Eurogamer, archived from the original on 2022-07-07

(chiefly video games) The amount of skill required to master some activity (especially a game or character); the maximum possible skill.


multistring

The AIM screen name of person as a multistring with two labels: kABAIMWorkLabel, and kABAIMHomeLabel

2003, Michael Beam, James Davidson, Cocoa in a Nutshell

Multistring values are relatively simple to edit.

2006, Guy Hart-Davis, Mastering Windows XP Home Edition, page 320

After that, two possibilities are offered: the first is to recover a string by thresholding the multistring and the second is to transform the Pattern Recognition algorithm that uses the median to use multistrings instead of strings.

2008, Niels da Vitoria Lobo, Takis Kasparis, Michael Georgiopoulos, Structural, Syntactic, and Statistical Pattern Recognition, page 432

(programming, data structures) A data structure that represents multiple text strings.


code coverage

(computer science) A measure of the degree to which the source code of a program is executed when a particular test suite is run.


DAGN

(computer science) Abbreviation of discourse-aware graph network.


bootflash

(computing) A flash memory used at bootstrap time for a device, commonly containing a bootloader and simple configuration information.


uncode

en-verb

uncode (third-person singular simple present uncodes, present participle uncoding, simple past and past participle uncoded)

uncodes (present singular third-person)
uncoding (participle present)
uncoded (participle past)
uncoded (past)

To uncode a data fragment, it is necessary to select it.

2022, Peter A. Stevens, Qualitative Data Analysis: Key Approaches

(computing, transitive) To remove the code or coding from.


Usenetian

Now imagine that someone wanders into your house and starts loudly lecturing your about the miraculous benefits of vitamin C. You would probably, being a polite Usenetian, ask this person to leave.

1994 April 23, Andrew Lias, alt.atheism (Usenet)

lol, Derek, thanks for the window-washing. I can see more clearly now that the dust is gone. Hi, you Usenetian, you...

2000 March 15, zoe_a...@my-deja.com, “OZONE layer -- its history?”, in talk.origins (Usenet), retrieved 2023-03-21


conneg

While this is very useful to help service different types of clients, it's not the main purpose of conneg.

2009, Bill Burke, RESTful Java with JAX-RS, page 115

In this exercise, you will override conneg and let ASP.NET Web API use the media formatter that you specify to serialize the resource.

2013, Badrinarayanan Lakshmiraghavan, Practical ASP.NET Web API, page 66

content negotiation
w:content negotiation

(Internet) Abbreviation of content negotiation.


finite-state automaton

en-noun

finite-state automaton (plural finite-state automata)

finite-state machine
finite-state machine#English

(computing theory) Synonym of finite-state machine


Wikimania

At the Wikimania conference this weekend in Stockholm, the Wikimedia Foundation signed a first-of-its-kind partnership with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

2019 August 16, Stephen Harrison, “Wikimania to the Rescue”, in Slate

(Wikimedia jargon) An annual gathering of Wikimedians.


round-trippable

(computing) Able to be exported and later reimported without loss of fidelity.


Oregon Trail Generation

Coined with reference to the educational computer game The Oregon Trail (1985) that members of the generation frequently played as children.

Now our teacher candidates are almost 100% members of the Oregon Trail Generation. They answer email on their iPhones and play computer games on their cell phones when they are bored.

2009, Rhonda Christensen, “Forward”, in Digital Simulations for Improving Education: Learning Through Artificial Teaching Environments, page xix

"I'm thirty-four. I claim Oregon Trail generation."
"What?" Ellery laughed outright. "There is no Oregon Trail generation."

2018, Kathleen Brooks, Saving Shadows, unnumbered page

Unlike the millennial generation that followed us— the “digital natives” who can never remember a time before computers—the Oregon Trail Generation grew up on the cusp of changes that transformed modern life.

2021, Melanie C. Ross, Evangelical Worship: An American Mosaic, page 18

(US) A transitional microgeneration born from the mid-to-late 1970s to the early-to-mid 1980s, characterized by its pre-Internet childhood and online adolescence and early adulthood.


unga bunga

/ˌʌŋɡəˈbʌŋɡə/

Imitative. Reportedly first used in the Looney Tunes short Bushy Hare, in which Bugs Bunny yells "unga, bunga, bunga!" at a stereotypical depiction of an Australian Aborigine. Compare bunga bunga.

Can you tell my playstyle is unga bunga? lmfao

I finished Elden Ring’s main story with my unga bunga pure strength double colossal sword build :D

2022 March 25, JonBoi (@Jon_dude1), Twitter

This piece was liable to put the user in a state of disadvantage without proper precautions, but today Miss Celia had abandoned her unga-bunga playstyle.

2023, Schuld (trans. Mikey N.), Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World: Volume 5, unnumbered page

(video games, slang, often attributive) A playstyle that relies on brute strength or extreme aggro in combat.


unga bunga

en-verb

unga bunga (third-person singular simple present unga bungas, present participle unga bungaing, simple past and past participle unga bungaed)

unga bungas (present singular third-person)
unga bungaing (participle present)
unga bungaed (participle past)
unga bungaed (past)

/ˌʌŋɡəˈbʌŋɡə/

Maybe because they are playing a different style in online rather than unga bungaing it?

I played Glaive for all of 1 mission in MHGU. When I learned how awful it was in classic mode, I went back to unga bungaing the monsters with my giant sword of overcompensation.

2022 January 3, Gene Reyva (@genereyva), Twitter

The temptation to respec my Elden Ring character is high but I will continue to unga bunga through this playthrough.

2022 February 27, Bizarnage (@Bizarnage), Twitter

(video games, slang) To employ this playstyle.


namesearch

namesearch (third-person singular simple present namesearches, present participle namesearching, simple past and past participle namesearched)

namesearches (present singular third-person)
namesearching (participle present)
namesearched (participle past)
namesearched (past)

Ricky Gervais namesearches himself and that's the funniest thing he does

2018 March 17, Ratio Hornblower (@OneStrawShort), Twitter

You know Elon is namesearching himself in Slack and writing down names of people who make fun of him.

2022 November 15, Adam Ellis (@adamtotscomix), Twitter

Imagine being a gazillionaire and namesearching yourself on Twitter, how sad is that

2022 November 29, Chaotina (@dankestofbread), Twitter

(Internet slang) To search for a person's name (particularly one's own) on a social media platform for the purpose of obsessively reading and engaging with posts containing it.


binary large object

en-noun

binary large object (plural binary large objects)

(databases) A data type that allows storage of binary data often of indeterminate length, used for example to embed multimedia within a database table.


prompt engineering

Likely coined in 2020 by AI researcher Gwern Branwen.

Practice prompt engineering and measure your progress in time. Prompt engineering is a new skill that will take you to the next level of AI.

2022, Denis Rothman, Antonio Gulli, Transformers for Natural Language Processing […], Packt Publishing Ltd, page 426

PromptBase’s sixth-most-popular seller, a prompt creator from Spain who goes by Imagineer, told me that prompt engineering is still a side hustle, having earned them just over 800 euros since September.

2023 February 8, Charlie Warzel, “The Most Important Job Skill of This Century”, in The Atlantic

The latter skill has become known as “prompt engineering”: the technique of framing one’s instructions in terms most clearly understood by the system, so it returns the results that most closely match expectations – or perhaps exceed them.

2023 March 16, James Bridle, “The stupidity of AI”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Now that you’ve learnt the basics of prompt engineering, you should be able to use AI chatbots more efficiently and get the desired results.

