Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

NABLA is one typo away from some unsavory people.


For those missing the reference, NAMBLA is the "man/boy love association" (as in pedophiles).


Back before SWATting was a thing, signing up people you disliked as members of NAMBLA was all the rage.

If you ask me it was funnier, and less risk of anybody actually dying.


It's also the name of a mathematical vector derivative operator (∇).


Interesting, I only knew it as the del until now


OMG, how did you remember that

  nabla x nabla = labla(ce)?


I think you meant Laplace (Laplacian operator).


That's the mnemonic I was taught, but granted, it takes some artistic license to make it rhyme.


Ha! lol ^^ Ok, I see!


And I thought only ∂ is called "del".


i thought it was the symbol for gradient?

edit: ah, the name of the symbol for the gradient operator is nabla


To scientific-oriented minds it only refers to the mathematical operator.

I personally did not know about, and don't care about, the "horrifying" thing you see in nabla. And I will keep being like that.

If we were to start tracking all the things that are "a typo away from a bad thing", not a lot of words would be left.


I'm sure you have a list of things that you would not want to be "one typo away" from.


There are too many things to really worry about it too much. It's not really how language works anyway - like would you say "You don't want to call your organisation the Rare Books Association because 'rare' is only one letter away from 'rape'?" - clearly that's ridiculous.


"Rare Books A**ociation" already has 1 bad word right in it. No typo needed.


I don't. One typo away means it stays different.


I used to study news, which meant reading a lot of it, so maybe I'm not representative, but I immediately noticed that.

Whoever tastefully drew their logo in lowercase might've warned them not do it as all-caps elsewhere, if they were aware of the US brand issue.

If I had to refer to this brand name in text, such as in specs, I wouldn't do all-caps like they have. (To US people, who may be familiar with the toxic brand from written news, US journalism style guides tend to put initialisms and acronyms in all-caps, unlike in parts of Europe.) I would capitalize only the first letter.


I've seen other comment for the supposed unsavory thing but I've never heard about it, like, at all. Only know it as the mathematical operator. Also being used as card name for a children card game that's a bit infamously censor heavy so I think it's safe enough https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Mathmech_Nabla


I mean, North American Marlon Brando Look-Alikes are not that bad.


Never heard of the term in question, is the word similar sounding to this by accident or is it tongue-in-cheek inspiration of some sort?


I've never heard of it either until reading these comments (I'm in Australia). Assuming the NA in that acronym means North America (?) and given that Denx and this new entity is German it's probably safe to assume that they haven't heard of it either.


Don't help those unsavory people hog a large part of our shared namespace.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: