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lambda user love

lambda user

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  • practik commented on the word lambda user

    Sighted today in the wild in a software developers’ discussion of whether a potentially dangerous preference should be hidden from average users (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1420514):

    We should remove (or move under an advanced option) the options to disable updates. I don’t see any good in this option as we fix critical issues in every release of Firefox. Of course, the options should remain available under a pref but not available to lambda users.

    Further research turned up some good discussion (https://lwn.net/Articles/646777/), starting with an example of the word in use and a query:

    “a lot of the visitors are just lambda users that will get scammed by their new trick.”
    What is a lambda user?

    And three great answers, including two suggested etymologies:

    I’m not the guy who wrote it, but I read “lambda” with the connotation of a lambda function (meaning anonymous closure): a lambda user is a nameless user who only uses the site once.

    it means “any anonymous user with a random basic knowledge of the tool”

    I think it’s a Gallicism. In French, “individu lambda” means “average individual”, in the sense of “layman”. It is attested since at least the 1950s, and became widely used in the 1980s. The origin is unknown, and while it most probably comes from mathematical usage, I doubt it originated in the lambda-calculus.

    September 25, 2018