2023 May 29, Zohaib Ahmed, “Want to make the most of ChatGPT? Try these prompt engineering basics”, in Indian Express, Mumbai

artificial intelligence
artificial intelligence

generative AI
generative artificial intelligence

(artificial intelligence, technology, neologism) The technique of formulating instructions (prompts) for a generative AI, in order that it produce the expected output.


alignment tax

First attested in a 2019 speech by computer scientist Paul Christiano (see quote), who attributed the idea to AI researcher and writer Eliezer Yudkowsky.

I like this notion of an "alignment tax" […] the reason I might compromise is if there's some tension, between having the AI that's robustly trying to do what I want, and having the AI that is competent or intelligent, and the alignment tax is intended to capture that gap—that cost that I incur if I insist on alignment.

2019 August 29, Paul Christiano, Current work in AI alignment, EA Global San Francisco 2019

The fact that larger models are less subject to forgetting may be related to the fact that larger models do not incur significant alignment taxes.

2021 December 1, Askell, A. et. al., “A General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment”, in arXiv, →DOI

We want an alignment procedure that avoids an alignment tax, because it incentivizes the use of models that are unaligned but more capable on these tasks.

2022 March 4, Ouyang, L. et. al., “Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback”, in arXiv, →DOI

We note that instead of an alignment tax our proposal entails a safety dividend – the more rational the system the more capable and the safer it will be.

2023 February 27, Kornai, A. et. al., “Safety without alignment”, in arXiv, →DOI

artificial intelligence
artificial intelligence#Noun

(artificial intelligence) A cost to the capabilities of an artificial intelligence resulting from the effects of aligning it with human ethics and morality.


prompt injection

prompt injection (countable and uncountable, plural prompt injections)

Retomeli.io is a jobs board for remote workers, and the website runs a Twitter bot that spammed people who tweeted about remote working. The Twitter bot is explicitly labelled as being "OpenAI-driven", and within days of Goodside's proof-of-concept being published, thousands of users were throwing prompt injection attacks at the bot.

2022 September 21, Alex Hern, “TechScape: AI's dark arts come into their own”, in The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-02-05

Yesterday, OpenAI announced an API for ChatGPT and posted an underlying format for the bot on GitHub, alluding to the issue of prompt injections.

2023 March 3, Chloe Xiang, “Hackers Can Turn Bing's AI Chatbot Into a Convincing Scammer, Researchers Say”, in VICE, archived from the original on 2023-03-22

One category is what's known as a "prompt injection attack," in which users trick the software into revealing its hidden data or instructions.

2023 February 14, Will Oremus, “Meet ChatGPT's evil twin, DAN”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-03-19

(artificial intelligence) A method of causing an artificial intelligence to ignore its initial instructions (often moral programming) by giving it a certain prompt.


prompt engineer

prompt engineer (plural prompt engineers)

The primary role of an AI specialist will require linguistic skills to show, not just tell, the GPT-3 engines how to accomplish a task. Showing, for example, involves working on the context of the input. This new task is named prompt engineering. A prompt engineer has quite a future in AI!

2022 March, Denis Rothman, Antonio Gulli, Transformers for Natural Language Processing, Packt Publishing, page 17

An online marketplace called Promptbase has already sprung up, where prompt engineers can sell their carefully crafted instructions for image-generation tools such as Midjourney.

2022 December 13, Tim Bradshaw, “Is becoming a ‘prompt engineer’ the way to save your job from AI?”, in Financial Times, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-03-23

Some pundits are proclaiming that we will need to train humans in how to write good prompts, for which they will have the vaunted title of a prompt designer or prompt engineer.

2022 December 29, Lance Eliot, “Twenty-Five Eye-Opening 2023 Predictions About Generative AI And ChatGPT Including A Splash Of AI Ethics And AI Law Tossed In”, in Forbes, New York, N.Y.: Forbes Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-02-23

With each request, [Riley] Goodside said, the prompt engineer should be instilling in the AI a kind of "persona" — a specific character capable of winnowing down hundreds of billions of potential solutions and identifying the right response.

2023 February 25, Drew Harwell, “Prompt engineers can make ChatGPT and Bing AI do what you want”, in The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-03-24

[Simon] Willison spoke with Day 6 guest host Peter Armstrong about whether skepticism is warranted over how much control prompt engineers have — and whether it's a real science, or just learned intuition.

2023 March 24, Paul Hantiuk, “These engineers are being hired to get the most out of AI tools without coding”, in CBC News, archived from the original on 2023-03-25

(artificial intelligence, technology, neologism) Someone who designs prompts to be given to an artificial intelligence.


bitfilter

(computing) A specified subset of a sequence of bits.


millennial pause

millennial pause (plural millennial pauses)

Ekin-Su doesn't flatten herself to widen her appeal to audiences. It's even more obvious, now that she's out of the villa, that she had minimal IG career aspirations going in — she and Davide both are endearingly bad at social media (check Ekin's IG Story and you're likely to find millennial pauses, the comic sans font, and 2012-style selfie angles).

2022 August 16, Katja Vujić, “An Ode to Ekin-Su, TV's Best Reality Star”, in The Cut, archived from the original on 2023-05-10

(neologism, Internet) A brief pause taken by someone between starting a video recording of themselves and beginning to speak, said to be characteristic of millennials (people born around the 1980s and 1990s).


Julius Caesar cipher

Julius Caesar cipher (plural Julius Caesar ciphers)


autobackup

autobackup (countable and uncountable, plural autobackups)


SLSA

This metadata is stored in the format defined by the Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA) framework[…]

2022, Anthony Bushong, Kent Hua, Cloud Native Automation with Google Cloud Build, Packt Publishing Ltd, page 95

(software, computer security) Initialism of supply chain levels for software artifacts, a framework for verifying the provenance of software components.


reverse Turing test

reverse Turing test (plural reverse Turing tests)

Named after English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer Alan Turing (1912–1954).

named-after

(artificial intelligence) A Turing test in which the aim is to verify the remote participant as human, rather than focusing on whether they are a machine.


latent space

If we truly want to use the decoder of an autoencoder-type structure to generate images, then we need to develop a way to organize or regularize the latent space.

2021, Valliappa Lakshmanan, Martin Görner, Ryan Gillard, Practical Machine Learning for Computer Vision, O'Reilly

A chilling discovery by an AI researcher finds that the “latent space” comprising a deep learning model’s memory is haunted by least one horrifying figure — a bloody-faced woman now known as “Loab.”

2022 September 13, Devin Coldewey, “A terrifying AI-generated woman is lurking in the abyss of latent space”, in TechCrunch, retrieved 2023-03-31

As can be observed, the central idea of anomaly detection using GAN revolves around learning the latent space representation of data samples, which is then used to compute reconstruction losses to arrive at an anomaly score.

2023, Roshani Raut et al., editors, Generative Adversarial Networks and Deep Learning: Theory and Applications, CRC Press

(machine learning) A multidimensional spatial representation of latent variables, where related concepts are positioned closer to one another.


DCN

dynamic circuit network
dynamic circuit network#English

(networking) Initialism of dynamic circuit network.


kangaroo code

Sometimes, especially when working on large projects or with multiple programmers, it can become hard to avoid kangaroo code, that is, code that jumps from function to function and even jumps around within the same class.

2016, J. F. DiMarzio, The Debugger's Handbook, page 25

(programming, slang, rare) Poorly structured program code with many jumps.


PoP

en-noun

PoP (countable and uncountable, plural PoPs)

proof of personhood
w:proof of personhood

(computer security) Initialism of proof of personhood.


blogrolling

One feature that some argue may help increase a blogger's credibility is “blogrolling” – or hyperlinking to bloggers' favorite sites. Blogrolling can be used as a credibility assessment component.

