Hacker News Reader

Comment by adsfgiodsnrio | Hacker News Reader

Leaving aside the legality, I find it tacky to use the names of dead people in advertisements. Grace Hopper did not endorse this product. We have no idea what she would have thought of Nvidia. Yet the lawyers are now fighting over the right to use her name and legacy to "create shareholder value".

The worst offender is Tesla, because I'm pretty sure he would have hated that company.

View on HN

It's tacky but I don't think they are in any way implying an endorsement. Tesla, Ampere, Pascal, Volta, Kelvin, Turing (and quite a few more I can't remember) are all Nvidia architecture names, and are all named after historically important scientists (well, I have my reservations about Kelvin, but that's more personal opinion)

Off topic, but I have to ask. What do you have against Kelvin?

Maybe they are a descendant of William Rankine. Maybe there is an epic 150-year Scottish Baron family feud still going.

My guess is that Gruturo is Irish or is of Irish descent. Kelvin took public stances against the independence (or "home rule") of Ireland.

For Nvidia architectures it wasn't 'Kelvin', it was 'Kepler', as in Johannes Kepler the astronomer.

Kelvin (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_(microarchitecture) ) was an architecture of theirs that was released in 2001.

I think they only started using the scientist codenames publicly starting from Tesla, but yeah they've used them internally almost since the founding of the company. Early on there was Fahrenheit, Celsius, Kelvin, Rankine and Curie, then the well-known Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, etc.

Oh wow; I did not realize their architecture naming scheme even went back that far. That was their first one. The earliest I remembered hearing them call out the name was Tesla.

For other's reference, nvidia arch's listed on wikipedia as follows in order:

Kelvin, Rankine, Curie, Tesla, Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Volta, Turing, Ampere, Lovelace + Hopper

it's just flattery, same as naming a road, Martin Luther King drive, Washington boulevard, etc. They may or may not have approved all this, but this just signifies that you want them to be remembered in your own way.

I think naming a public road after someone is a lot different than naming a private company's product after someone.

Yeah we need a law against it. A lot of people would support such law. Could be defining issue of our times.

It would be hilarious if Tesla had to change its name to Electricity Cars LLC or whatever

if anything the teslabots have trained me to think of Tesla as a power company and not a automobile manufacturer.

they're both intended to honor said person, no?

If it's an internal name, maybe, but external names are generally intended to manipulate the public via psychology to make unconscious connections to the product that will make them want the product, in other words "marketing 101".

I wonder if it's safe to name something "Sagan" now [1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_7100#Codename_...

It's more fun when the people are alive to complain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litigation_involving_Apple_Inc...

Who knew that one of the most profitable companies on Earth would get there by calling Carl Sagan a "butt head astronomer"!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com