[HN Gopher] Unsuck It (2010)
___________________________________________________________________
Unsuck It (2010)
Author : dsr_
Score : 108 points
Date : 2021-02-22 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unsuck-it.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unsuck-it.com)
| kps wrote:
| I am disappointed that 'actionable' doesn't present the original
| meaning -- providing cause to take legal action -- given how well
| it typically fits corpspeak in place of the intended one.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| Shamelessy perused my most recent side project to see if I had
| any of this language on my pages. Luckily none such words were
| found!
| tyingq wrote:
| If you stump it, you get:
|
| _" Well, tickle my taint. That one hasn't come up yet. Not to
| worry. We're on it."_
| jihadjihad wrote:
| It really jibes with the site's logo
| danieldrehmer wrote:
| GPT-3?
| neatwithatwist wrote:
| I still use this site occasionally. Used it way more when I
| worked in Consulting. Has actually been useful.
| techbio wrote:
| An update on the model of Ambrose Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary":
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/972/972-h/972-h.htm
| phildenhoff wrote:
| Seeing all the phrases my old colleagues used has really
| solidified that leaving consulting was a good choice for my own
| sanity. Stop trying to ping me on a go-forward basis to utilize
| and action upcoming synergies in a fulsome manner!
| Jtsummers wrote:
| My desk at an old job was adjacent to the desk of the woman in
| charge of a safety process (some variant of 5S and something
| else, I think). Every week there'd be a small gathering at her
| desk including a couple managers and people from some other
| departments (not sure what their roles were otherwise, the
| managers I knew were a few levels above me in engineering).
|
| I heard nearly every buzzword bingo term during those meetings.
| I swore off the idea of every becoming any kind of manager
| after that. Fast forward a decade, I'm pissed off with how
| things aren't working and aren't changing so I opt myself into
| a management adjacent position ("process improvement"). I ended
| up in many, many more management meetings than I ever want to
| and learned that there were still more buzzword bingo words for
| me to learn! I escaped after a time because I realized that
| they were just playing a convoluted drinking game (I think if
| you say or hear "synergy" 1000 times it's guaranteed to make
| you an alcoholic, but the drinks are after hours instead of
| when the game is played).
| imwillofficial wrote:
| ::in a drunken haze:: "Circle back to that!" "We faced
| challenges!" "Synergize our core competencies!" ::passes
| out::
| dsr_ wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4
|
| (Weird Al Yankovic: Mission Statement)
|
| First verse:
|
| We must all efficiently Operationalize our strategies
| Invest in world-class technology And leverage our core
| competencies
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _Unsuck It - translate business jargon_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1600102 - Aug 2010 (23
| comments)
| bussierem wrote:
| This reminds me of https://mourner.github.io/bullshit.js/
| culopatin wrote:
| Im having fun browsing it but it is one of the slowest sites I've
| actually waited for to load.
| mirkules wrote:
| > Illegal Alien: person.
|
| This is like saying "another word for car is 'vehicle'". It's not
| the same thing.
|
| _Maybe_ it's an outdated expression, but it still signifies a
| person who crossed a country's border illegally and does not have
| legal status.
|
| Maybe in some libertarian circles where there ideologically are
| no such things as borders this would be true, but the world
| exists, countries exist, laws exist and changing words to suit an
| ideology instead of facts is kind of silly.
|
| P.S. I got to "Illegal Alien" by entering "Synergy" then
| following along.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Maybe it's an outdated expression, but it still signifies a
| person who crossed a country's border illegally and does not
| have legal status.
|
| Actually, it doesn't even mean _just_ that, that 's just the
| popular perception. Anyone not present legally would be an
| illegal alien, even if they crossed the border legally. I knew
| many international students who became illegal aliens due to
| overstaying their visas or who violated their visa in some way
| through work they did.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The one all the cool-kid execs are using these days is "lean in
| to" as a replacement for the boring "focus on". As in "We're
| going to be _leaning in to_ Cloud and Chat Apps this quarter in
| order to grow our investment into execution and innovation... "
| fbelzile wrote:
| This is awesome. It has my favorite one: "ping me"
|
| Man, I hated hearing this. Just use normal words, please.
| 1-more wrote:
| If they reply with anything other than ACK tell them they are
| breaking protocol
| jasonv wrote:
| I don't mind that one, but "rockstar" in job descriptions
| drives me batty.
|
| As do "send it" and "stan". So, it's across all cultural
| borders these days.
| woodrowbarlow wrote:
| when someone says "rockstar programmer" i hear "doesn't play
| well with others".