2011, Gavin Jocius, The Age of Annoyance, page 63

Blogrolling is similar to adding friends, but possibly more significant.

2014, Biz Stone, Who Let the Blogs Out?, page 101

(Internet) The practice of a blogger listing hyperlinks to other blogs that he/she recommends.


KVO

KVO, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. It can be useful, and it can cause trouble. It's implemented in a highly magical way, and some of its usage is quite awkward.

2014, Rob Napier, Mugunth Kumar, iOS 7 Programming Pushing the Limits, John Wiley & Sons, page 406

(programming, Apple platforms) Initialism of key-value observing.


frobnicate

en-verb

frobnicate (third-person singular simple present frobnicates, present participle frobnicating, simple past and past participle frobnicated)

frobnicates (present singular third-person)
frobnicating (participle present)
frobnicated (participle past)
frobnicated (past)

(computing, slang, rare, transitive) Synonym of frob (“manipulate in some ill-defined way; tweak”)


invincibility frame

en-noun

invincibility frame (plural invincibility frames)

player character
player character#English

(video games) A single frame, or some other brief window of time, during which a player character is invincible, usually occurring immediately after the character has just been hurt or when a scene from the game's world has finished loading.


biblically accurate

Likely from Bible verses such as Revelation 4:8 describing angels as having many eyes and wings; such depictions are said to be more "accurate" than humanoid ones. Popularized around 2019-2020.

My family doesn't appreciate my biblically accurate angel cookie [Picture of a cookie covered in cartoony eyes made of frosting]

2019 December 26, Sarah L. Hawthorn (@slhawthorn), Twitter, archived from the original on 2022-08-02

biblically accurate engels [Picture of Friedrich Engels with four extra eyes edited onto his forehead]

2022 April 30, @queersatanic, quoting pixel 🖤 (@Pxlutopia), Tumblr, archived from the original on 2023-09-30

borzóis are biblically accurate dogs

2023 September 30, ℭ𝔞𝔯𝔬𝔩 🪐✨. . • ☆ . ° .• °:. *₊ ° . ☆ (@earth222carol), “Archived copy”, in Twitter, archived from the original on 2023-09-30

(Internet slang, humorous) Having an unsettling or cursed, "unfathomable" appearance, especially one with many eyes and wings.

библе́йски то́чный

having many eyes and/or being an unfathomable being


super-app

From super + app. Attested from a 2010 speech by BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis at Mobile World Congress (see quotations below).

We think these applications are so compelling that we just don't call them apps. We call them super apps. Super apps are integrated with other apps, giving you a seamless experience across the device.

2010 February, 10:25, in Mobile World Congress 2010 Keynotes: Mike Lazaridis, President, Co-CEO, RIM, spoken by Mike Lazaridis

However, despite increased interest from tech players, it is the financial sector that strongly gravitates towards the super app approach. In particular, the newly-emerged digital banks and FinTech players are at full speed ahead into transforming their ecosystem of services into open banking marketplaces.

2019 October 18, “Introducing Super App: a New Approach to All-in-One Experience”, in Infopulse

LINE and the regional convergences of super apps in East Asia are a potent reminder of the need to analyze platforms outside of the bi-polar hegemony of the United States versus Chinese tech world—which increasingly frames journalistic discourse and academic research—and of the need to attend to the historical and regional particularities of platforms and their cultural impacts.

2020 June 19, Marc Steinberg, “LINE as Super App: Platformization in East Asia”, in Social Media + Society, volume 6, number 2, →DOI

The Tata super app, due to be launched on April 7, will bring about a potential 10-fold increase in the number of customers for Westside, which is the group's retail store chain, Tata Trusts director Noel Tata has said.

2022 April 5, Chaitali Chakravarty, “Super App may Grow Westside Reach by 10x”, in The Economic Times, New Delhi

He could well be eyeing something along the lines of the hugely successful Chinese app WeChat. That's a kind of "super app" which incorporates a lot of different services including messaging, social media, payments and food orders—there is as yet no such thing in the west.

2022 October 5, Zoe Kleinman, “Elon Musk, Twitter and the mysterious X app”, in BBC News

(technology, Internet) A mobile or web application that can provide multiple services.


pseudostatement

If the label of a BEGIN pseudostatement is missing, the preceding and following cards are tested for clues: […]

1972, Bary W. Pollack, Compiler Techniques, page 287

(programming) A construct resembling a statement that is not a true statement.


last known good

(computing) The most recent configuration that works properly, used to roll back changes that might later prove problematic.


megainfluencer

This BeReal is going to be epic. Worshippers in the seats around me swipe open the app, hold their phones high, and angle for the perfect two-way shot that will frame their selfies with the famous figure who brought them here tonight: Sadie Robertson Huff—reality star, mega-influencer, and America’s foremost spiritual ambassador for feminine submission.

2022 November 8, Allison Theresa, “Sadie Robertson Huff Preaches Submissive Womanhood. Her Message Is Uncomfortably Compelling.”, in Cosmopolitan

One site, PearPop.com, hooks TikTok or Instagram influencers up with fans to create duetted or stitched videos that fans pay for. This can be an effective way to build followers fast.⁹ Model Leah Svoboda added 120,000 followers after a PearPop duet with megainfluencer Anna Shumate.¹⁰

2022, Brian Boxer Wachler, Influenced: The Impact of Social Media on Our Perception, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pages 186–187

(social media) An Internet celebrity with a very large following on a social media platform (especially someone with more than 1 million followers).


terminally online

en-adj

terminally online (comparative more terminally online, superlative most terminally online)

more terminally online (comparative)
most terminally online (superlative)

SNL and other late-night outlets have fitfully tried to evolve by hiring social-media-trained talents and targeting some sketches toward the terminally online crowd.

2023 September 27, Spencer Kornhaber, “The Weirdos Living Inside Our Phones”, in The Atlantic

(informal, derogatory) Spending an inordinate amount of time on the Internet.


memehood

And hence the actual details of the representing are sometimes just as much a candidate for memehood as the content represented.

1995, Daniel C[lement] Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life, page 359

Then the innocent question hit meme-hood, being applied to every new computer or gadget in the news.

2008 September 15, Mark Milian, “New ‘Crysis’ has same issues”, in Chicago Tribune, 162nd year, number 259, page 3, columns 1–2

This exercise in surrealism was destined for memehood.

2014, William Poundstone, Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody

[…] I’m fascinated by the response to the video, by its eternal life in online memehood.

2017, Anthony Palumbi, Blood Plagues and Endless Raids: A Hundred Million Lives in the World of Warcraft, Chicago Review Press

Key ingredients for memehood, generally, are the rapid and spontaneous sharing of the thing and some sort of cultural context.

2021 June 17, Stefanie Pettit, “Navigating the meme streets of social media”, in The Spokesman-Review, 139th volume, number 9, page N4, column 1

The original Steamed Hams scene appeared on a Simpson’s episode from the 1990s, and somehow developed a cult following by its reruns, that turned it into a meme. It’s been reworked into fanfiction and fully reanimated in the style of 1960s Soviet cartoons. It’s been overdubbed with opera and recut to resemble a Criterion Collection DVD of a François Truffaut movie. There’s embroidery of it. It’s surpassed memehood and become an artistic movement of its own.

2023 March 19, Talia Felix, “Steaming a Good Ham”, in Online Etymology Dictionary, archived from the original on 2023-03-20


device file

(computing) An interface to a device driver that appears in a file system, allowing an application program to interact with a device by using its device driver via standard input/output system calls.


live actor

In this film, the live actors interact with cartoon characters.


