Alphabet's Jigsaw Wants To Explain Tech Jargon To You, Launches Sideways Dictionary (cnet.com) 66
It might sound obvious, but the thing about tech is that sometimes it can get really, well, technical. From a report on CNET: So Alphabet wants to help make nitty-gritty tech jargon simpler to explain to the masses. On Tuesday, Jigsaw, a tech incubator owned by Google's parent company, launched a website called the Sideways Dictionary that takes jargon and puts it into terms normal people would understand. Jigsaw partnered with the Washington Post to build the tool.
Dictionary? (Score:3)
What's that?
Re: (Score:1)
Bought this in school:
Newton's Telecom Dictionary: Telecommunications, Networking, Information Technologies, The Internet, Wired, Wireless, Satellites and Fiber
Does what it says on the tin.
It might be useful! Does it define "moz://a"? (Score:1)
This dictionary thing may actually be useful.
Can anyone tell me if it defines the term "moz://a"?
I saw that term recently, but I'm not sure what it means.
At first I thought it might be a URL using a cool new protocol, but I've never heard of the "moz" protocol and the hostname of just "a" seems really unusual. That hostname doesn't even resolve for me!
So maybe it isn't a URL. Should I ignore the strange characters? I'm not sure what a "Moz a" is, though.
Should I read it as "Moza"? I don't know what that is,
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That's called a "wordmark" [wikipedia.org]. It's a logo or brand formed primarily out of stylized letters and symbols. Creative license is sometimes taken with the letterforms.
Just because it can be typed on a keyboard does not mean it should be taken literally.
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So basically it's poncy hispter shit.
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Wordmarks are a form of logo that's been around for hundreds of years.
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Such as?
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I'm lazy, so I may not go far enough back, but GE had its first wordmark in 1892. Not every wordmark changes the shapes of its letterforms to slightly non-letter shapes, only the more creative ones - some are subtle enough that you may have never noticed.
The Twinings tea company's logo is multiple hundreds of years old, but may or may not be considered a wordmark due to the fact that it's usually combined with a symbol.
The Staples word mark does not contain a letter L. That is a literal staple. This only
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Crowd-sourced with Reddit-style voting. Unlike Urban Dictionary, I assume they have some way of reviewing and taking overriding action. This also means that Boaty McBoatface-style answers will be caught.
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Blank page
Kind of. You're presented with a blank page, it then takes 4 or 5 seconds to load the text "Sideways Dictionary" at the bottom of the page. Not wildly impressed.
Content seems to be largely snippets worthy of BadAnalogyGuy.
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And when it does load, I can hardly read [imgur.com] what's on the page, aside from the blue "Please Explain." The text that says "write here" is barely visible, too small and way too light. Light gray on white is not exactly conducive to a good UI.
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The blinking cursor is readable enough. Explanatory text in full size and color is taken to mean literally text to most dumb end users, and they'll keep clicking next to it and hitting backspace. The search suggestions are only that - suggestions. You don't strictly need to see them either.
In real-world use, this site will presumably be linked to by article body text to define jargon in the article, so the search UI is very secondary.
Re:Link is ? (Score:4, Informative)
Doesn't work in Chrome with uBlock and Privacy Badger. Disabled uBlock, could see definitions but could not log in. Gave up.
Does not load at all on IE10. My work PC won't install IE11 for some reason.
I have not seen a site this shitty for a while. Normally something at least kinda works.
Needless JS, WAPO partnership unimpressive (Score:2)
Meanwhile Wikipedia (and related services including Wiktionary) get a lot more views, doesn't require JS to use, and works with a lot more browsers (including textual browsers). I'm also not impressed by the Washington Post "partnership". WAPO has been a source of "fake news" Russophobic hysteria lately: the Russians reportedly attacking the US electrical grid via a Vermont electrical facility (a story they still haven't retracted), and using the PropOrNot website as a viable source when we don't know who i
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Too much money (Score:2)
Bierce (Score:1)
Ambrose Bierce has prior art.
