9 ms·
Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked
- jepler 11y ago#unfortunatesubstring
- thinkpad20 11y agoAm I parsing it incorrectly in my head, or does this project have a blatantly antisemitic name?
- atom_enger 11y agoI read it the same way. I don't think it was intentional. I think this name without the e would be much better.
- dindresto 11y agoSorry if it is rather obvious, but I cannot see it. Would you care to elaborate? (no native English speaker here)
- atom_enger 11y agoIt's the last five letters without the d. It's an ethnic slur for a Jewish person. Here you go if you're interested in the history or etymology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kike
- phamilton 11y agoThe Etymology is fascinating: > The word kike was born on Ellis Island when there were Jewish migrants who were also illiterate (or could not use Latin alphabet letters). When asked to sign the entry-forms with the customary "X," the Jewish immigrants would refuse, because they associated an X with the cross of Christianity. Instead, they drew a circle as the signature on the entry-forms. The Yiddish word for "circle" is kikel (pronounced ky-kul), and for "little circle," kikeleh (pronounced ky-kul-uh). Before long the immigration inspectors were calling anyone who signed with an "O" in place of an "X" a kikel or kikeleh or kikee or, finally and succinctly, kike.
- octatoan 11y agoKik was the name of the npm package that is the source of all the recent hullabaloo. "Kiked" is an instance of unfortunately misinterpretable verbing. I parsed it that way too at first.
- josh2600 11y agoYou are parsing it incorrectly. Can I be 'kik'-ed. Kik being the operative word here not the slur to which you refer.
- earlyresort 11y agoPerhaps my background makes me a little more attuned to this particular word, but 'kike' practically leapt off the page to me. In English, words ending in a single short vowel followed by a single consonant double the consonant before adding '-ed' to form the past tense. That's the grammatical rule. I still can't tell if this project is by someone with bad grammar or some 4chan-bred bigot trying to make a double entendre, but either way, it's fucking obnoxious to see it on the front page of Hacker News.
- ChristianBundy 11y agoNever attribute to 4chan that which could adequately be explained by bad grammar.
- stordoff 11y agoI'm a native English speaker, and probably would have made the same mistake. 'Kick' conjugates as 'kicked', so I would have conjugated 'Kik' as 'Kiked' and 'Kikked' just looks weird to me. Though I've heard the term 'kike' before, I certainly don't hear it enough (I'm in the UK FWIW) that I would have recognised it unless it was pointed out (and obviously at that point would adjust the name). Your posts come across as ascribing malice to a fairly trivial (IMO) mistake. Politely pointing out that the name could be misinterpreted to be a derogatory term would have been a been course of action.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- joshmanders 11y ago> either way, it's fucking obnoxious to see it on the front page of Hacker News. Of course, because you can't read, it's obnoxious to be on the front page.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- oneeyedpigeon 11y agoMe too. I think the owner of this project needs to have a serious think about the name, ironically.
- slantyyz 11y agoFor me the irony comes from the library being a name checker for trademarked words that itself could have benefited from some name checking itself.
- coreyp_1 11y agoNative english speaker here, and I have no idea what part of this might be considered anti-semitic. Maybe it's only in some parts of the world?
- alextgordon 11y agokik = a messaging app kike = a jewish person
- coreyp_1 11y agoWeird. I'm from Texas, in my 30's, and have never heard the word before. Then again, growing up I never heard anyone talking bad about Jews either.
- partisan 11y agoI think you would have to wallowing deep in anti-semitism to use a word like that so it is a good thing you aren't surrounded by people like that.
- phamilton 11y agoOr live in a predominant Jewish community and hear kids on the playground using it as a joke because both parties were Jewish.
- skywhopper 11y agoI've never heard anyone say it in person, but I do remember the first time I was aware of it. The story is here under "Dispute regarding lyrics and context": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Don%27t_Care_About_Us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Don%27t_Care_About_Us
- skywhopper 11y agoTo be clear, the second is an offensive, derogatory slur for a Jewish person.
- jessaustin 11y agoYou are reading correctly. The project name doesn't follow English inflection rules. Just as e.g. "tap" becomes "tapped", "kik" should become "kikked". "Kiked" is an inflection of "kike", just as "liked" is an inflection of "like" and "taped" is an inflection of "tape". This mistake is easy to make, since there aren't any English verbs spelled ending "ik"; words with this sound are instead spelled ending "ick".
- Tehnix 11y agoThe "Kiked" should probably be read as "Kik'ed" and in any regards, "Kikked" would be wrong. Kik is an entity and not a word in itself here. Try replacing it with "IBM'ed", "Microsoft'ed", "Facebook'ed" etc. The last one is the closest one, you wouldn't be saying "Facebookked". As a side-note, I in no way think the author made any association with the word kike. Even though I know the word, I didn't jump to that conclusion at least, especially given the context.