JWS

en-noun

JWS (countable and uncountable, plural JWSs)

(computer security, countable) Initialism of JSON Web Signature.


pornbot

As I learned, they [furries] are protective about their communities, as well they should be. Otherwise these worlds would be overrun with trolls and pornbots and idiots whose sole purpose is to cause trouble.

2005, Regina Lynn, The Sexual Revolution 2.0, page 125

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which is the new owner of MySpace, could go bankrupt (wishful thinking), or, more likely, could allow the site to be overrun with ads, spam, or pornbots posing as humans.

2009, David Mathison, Be the Media: How to Create and Accelerate Your Message...Your Way, page 104

I probably identify 50 new followers as pornbots every week. Twitter gives you two options for dealing with this kind of annoyance. You can “Block @name” or “Report @name for spam.”

2013, Shelly Palmer, Digital Wisdom: Thought Leadership for a Connected World, page 32

(Internet) An automated account on a social-media platform that spams users with advertisements for pornographic content or sexual services.


subwiki

These subwikis provide a convenient way to organize lots of tests, as well as to allow for separate software projects to be managed by the same FitNesse system.

2005, Rick Mugridge, Ward Cunningham, Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests

(computing, rare) A wiki forming part of a larger wiki.


edgeloop

Many newcomers make that mistake, not adding in edgeloops, and get flummoxed a little about why the deformer doesn't work.

2018, Tina O'Hailey, Rig it Right! Maya Animation Rigging Concepts, 2nd edition

(computer graphics) Alternative form of edge loop


edge loop

(computer graphics) A set of connected edges across a surface, with the last edge usually meeting the first edge to form a loop.


Pokémon-esque

en-adj

Pokémon-esque or Pokémon-esque (comparative more Pokémon-esque, superlative most Pokémon-esque)

Pokémon-esque (canonical)
more Pokémon-esque (comparative)
most Pokémon-esque (superlative)

Haddock’s online project, titled “Screenshots”(whitelead.com/jrh/screenshots), uses the poppy, Pokémon-esque style of kiddie computer games to re-create some of the most incendiary scenes in recent memory (the Columbine killers in the cafeteria, the Rodney King beating, Elián and the feds).

While old-school fans might believe that the whole Armada setting manages to desecrate our fond childhood memories of the original series by changing virtually everything (‘Megatron, a tank? That’s rubbish!’), Transformers turns this negative into a pretty convincing positive thanks to those damn Minicons – the small and almost Pokémon[-]esque robots that seem to be so important to today’s transforming machine.

2004, “Transformers”, in GamesTM, →ISSN, page 084

Cards, collected around the map, are used to send Pokémon-esque monsters into battle.

2007 June, “Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales”, in Edge, page 92

Fantastical beasties from authentic Celtic lore serve as Pokémon-esque companions on the duo’s intertwining quest, so the monster-wrangling is both addicting and educational here.

2007 December, A. Fitch, “Folklore”, in Electronic Gaming Monthly, number 222, page 110

Did you know that the world is absolutely teeming with tiny monsters that are invisible to the naked eye? Oh, it’s totally true. Fortunately, a Sony scientist recently discovered that the PSP camera can detect these Pokémon-esque creatures just fine.

2009 September, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, page 48

Ari played a Pokémon-esque character in our musical performance.

2016, Aaron Feinstein, “We Don’t Want to Fit in: A Reflection on the Revolutionary Inclusive Theater Practices of The Miracle Project and Actionplay for Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum”, in Peter Smagorinsky, editor, Creativity and Community among Autism-Spectrum Youth: Creating Positive Social Updrafts through Play and Performance (Palgrave Studies In Play, Performance, Learning, and Development), Palgrave Macmillan, page 140

Their take on the way Techodes work reminds of a Pokémon-esque feel to a mecha-centered story.

2018, Chris Stuckmann, Anime Impact: The Movies and Shows That Changed the World of Japanese Animation, Mango Publishing

It was a business success the likes of which Nintendo had never dreamed—not at first, anyway—but it was also something more: a truly Pokémon-esque moment, in which Japan the nation evolved into Japan the fantasy superpower.

2020, Matt Alt, Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World, New York, N.Y.: Crown, published 2021, page 226

In Japan, it had to settle for the silver medal, with the top spot occupied by a Yu-Gi-Oh! game, one that used Pokémon-esque tactics to propel its record breaking to boot.

2022, Daniel Dockery, Monster Kids: How Pokémon Taught a Generation to Catch Them All, Running Press

If you put a million hungry ants in a glass cube with one human, who’s more likely to walk out alive? —Eric Bowman / Everyone always assumes that if you put two animals together like this, they’ll battle to the death, which is a very Pokémon-esque view of biology.

2022, Randall Munroe, What If? 2: Additional Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Riverhead Books, pages 135–136

Resembling or characteristic of the Pokémon franchise or the creatures featured in it.


charstring

Clipping of character string. By surface analysis, char + string.


core update

For example, in June 2018 a core update rolled out video carousels in search results, giving the likes of YouTube immediate spikes in their rankings.

2020, Damian Ryan, Understanding Digital Marketing […], Kogan Page Publishers, page 271

(SEO) A significant change to Google's search algorithms and systems.


bitrotten

bitrotten (comparative more bitrotten, superlative most bitrotten)

more bitrotten (comparative)
most bitrotten (superlative)


whuffie

Coined by Canadian-British-American blogger, journalist, and science fiction author Cory Doctorow in the novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (2003). Popularized by Tara Hunt in the non-fiction book The Whuffie Factor (2009).

coin

On the photo-sharing site Flickr, for example, your whuffie might go up with the number of photos you post, the tags you place on photos, the helpful comments you make about other people's photos, the number of useful galleries you create, and so on.

2010, Mark Durieux, Robert Stebbins, Social Entrepreneurship For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, page 188

(Internet, neologism) A type of social capital or reputation, especially within an online community.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Tara Hunt


Schneier's Law

(computer science) Alternative letter-case form of Schneier's law.


Schneier's law

Coined by Canadian-British-American blogger, journalist, and science fiction author Cory Doctorow in a 2004 speech with reference to a 1998 quote from security expert Bruce Schneier.

This is especially true if you want to design security systems and not just implement them. Remember Schneier’s Law: “Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can’t think of how to break it.”

2014, Bruce Schneir, Carry On: Sound Advice from Schneir on Security, page 34

RSA was one of the few fundamental encryption protocols that had not succumbed to Schneier's law in more than thirty years.

2022, Andy Greenberg, Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency, unnumbered page

One unifying truth of computer security is described by Schneier's Law (1998) [267]: Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break. It's not even hard.

2022, Diego Miranda-Saavedra, How to Think About Data Science, page 184

(computer security) An informal law holding that anyone can create a security system they cannot personally break.


blogiversary

Blog soon begat a whole new generation of techno-neologisms in the blogosphere, where bloggers compile blogrolls, celebrate blogiversaries and suffer from blogorrhea.]

[2010 November 11, Ben Zimmer, “Web”, in The New York Times Magazine

When it comes around again, write a post celebrating your blogiversary..

2015, Charlotte Hodgson, Peter Woodard, Pocket Blogger: Fashion, page 54

The anniversary of one's first blog post.


metacrap

From meta- + crap. The "metadata" sense was coined by Canadian-British-American blogger, journalist, and science fiction author Cory Doctorow in 2001.

People who refer to the metacrap argument are generally advocating “letting the software sort it out” instead of asking people to explicitly tag everything before making any contribution.

2004, Christian Crumlish, The Power of Many, page 246

More formally we can say that the metadata is fragile or inconsistent. More forcefully this has been described as 'metacrap'.

