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• whalesalad 2y ago
  because it is an internal tool? why does that cause an issue?
• stavros 2y ago
  Probably because it takes from the rich and gives to the poor.
• kergonath 2y ago
  You cannot avoid all names that were or will be ever used by anyone. Collisions will happen. And Robin Hood is not particularly obscure…
• guessmyname 2y ago
  Round Robin [1] is a popular algorithm for load balancing. That’s the only reason they named the software “Robinhood”. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin_scheduling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin_scheduling
  • Dalewyn 2y ago
    Why specifically "Robinhood", though? Robinhood is a fairly well known brokerage. Why not Robin Hood or some other unique or generic name?
    • CogitoCogito 2y ago
      I don't think there are many people who will confuse an in-house load balancing service used at dropbox with a brokerage even if both are called Robinhood. Similarly, I don't think that people will confuse said brokerage with an old character of English folklore (and no I don't think it's the space that's important). Context matters. There simply isn't a risk for meaningful confusion here. So what's the issue exactly?
      • donpott 2y ago
        I think it's quite easy to confuse the two if one is diagonally reading the HN frontpage and sees a headline that begins with "What's new with Robinhood [...]".
        • ajoseps 2y ago
          maybe dropbox didn’t optimize naming their in-house software for HN readers
      • dylan604 2y ago
        > I don't think that people will confuse said brokerage with an old character of English folklore I don't know about that. Why do you think people would not link a financial company to the folklore character famous for redistributing money? That's kind of disingenuous claim to me. When I first heard about it, I actually assumed it was a reverse Robin Hood by taking money from the poor to give back to the rich type of scheme.
      • Dalewyn 2y ago
        >(and no I don't think it's the space that's important). That space or the lack thereof is important. To date I only know of two Robinhoods, the brokerage and the load balancer, and I only learned about the second with this thread.
    • Veen 2y ago
      Many things are named after Robin Hood. It's not as though the brokerage invented the term or has any right of exclusive use. You'd have to be quite dim-witted to muddle up a brokerage and a load balancer.
      • Dalewyn 2y ago
        Many things are named after Robin Hood, but I only know of two things specifically calling themselves Robinhood and one of them I only learned from this thread. In fairness the load balancer presumably came first, but the point remains.
    • rsynnott 2y ago
      I think Robinhood the brokerage was _fairly_ obscure til 2020 or so, no? This appears to have gone into production in 2020, so is likely older than that.
    • bayindirh 2y ago
      Robinhood is a large filesystem policy engine and maintenance tool since 2004, too. Soo Robinhood Markets are already late to the game. :)
• almost 2y ago
  Weird that a gambling app would take thename of a popular character from legend! Or maybe not, try actually naming something sometime and you'll see. It's not easy to come up with something that fits all the requirements AND has never been used before. And it's not like anyone is ever going to get confused and accidentally try and use Dropbox's internal load balancer to buy options on a stock or something. Or try and make a gambling app the star of their next hit movie for that matter.
  • tgv 2y ago
    A gambling app that --like all-- takes from the poor and gives to the rich. Sarcasm, or bitter misantropy, I suppose.