Hacker News Reader

Comment by ohitsdom | Hacker News Reader

I wish these "Call Me Maybe" blog titles would die already...

It's a series on testing durability claims in distributed computing workloads. It's a good name.

I wouldn't have guessed that from the title. What I got was something security related to MariaDB. And that's because I got used to the funny gifs and the `hacking is cool` mentality of the security industry...

It's a fairly long running and well known series. The first one was published a couple of years ago and was themed around the Carly Rae Jepsen song titled "Call Me Maybe" that was popular at the time.

From that a testing harness named Jepsen was also developed.

Sure, no problem with that. I just don't understand why we can't call e.g. a buffer overflow in software X a buffer overflow in software X instead of "Adventures in Memoryland!!! The bug, that 0wnzors your boxorz!!".

> I just don't understand why we can't call e.g. a buffer overflow in software X a buffer overflow in software X instead of "Adventures in Memoryland!!! The bug, that 0wnzors your boxorz!!".

Since you appear to be sincere, it's because sometimes a lot of people like to interact in human ways, which includes a bit of storytelling to relieve the monotony of just the facts.

We? Who is we? Aphyr can call it whatever he wants.

It has nothing to do with security. The series is about database consistency - whether or not the data stored in distributed systems is valid.

I didn't say it was related.

Ahem. "What I got was something security related to MariaDB."

Yes, that was my first impression guessing from the title. All I'm saying is that the title should be a rough approximation of the article so that the reader can have some vague idea of the contents.

I'd say anyone who puts that much time and work into it is allowed to call it whatever they want. Besides, as DannoHung pointed out, it's actually quite appropriate.

Last time one of these posts came up, someone made the interesting point that this series, and especially the Jepsen project, may well be around long after everybody has forgotten about their namesake.

“Call Me Maybe” was the #1 selling single of 2012, was nominated for 2 Grammy awards, has been covered and parodied by numerous other artists, and is still played all the time on pop radio stations. The Youtube video has been viewed 700 million times. I don’t think it’s going to be forgotten anytime soon.

It's not at all clear that popularity at time of publication correlates well with long term popularity for songs. See http://poly-graph.co/timeless/

i only just made the jepsen connection, so i'd believe that while "call me maybe" might achieve meme status, people will have forgotten who sang it.

I'm not nearly as sure about that. Software products, like pop stars, come and go. "Call Me Maybe" and "Call Me Maybe" have about equal chances of outlasting one another, as do "Jepsen" and "Jepsen".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com