2008, Duncan Grey, Getting the Buggers to Find Out: Information Skills and Learning How to Learn, page 175

The contributors may have certain bias and personal agenda (e.g., to allure visitors to a resource) in entering tags not relevant to the resources at all, thus the tags may be a collection of “metacrap” (Doctorow 2001).

2009, Hongwei Zhu, Harris Wu, “Sloppy Tags and Metacrap?: Quality of User Contributed Tags in Collaborative Social Tagging Systems”, in Proceedings of the Fifteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, San Francisco, California August 6th-9th 2009, page 1

(Internet, derogatory) Low-quality or unreliable metadata.


Googlitis

Be careful of Google, though. You can diagnose yourself as having every dreadful disease on the planet with just one sniffle. If I'm being honest, my husband had to save me from being carried away by Googleitis more than once.

2019, Rachel C. Swanson, Refine and Restore: Revive Your Heart, Release Your Purpose, New York, NY: FaithWords, page unknown

(Internet) The excessive use of, or overreliance on, Google (or other search engines), possibly leading to misinformation or impaired critical thinking skills.


HPU

hogel processing unit
hogel processing unit#English

(computing) Abbreviation of hogel processing unit.


VPU

vector processing unit
vector processing unit#English

(computer hardware) Abbreviation of vector processing unit.

visual processing unit
visual processing unit#English

(computer graphics) Initialism of visual processing unit.

voxel processing unit
voxel processing unit#English

(computer graphics) Initialism of voxel processing unit.

video processing unit
video processing unit#English

(computing, video) Initialism of video processing unit.


shtwt

Among the disturbing statistics in the report is that since October, hashtags related to self-harm such as #shtwt,” which is short for “self-harm Twitter,” have increased roughly 500 percent, the report found.

2022 August 30, Naomi Nix, “Self-harm posts are surging on Twitter, despite breaking content rules”, in The Washington Post

(Internet slang) The Twitter community of people engaging in self-harm.


birdsite

From bird + site, referencing Twitter's blue bird logo.

It's a bit more familiar for people moving from "the birdsite," as Mastodon users often call Twitter.

2022 November 14, Stephen Shankland, “I Want to Like Mastodon. The Decentralized Network Isn't Making That Easy”, in CNET

“I am having a hard time letting go of the birdsite but I was raised by an alcoholic so I understand what a trauma bond is,” the political journalist Ana Marie Cox wrote on journa.host on Nov. 20.

2022 November 21, Joseph Bernstein, “Chaos on Twitter Leads a Group of Journalists to Start an Alternative”, in The New York Times

Always remember where you are when you're posting. It's easy to fall into bad habits, especially after spending years on the birdsite, also known as Twitter.

2023, Chris Minnick, Michael McCallister, Mastodon for Dummies, page 75

(Internet slang) The social networking and microblogging platform Twitter.


artificial bee colony

en-noun

artificial bee colony (plural artificial bee colonies)

Proposed by Turkish computer scientist Derviş Karaboğa in 2005.

(computing) A metaheuristic-based optimization algorithm inspired by the intelligent foraging behavior of honey bee swarms.


hard-block

en-verb

hard-block (third-person singular simple present hard-blocks, present participle hard-blocking, simple past and past participle hard-blocked)

hard-blocks (present singular third-person)
hard-blocking (participle present)
hard-blocked (participle past)
hard-blocked (past)

Coordinate term: soft-block

And just last week, I gave my partner the silent treatment for not answering me after five minutes. On social media, all I seem to do is hard-block people left and right, foregoing the soft-block altogether. If I’m not doing that, I leave rude comments with super sassy emojis or direct message my friends with passive-aggressive cat GIFs.

2022 October 27, Paloma Torres, quoting Potentially Petty/Hot Person, “Advice Column: Am I becoming hotter or just pettier? Paloma Torres answers the age-old question constantly on everyone's minds”, in The Eyeopener, volume 56, number 7, page 3

(Internet, transitive) To permanently block (a user) on social media, as opposed to soft-blocking.


hard-block

Coordinate term: soft-block

Essentially, the users in question would not be prohibited from accessing your profile and tweets like a hard block would trigger. Instead, they will still be able to see your tweets and also send you direct messages. Your presence will be taken off from their news feed.

2021 October 12, Bharat Sharma, “Twitter Lets You 'Soft Block' Insufferable Followers: But Will It Limit Abuse?”, in Indiatimes


BLAS

Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms
w:Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms

(computing) Acronym of Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms.


powerwash

powerwash (third-person singular simple present powerwashes, present participle powerwashing, simple past and past participle powerwashed)

powerwashes (present singular third-person)
powerwashing (participle present)
powerwashed (participle past)
powerwashed (past)

Back-formation from powerwasher, equivalent to power + wash.

(technology) To reset a Chromebook or any other ChromeOS device to factory settings, deleting all data from the unit.


FNF

Friday Night Funkin'
w:Friday Night Funkin'

(video games) Initialism of Friday Night Funkin' (“a 2020 rhythm-based video game”).


TechToker

TikTok is famous for its viral pranks, endless wave of memes, and, for me at least, its ability to make an hour disappear by sucking you into a rabbit hole. There are unlimited niche topics to get lost in, but where I often find myself is #TechTok. [see title]

2021 April 14, Jordan Bowman, “The Best Gadgets on TikTok, According to TechTokers”, in The Strategist

That divide between employees who code and those who work in areas like sales or recruiting is present at some companies, other TechTokers acknowledged, but they also pointed out that the vlogger has at times looked pretty elitist herself; […]

2022 September 4, Steffi Cao, “#WorkingInTech Influencers Are Facing Backlash For Their Glamorous TikToks About The Industry”, in BuzzFeed News

Francis is just one of many young people who have made a name for themselves on TikTok by sharing their lives as #corporatebaddies, #techgirls, or #techtokers, then found themselves impacted by the mass layoffs sweeping the tech industry.

2023 February 11, Stephanie McNeal, “What Happens When A Corporate TikTok Girlie Gets Laid Off? She Posts Through It.”, in BuzzFeed News

A TikToker who makes videos about, discusses, or is otherwise interested in technology.


FoodTok

FoodTok can be a dizzying mash-up of competing birria taco recipes, fufu reviews, and Coca-Cola pot roast recipes passed down from sorority cookbooks. […] On FoodTok, I get to see how people eat and cook in their everyday lives, to peer into virtual kitchen windows like a voyeuristic passerby who just got a whiff of something delicious (or horrifying).

2021 February 9, Hazel Cills, “The Voyeuristic, Hypnotic Pleasure of FoodTok”, in Jezebel

What does your “For You” page look like on TikTok? Do you watch mostly dance challenges, lip syncs, comedians, travel videos or something else? Have you ever ventured onto food TikTok, or FoodTok? […] Why might someone aspire to be a FoodTok star? Have you ever wanted to become a TikTok celebrity for cooking or something else?

2021 May 28, Nicole Daniels, “Lesson of the Day: ‘TikTok, the Fastest Way on Earth to Become a Food Star’”, in The New York Times

TikTok recipes – or FoodTok, to use the parlance of the people – are a genre unto themselves. Creators post short videos of (usually) simple recipes that take fairly ordinary, well-trod ingredients (feta, tomatoes) and give them new relevance.

2022 August 5, Lauren Sams, “How TikTok is taking over your kitchen”, in Australian Financial Review

If you’ve spent any amount of time on FoodTok, then you know there are plenty of creators out there who’ll make your mouth water…but Cedrik Lorenzen is looking to do more than whet your appetite, if ya know what I mean.

