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Comment by Uehreka | Hacker News Reader

Among CPU geeks “Team Red” means AMD. If you’re talking about their GPU competition then “Team Green” is Nvidia, and if you’re talking about their CPU competition “Team Blue” is Intel (and in American politics, Team Red generally would refer to the Republicans). I can’t speak to the aesthetics of the Bull or the odd choice of the mammal best known in the West for spreading Covid to humans as the version mascot, but hey, it’s original.

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I have to say I cringe a bit when I see terms like this and it's oddly off-putting to me.

It's a little like if you're shopping for a video game console or a phone and can't get a straight answer on anything due to children arguing over which brand's product they like better all over the internet.

I get that it's just terminology but it's always struck me as odd that buyers would affiliate themselves so strongly with a brand in an open, competitive marketplace.

At least between (for example) Android and iPhones there are objective differences that might matter to you in picking one or the other, but for internal components that fundamentally don't impact how the device works it seems odd to have such strong feelings about it.

Surely all I care about as the consumer is if this laptop is objectively better for my use case than my other options in its price range?

I hear these a lot but I've never heard someone self-identify as being on "Team Green" or whatever. They're just nicknames.

> At least between (for example) Android and iPhones there are objective differences that might matter to you in picking one or the other, but for internal components that fundamentally don't impact how the device works it seems odd to have such strong feelings about it.

The choice between AMD and Nvidia has a strong impact on how your device will work - and that is beyond just performance.

> I get that it's just terminology but it's always struck me as odd that buyers would affiliate themselves so strongly with a brand in an open, competitive marketplace.

I feel the same way about politics

I don't think it's necessarily that people affiliate themselves with a specific team, like some do with xBox vs Playstation for example. Team names have been more popular lately due to the comeback of AMD, where a lot of people were rooting for "team red" so that the CPU market wouldn't be as stagnant. However most people still just buy the product with the most performance per dollar, or support for their software.

>At least between (for example) Android and iPhones there are objective differences that might matter to you in picking one or the other, but for internal components that fundamentally don't impact how the device works

There are fundamental differences to AMD vs Nvidia GPUs if you're using them in a professional context. Main one being if the software you need uses CUDA acceleration you need to buy Nvidia because it's their technology and will not run on an AMD card.

I am in Europe and it's the first time ever I hear about bulls spreading Covid to humans.

Pangolin

The pangolin as an intermediate host between bats and humans is a valid virologist theory, but as far as I am aware there is no physical evidence for these zoonotic jumps, is there?

As far as I've been able to tell, the evidence for pangolins as the vector for Covid is somewhat circumstantial at the moment, based largely on their presence in the Wuhan wet market that has been implicated in early spread, a history of pangolins being found to carry and transmit various coronaviruses similar to Covid-19, and some specifically suspicious test results in pangolins from the market. Nothing specifically causative that I've seen (AFAIK, the link to the wet market as the source rather than an early transmission location isn't even well-established).

I suspect that, given we're a year on from the initial transmission of the virus in humans, unless the Chinese government has more research they haven't made public, we'll likely never know the truth.

> AFAIK, the link to the wet market as the source rather than an early transmission location isn't even well-established

My understanding is that there's really no evidence for it being the source at all; it's effectively a myth. It was an early super spreader, but there's no particular reason to think it was the _source_.

I was referring to the Pangolin, which I had never heard of until 10 months ago. Mascot was probably the wrong word, but I don’t know what else to call the naming trend of “use an animal name that starts with the letter we want”.

Penguin? Most people will run Linux on it anyway

Oh believe me, you won’t be confusing a pangolin for a penguin anytime soon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin

That's not very precise of you.

First time I hear about a pangolin-Covid connection too. As far as the animal angle of the Covid goes the only thing that I can think of, with effort, is the mink, because of Dutch culling them in bulk in recent weeks. Nothing else.

Edit - looked it up. Ah, so that's about the Chinese market trading exotic wild animals that was the ground zero of the outbreak. Never remembered that it had pangolins in the mix and I doubt that very many people do.

I thought it was a bat? Never heard of a pangolin wrt to covid either.

pangolin unheard of until pandemic for sure but made it into household enough to be a starring feature in the South Park pandemic episode I noticed

Yes but if you buy one of these, install Ubuntu 12.04, and set your wallpaper to some of these lovely creatures then you can look at pangolins on Pangolin on your Pangolin. And isn't that what life's really all about in the end?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVt5EZNAqLU

South Park did it. Probably NSFW

The parent was talking about pangolins, although ironically there's data to show that bovines can also contract and transmit COVID-19. What a time to be alive! (or at the very least not yet dead in a pandemic!)

> I can’t speak to the aesthetics of the Bull or the odd choice of the mammal best known in the West for spreading Covid to humans as the version mascot

IIRC the Pangolin is already on their laptop lineup since a couple of years.

> and in American politics, Team Red generally would refer to the Republicans

Interestingly, this is surprisingly recent. In 20th century Democrats were usually (though not always) red, and Republicans blue, which would approximate UK usage (red for Labour, blue for Tories). Some TV network switched in the 90s, and it just caught on. Apparently 2000 was the first time it was done consistently.

Right. Red is normally for lefties... ("Red" being a reference to communism, I guess).

Wikipedia has a great article on all the different ways that color is used in politics:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_colour

The thing that confused me was saying no bull in at least two sentences, and having a huge bull in the middle of the picture.

"No bull" in this case being short for "no bullshit" - no misleading, exaggeration, or lies. It's an idiom, possibly an American one but I'm not sure. They're using it here as a pun.

I believe that it's a reference to the colloquialism that references how matadors use red capes to fight bulls:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=seeing%20red

So Team Red -> Seeing Red -> Bull?

Poor old pangolins. Personally I'd heard of them because they're so critically endangered with extinction. They seem like quite timid little creature. Hopefully their involvement in Covid transmission will encourage people to stop eating them or using them for bullshit folk medicine.

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