Skip to content

mathiasvr/real-things-with-funny-names

Folders and files

NameName
Last commit message
Last commit date

Latest commit

 

History

29 Commits
 
 

Repository files navigation

Real Things with Funny Names

List of things with names that, without any context, sounds quite strange.

  • Baby Boom Galaxy - Starburst galaxy generating over 4,000 stars per year.
  • Baby-step giant-step - Algorithm for computing the discrete logarithm.
  • Ball tree - Space partitioning data structure for organizing points in a multi-dimensional space.
  • Billion laughs attack - A type of denial-of-service (DoS) attack aimed at parsers of XML documents.
  • Birthday problem - Probability that two people in a group have the same birthday.
  • Black swan theory - Metaphor that describes an event that has a major effect and comes as a surprise.
  • Broadcast storm - Accumulation of broadcast and multicast traffic on a computer network.
  • Bubble sort - Simple sorting algorithm that compares and swaps adjacent elements.
  • Bus factor - Minimum number of team members that can disappear from a project before it stalls.
  • Butterfly effect - When a small change in a system can result in large differences.
  • Cannibalize - Use a machine as a source of spare parts for another machine.
  • Christmas tree packet - Network packet with every option set for the protocol in use.
  • Code golf - Recreational programming competition to achieve the shortest source code of an algorithm.
  • Cowboy coding - Undisciplined approach to software development.
  • Curse of dimensionality - Phenomena that arise when analyzing data in high-dimensional spaces.
  • Dark data - Operational data that is not being used.
  • Eating your own dog food - Using own products or services for internal operations.
  • Fork bomb - Denial-of-service attack where a process replicates itself to deplete available system resources.
  • The Great Attractor - A gravitational anomaly tens of thousands of times more massive than the Milky Way.
  • Great Pacific garbage patch A gyre of marine debris particles in the central North Pacific Ocean.
  • Heisenbug - Software bug that seems to disappear when one attempts to study it.
  • Holy grail distribution - Probability distribution considered ideal for so-called "tail risk" hedging funds.
  • Hype cycle - Graphical representation of the maturity, adoption and social application of technologies.
  • Look-elsewhere effect - Phenomenon where a statistically significant observation have arisen by chance.
  • Martian packet - IP packet with a source or destination address reserved for special-use.
  • Paper street - A road or street that appears on maps but does not exist in reality.
  • Rainbow table - Precomputed table for reversing cryptographic hash functions.
  • Rubber duck debugging - Method of debugging code by explaining it to a rubber duck.
  • Sneakernet - Transfer of electronic information by physically moving media between computers.
  • Space-time crystal - Structure that repeats periodically in time and space.
  • Surreal number - Natural collection of numbers including the real numbers and the infinite ordinal numbers.
  • Tail risk - The financial risk of an asset moving more than 3 standard deviations from its current price.
  • Tamagotchi effect - Development of emotional attachment with machines, robots or software agents.
  • Taxicab geometry - Geometry that uses the Manhattan distance metric.
  • Twin films - Films with very similar plot produced or released at the same time.

I used to bookmark things like this just because of the name. Please let me know if you have more examples! :)

About

📝 A list of things with funny names

Topics

Resources

Stars

Watchers

Forks