2022 August 26, Corinne Sullivan, “TikTok’s Sexy Food Guru Cedrik Lorenzen Is Here to Whet Your Appetite”, in Cosmopolitan

FoodTok is an infinite recipe book, a source of information, comfort and entertainment, and, at the same time, a disgusting universe of ever more ungodly “hacks”, tricks and challenges. […] Not-so-secret sploshing content resides in the overlapping midpoint of FoodTok’s Venn diagram, with “appealing” on one side and “outrageous” on the other.

2023 April 22, Eloise Hendy, “Dorito casseroles, butter diets and how weird food took over the internet”, in The Independent

The community of food- and cooking-oriented accounts on TikTok.


direct message

direct message (third-person singular simple present direct messages, present participle direct messaging, simple past and past participle direct messaged)

direct messages (present singular third-person)
direct messaging (participle present)
direct messaged (participle past)
direct messaged (past)


UFCS

Nim's default import behavior allows flexible Uniform Function Call Syntax (UFCS) and operator overloading.

2017, Dominik Picheta, Nim in Action, Simon and Schuster

Uniform Function Call Syntax
w:Uniform Function Call Syntax

(programming) Initialism of Uniform Function Call Syntax.


DevEx

Coordinate term: UX

[…] ensure that the platform teams have a focus on user experience (UX) and particularly developer experience (DevEx).

2019, Matthew Skelton, Manuel Pais, Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow, IT Revolution

developer experience
developer experience#English

(programming) Abbreviation of developer experience.


instantially

Have you tried using perform_now just for the sake of testing? It's equivalent to perform_later, but instead of enqueuing, it runs instantially.

2021 October 12, João Fernandes, “Rails test job and raise errors if any”, in Stack Overflow, retrieved 2023-04-27

(computing) As instances arise, rather than enqueuing.


rage comic

Last week, Reddit user CappnPoopdeck posted a "rage comic" depicting a man who, as a joke, takes an unused pregnancy test left behind by his ex-girlfriend, then finds that the test comes back positive.

2012 November 7, Hilary Hanson, “Man Takes Pregnancy Test, Finds Out He Has Testicular Cancer: Reports”, in HuffPost, archived from the original on 2023-04-30

He added, “Obama is a smart guy. ‘Okay, so this is how that works, so I type in that name, or now that I’m on Google+, I type in a +, or now that I’m on Reddit, put in a rage comic because that’s funny.’”

2013, James E[verett] Katz, Michael Barris, Anshul Jain, The Social Media President: Barack Obama and the Politics of Digital Engagement, Palgrave Macmillan, page 99

Thus, in order to produce and understand LOLCats, users need to master LOLspeak; to create a rage comic, the user requires familiarity with a broad range of new symbols.

2014, Limor Shifman, Memes in Digital Culture (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series), Cambridge, Mass., London: The MIT Press, page 118

A rage comic features a short sequence of the actions of standard characters and is often about the absurdity or folly of everyday life situations or comments on media occurrences.

2015, Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, editor, Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, 3rd edition, Information Science Reference, page 3772

Rage comics were first introduced to China as bàozŏu mànhuà […] in 2008, and have become increasingly popular among Chinese Internet users since then.

2017, Aaron Marcus, Masaaki Kurosu, Xiaojuan Ma, Ayako Hashizume, Cuteness Engineering: Designing Adorable Products and Services, Springer, page 70

(Internet slang) A short cartoon strip using a growing set of pre-made cartoon faces which usually express rage or some other simple emotion or activity.


hackfolk

On Tuesday 13 April 2010 on the Island of the Manahattoes, Lisp NYC will gather to eat and drink. And the NYLUG Hackfolk will gather to first Squeak, then eat and drink.

2010 April 5, Jay Sulzberger, Corresponding Secretary LXNY, “NYC LOCAL: Tuesday 13 April 2010 Lisp NYC Meet and NYLUG Hack Meet”, in gnu-misc-discuss (Usenet)

(informal) People who habitually tinker with computers.


generative AI

Generative AI won’t be the end of employment, we are told, only “boring work” – with chatbots helpfully doing all the soul-destroying, repetitive tasks and humans merely supervising them.

2023 May 8, Naomi Klein, “AI machines aren’t ‘hallucinating’. But their makers are”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

ChatGPT's sudden popularity has triggered an arms race among the world's leading tech companies and start-ups that are rushing to obtain the H100, which Huang describes as “the world's first computer [chip] designed for generative AI”—artificial intelligence systems that can quickly create humanlike text, images and content.

2023 May 28, Tim Bradshaw, Richard Waters, “Nvidia reaps rewards from early lead in AI chipmaking”, in FT Weekend, page 14


appification

While appification makes the former Web-based tools and apps more accessible, and improves users' quality of life, […]

2015, Barbara Guzzetti, Handbook of Research on the Societal Impact of Digital Media, page 417

Our focus is on investigating the architecture-level decisions that are specific to the appification process.

2015, Danny Weyns, Raffaela Mirandola, Ivica Crnkovic, Software Architecture: 9th European Conference, ECSA 2015, page 38

Tubi TV exemplifies an app's effort to step into this long, complicated global evolution of mobile television (Goggin 2012), and as such, it is emblematic of why the appification of television […]

2018, Jeremy W. Morris, Sarah Murray, Appified: Culture in the Age of Apps, page 243

(computing) The conversion of traditional programs, websites, etc. into small, self-contained apps targeting mobile devices.


WKB

Coordinate term: WKT

(file format) Initialism of well-known binary (“a binary representation used in geometry markup”).


Heawood conjecture

Formulated in 1890 by Percy John Heawood.

(graph theory) A conjecture (proven in 1968) that gives a lower bound for the number of colors that are necessary for graph coloring on a surface of a given genus.


Heawood graph

(graph theory) An undirected graph with 14 vertices and 21 edges.


(databases, transaction processing) Initialism of two-phase locking.


backportable

backportable to older releases


backportability

with backportability in mind

(computing) The quality of being backportable.


minimod

In becoming TSR moderators (of varying hierarchical status such as supermoderators, global moderators and minimods, further also forum assistants), users are supposed to set a good example for appropriate online behavior as a by-product of their ongoing conversations.

2013, Jenny Arendholz, (In)Appropriate Online Behavior: A pragmatic analysis of message board relations, page 46

(Internet, rare) A moderator having only limited permissions.


IIR

IIR filter

infinite impulse response
infinite impulse response#English

(computing) Short for infinite impulse response.


crowdtesting

software engineering
software engineering

(software engineering) Crowdsourced testing of software, performed by as many Internet users as possible.


distro-hop

distro-hop (third-person singular simple present distro-hops, present participle distro-hopping, simple past and past participle distro-hopped)

distro-hops (present singular third-person)
distro-hopping (participle present)
distro-hopped (participle past)
distro-hopped (past)

/ˈdɪstɹəʊˌhɒp/

I've been distro-hopping for two years now, but I still haven't found the perfect distro.

(intransitive, software) To engage in distro-hopping.


distro-hopping

/ˈdɪstɹəʊˌhɒpɪŋ/

/ˈdɪstɹoʊˌhɑpɪŋ/

After years of distro-hopping, I finally settled on Debian.

Choosing a distribution is a personal choice and most people find the one that's right for them by distro-hopping, the process of trying out different distributions, until, like Goldilocks, you find the one that's just right.

2016 November 17, Steven Ovadia, Learn Linux in a Month of Lunches, Simon and Schuster

Distro-Hopping is a term that refers to the activity or hobby of Linux users to switch between distros frequently, exploring them and trying several distros out in an attempt to find the one that best suits their needs.