| ficklepickle wrote:
| OK boomer.
|
| I'm stanning so hard I'm just gonna send it, fam.
|
| Just kidding. I'm old too. Get off my lawn, unless you are
| playing lawn darts.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I used to hate all that nonsense, then at some point in the
| last 15 years I got assimilated. Though, I still can't
| understand anything an executive says.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Yeah, normal words like "reaching out" (said the way Neil
| Diamond says it, with some seriousness and a straight face). It
| turns professional life into melodrama.
| fbelzile wrote:
| Or just, email me when... or call me when... At least it
| gives me a hint about the best way to contact you about
| something.
| wiml wrote:
| "ping me" does have a useful connotation, though, like
| "touch base" or "give a heads-up" it suggests a pretty
| minimal communication, just to let someone know that
| something has or will occur. Making a distinction between a
| short notice that can be followed up on if needed, vs. a
| more detailed memo or report.
| tyingq wrote:
| I imagine our pointy-haired bosses would appreciate an "unsuck
| it" for tech jargon, with stuff like:
|
| orthagonal -> unrelated
|
| immutable -> unchangeable
|
| idempotent -> (is there a very short phrase that works here?)
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| idempotent -> one-and-done ?
|
| It's kinda hard to summarize
| astrea wrote:
| Those aren't even jargon, they're just words a well-educated
| person would know.
| kube-system wrote:
| Idempotent is definitely jargon. It was coined by a
| mathematician and the word has no use outside of a math/cs
| context.
| reaperducer wrote:
| It's not about education or vocabulary. It's about using
| words to make yourself sound important, when you're not.
|
| The problem is that people who don't have a good vocabulary
| abuse these words and change their meaning for self-serving
| purposes, and not to communicate.
| astrea wrote:
| Perhaps that's just projections of your own insecurities
| and those words are just simply what come to mind for them
| or find the most descriptive.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Perhaps that 's just projections of your own
| insecurities and those words are just simply what come to
| mind for them or find the most descriptive._
|
| No, it's because I have a degree is Communication, and
| understand the importance of language in the workplace.
|
| Any "insecurity" is just defensiveness on your part.
|
| Or, to put it in language you might understand: "Troll
| harder, n00b."
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Ooooh the guy with the degree in communications has
| decided what is useful and what is over the top in
| regards to mid tier vocabulary usage.
|
| I think you've missed the point of this whole website my
| friend.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| idempotent -> side-effect-free? safely-repeatable?
| tyingq wrote:
| Ah, that's helpful. _" Safely repeatable, with no side
| effects"_ will be my new answer if anyone asks.
| zodiakzz wrote:
| transparent -> opaque
| seph-reed wrote:
| Idempotent -> singularly consistent
|
| It's not a perfect definition, but I don't think execs really
| need to know what idempotent is.
| chousuke wrote:
| You could replace orthogonal and immutable perhaps, but
| idempotency has a rather precise technical definition that
| doesn't really have any synonyms. It's a useful word too,
| because idempotency is generally a very desirable property to
| have in many systems.
|
| If you do any kind of system automation, it would get quite
| cumbersome if you had to keep talking about operations which
| only effect change when they actually need to.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Got me.
|
| But I like to think that using precise technical terms such as
| "idempotent" is perfectly fine. "Immutable", works as well,
| since you have "mutable", and "mutation" to go with it. Both
| also carry a lot of contextual information that make them hard
| to replace.
|
| (There has to be a proper linguistic term to describe these
| properties)
|
| "Touch base" is none of those things. Ever.
| Twisol wrote:
| Hm. "Safely repeatable"? Idempotence is a pretty specific
| concept.
| NoodleIncident wrote:
| I like that orthagonal suggests that they definitely intersect,
| but go in two different directions. Unrelated is too harsh in
| most of the situations you'd use orthagonal.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| _" Hey, you're an idempotent kind of person: all I need to know
| about you I learned on day 1, and nothing's changed since
| then."_ /s
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Does this work too?
|
| "Hey, you're an idempotent kind of person: all you think you
| need to know about me you learned on day 1, and nothing's
| changed since then."
| DonHopkins wrote:
| As snarky as a fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suck.com
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20181215003853/http://www.suck.c...
| jessriedel wrote:
| Doesn't the phrase "add color" go back at least to the century-
| old idea of a "color" commentator (who operates opposite the
| "play-by-play" commentator) of sports radio and later sports TV?
