The Guardian coins 18 new words for our tech hellscape, from 'dickover' to 'AI-horning'
nordicinst · x · 2026-08-18
The Guardian rounds up new coinages for modern tech irritants. The centerpiece, dickover — coined by tech writer John Gruber in May — describes a modal/popover that deliberately obscures a site's own content: cookie banners, notification prompts, sign-in walls.
The piece also proposes AI-horning: AI features shoehorned into everything, from AI overviews before search results to Spotify's AI DJ. The author laments that after their car switched from Google Assistant to Gemini, navigation got noticeably worse. 18 words in total map the 2026 tech hellscape.
More from AGI Musings
- Oxford Professor: Leaders Should Ignore AI Predictions and Shape the Future — AnnaCiaunica · 2026-08-18
- AGI Arrived Quietly: We Missed It While Arguing Over Definitions — UAP44 · 2026-08-18
- New Book 'Intelligence Explosion' Explores AGI's Impact and Risks — i_dg23 · 2026-08-18
- 1986 sci-fi technologies are now the research frontier — anderssandberg · 2026-08-18
- 54% of UK businesses say AI has created jobs, Lloyds survey finds — Polymarket · 2026-08-18
- Rich Sutton: Synthetic Data is a Mistake, The Goal is a Continually Learning Trillion-Parameter Mind — Training Data (Sequoia) · 2026-08-18