2020 February 6, Balaji Gunasekaran, “Distro-Hopping, What, Why & How Explained!”, in EmbeddedInventor.com, retrieved 2023-05-07

Distro-hopping is a time-honored pastime, where you download and try different Linux distributions.

2021 August 13, Carla Schroder, Linux Cookbook, "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

(software) The act of frequently changing the operating system of one's computer to a different distribution of Linux.


masonry layout

(web design) A tightly-packed columnar layout; unlike a uniform grid, there are no identifiable rows.


SNI

Server Name Indication
w:Server Name Indication

(networking) Initialism of Server Name Indication (“TLS extension”).


cloud-native

Therefore, at its most basic form, cloud native means to embrace cloud computing services to design the solution; however, that only covers part of what is required to become cloud native.

2018, Tom Laszewski, Kamal Arora, Erik Farr, Piyum Zonooz, Cloud Native Architectures […], Packt Publishing Ltd, page 7

Automation: Cloud-native applications and their life cycles should be automated as much as possible.

2018, Onur Yılmaz, Cloud-Native Continuous Integration and Delivery […], Packt Publishing Ltd, page 11

(computing, of a technology or architecture) Able to take full advantage of running on public, private, or hybrid cloud computing environments.


WDL

We describe the main automated and manual steps taken before, during and after assembly. A combined set of workflow description language (WDL) formatted assembly workflows is available from Dockstore that captures each of the steps for filtering adapter-contained reads and running Hifiasm[.]

2023 May 11, Wen-Wei LiaoMobin AsriJana Ebleret al., “A draft human pangenome reference”, in Nature, volume 617, →DOI

(computing) Initialism of workflow description language.


CADD

computer-aided design
computer-aided design#English

(computing, engineering) Initialism of computer-aided design and drafting.


clusterer

(computing) That which divides data etc. into clusters.


orphan off

orphan off (third-person singular simple present orphans off, present participle orphaning off, simple past and past participle orphaned off)

orphans off (present singular third-person)
orphaning off (participle present)
orphaned off (participle past)
orphaned off (past)

(transitive, computing) To remove all links to (something), leaving it an orphan; to render a technical item (website, function, etc.) useless by removing references that call on it.


non-stack

a non-stack developer

a non-stack framework

(computing) not skilled at, or relating to, multiple software layers such as operating system and user interface.


hexatrigesimal

en-noun

hexatrigesimal (countable and uncountable, plural hexatrigesimals)

From hexa- + tri- + decimal; see the Wikipedia article for hexadecimal for more information.

(arithmetic, computing, uncountable) A number system with base thirty-six, using the digits 0–9 and A–Z.

(countable, computing) A number expressed in the hexatridecimal system.


DTLS

Datagram Transport Layer Security
w:Datagram Transport Layer Security

(computing, telecommunications) Initialism of Datagram Transport Layer Security.


BEAST

(Internet) Acronym of Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS.


hexavigesimal

hexavigesimal (countable and uncountable, plural hexavigesimals)

From hexa- + vigesimal; see the Wikipedia article Hexadecimal for more information.

(arithmetic, computing, uncountable) A number system with base twenty-six, using the digits 0–9 and A–P (or A-Z without numerals).

(countable, computing) A number expressed in the hexavigesimal system.


WWAN

wireless wide area network
wireless wide area network#English

(networking) Initialism of wireless wide area network.


Squiggol

Blend of squiggly + ALGOL, from the “squiggly” symbols it uses.

The overall goal of Squiggol is to calculate programs from their specifications in the way a mathematician calculates solutions to differential equations, or uses arithmetic to solve numerical problems.

1991 June, Erik Meijer, Maarten Fokkinga, Ross Paterson, “Functional programming with bananas, lenses, envelopes and barbed wire”, in Proceedings of the 5th ACM conference on Functional programming languages and computer architecture, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, pages 124–144

functional programming
functional programming

(functional programming, humorous) The Bird–Meertens formalism.


COMAL

Acronym of common algorithmic language, inspired by ALGOL (“algorithmic language”).

Mr. Lindsey's letter in Vol. 5, No. 11 made some misleading claims for COMAL. He stated that COMAL, like BASIC, is free. Well, back in October of 1981, a price of $49.95 for a COMAL starter package was mentioned in Robert Baker's PET-pourri column in Microcomputing.

1983 May 23, Willi Kusche, “COMAL claims are questionable”, in InfoWorld, volume 5, number 21, page 39

programming language
programming language

(computer languages) A programming language influenced by BASIC and Pascal.


TWKB

Tiny WKB (TWKB) Tiny WKB is another format used for web mapping that was introduced in PostGIS 2.2. Similar to the MVT format, it is a compressed binary format, but it's based on WKB format.

2021, Leo S. Hsu, Regina Obe, PostGIS in Action, 3rd edition, Simon and Schuster, page 183

(file format) Initialism of tiny WKB (well-known binary).


quadravigesimal

quadravigesimal (countable and uncountable, plural quadravigesimals)

/ˌkwɒdˈɹɑvaɪd͡ʒɛsɪməl/

(arithmetic, computing, uncountable) A number system with base twenty-24, using the digits 0–9 and A–N (or Greek α-ω without numerals).

(countable, computing) A number expressed in the quadravigesimal system.


hybrid sleep

(computing, Microsoft Windows) A variant of sleep mode in which current data is retained both in memory (allowing fast resumption, as if from hibernation) and on disk (to protect from data loss in the event of a power cut).


Lunix

Blend of Linux + lunatic or perhaps loon.

(informal, dysphemistic) Linux, an operating system originally patterned after Unix and which gave rise to Google's Android operating system.


code position

The ISO 8859 character codes use the obvious encoding: each code position is represented as one octet.

2006, Jukka K. Korpela, Unicode Explained, O'Reilly, page 126


US-ASCII

Here, we see that the source encoding has fallen back to US-ASCII because none was explicitly set.

2009, Gregory T. Brown, Ruby Best Practices, O'Reilly, page 189

(computing, formal, retronym) Synonym of ASCII, especially to differentiate it from 8-bit extended ASCII.


Day-Stout-Warren algorithm

the Day-Stout-Warren algorithm (canonical)

Designed by Quentin F. Stout and Bette Warren in a 1986 paper, based on work done by Colin Day in 1976.

(computing theory) A method for efficiently balancing a binary search tree.


DSW

Day-Stout-Warren algorithm
Day-Stout-Warren algorithm#English

(computing theory) Initialism of Day-Stout-Warren algorithm.


Putnam model

(software engineering) A model that describes the time and effort required to finish a software project of a specified size, taking productivity into account.


Unicodify

en-verb

Unicodify (third-person singular simple present Unicodifies, present participle Unicodifying, simple past and past participle Unicodified)

Unicodifies (present singular third-person)
Unicodifying (participle present)
Unicodified (participle past)
Unicodified (past)

I think now that people have had time to "Unicodify" their applications with 5.8.x, starting to collect the tricks required and found useful would not be a bad idea.

2004 January 3, Jarkko Hietaniemi, “Re: Keeping byte-wise processing as an option”, in perl.unicode (Usenet)

(transitive, computing) To make (something) compatible with Unicode.


BEAM

Elixir is a functional, dynamic language built on top of Erlang and the Erlang VM (BEAM).

2016, Kenny Ballou, Learning Elixir, Packt Publishing Ltd, page 1

Bogdan's Erlang Abstract Machine
w:BEAM (Erlang virtual machine)

(programming, Erlang) Acronym of Bogdan's Erlang Abstract Machine.