| I'd be pretty surprised if this wasn't used for things outside of
| sports before MBAs started using. And if the MBAs invented the
| turn of phrase, I'd say it's clever and evocative!
|
| This seems very different than mere business euphemism like
| "realize negative gains".
| [deleted]
| gherkinnn wrote:
| It's not necessarily the words themselves, but the type of person
| who is associated with them. And I hate it when a word I like
| gets appropriated by unlikable people.
|
| "Touch base" and "Bio break" are an exception. Makes me squeal
| every time, no matter who uses them.
| tyingq wrote:
| "Synergy" haunts me, as well as repurposing words like
| "ideation". If I play word association, "suicidal" is the only
| context where "ideation" sounds correct.
| piinbinary wrote:
| This one is great:
|
| > counterintuitive
|
| > Based on facts or evidence, rather than on magic-gut
| divination.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Clicked on browse, and then read the first term for 'above the
| fold'. pure gold
|
| Unsucked:
|
| The mystical location on websites where advertisers want their
| ads to appear. Originally referred to physical newspapers, which
| folded in half and made money from advertising. Today, newspapers
| don't have advertisers and just fold.
| jefftk wrote:
| To be dull: "above the fold" means visible on the initial page
| view, without any scrolling.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Which made sense when everyone was browsing at 800x600. But
| these days who knows what the size of an initial page view
| is. Not just devices, but windows within those devices.
| shawn-furyan wrote:
| Get that newfangled SVGA outta here. VGA (640x480) is the
| One True Resolution(tm).
| 867-5309 wrote:
| most mobile browsers actually use low resolutions like
| this by default
| jefftk wrote:
| Publishers have good information on a per ad slot basis
| telling them how likely they are to be initially on screen.
| It's not yes/no, the way it would be if everyone's screen
| was the same size or on a physical newspaper, but
| percentages are still useful.
|
| Mostly people use viewability instead:
| https://headerbidding.co/mrc-viewability-standards/
| tyingq wrote:
| I know I'm venturing off-topic here, but I believe _" above the
| fold"_ in the newspaper world referred to story prominence on
| the front page rather than advertising.
|
| I don't recall, even long ago, seeing ads on real newspapers
| that were both front-page and _" above the fold"_. I imagine _"
| above the fold"_ wasn't related to advertising until the web
| existed.
| troyvit wrote:
| When I studied journalism in the early '90s our professors
| drew a direct correlation between newspapers that showed ads
| "above the fold" and those that didn't. According to the
| profs if they practiced the former they were clearly not real
| journalistic enterprises. USA Today did it and they used it
| as a case that proved their point. How times change.
| tyingq wrote:
| That's interesting. I can't find a picture of a paper USA
| Today with an actual advert front page, above the fold.
| They do put little gossipy teaser type "boxes" there that I
| guess could be considered "ads" to read a story in their
| Celebrity section. But no actual advertisement for some 3rd
| party product or service. Not saying that didn't happen,
| but it's at least not easy to find.
| shawn-furyan wrote:
| Would that it were so simple to assess the value and
| integrity of individual voices vying for attention among
| the roaring cacophony that is the internet.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Around here they did exist, but were not so prominent,
| usually in a sidebar or topbar format. I think they were more
| common on slow news days, which both does and doesn't make
| sense.
|
| They became more common overall as newspapers declined; how
| prominent they are now, I don't know, because the dead tree
| edition isn't worth reading anymore.
| reaperducer wrote:
| This applied only to broadsheets (New York Times), and not to
| newspapers that used tabloid layout (Chicago Sun-Times).
|
| The reason "above the fold" was valuable real estate was
| because whatever was there would be visible in newspaper
| vending machines, newspaper racks, and the stacks at kiosks.
|
| Newspapers that printed on tabloid-sized paper didn't have
| that problem, since they were not folded horizontally.
|
| Tabloid newspapers were generally read by the working class
| and were sized so that they could be read on trains, buses,
| and communal lunch tables. Broadsheets were read by the
| bosses who had private offices, individual desks, and space
| to spread out.
|
| / Previously worked for two newspaper companies.
| andi999 wrote:
| Reminds me of who reads British newspapers:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M
| soneca wrote:
| GP point maintains. At least in my country, I never saw ads
| above the folder, but the main headlines.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I recall the Chicago Tribune putting ads in the masthead,
| usually a reference to a promotional story lurking deeper
| inside the paper. And then there was this.
|
| http://mchenrycountyblog.com/2013/01/21/message-of-the-
| day-a...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-02-22 23:00 UTC)