- gyardley 11y agoThe entity has nothing to do with it. Back when I worked for the comparison shopping NexTag, for example, people would certainly joke about being 'nextagged', not 'nextaged', which would've been read as something completely different. None of IBM, Microsoft, or Facebook end in exactly one 'short' vowel plus one consonant, which is the rule, in English, that determines when the final consonant is doubled. That's why your examples don't work.
- phamilton 11y agoAlso, booked is the correct past tense anyway, so Facebookked is a bad example.
- jessaustin 11y agoOther languages might have special rules regarding proper nouns and their use as verbs, but English doesn't. Basically, we follow the normal rules for words, except in cases where that would cause a problem. In this case, following the normal rules prevents a problem. Incidentally, I would suggest "Microsoftened", since "soften" is already a verb that everyone is comfortable using. "Facebooked", of course, was a normal word in common use before anyone ever heard of Zuckerberg. Two vowels followed by a consonant is simply a different situation than one vowel followed by a consonant.
- Normal_gaussian 11y agoIf the word isn't appropriated for other things its meaning will never change.
- tbrock 11y agoSeriously? I really don't think the author of this module sat down and thought, "hrm... how can I blatantly offend people" when they came up with the name. Wouldn't you rather believe that this person didn't maliciously name this thing and get on with your day? Not everyone on earth is a horrible person.
- earlyresort 11y agoYeah, I'm thinking you don't have to live with 4chan and Twitter tolerating and increasingly normalizing anonymous bigots calling your ethnic group, which has been the target of genocide before, the equivalent of a nigger. Do you have any idea how telling me to 'smile a little' about this comes across?
- mynameisvlad 11y agoIt's an unfortunate naming choice, it's obvious the author didn't intend for it to happen given the context of the situation. Nobody is trying to use the ethnic slur against you in this situation, and you are, quite frankly, overreacting to the whole thing. A lot of horrible things have happened to Jewish people in the past, yes, but that doesn't give you the right to leap down someone's throat for what looks to be a very honest mistake.
- earlyresort 11y agoThe author's intentions are not remotely obvious. It just as easily could be an anti-Semitic double entendre referring to both the kik situation and Jews, and I'm still not at all certain HN isn't being deliberately trolled with this submission. Determining how I respond to ethnic slurs against me or my people really isn't up to you, either.
- mynameisvlad 11y agoIt may come as a surprise to you, but "ethnic slurs" is not in the curriculum for English, especially not overseas. This thread is the first time I have ever heard it, and I grew up in Canada with some of my best friends being Jewish. If I hadn't heard it till now, I can sure as hell tell you the author most likely hasn't as well. And seriously, what do you honestly believe happened here? That an Italian, non-native English speaker incorrectly conjugated the non-verb "kik" into the best he could? Or that he knowingly and maliciously took a jab at all Jewish people for seemingly no reason whatsoever? If it's honestly the latter, then I feel sorry for you. No, I can't tell you how to respond. But I can sure as hell tell you when you're coming off like an asshole by responding in the way you do.
- themgt 11y ago"Canibekik'd" please
- coreyp_1 11y agoIt's funny, but this is, in a way, a parallel of what happened to the original "kik" project, in that there is a suggestion of name change because of the perception of some people.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoWas the same argument made for kik, or was there a different name originally?
- err4nt 11y agoThankfully the code is online so anybody can fork it and rename it :)
- mholt 11y agoThere's also https://github.com/egoist/is-trademarked-cli https://github.com/egoist/is-trademarked-cli - a CLI tool I came across the other day, to see if a name is trademarked.
- stephenboyd 11y agoThat's actually the dependency that provides the trademark checking ability of OP's tool. And its first commit was two days ago, so it was probably also a response to the NPM kik-storm.
- zachrose 11y agoI have an NPM package named "barrel"[0], which apparently is also a trademark for some kind of sunglasses company. I would expect there to be some kind of fair-use-like rule for common nouns that are used in different industries or domains? [0] https://www.npmjs.com/package/barrel https://www.npmjs.com/package/barrel
- Amorymeltzer 11y agoAt least in the US, the rule is essentially confusion: is a consumer likely to be confused? In both cases (yours and kik) the likelihood of real confusion is unlikely, although admittedly sunglasses are a couple steps more removed than a messaging app. Good reading is the Apple V Apple series of court cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer
- nickodell 11y agoTrue, but the brouhaha over kik was over npm's module name dispute policy. So, it seems like the operative questions are 1) How likely is X to create an npm package? and 2) If a node.js developer types `npm install X`, are they more likely to expect X's package, or my package? For the parent commenter, 1 is a definite no, and 2 is kinda wishy-washy.
- michaelmrose 11y agoI don't think anyone on earth installs a package with npm without specifically knowing what they are installing. This is in contrast to users going to foo.com expecting to find foo corps website. Going to foo.com is a very serviceable strategy for getting foo corps website and if it's not you have invested 2 seconds and risked nothing. Contrast that with npm unless you specifically know the package by name getting foo corps software by npm install foo is a total crap shoot that is only somewhat likely to succeed will cost you as much as a minute or more of your time and is installing software considered by most technical people to be risky. Nobody is likely to confuse foo package with foo Corp unless the description of the package is unclear thus name and description should be considered together to decide if confusion exists.