The jargon file (Score:3)
Anyone else thought about The Jargon File [catb.org]?
It is not that at all.
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Too many bad analogies (Score:2)
This tool provides only a bunch of analogies for tech jargon, but many are not good.
An API to a turnstile??? Not really at all useful to most people. The "Cinderella" one for 2-factor authentication is better, but still leaves off the most critical requirement that the 2 factors be of different nature. Generally this means two of: Something you know (password), something you have (token), or something you are (biometrics)
I keep seeing claims for 2-factor that are only having more than one of "something you
Re:Too many bad analogies (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, so the idea is that we have these analogies that "regular people" can understand. Then I look at an analogy for "Hackathon"
Okay, let's go look up "cosplay." Nope. Not there.
So much for "regular people" understanding...
Re: Too many bad analogies (Score:1)
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It has absolutely dumb algorithm of finding synonyms.
Asking about LED takes me to "Cryptography."
"File": "Internet Service Provider"
"Script":"Backend"
"WWW": Domain Name Servers.
It's beyond useless - it's actively harmful.
These are pretty bad (Score:2)
I have to give technical explanations to business types regularly and in my experience a poor analogy that gives the wrong impression of a technical concept is worse than useless. I've found in my career is if you can express why it is valuable for someone to understand a technical term or concept, they are more than capable of understanding it. People usually don't understand all this technical jargon not because it's hard, but because they can't be bothered.
I would call these analogies flawed at best. For
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If your analogy makes them shut up and do what you say it's as correct as it needs to be.
So far it sucks. (Score:5, Informative)
I went there looking for a geekanese to normie dictionary, instead I find an Urban Dictionary analogy list. I was going to share this with my users, as for now, I think I'll pass.
Re:So far it sucks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed.
Ad Blocking:
"Itâ(TM)s like vandalizing outdoor posters. A legitimate form of protest against adverts that have invaded public space. Or criminal damage to private property."
"Itâ(TM)s like fare dodging. If one person dodges their bus fare, it wonâ(TM)t have any great effect on the viability of the service. But if everyone does it, the bus company runs out of money and cancels the service."
"Itâ(TM)s like music piracy. Some people say ad blocking is to brands what music piracy was to music companies. You can see it as an existential threat, or a wake-up call."
Ironically I had to disable my ad-blocker to see that. Even without it, I can't seem to log in and add my own definition.
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Well it's good to see that the world's largest pusher of adverts is entirely honest and een handed on the issue.
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My analogy is:
It is like having sex when you are unsure if your partner has any STDs, so you wear a condom to protect yourself.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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HTTP also "seals" the message inside the protocol's encapsulation
The encapsulation for an HTTP message is the bounds of physical paper (which grows in size to fit the contents, of course). It's not hidden from view at all.
HTTPS is not even just a lined envelope. It's more like writing in secret code - the message itself is still plainly visible.
Re:Piece of (Score:5, Insightful)
At this point it's more a joke than anything else... I like the ransomware.
"It’s like taking a hostage. As the name suggests, it’s a form of kidnapping, where your data is taken hostage (often using a virus) and a ransom demand follows. In the more sophisticated cases, even Liam Neeson can’t help you."
Re: Piece of (Score:1)
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Wow (Score:2)
Poorly implemented website (Score:1)
Too much javascript interfering with scrolling and animations. Makes the user experience clunky and annoying. Looks like another Google-cum-Alphabet project destined for the dustbin.
But... (Score:1)
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can it do car analogies?
It can, but there are none: https://sidewaysdictionary.com... [sidewaysdictionary.com]
It's bad enought that marketing has taken over (Score:2)
Needs a lot of TLC... (Score:2)
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Like the Foldoc? From 1985? (Score:3)
This site: http://foldoc.org/ [foldoc.org]
Here's a wiki entry about it. [wikipedia.org]
"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun." -- Ecclesiastes 1:9
Goes twice for technology.