[amusingimpala75]

I would just like to point out that that is not how the saying goes. When Queen Elizabeth died it would have been “the queen is dead, long live the king”, as the dead thing is the predecessor and the living thing is the one that follows it

[ihattendorf]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_th...!

In this case, the article is implying that Intel (x86) is dead to them and AMD (x86) is the successor. Whether Intel is dead or not is up for debate (I doubt they are), but the saying is used correctly.

[harpratap]

The dead thing is Intel (x86) and the successor is AMD (x86) as opposed to ARM in our case. Isn't it correct?

[pjmlp]

If we forget about the Intel patents AMD also needs to produce their own x86 flavour.

[re-thc]

> Isn't it correct?

No. Intel isn't dead. They may be behind (for now) but they're definitely catching up and have in a way on the desktop.

It's not certain that Intel will die and AMD will for sure win. Competition is great.

[saghm]

If we're going to be that pedantic, we might as well just say that because Intel and AMD aren't living entities so they can't be "dead". Or we could just accept that the original meaning of the phrase has evolved and is flexible enough to be used in situations where it's not absolutely literal.

[Teever]

I just closed another post on HN because the top thread descended into some bullshit semantics pissing contest so I come here and see the same.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed an increase in arguing over the meaning of words on HN lately?

[kergonath]

I’ve noticed that as well. It beggars belief that people are seriously arguing about applying a centuries-old foreign metaphors about kings to modern large corporations. That’s straight over Pedantic territory into the Obnoxious Contrarian wilderness. Sigh…

[coldtea]

Sorry, but you've just noticed it?

Wars about semantics have been standard fare on geekdom since the dawn of time, and on Hacker News since the dawn of Arc.

What appears as "Obnoxious Contrarian wilderness" is good-old hacker "well, actually" pendanticness (with some sprinkling of on-the-spectrum focus on details and semantics).

[arcanemachiner]

Nerds have been arguing online about irrelevant pedantry as long as the Internet has been around. And this place attracts some pretty hardcore nerds.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I'd guess it's a timing thing. This site likes to prioritize more highly the "current" discussions which are generating upvotes as long as they're not also generating a ton of downvotes.

[coldtea]

>Is it just me or has anyone else noticed an increase in arguing over the meaning of words on HN lately?

Depends on what you mean by increase, arguing, and words.

[throwaway742]

It's unironically one of the things I like about this site.

[Clamchop]

Weird. The topic was the phrase.

Mercari replaced Intel with AMD. One x86 out, another in. Usage is correct if figurative.

Article does not claim Intel is dead. States that they are "catching up". But for their nodes, Intel out ("dead"), AMD in.

It's reasonable.

[coldtea]

Your point is about the factual statement (whether Intel x86 is actually dead).

But this subthread (as started by amusingimpala75), and your direct parent's question was about whether the idiomatic usage of "(old) X is dead, long live (new) X" was correct (given that the author believes AMD taking over Intel is the factual case). That is, not about whether the factual statement is correct or not, just whether it's expressed well idiomatically.

[GauntletWizard]

Perhaps it would be better phrased as "'intel x86'" vs "'AMD x86-64'". Specific sets of mandatory instructions and extension parameters - But AMD's set "won" at some point in the past, roughly corresponding to the launch of Intel's "Core" microarchitecture in 2006 when they started competing in the x86 space again

[coldtea]

>When Queen Elizabeth died it would have been “the queen is dead, long live the king”, as the dead thing is the predecessor and the living thing is the one that follows it

And if a freshly dead king is replaced by a new king, it's "the king is dead, long live the king".

The predecessor and the living thing doesn't have to be of the opposite sex, or use a different term:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_king_is_dead,_long_live_th...!

It's a very famous idiom.

[fsckboy]

no, the "saying" is "the king is dead, long live the king", because the "saying" uses the apparent absurdity of the king being dead and alive to illustrate the stability of the royal system: the people don't need to worry, they are never without a king.

yes, in a particular circumstance, if there happens to be a queen involved (rarer within agnatic primogeniture), then it would be spoken as you say, but that's not "the saying" that people generally quote.

Rarer still, but 2 Queens would have the same form as the saying, "the queen is dead, long live the queen", which I mention to mention, when the king is dead, if it's "long live the queen", it's not generally the king's spouse even if she was styled "queen", but would be some direct blood relative of the king such as his daughter. I think his wife would become Dowager Queen. The Dowager queen might rule as Regent if her children were not adults yet.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/agnatic