Verschlimmbesserung: The Word Your Software Updates Need

eqvinox•14 minutes 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]

schoen•11 minutes ago

Cases apply only to nouns; the present and past perfect are called tenses.

OptionOfT•13 minutes 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.

dwoldrich•about 1 hour 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.

alhirzel•about 1 hour ago

I would probably abbreviate that to v17g.

levzettelin•about 1 hour ago

Just from looking at the title, I feel that this talking about AI in general...

boxed•about 2 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.

dylan604•about 1 hour ago

They're not bugs, they're undocumented features

Krasnol•about 2 hours ago

I'd say enshitification is a good enough word.

Verschlimmbesserung is not widely used these days in Germany.

ahf8Aithaex7Nai•about 1 hour 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.

Verschlimmbesserung: The Word Your Software Updates Need

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion (10 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews