Eh, I've been learning about linguistics and it's changed my view on the topic.

Sorry, I wasn't online before 1988.

The developers of PNG at least documented the pronunciation right from the start: ping

It would make more sense if it was written “enflammable”, similar to French.

But both forms are acceptable… meaning in French, you can have “ininflammable”!

Didn't baud = bps since we send 8bit "words" so for all of intents and purposes (except 40 year old gear) it's kind of correct?

Who uses baud nowadays though?!

Lol, no they don't. Because outside of a scientific setting- the words are synonyms. Listed as such within any modern dictionary or thesaurus. Just because YOU have a narrow understanding of a word, doesn't make its use outside of that scope wrong.

"the·o·ry
/ˈTHirē/
noun
noun: theory; plural noun: theories

a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained."

"hy·poth·e·sis
/hīˈpäTHəsəs/
noun
noun: hypothesis; plural noun: hypotheses

a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation."

I'm gonna reuse an old comment here

"literally" being used to mean "figuratively" dates back to 3 years after the word "literally" began meaning "actually". If this is a hill to die on, you need to use "literally" exclusively to mean "as written in the texts". Common usage of "literally" to mean "actually" and "figuratively" both date to the 1590s

Some words that begin in gi have a j sound and some have a g sound. There’s no rule. English just be like that.

There’s giraffe and there’s girl.

There’s gibberish and there’s gibbon.

There’s gigantic and there’s gigabyte.

There’s ginger and there’s gingham.

The whole debate on GIF is dumb. Both pronunciations are acceptable. I would say it like gift personally, but there’s no reason to think that gif- has to sound like g vs j. There’s just no rule for it in English.

I miss leetspeak personally

I work in crypto. No, not "cryptocurrency".

I study linguistics, and ironically, I have no idea what you mean.

The hilarious part was I was recently dating a linguistics TA working towards her masters. The entire draw between us was linguistics.

This is so hilarious to me.

Icing on the cake, my ex-fiancé had her masters in communication.

It's one of the few playful arguments left in this world, I think. If there is one that can still be had online, it's probably this one.

To be honest, I pronounce gif like "gif" or "gif" depending on my mood.

While my personal bias is in the creators favor, it doesn't seem to me that GIF is even a proper word to begin with. It's an abbreviation and a format extension. As such, there aren't any rules that should be applied even if there were rules that could.

File extensions have such a wide variety of pronunciations it makes "gif" irrelevant anyway. (Is it E-X-E or is it "ex-ee"?)

Yes

I still call it P N G

I had this happen with 3D (as in computer graphics, 3D animation...) when films started releasing in stereo. Fortunately it's mostly a thing of the past now

Very interesting! Goes to show no subject of study is monolithic in belief! Well, as an unlearned person, here's where the topic intersected with linguistics for me: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2pX2MC8vjKOeepdvCrQ07h

The podcast is Lingthusiam.

Long story short it's back to the changing nature of definitions based on how people use the word. Hence, my saying they are found, as they can be found to have evolved. Have a great one!

I worked in all those areas as well as networking. And it only put me in management, which I fucking hate.

Plus side: only have to deal with the CEO. Downside: anytime I try to do what I enjoy doing, I have to delegate the task or at least be training.

So much bullshit of checking on what my team is doing, acting as a liaison and paralegal to work with various vendors, etc.

But hey: I am no longer customer facing and I choose my hours. As long as the projects stay on track, cool.

And I am a pretty good boss to work for. I keep us way ahead of schedule, and when my team says they have nothing to do, I cause a network issue that kills the cameras and tell them to watch a movie.

When the CEO bitches about the network issue, I remind him of how he wouldn't buy the equipment I recommended and that we should have ran fiber to my team's building.

Sounds like I am shitty to the company from an HR standard, but if I need something in a pinch, my team will pop in with 200% energy and focus. They like coming to work and don't dread when I come around.

It was funny when new hires come on and I find they are doomscrolling tiktok on their phones. Man, are we reaching the projected goal date? Then I give no fucks.

As for metrics, because I used to work for a fortune 500 company, I just did what I did then: learn the API, write a script system that opens tickets with plenty of randomized jargon, and close them after a few hours. Dude is just looking at big picture shit anyhow.

I always wanted to work for me, but I think I am a unicorn.

Did you reply to the wrong comment? Just figured this sounds like it was meant for another thread and don't want that convo interrupted.

How do we discuss anything when different people mean different things but use the same words? We all have weird perceptions of scale. Ask an american how far away 'far away' is. Then ask a European. Ask someone how they define 'smart.' Then ask someone who fits the first one's definition. You can get probably a dozen definitions each for words like 'friend,' 'trans,' 'fascist,' 'appropriate for children,' or just 'child.' Some people are dedicated to precision of language but society is full of people who say 'It was bluh,' because they either cannot, or just as often will not, put in the mental effort to find the words to express what they mean. Add in how most people don't have the time/bandwidth to learn what AI is, (or LLM, or genAI, or agentic, or neural networks, or conditionals, or statistical modeling, or anything else) but still want to feel like they do, so they map 'AI' onto some pre-existing concept in their head so they don't have to learn a new word.

I use Voyager and it is buggy as shit. So yeah, this was a misthread response. Annoying. Pay no mind. Have a great week!

This was intended for a programmerhumor post.

Awww, you missed out on the C:\DOS\RUN times!

Yes, in 1988, I used an Amiga 500 to go online. Wrote and ran my own BBS on it in 1989. Switched to Linux on PC in 1995, after booting into NetBSD a few times on an Amiga 3000.