[dang]

Stub for arguing about what "USD" means. These comments were originally at the top level but the offtopicness was choking the thread so I'm moving them here.

I left https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962294 out because it has actual interesting information about the project.

[TacticalCoder]

> For people complaining about the name, USD has been already a thing publicly since at least 2013

As opposed to the United States dollar that became public after 2013?

I mean, seriously: OpenUSD sounds like a cryptocurrency "stablecoin" token name.

[khazhoux]

Literally no one who uses USD as part of their work gets tripped up by this.

It’s ok for jargon and acronyms to be confusing to people who are not at all in the field.

[uglycoyote]

I'm in the field but don't actually use USD so when I heard some colleagues talking about it I googled to try to figure out what they were talking about... but was unable to find anything that wasn't talking about currency. Even if I Google something like "USD format converter"I tend to get a bunch of currency converters. it is kind of a pain in the ass.

[KMnO4]

Python’s fork can be used to create children. Don’t forget to kill them when you’re done otherwise their memory can leak when they become zombies.

Trust me, it’s about programming. Not snake horror dystopias.

[khazhoux]

I'll reply to your comment, but first I need to look into this dump I just took.

[whycome]

Any old BOB or RON can use USD as part of their work. I sometimes work with Autodesk and I, personally, prefer CAD. Don't let this RUB you the wrong way. Don't get MAD. Don't call a COP. Don't declare an SOS. For those that use PHP, consider SVC or plain old PEN.

https://www.xe.com/iso4217.php

[waffletower]

Its simply not ok -- pure consonant acronyms obfuscate and conflate meaning and dilute inter-communication. They are a relic of the pre-internet. It would be better to either eliminate usage, or move to richer abbreviation practices which include vowels (like 'SemVer' for 'Semantic Versioning')

[alanpearce]

> It’s ok for jargon and acronyms to be confusing to people who are not at all in the field.

On the site itself, sure. Here, where not everyone "uses USD as part of their work", spelling it out in the title would have avoided this whole stub

[Phrodo_00]

I use USD as part of my work... in fintec, so this confuses the heck out of my brain

[nottorp]

Yes i'd like to complain. But then Apple is involved, and they don't test their devices outside a California air conditioned and dust free office anyway. Why would they test their names...

USD is the US Dollar currency everywhere. Even americans who have dabbled with forex know. Apparently though, no one in the management of 5 large american tech companies.

Will they sue every currency exchange shop in the world for using their acronym?

Edit: and how are they going to make their format popular when all search engines are just going to give them the currency converter pages?

[jrflowers]

I am so glad that they picked an acronym so obvious so as to not confuse anyone.

[moffkalast]

Can someone clarify what the conversion ratio between OpenUSD and OpenEUR will be though?

[codyb]

I doubt the name's an issue cause acronyms and names are reused all the time and this is a pretty specialized area (3D content rendering).

Everyone working in 3D content rendering will know what OpenUSD is, and then whenever it gets exposed to broader audiences, we'll get small confusion from people who don't work in 3D rendering.

[johnalbertearle]

I am no longer into stuff like USD, and probably it is useful and a good thing. Adobe and Autodesk etc. will have an interchangeable structure. But I used to work for both of those companies indirectly and ..

They want closed systems as much as possible, only open standards etc. when forced to do so, because of course they want all the business and all the money. So USD probably good, but they will wield it against competitors (are there any anymore?) as much as possible.

IMNSHO. Sorry where it offends.

[savolai]

dang: This seems to have accidentally landed in the naming stub?

[sanitycheck]

If it's OK to just use acronyms that are already really just their own thing, I expect the next lot of technologies to come from these guys to be USA, USSR, NASA, NORAD, FBI, CIA, LOL, WTF, MILF and SNAFU.

[dumpsterdiver]

I came across a saying once that proved itself apt after a brief stint working for the government:

Always spell out acronyms upon first use in any discrete communication.

The reason this is so apt in government work is because workers become so familiar with lazily throwing around acronyms that they forget what those letters represent. I've witnessed first hand a person confidently throwing around acronyms as if they knew all about it, only to find out that they knew pretty much nothing about it aside from the letters that comprise the acronym.

