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Comment by inflatableDodo | Hacker News Reader

maybe we should put some thought into how we can make sure the police use it properly.

This times a million. Do not just make the device accurate, make sure it is very hard for a motivated individual to trick it into being inaccurate, in either direction. Please excuse the terminology, was learned from very elderly engineers, but above foolproof (stupidity), there is twatproof (deliberate misuse) and cuntproof (educated malice). Fully cuntproofing is very hard, but any device like this should be at least fully twatproofed, with at least some attempt at cuntproofing.

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reading HN as a woman is an exercise in managing fury

My apologies if I have caused offense. I have angered you here and this wasn't my intention.

One thing I will say is that the prefixes I gave are in general use as descriptive epithets by both men and women across much of the English speaking world, along with many others decribing the male genitalia, with much greater frequency than you will find on here. Personally, I'm with Alice Fraser on this one - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gioul9PW9B0 - but will cheerfully adapt the taxonomy in future, if I can find better words to use for the prefixes. Any ideas?

Why not just say what you mean? The prefixes you used are incomprehensible without the parentheticals following them ("(deliberate misuse)" etc.), so why not just use those?

I'm not convinced it breaks down into three clean categories anyway.

>The prefixes you used are incomprehensible without the parentheticals following them

I disagree. In the taxonomy of these things, being a twat is more impulsive misbehaviour, while being a cunt involves malicious aforethought and intent. There is a fairly clear meaning from that general usage.

>I'm not convinced it breaks down into three clean categories anyway.

I agree, but I didn't make it up and people tend to use the rule of three for stuff like this. I suppose a category of dickproof could be added between foolproof and twatproof, but I think it already has a lot of overlap with foolproof.

I think your "general usage" is actually fairly specific to particular places and people. Without the explanations, I wouldn't have gleaned the meanings you're assigning (I'm a native English speaker from NZ). It seems pointlessly obfuscated and offensive to me.

Thought I'd go find out if I was being particularly insensitive or if people were clutching their pearls a bit tightly. Couldn't find many examples, but here they are in the wild and not causing any noticable problems.

Firstly, twatproof, from reply #14 in the Festool owner's group to a question about dovetails:

>"I just had a go with the Festool jig and it's the most twatproof solution I've ever seen."

https://www.festoolownersgroup.com/hand-tools/advice-sought-...

and secondly, cuntproof, on twitter, with someone called Wiryjack describing the term to the award winning writer and naturalist Helen Macdonald:

>"A mechanic I used to know described things as 'cuntproof', which I took to mean foolproof but extra robust to deter the malicious as well as the stupid."

https://twitter.com/Wiryjack/status/938755264815271938

I may note that Helen Macdonald apparently considers cuntproof to be an excellent term, well worth adding to her vocabulary.

This seems like a very strange idea to triple down on. Take or leave the feedback, but I'm not sure you are helped by trying to debate the relative merit of these terms.

FWIW, as a native English speaker I also found your post both needlessly offensive and equally inscrutable.

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