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scblock

X by Google, X by Twitter, X by X. Terrible branding on all sides and I am so not interested in any of this bullshit.

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The only thing I can ask is: Y ???

It's a combination of things really.

This is even better in Spanish.

["Y?" is the equivalent of "And?"]

YCombinator needs to rebrand as Y to compete in this new world.

Zzz

Much more original and superior

Thank you

"Google X" actually made (and maybe still makes) a lot of sense.

The history is that around 2010 Google wanted to kick off experimental projects, in part because they were starting to lose top talent to startups. Since they had Google Maps and Google Images and Google Earth and Google Mail etc, they named the new org Google X as a space for the new and undefined projects.

I'm told internally at Reddit there's a group called Reddit X working on the next big thing which recently got disbanded.

>the next big thing which recently got disbanded

A redesign that only applies to 30% of the website? A new video player that's even more broken?

Shit. Don't give them any more ideas. Just wait until they finish the current "revamp of the awards system".

https://x.redditinc.com

The money/coins/rewards everywhere, the childish avatars, the lies about privacy and "empowering" redditors...

Thanks, I hate everything about it.

It just reminds me of Telegram. This page I mean, and that too visually it kinda resembles some Telegram product pages. However, unlike Reddit, Telegram app is epic good.

There was also NHSX, which got merged into NHS Digital, which then got merged into NHS England.

WTH, I totally 100% thought this was Musk's new company. There is already a company called X by Alphabet, what a goof.

Musk's original web payments company was x.com, which he started in the late 90's. Then it did a very early merge with some other startup, and the combined company rebranded to PayPal. At some point, Musk bought back the domain from PayPal.

I do not understand why anyone would think that it's a great idea to do a this major rebranding of an existing company with a well-known brand.

This entire endeavour not sure whether conscious or unconscious is Musk trying to -- gosh, there's a word for this but my English is failing me -- to finally get even with Thiel, to show Thiel he can do everything Thiel did but better. Someone like Musk never fully recovers from getting fired from his dear X.com post-merge. Make no mistake: back then Musk was doing a stupid by trying to force a Windows tech stack on a payment company which was using Unix.

Thiel was one of the largest donors of Trump in 2016, is a true darling of the alt right so of course Musk must rub shoulders with them.

Between the erstwhile x.com and Confinity the company which launched PayPal, the latter succeeded, gobbled up x.com so now of course Musk must show to Thiel that he can make a successful payment company called x.com. He must.

That's the reason for all this bullshit, I am certain.

> gosh, there's a word for this

one-upmanship?

Google X doesn't really need brand recognition, because they're supposed to pump out brands, not be the brand. IE Waymo, verily, etc.

"Google" is the brand name for enshittification.

Scrolling down, this looks like Google's X.

> scrolling down

There are resources available. https://www.healthline.com/health/suicide-and-suicidal-behav...

take a dramamine before scrolling down

It is.

mac os x

10 is actually a pretty special number

I suspect the "X" branding for these companies has less to do with Roman numerals and more to do with the prominent use of "X" in mathematics as a unknown variable, and that's due to René Descartes according to:

https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/8109/why-are-x-and-y...

There’s also a history of using ‘X’ as the designation for eXperimental planes, e.g the X-15.

I always assumed that was the inspiration for the use in tech branding like Google X - conjuring up images of skunkworks, etc.

hmm:

mac os: numeral

generation: variable

google: eXperimental!

malcom: variable

elon: hey yo, check it out i tried to register x.com and actually got it!

the question is... chitter or xitter?

Am I the only one thinking of that picture of ten roman legionaries, captioned "The X Men"?

For me, the 90's X-Men theme doesn't work in the movie 300.

ten fingers, ten toes, base ten arabic numbers

OS X at least has the excuse of having come out during the time when Generation X were the young adult audience sought after by marketers.

In contrast, today we have Gen X executives who are seemingly trying to recapture the glory days of the late '90s.

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