this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023

101 points (94.7% liked)

Asklemmy

43946 readers

684 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

101

What does kbin mean? Why is kbin.social called that? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

47 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Is it just random letters arrived to by keyboard mashing like a lot of federated websites seem, or is there any thought behind it?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I found this

according to ernest it stems from /sbin. though one of the early instances was named karabin based on the karabine gun and thus shortened to kbin (or rather expanded from kbin).

(Ernest Wiśniewski is the creator of kbin)

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It also explains "magazines".

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ernest has actually said that the name "magazine" isn't gun related and that it's a reference "to the virtual edition of a late 90s gaming newspaper" (see this thread and my other comment for the full story)

Someone in that thread also explains that in Polish the names are different:

Polish word "magazyn" means storage or newspaper, but "magazynek " is a gun mag.

EDIT: Didn't word good.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This just changed my whole worldview.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

🤯

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Great. Now we gotta Google what a Karabin Gun is.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbine

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

but like... why tho?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Because of the rapid fire content, I guess?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

shrug

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's such a bad domain name

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's Polish for "rifle".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

so it's a "gun rifle"? why in the world would they name a platform after it?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It was a play on words, from /sbin. More info in the top thread.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Not sure, perhaps he liked the domain karab.in. But honestly, there's plenty of weirder names out there, even among the biggest brands.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kbsp_wz._1938M

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

This just happens to have the "karabin" in the name but it simply means a rifle.