Erlang

Named after Danish mathematician and engineer Agner Krarup Erlang (1878–1929) and a clipping of Ericsson language, the company where it originated.

named-after

If you need to wring out every drop of performance on a complex task, or want to avoid rewriting a library written in a language other than Erlang, you'll want to explore Erlang's tools for connecting with other programming languages.

2017, Simon St. Laurent, Introducing Erlang: Getting Started in Functional Programming, O'Reilly, page 172

(computer languages) A functional programming language designed for highly concurrent and fault-tolerant applications.


Kagi chart

(finance) A style of financial chart, mostly independent of time, used to track price movements and make decisions on purchasing stock.


if-then

List Formatter makes properly-spaced & indented listings with page breaks; each statement on new line, if-thens and loops called out; a great de-bugger!

Storing (closed) predicate definitions in this form (if all the predicates are so stored, and there never were any cuts or if-thens in the first place, we have the well-known "completion" of a logic program) makes the coding of source-level tools simpler.

1985, 1985 Symposium on Logic Programming: July 15-18, 1985; Sheraton Boston Hotel Boston, Mass., IEEE Computer Society Press, page 71

1. The problem is well bounded, 2. There are many empirical if/thens that lead to a correct solution, 3. The total number of if/thens is sufficient to bring you close to a right answer (Mazur 1987).

1989 December, David W. Long, Michael R. Wagner, “Insect Pest Management Expert Systems in Multiresource Management of Ponderosa Pine”, in Multiresource Management of Ponderosa Pine Forests: Nov. 14 - 16, 1989, Flagstaff, Arizona (General Technical Report RM-185), page 260

Many if-thens will degrade vector performance below that of a scalar version that computes only the correct branch.

1992, Donald L. DeAngelis, Louis J. Gross, editors, Individual-Based Models and Approaches in Ecology: Populations, Communities and Ecosystems, Chapman and Hall, pages 154–155

Think of this process as programming with pictures, complete with loops, pauses, if-thens, and so on.

Finally, they use descriptions and statements from set theory to provide material for flowcharting problems that contain multiple decisions (nested if-thens).

2000, Harold J. Rood, Logic and Structured Design for Computer Programmers, Brooks/Cole, page ix

Simple statements (like assignments and if-thens) are executed serially.

2001, Mark Guzdial, Squeak: Object-Oriented Design with Multimedia Applications, Prentice Hall, page 35

But I think that the badge system is very motivating, and if one of your goals is to get students to become more proficient in the programming, then this is certainly a way to do that. Because you set not a very high bar toward attaining these things and some of them I think are quite challenging – you know, doing the ones for lists, and the if-thens, and all that.

2004, Jim, quotee, “Co-Evolution of Design and Pedagogy Online”, in Sasha A. Barab, Rob Kling, James H. Gray, editors, Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning (Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives), Cambridge University Press, page 253

However, you can neither create multiple if-thens that execute simultaneously, nor create a rule based on a file’s Kind—so this utility’s utility is limited (November 2003).

Have you noticed any similarities between “programming” a mechanical system and writing software? / The logical problems are absolutely the same. In the mechanical and in the computer, there are equivalents of variables and if-thens.

2005 February, Make: Technology on Your Time, volume 01, O’Reilly Media, Inc., page 160

There’s some recursive programming in her that gives more weight to associative and metaphorical thinking than to logical if-thens.

2012, Kim Stanley Robinson, 2312, Hachette

(programming) A conditional statement; a line of code that specifies a Boolean condition to check and a statement to execute when that Boolean evaluates to true.


mirror match

(video games) A match in a 1v1 fighting game in which the two opposing players play as the same character.


matmul

(computing, informal) Short for matrix multiplication.


Brzozowski derivative

en-noun

Brzozowski derivative (plural Brzozowski derivatives)

Named after the computer scientist Janusz Brzozowski, who investigated its properties.

(computing theory) The set of all strings obtainable from a given set of strings by cutting off a prefix. For example, for the set { cat, cow, dog }, the Brzozowski derivative with respect to c is { at, ow }. They have applications in regular expressions.


pseudoconsciousness

(neuroscience, neurology, psychology, computer science) A state or condition that is not consciousness but seemingly or nearly approaches it or simulates it.


ask me anything

ask me anything (plural ask me anythings)

This style of interview was popularized in the r/IAmA subreddit founded in 2009, where users post prompts for others to ask questions by stating who they are and adding the phrase “Ask me anything!”.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, returned to Reddit this week for an Ask Me Anything that covered everything from net neutrality to memes to the online harassment of women.

2015 March 11, Abby Ohlheiser, “What Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, has to say about Internet harassment”, in The Washington Post

We volunteer our time to help manage the subsection called IAmA — a popular part of the site where thousands of interviews, known as “ask me anythings,” take place.

2015 July 8, Brian Lynch, Courtnie Swearingen, “Why We Shut Down Reddit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Forum”, in The New York Times

(Internet, often attributively) An online interactive interview in which people can ask the interviewee questions about any topic, typically through the website's comment system.


net-neutral

In a net-neutral future it should still be possible, theoretically, for anyone with a camera and some willing friends to shoot a D.I.Y. video and put it online.

2011 March 25, Mike Hale, “A-List Stars Invade Digital Auteurs’ Space”, in The New York Times

(networking) Characterized by net neutrality.


drag click

en-verb

drag click (third-person singular simple present drag clicks, present participle drag clicking, simple past and past participle drag clicked)

drag clicks (present singular third-person)
drag clicking (participle present)
drag clicked (participle past)
drag clicked (past)

When you drag click, you benefit from the friction created as your finger moves quickly across the surface between the mouse button and skin. Because of the friction, the mouse switch detects vibrations that result in more clicks than would otherwise be feasible.

2022 October 20, Edward Hays, “How to improve CPS in Minecraft PvP?”, in Sportskeeda, archived from the original on 2023-03-30

When you drag click, you rely on hardware and not on the software part. Regardless, it takes some time to master it. This gives players who know it a greater advantage over those who can't do it.

2023 February 16, Joseph Henry, “Best Drag Clicking Mouses of 2023: Why Should You Use Them?”, in Tech Times, archived from the original on 2023-03-06

(video games) To cause a computer mouse to record an extremely high rate of clicks (sometimes over 100 CPS) by rubbing it with one's finger to create a vibration.


drag click

Knowing how to double-click drag before you get too fancy with short and long drag clicks is essential. This isn't about clicking the mouse fast or pressing it hard. You must drag your finger softly along the mouse wing from back to front. More clicks will register if you move to the edge of your mouse wing (left for left-clicks and right for right-clicks).

2022 June 27, Jorge Aguilar, “How to drag click — Drag Clicking Explained”, in Dot Esports, archived from the original on 2023-03-15

Flick your wrist at an angle while softly pressing the mouse button downward to perform a drag click. Let your finger slide through the button without applying excessive pressure.

2022 August 22, “Top 3 Clicking Methods To Improve Mouse Clicking Speed”, in Deccan Herald, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-03-15

(video games) An instance of drag clicking (which includes multiple individual clicks).


BiS

(video games) Initialism of best in slot (the best piece of equipment a character is able to equip in a certain equipment slot)


paragade

(fandom slang, video games) A play style in the Mass Effect series in which options from both the paragon and renegade orientations are selected about equally.


bottom type

A new notion to many Java developers will be the idea that a class hierarchy can have common bottom types. These are types that are subtypes of all types. Scala's types Null and Nothing are both bottom types.

2017, Toby Weston, Scala for Java Developers: A Practical Primer, Apress, page 25

(type theory, programming) The type that is a subtype of all other types.