Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked
github.com
github.com
I intended the word only in the sense "to suffer the same fate as the azer/kik project".
I renamed the project, my apologies to anyone who could have been offended by my mistake.
Good reading is the Apple V Apple series of court cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
So, it seems like the operative questions are 1) How likely is X to create an npm package? and 2) If a node.js developer types `npm install X`, are they more likely to expect X's package, or my package?
For the parent commenter, 1 is a definite no, and 2 is kinda wishy-washy.
Going to foo.com is a very serviceable strategy for getting foo corps website and if it's not you have invested 2 seconds and risked nothing.
Contrast that with npm unless you specifically know the package by name getting foo corps software by npm install foo is a total crap shoot that is only somewhat likely to succeed will cost you as much as a minute or more of your time and is installing software considered by most technical people to be risky.
Nobody is likely to confuse foo package with foo Corp unless the description of the package is unclear thus name and description should be considered together to decide if confusion exists.
It's more likely that most had heard of neither and now way more clear on who both parties are.
You all owe parro-it (<-- notice the country code in the name? big clue) an apology. How about setting this right with some substantive feedback about the project?
Edit: We'll mark this and the other "is that a racist slur on the bikeshed" subthreads off-topic, so your forthcoming substantive feedbacks should all rank higher in the thread.
1: https://github.com/parro-it/canibekiked/issues/2#issuecommen...
Here you go if you're interested in the history or etymology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kike
> The word kike was born on Ellis Island when there were Jewish migrants who were also illiterate (or could not use Latin alphabet letters). When asked to sign the entry-forms with the customary "X," the Jewish immigrants would refuse, because they associated an X with the cross of Christianity. Instead, they drew a circle as the signature on the entry-forms. The Yiddish word for "circle" is kikel (pronounced ky-kul), and for "little circle," kikeleh (pronounced ky-kul-uh). Before long the immigration inspectors were calling anyone who signed with an "O" in place of an "X" a kikel or kikeleh or kikee or, finally and succinctly, kike.
"Kiked" is an instance of unfortunately misinterpretable verbing. I parsed it that way too at first.
Can I be 'kik'-ed.
Kik being the operative word here not the slur to which you refer.
In English, words ending in a single short vowel followed by a single consonant double the consonant before adding '-ed' to form the past tense. That's the grammatical rule.
I still can't tell if this project is by someone with bad grammar or some 4chan-bred bigot trying to make a double entendre, but either way, it's fucking obnoxious to see it on the front page of Hacker News.
Your posts come across as ascribing malice to a fairly trivial (IMO) mistake. Politely pointing out that the name could be misinterpreted to be a derogatory term would have been a been course of action.
Of course, because you can't read, it's obnoxious to be on the front page.
Maybe it's only in some parts of the world?
kike = a jewish person
As a side-note, I in no way think the author made any association with the word kike. Even though I know the word, I didn't jump to that conclusion at least, especially given the context.
None of IBM, Microsoft, or Facebook end in exactly one 'short' vowel plus one consonant, which is the rule, in English, that determines when the final consonant is doubled. That's why your examples don't work.
Incidentally, I would suggest "Microsoftened", since "soften" is already a verb that everyone is comfortable using. "Facebooked", of course, was a normal word in common use before anyone ever heard of Zuckerberg. Two vowels followed by a consonant is simply a different situation than one vowel followed by a consonant.
In any case, I think that it's fair to inform the author but feeling offended seems unnecessary. I had certainly never heard this word before and judging from the other threads here, neither had several native English speakers. To think that it was done on purpose seems really far fetched to me.
Wouldn't you rather believe that this person didn't maliciously name this thing and get on with your day? Not everyone on earth is a horrible person.
Do you have any idea how telling me to 'smile a little' about this comes across?
A lot of horrible things have happened to Jewish people in the past, yes, but that doesn't give you the right to leap down someone's throat for what looks to be a very honest mistake.
Determining how I respond to ethnic slurs against me or my people really isn't up to you, either.
And seriously, what do you honestly believe happened here? That an Italian, non-native English speaker incorrectly conjugated the non-verb "kik" into the best he could? Or that he knowingly and maliciously took a jab at all Jewish people for seemingly no reason whatsoever? If it's honestly the latter, then I feel sorry for you.
No, I can't tell you how to respond. But I can sure as hell tell you when you're coming off like an asshole by responding in the way you do.
It looks like the author is Italian, so I would hazard that they're not a native and that this is just an innocent mistake in transcribing what they think "kik'd" ought to sound like.
Therefore we doubled the 'k' above. We also added hyphens for clarity. And camel case for clarity. Please lord let it be clear now.
I have nothing against jews, but it pisses me off that some local slang is elevated into a global "character sequence you can't use", so long as that slang originates in NYC. Imagine if every other city had that privilege; we wouldn't be able to name anything.
Probably someday that will be the case, but it isn't yet -- the US still has an outsize influence.
Once this was figured out as the problem, Jewish immigrants were instructed (in yiddish) to write a circle instead, thus they were referred to as "kikes" by immigration officials.
Since the origin of the term is specifically american, why should the rest of the world have to deal with it? You're not really addressing the original concern. Your theory of offensiveness as being "words with only one possible meaning" is fallacious, since again, that meaning is derived from the very specific mores of only one society. Very disappointing to see this kind of thoughtless "america is the center of the universe" opinion in HN.
Still, if you're publishing for an international audience, it makes sense and is polite to make a change once you've been alerted. I think Parro-it handled this very well. (Especially since, as others have pointed out, the proper English conjugation of "kik" is "kikked".)
This sort of thing does go both ways, BTW. There have been several significant media flaps over the word "spaz," which just means "clumsy/hyper/awkward" in American English, but is a pretty serious ableist slur in British English.