The language of silicon dreams and stack overflows.
When a website, app, or service stops working, causing customers to panic and post angry tweets while support teams pretend it's 'scheduled maintenance.'
Machine learning using artificial neural networks with many layers, which sometimes works brilliantly and sometimes produces completely wrong answers with high confidence.
A dubious claim masquerading as fact or scientific truth—the kind of statistic or assertion that sounds plausible but is actually corporate spin or pseudoscience dressed up as expertise. Named after creationist claims that humans and dinosaurs coexisted peacefully.
A telephone feature activated by dialing *69 (in North America) that automatically redials the phone number of the last incoming call, whether answered or missed. It was one of the earliest callback services offered by telephone companies.
Fancy word for tracking everything your users do so you can optimize the product—or sell the data. Depends on the company's ethics.
An application designed to live in the cloud and panic if it can't access the internet, usually meaning it's more expensive and complicated than the original system.
In UNIX/HTTP terminology, '200' is the server response code meaning OK—but this definition stretches it into casual slang as a way to just say 'yes' or 'I agree' to plans. It's tech lingo repurposed by people who think HTTP status codes are a personality trait.
An advanced fighting game combo in Street Fighter that chains together multiple ultra-powerful moves in rapid succession—the ultimate flex for players who've actually mastered frame data and input timing. It's the digital equivalent of a perfect hat trick.
Small tracking files that websites place on your browser to monitor your behavior and prove that privacy is dead. Sweet surveillance baked right into your browsing experience.
A fixed time period (usually two weeks) where developers furiously work on a small chunk of software features before a standup meeting where everyone pretends to be on the same page. It's controlled chaos masquerading as productivity.
AI systems designed not just to recognize patterns but to generate genuinely novel outputs—combining features and ideas in ways never seen before. It's where machine learning stops analyzing and starts imagining.
The increasingly normalized act of buying stuff on the internet instead of leaving your house like a normal person. Also known as 'adulting responsibly' or 'avoiding human interaction.'
When a machine learning model inherits all of humanity's worst prejudices because it was trained on biased historical data. Turns out garbage in equals garbage out, even with fancy math.
When your Minecraft installation becomes so corrupted with conflicting mods that the only solution is to delete everything and start fresh — a digital apocalypse followed by rebirth. Perfect metaphor for when your life is too broken to fix, so you just restart.
The art of defending your digital assets against people who want to steal them. It's a constant battle between hackers getting smarter and security teams getting exhausted.
An inexperienced and irritating user of IRC chat who accesses via Java clients, combining 'Java' with 'newbie.' Basically the 2000s equivalent of 'read the rules before posting.'
Slang for something ridiculously expensive—so pricey it makes your wallet cry. If it's bogbox, you're definitely not buying it without serious deliberation.
A lightweight software package that includes everything your application needs to run. Makes deploying code slightly less catastrophic.
Acronym for 'Works For Me'—a tech-world response implying that something you claim is broken actually functions fine on their end. Usually delivered with the subtext 'maybe it's a you problem.'
The animated progress bar on websites and media players that pulses back and forth while loading, named after KITT's iconic scanning light from the TV show 'Knight Rider.' It's that hypnotic visual reassurance that something is actually happening.
A multipurpose word with several meanings: the footbag toy itself, a group goal in footbag, a copycat who steals credit, or in tech—to break into computer systems through coding prowess. Sometimes it just means to chop something up aggressively.
A cybercriminal technique where attackers impersonate legitimate organizations via email to trick people into revealing passwords or sensitive information. It's social engineering that exploits human laziness instead of actual vulnerabilities.
Storing your data on someone else's computer while pretending this is more secure and private than your own. It's renting storage with extra marketing.
When tech infrastructure bounces data between systems so inefficiently that you could literally watch the data go back and forth.