1.ID10T: Another error, usually sounded out as Aye-Dee-Ten-Tee but seldom written as it should be pretty obvious what is being said.
2.Pwn: Gaming term for “own,” indicating that when one player pwns another, he or she has defeated his or her opponent.
3.KOS: From gaming, it stands for Kill On Site and can also be used to indicate data to be deleted or hardware to be retired.
4.Byte: eight bits strung together to represent a specific value such as a letter or a digit.
5.404: The HTTP response code for “File Not Found”, 404 is being used to simply convey things like “not found,” “not here,” or even “I don’t know.”
6.SNAFU: Situation Normal, All Fouled Up, or close enough you get the gist. SNAFUs can be one word status reports, sit-reps, or responses to “sup?”
7.Sneakernet-The old-fashioned way of transferring data using external, portable media by copying the data to disk and then walking it over somewhere.
8.Emoji: another word for emoticon, it’s those little smiley faces, frowning faces, tables, etc. that are used to convey tone or emotion in written conversations.
9.Hack: To improve, reverse engineer, adapt for other purposes, or suborn a piece of hardware or software, website, or remote system for the purposes of learning more or expanding capabilities.
10.PEBKAC: Another helpdesk acronym that indicates the Problem Exists Between the Chair and the Keyboard, like a CKI error.
11.AFK: Away From Keyboard, to signify when you need to step away so people chatting with you don’t think you are now ignoring them.
12.Boss Key: Any key built into a game that quickly pauses the game and brings up a spreadsheet or other screen that looks like work so your boss doesn’t realize you were goofing off.
13.CKI: Refers to an error in the Chair Keyboard Interface. Think about what connects the chair to the keyboard.
14.Stories: Snapchat started the trend of creating ten second peeks into everyone’s life then Instagram and Facebook followed suit. These short videos are called stories.
15.Tweet: A post to Twitter is called a tweet, and the act of submitting a post is called tweeting.
16.GUI: A gooey is a Graphical User Interface, and not something that requires hand-sanitizer, but try talking about your GUI around non-techies and see what facial expressions result.
17.AMA: Ask Me Anything, from the popular Reddit forum’s interviews with celebrities and others of note. Our favorite AMA? It has to be this one with Dr. Jane Goodall.
18.Crack: To compromise or suborn a piece of software, website, or remote system with malicious intent.
19.FUBAR: From an old military jargon term, this means “Fouled Up Beyond All Repair,” or at least close enough to that so my editor won’t get mad at me.
20.Interwebs: Slang for the Internet, as a way to poke fun at non-technical people who confuse the Internet with the World Wide Web.
21.Teh: Whether it’s poor typing skills or just a way to be cool, “Teh” stands in for “The” but can also indicate emphasis.
22.Blob: A blob is a Binary Large Object, and indicates some large amount of data other than just simple text, usually stored within a database.
23.Wiki: A backronym was coined to say Wiki stands for “What I Know Is” but it is actually Hawaiian for “quick.”
24.Kludge: A poorly programmed piece of software, a piece of hardware cobbled together from spare parts, or a project plan created by someone with no real experience with the task at hand.
25.Dead Tree: A paper printout of an electronic file; frequently done single-sided and in color.
26.Worm: A software worm crawls across systems, either seeking specific data or exploiting vulnerabilities which can in turn be used to exploit other systems. Unlike a virus that must be executed by a system, a worm seeks to exploit the system through externally accessible vulnerabilities and does not require user interaction.
27.Mouse: what else could you expect Doug Englebart and Bill English to call their small device with a tail coming out of it, an X-Y position indicator? Fortunately their word for the cursor, bug, didn’t catch on like their invention the mouse. You can even buy mice that look like mice.
28.Troll: Like the humanoid that lives under bridges and preys upon the weak and innocent, trolls lurk in discussion groups or on social media websites and live only to post inflammatory statements or to ridicule and deride others. Trolling is the verb to define such actions.
29.Hash: A hash is a fixed-length numerical value calculated from a variable length amount of data, and can be used to validate the authenticity or to detect tampering with data. It can also be used in some contexts to represent a value calculated from user credentials. Admins mentioning “pass the hash” want neither a potato and meat dish, nor do they live in Colorado.
30.Virus: In nature, a virus is a primitive life-form that exists only to replicate itself, consuming resources from a host to manufacture more of itself. It is this behavior that led to code that not only does this, but also causes damage, steals data, and can provide attackers with remote access to victim machines coming to be known as a virus.
31.Pr0n: Also spelled with a zero and with intentional shifting of positions, it stands in the place of porn to indicate pornography, and was probably coined as an attempt to get around simple word filters.
32.Phishing: When you see a link in your email to download an attachment from an unknown sender, it is possible you are a target for phishing. Short for password fishing, this is a fraudulent practice where private data is captured from attempting to get you to enter in your personal information. Beware of any links from suspicious emails.
33.TWAIN: a standard for hardware interoperability, this was originally a type of technology without an interesting name, until someone was inspired by Rudyard Kipling to borrow from the Ballad of East and West, since it seemed that “…never the twain shall meet.”
34.Filter: In the beginning, a filter was an overlay of a photo that would alter lighting and coloring to improve the picture. Today, filters consist of animated masks, hats, rainbow tongues and more. Popularized by Snapchat, flower headbands and dog ears are now able to be superimposed on our faces for a laugh.
35.Bug: Whether first used by Thomas Edison, or referring to a moth trapped in an early computer that blocked a relay from properly functioning, today “bug” refers to any glitch or defect in software, hardware, or even the odd human.
36.Warez: All 1337 speakerz replace the letter S with Z, use pidgin grammar, and shorten wordz, so “warez” is short for “softwares” and refers to ill-gotten gains, either pirated, cracked or being used with a key code to circumvent licensing requirements.
37.Cookies: Small files used to store state from one visit to a next, cookies are also being used to track users and deliver advertising. Anything that indicates where you have been or what you have done may now be referred to as a cookie, including phone logs and footprints.
38.Bluetooth-named for the Dread Pirate Roberts, ehm, the Dread King Bluetooth of Scandinavia, whose real name was Harald Gormsson. Apparently he had a pretty gnarly smile. No one knows for sure what Intel engineer Jim Kardach was really thinking when he came up with this codename, but it’s so much cooler than calling it Personal Area Network (PAN) that we’re glad the name stuck.
39.Like: We can thank Facebook for creating a “thumbs up” whenever we agreed with someone’s post. They have since improved your options by giving you the heart, laughing, sad, and angry emojis to let the poster know what we really think.
40.Thunking: When a program must call a subroutine to complete a task, it is called thunking. In Windows, when a 64-bit operating system must downshift into 32-bit mode for legacy code, or a 32-bit version must run old 8-bit code, it is also called thunking. You can almost hear the processor grinding.