- Kephael 11y agoOy Gevalt, in all fairness the developer of this doesn't appear to be a Native English speaker.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rcfox 11y agoI'm not the creator, but I am a native English speaker. I've never heard the word "kike" before, had no idea what it meant...
- ianwalter 11y agoDoes the inflection rule still work the same way with proper names?
- dang 11y agoI don't see why not. If you turn it into a verb it would seem unsporting not to let it behave like other verbs. Therefore we doubled the 'k' above. We also added hyphens for clarity. And camel case for clarity. Please lord let it be clear now.
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoYes. If Twitter had been named after a guy named Bob, then the past tense of the verb for posting on that service would be "Bobbed," not "Bobed."
- ianwalter 10y agoOk, thats fair. It seemed weird at first that there could also be someone named Bobb, but I guess that would be Bobbbed.
- StavrosK 11y ago20 comments about the name here and none of you bothered to open an issue. For shame!
- Kristine1975 11y agoSomeone just did: https://github.com/parro-it/canibekiked/issues/2 https://github.com/parro-it/canibekiked/issues/2 :-)
- StavrosK 11y agoYeah, that was me!
- pavel_lishin 11y agoAnd like an idiot, I waded in.
- StavrosK 11y agoYeah, I can't say I don't regret my involvement either.
- pavel_lishin 11y agoSeems like it's worked out for the best.
- StavrosK 11y agoYeah, luckily.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- draw_down 11y agoBang up job on the name. Jeez.
- dang 11y agoPlease don't be an asshole on Hacker News. Your comment is worse than the innocent mistake of the OP.
- woodruffw 11y agoA fairly unfortunate naming choice. It looks like the author is Italian, so I would hazard that they're not a native and that this is just an innocent mistake in transcribing what they think "kik'd" ought to sound like.
- dang 11y agoAll: it took at most a single click to figure out that "canibekiked" included "kike" by obviously innocent accident. I understand the magic power of the bikeshed to hold internet forums in thrall, but holy magoly you guys outdo yourselves sometimes. You all owe parro-it (<-- notice the country code in the name? big clue) an apology. How about setting this right with some substantive feedback about the project? Edit: We'll mark this and the other "is that a racist slur on the bikeshed" subthreads off-topic, so your forthcoming substantive feedbacks should all rank higher in the thread.
- AnkhMorporkian 11y agoThe author has decided that he will rename the package 'Kikked.'[1] The title should be updated to that. 1: https://github.com/parro-it/canibekiked/issues/2#issuecomment-201908619 https://github.com/parro-it/canibekiked/issues/2#issuecommen...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- josai 11y agoWithout wishing to otherwise get involved at all, I'd like to say that as an Australian native english speaker, I have never heard of the word "kike" or that it is apparently a slur against jews. Why would anyone else in the world know that? I have nothing against jews, but it pisses me off that some local slang is elevated into a global "character sequence you can't use", so long as that slang originates in NYC. Imagine if every other city had that privilege; we wouldn't be able to name anything.
- umanwizard 11y agoEveryone in the U.S. knows this word. The U.S. is a majority of native English speakers.
- icebraining 11y agoNative English speakers are a minority among all English speakers.
- umanwizard 11y agoTrue, but not if you weight by impact/influence on what's considered standard English, globally. Probably someday that will be the case, but it isn't yet -- the US still has an outsize influence.
- kedean 11y agoThat rule usually only applies if the word doesn't have other valid uses. For example, 'cracker' is a racial slur for white people, but it also means an edible snack, so it's in the clear. To my knowledge, the word 'kike' does not have a non-offensive meaning, at least in the english speaking world.
- josai 11y agoBut no-one said "kike". You guys regexed it out of a larger word, a totally reasonable word. My point is that no-one but you would even have that word in their regex, so it's wrong to get all upset about it.
- cphoover 11y agoDon't think this really solves the problem... I think the real issue here is security of what happens when a deep dependency in NPM's graph get's removed... Right now it is possible for anyone to republish said dependency with any (perhaps evil) package. What needs to happen is either unpublish needs to be disabled, or when you remove a dependency that is heavily depended on, an empty placeholder has to be automatically added by NPM so no one can hijack the package name. The question becomes what constitutes a heavily depended on package. (100 dependents? 1000?)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- parro-it 11y agoI'm not a native speaker, I had no idea what "kike" means in english before reading this issue. I intended the word only in the sense "to suffer the same fate as the azer/kik project". I renamed the project, my apologies to anyone who could have been offended by my mistake.
- nailer 11y agoNo harm done, node itself has 'gyp' which is a racial epithet for gypsies in most of Europe.
- DrScump 11y agoEven "gypsy" has negative connotations, hence their preference for "Roma", generally speaking.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- lamby 11y agoBtw, it should also be "are trademarked" :)
- Douchiz 11y agoRight!