Verschlimmbesserung: The Word Your Software Updates Need(geekyschmidt.com)
50 pointsby speckx4 hours ago8 comments
  • dwoldrich2 hours ago
    Value is now only _extracted_. Place the acquired good into the press and smash it until all but the faintest essence remains among the mash. The squeezings are bottled and saved to pay for future _extractions_.

    Companies like Valve can continue largely unshittificated because they are private. Once that is no longer the case, all our game rentals will be squozen away from us.

  • OptionOfTan hour ago
    I usually relate this to people chasing good reviews at work. Maintaining a system and keeping it bug-free doesn't get people promoted.

    Doing something large, inventing a bunch of metrics, and showing that you improve on those metrics does.

  • alhirzel2 hours ago
    I would probably abbreviate that to v17g.
  • eqvinoxan hour ago
    It's actually a verb, "Verschlimmbesserung" is the substantivization.

    Base: verschlimmbessern

    Present conjugation: I verschlimmbesser[e], you verschlimmbesserst, he/she/it verschlimmbessert, we verschlimmbesser[e]n, (plural-)you verschlimmbessert, they verschlimmbesser[e]n

    Past/perfect: verschlimmbessert (e.g. "it got verschlimmbessert")

    Imperative: verschlimmbesser[e] (e.g. "don't verschlimmbesser that!")

    The [e] at the end is leftover from an older form, in the cases where I omitted it it would sound archaic to a German speaker, but in the other cases it's equivalent or may even sound better. It's also regionally different. The archaic versions kinda sound south German (Swabian, Bavarian).

    [ed. made some adjustments]

    P.S.: "Verbesserung" means improvement, "Verschlimmerung" means worsening/aggravation. The combined word is understood quite specifically though, not just as a combination of the two. It's *not* a normal case of German "paste words together", that's for nouns (you can do it with the substantivization, e.g. Donaudampfschiffverschlimmbesserungskapitän = "captain of verschlimmbessern the steam ships on the Donau", which makes little sense of course). It's not identical to enshittification either, the latter (to me at least) implies intention; verschlimmbessern you can (and probably often will) do by accident.

    • schoenan hour ago
      Cases apply only to nouns; the present and past perfect are called tenses.
      • eqvinox42 minutes ago
        (already edited in)
  • arjan_sch31 minutes ago
    What about "worseprovement"
    • eqvinox24 minutes ago
      As a German, I might not have thought of that but would absolutely use it to translate Verschlimmbesserung. Does it sound "normal" enough to native English speakers?
      • inanutshellus12 minutes ago
        It's definitely a normal-sounding, memorable word for us native English speakers.

        Meanwhile I won't be able to remember that German word longer than it takes me to close this tab. Vershumthingsomething.

      • groestl11 minutes ago
        Thumbs up, let's settle on that translation
      • arjan_sch17 minutes ago
        I'm Dutch, sounds pretty good to me
  • levzettelin2 hours ago
    Just from looking at the title, I feel that this talking about AI in general...
  • boxed2 hours ago
    We already have a word for it? "Misfeature"

    The opposite is the more interesting word though: hit bug. A bug/mistake/fuckup that turns out to improve the software.

    • looperhacks31 minutes ago
      A misfeature is specifically a feature that's just bad, while verschlimmbessern can happen with everything that nobody would call a feature (insert something about xkcd 1172). But yeah, it's pretty close
    • dylan6042 hours ago
      They're not bugs, they're undocumented features
  • Krasnol2 hours ago
    I'd say enshitification is a good enough word.

    Verschlimmbesserung is not widely used these days in Germany.

    • ahf8Aithaex7Nai2 hours ago
      I do think it's part of many people's vocabulary. It's a bit informal. And it's not a word you use every day. But it's definitely a word that gets used when the occasion calls for it, just like the related verb "verschlimmbessern."

      "Enshittification" isn't the same thing. "Verschlimmbesserung" is when you try to fix a loose connection in a power cord and then no electricity flows at all, or when you try to fix a bad haircut with a trimmer and the haircut ends up looking even worse, etc.

    • juvvel38 minutes ago
      Of course it is still widely used.
      • icantevenhold34 minutes ago
        Define widely used;

        I probably haven’t used it once in the last 15 years and have heard it maybe twice.

        Source: lifelong German speaker

    • looperhacks35 minutes ago
      It's certainly used - not in the top 100, but if the situation calls for it, it's not unexpected.

      There's a big difference between enshitification and "Verschlimmbesserung". The latter has the intent of actually improving things, while the first is making things knowingly worse for profit.