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Comment by fnfjfk | Hacker News Reader

> customer support specialist ed blair and software engineer Blade Barringer

Weird editing here—one name in lowercase?

> posted on X (formerly Twitter)

Speaking of editing—oh my, are we going to do this parenthetical forever?

> Barringer, the Bandcamp software engineer, says that a handful of engineers are still performing the critical tasks needed to keep the site running, but otherwise they can’t commit new code. He found a minor bug this week but couldn’t access the program he needed to fix it.

This is interesting! They're locked out of the tools for committing code, but have production access? (SSH?)

But if they are trying to demonstrate their necessity and want to form a union, not doing those critical tasks may be a better idea? If the company is not showing interest in supporting you, don't support the company?

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  Speaking of editing—oh my, are we going to do this parenthetical forever?

X isn't a brand, it's a foundation of our alphabet and used for many different things in society. So yes, we will do this likely until it's no longer used. Thank elon for that.

Perhaps the endpoint of this will mimic the moment Prince changed his name to a symbol and instead of using the symbol, media settled on calling him The Artist Fromerly Known As Prince, or TAFKAP.

So, Twitter is now X but when we tire of explaining away the inherent confusion of a single letter name, we'll converge on calling it TWFKAT.

When someone types "posted on X" in no way does anyone think someone posted something to a letter. They know it means X the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. So, really, there's no need to keep doing this parenthetical.

That isn't necessarily true, it takes a long time for everyone to know something.

It doesn't cost you much to glaze over the parenthetical but helps a lot for the couple of readers who won't understand.

Especially since Googling still doesn't work, here are the results in order: the Twitter handle, the film, the app (The X app is the trusted global digital town square for everyone. With X, you can: - Post content for the world to see and join public conversation), the movie a few times, the band, a bunch of pictures and finally Twitter is rebranding.

Note the handle and app don't mention Twitter except in an unhelpful way.

Pretty sure the actual one is the last link on the first page.

It's pretty common to see "posted on X" or "posted on XYZ" as a way of indicating interchangeability for the record.

With the common usage of the letter X as a generic stand-in, it's like naming your company "anything", "*", or "_".

I didn't know there was a rename. Hopefully they can keep up calling out the old name to let people know!

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