In the fine article above, the acronym was clarified upon first use, and so all is well:

"Alliance to foster global collaboration for Universal Scene Description (USD)"

[serhack_]

> Alliance to foster global collaboration for Universal Scene Description (USD)

UNISD? UNIversal Scene Description

At least better than Universal Scene Specific (USS)

[disillusioned]

Even just OpenSD would be a vast improvement. Presume the "open" replaces "universal" (which isn't a 1:1 mapping, but still works as a branding exercise) and you DON'T have what literally 100% of the non-graphic-artist HN commentariat thought: that they're weirdly doing a stablecoin.

[Closi]

Or better yet - 'Open Scene Description'. For the extra two syllables they can say what it is.

[TylerE]

Then it sounds like AI.

[depereo]

Stable Diffusion isn't a familiar term outside a very niche audience. Probably over 50% of the earth's population is familiar with checking 'USD' exchange rates.

[bsimpson]

As an outsider, OpenSD sounds more like a disk format than anything to do with AI.

[TylerE]

This isn't something regular people care about though.

People working in computer graphics absolutely know what stable diffusion is.

I would also that at least a third of the US adult population doesn't know that USD is the abbreviation for symbol for US dollars. The average American never travels internationally.

[depereo]

Maybe regular americans. Africans, Europeans, Asians, Pacific peoples and Antipodeans however...

The tech we buy is often USD-denominated and exchange risk is something we all deal with constantly for basic purchases, in business and personal life.

[NavinF]

> at least a third of the US adult population doesn't know that USD is the abbreviation for symbol for US dollars

If we're just gonna make up statistics...

[waffletower]

Open Universal Scene Description -> ScenDes. If you must: Open Universal Scene Description -> OpenScenDes. Uttering "universal" whenever something is referenced is pretentious and unwieldy. Save the pretense for the press release. Naming is indeed hard for these people. Some products have a different problem -- where they are unusable as acronyms -- like this proto-name from Microsoft: "Azure Smart Spaces".

[Racing0461]

Sounds like a crypto coin at first.

[tukajo]

Wait, it's not?

[emmjay_]

My dyslexic arse thought this read OpenBSD for a brief second.

[waffletower]

I am truly disappointed that these companies have not started an open-source alliance to counterfeit United States currency.

[tukajo]

Why is the JDF (Japanese Defense Force) backing a new crypto coin (OpenUSD) with Apple, Pixar, Nvidia and Adobe?

[nektro]

OpenUSD is an atrocious name, thought big tech was getting together to make a crypto

[rafaelturk]

USD: I thought this was instant payments initiative similar to Brazil's OpenPix...

[dyingkneepad]

OpenUSD sounds like something bitcoin-related. The USD acronym is so known for being for US Dollars, why would they want to overload it...

[jshreder]

Pixar has been using USD for years, OpenUSD is the rebranding of it as an open format.

> Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) is an extensible framework and ecosystem for describing, composing, simulating, and collaborating within 3D worlds. Originally developed by Pixar Animation Studios, USD, also referred to as OpenUSD, is more than a file format. It’s an open-source 3D scene description used for 3D content creation and interchange among different tools. [1]

[1] https://developer.nvidia.com/usd

[theogravity]

I also thought this was crypto related and felt it was odd Adobe, Pixar, and Autodesk were involved.

[moffkalast]

Yeah at first I thought it was some kind of store payment crypto they were introducing.

[ninepoints]

As someone in and out of the USD ecosystem for years (starting around 2014 or so), this comment is especially hilaruous.

[jimbob45]

Maybe this is the new anti-crypto meta - we proactively take away the best acronyms that the crypto community would want to use.

[khazhoux]

When Toy Story 3 was almost finished in 2010, they needed to convert some assets from Toy Story 1. Ed Catmull called an urgent meeting and instructed the software team to write a USD converter. The team came back 3 weeks later and demo'd their new USD converter, which they proudly announced could handle Euros, Pesos, Rupees, and 20 other currencies. The team was immediately fired, and went on to found Paypal.

[therealmarv]

for a second I've thought they are creating a new crypto stable coin oO

[throwaway104782]

what a terrible name, I thought this was some kind of USD stablecoin

[xbiitx]

is this about stablecoin ?

[gjsman-1000]

Seems to me that there is no shortage of better names available.

It's so easy to fix... why not call it, say, a "Universal Scene Description Package" (USDP) or a "3D Scene Description" (3DSD) or "Layered Universal Scene Description" (LUSD) or "Modern Scene Description Format" (MSDF) or "Universal Scene Description Format" (USDF) or "Kronos Scene Description" (KSD) or "Kronos Universal Scene Description" (KUSD) or...