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Maybe I'm being too sensitive, but if a company calls me a nerd or a geek, then it sounds like an insult. So it makes me feel slightly bad, and is not a great first impression. I think advertisers should stop doing that.

Also, why would a voice/messaging company write most of their software in Go, instead of Erlang (or Elixir)? That would make more sense to me.

Also, those are not even features! Congratulations on your basic SSL best practices.



... takes offence at being called a geek

... calls out the company for using Go instead of Erlang

Just sayin'. :)


Yeah I'm a nerd or a geek, if that means I'm interested in programming and IT. But if you ask Google for some definitions, it still tells you:

    nerd: a foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious.

    geek: an unfashionable or socially inept person.

And it's also kind of patronizing. I don't know, something about it just doesn't sit right with me.


This is a you thing. Nerds are cool now, the battle you're trying to fight is over.


I assume when you come on Hacker News you feel offended for being called a hack and a criminal :P.

Colloquial usage of these terms has shifted massively, to the point where the most common definitions I hear from people are:

    nerd: someone with an obsessive interest in certain intellectual areas, especially academic/technological things (math/computers/the sciences/etc.)

    geek: someone with an obsessive interest in certain subsets of popular culture, especially ones relating to fiction (games/comics/novels/etc.)
Now 'dork', that still has the old ring to it.


Didn't mean to offend. We consider ourselves nerds, and mean it affectionately.

And I will accept your sarcastic congratulations on "basic" SSL best practices with pride. I think you'll find that HPKP implementations are currently still very rare, and I do not consider it "basic".


That's cool, I'll get over it! I still don't really like the word "nerd", but to be fair, I did struggle to come up with a better title.

And sorry for the sarcasm, it does look like you're doing everything right.

When you say almost all your software is written in Go, is that including the telecom stack? I just didn't think Go was ready to compete with the Erlang VM in that arena.


It doesn't bother me but will bother some as we see. Maybe techie or something that's fairly neutral? Geek doesn't have nerd's negative connotations as much and is becoming mainstream. Probably something to use other than nerds in the label to show you're technical people helping technical people without offending anyone who hate that one label.


Re: nerd, time to trot out the old venn diagram.

http://laughingsquid.com/nerd-venn-diagram-geek-dork-or-dwee...

Maybe "geek" is what you're looking for, but nerd is fine too.


HPKP is indeed quite rare. But I am very worried to see that you are pinning end-entity keys and have only a single backup pin. If you want to pin end-entity keys, I recommend pinning at least three backup keys, using both RSA and ECDSA of varying key sizes. You have to be very concerned with bricking your site from either losing your backup keys, or CAs/browsers rejecting your backup keys because cryptographic standards have changed. Pinning end-entity keys is not for the faint-hearted.

Cool product, by the way.


I think your reaction is relatively rare these days. More and more I see lots of people in tech and gaming communities embracing the words 'nerd' and 'geek' as a way of describing their social subgroup. For example, 'geeky' has come to be desirable in lots of fashion (just google 'geeky guy' and it's all about how desirable they are! okay, maybe those search results are tailored to me?), and it's a thing people would describe themselves as to attract on others on, say, dating website profiles.


Yeah I've noticed that. I guess I'm more comfortable with "geek" instead of "nerd". "geek" just feels a bit nicer for some reason.

Haha you can also kind of see a difference if you compare Google Images results for "geeky guy" vs. "nerdy guy". At least in my results, "nerdy" fares quite a lot worse.

Bottom line, I don't appreciate it when "business guys" call us the "nerds" they get to build their startups. And I also don't like it when family members refer to me as a nerd or a geek because I "work in IT". Because it's always followed by a laugh.


See the nerd/geek/dweeb/dork Venn diagram (Google, or elsewhere on this thread) to understand why geek feels nicer.




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