For those that don't speak Spanish, this is GPT4's frog dissection:
> The joke implies that a Spanish-speaking employee at Nvidia might have come up with the name "CuLitho" because it sounds similar to the Spanish phrase "culo de envidia," which means "butt of envy" or "an envious butt." The phrase is often used to describe someone who is envious or jealous of another person's success or possessions.
While it's true that ChatGPT gives amazing explanations in many context, this one is not particularly good.
The point is not that CuLitho is similar to "culo" (ass), as the similarity is not that obvious.
The point is that it's practically identical to "culito" (little ass, where "little" is typically not literally about size, but more of an endearing term - another translation could be cute ass).
The similarity is large enough that, at least in places where we use that term (not sure if it's used in the whole Spanish-speaking world, but e.g. in Spain it is) there's no way to read that name with a straight face.
Thanks for clearing this up. Great example of how drinking from the fountain of machine generated content is a watered down experience.
I'm less interested in an AI trained on the droves of mediocre crap out there on the web, but would be super excited if there were one trained on curated material consisting of carefully crafted and authoritative answers like this. Or at least a way to lend greater weight to such inputs.
GPT "understanding"[0] more things better than me has never been a worry for me, for the same reason that libraries "knowing"[0] more than me hasn't worried me.
It's the possibility of it understanding what I'm best at, better than I do, that makes me concerned.
What will our John Henry moment look like?[1]
[0] for whatever definition you want to use for these words; I like them in these contexts, but it doesn't matter if this submarine is swimming or not
So I think culo means, well "posterior" and adding -ito is an endearing term that means small in an affectionate way. so "precious posterior". nvidia is like envidia which is envy in spanish.
Culito is basically Spanish for "nice ass" or "sweet ass". "Que culito!" would be "What a nice ass!" or "What a sweet ass!". "Que culito de envidia!" would be something like "What an enviable little ass!", although without the sense of it being physically "little", as in most cases an ass described as a "culito" is probably pretty thick. Oh, and adding the T, making it "culitho" doesn't technically affect the pronunciation, but it means you have to say it with more swagger.
Source: I lived in the Caribbean and spent way too much time watching reggaeton and dembow music videos.
My culitho brings all the boys to the lab,
And they're like, it's better than a silicon fab,
We're laughing our way to the top,
With computational power that won't stop!
We'll be etching those chips to the groove,
Culitho de NVIDIA, making that smooth move!
Was culitho ever a "word in the English language"? Anyways, if it's just about finding a trademark-able sequence of letters that can be done with the restricted latin alphabet used in the English language and keyboard, then there would still be the option of doing what nVidia did in their company name and add an n in front of another consonant, for example:
nCuLitho … I wonder how Spanish-speaking people would like that one. Or maybe that added letter makes it too long anyways and it could be shortened to… nCuLo
I'm from Spain and knowing the average Spanish person, I can tell you that is exactly what would happen, followed by a "no hay huevos" (literally "no balls").
Quick point of clarification here, Cthulhu wasn't an Elder God, it was an Old One. The Elder Gods were the ones who came and rescued humanity from the Old Ones, and locked Cthulhu in the sunken city of R'lyeh.
Yeah, but I heard that it started with ".nv" suffixes on firmware files or something (for "next version") and the idea of pronouncing it / branding around "envy" came up later when they were searching for a brand. In any case, I think it fits their company personality well.
Reminds me of the pico editor -- pico means penis in some Spanish-speaking countries (it also means beak, FWTW). I remember contacting that project to let them know, I guess they thought it would be alright.
I don't think it's comparable. Pico is highly polysemic. As you say, it also means beak, and it's also first person singular present of the verb "picar" (which is in turn polysemic, meaning to bite, or to have a snack, or to itch), and in Spain it can also be a small kiss, apart from being also a prefix in the metric system (the motivation for the editor's name) so it's not like most people would burst out laughing when hearing that word, as we are used to putting it in context and most meanings aren't about genitals. Just like some people have Dick as a surname and English-speaking people don't laugh, I guess.
Culitho is so unambiguous in Spanish, though, that it's hard not to laugh.
I'm a Spanish speaker and it doesn't sound funny to me. Slight differences in your native language are very distinctive, so I don't read "Culito" when I see it. Do you think Apple computers is too close to Asshole?
Everybody is different, but the 33800 laugh reaction in the Facebook post https://m.facebook.com/NVIDIADataCenter/photos/a.33432954734... (versus just 811 likes, 180 love, 115 surprise, 104 care and 14 sad reactions) suggests that most Spanish speakers read without the H.
You can’t really say it with the “h”. Spanish has nothing corresponding to the English “h” sound, and the overwhelming majority of Spanish speakers speak dialects with nothing like the English “th” sound either (the ones that do have it spell it “c” or “z”, not “th”).
I'm a non-native intermediate Spanish speaker and it was my first thought. However I think it's cute and it makes people talk about it, so it's not a bad name.
As my friend put it: "hmm, CuLitho de envidia."