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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

> A look at the so-called Smart TV reinforces the observation about CE culture. In less than two years, the CPU inside the TV quickly becomes obsolete and can’t be upgraded while the display itself easily lasts a decade, and software updates are persphinctery, if they happen at all.

Evocative term ("persphinctery"), what does it mean? A web search mostly references mondaynote.

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The prefix "per" means through, so this made up word seems to mean "as though it came through the sphincter" a.k.a "crappy".

So "persphinctery" would be a synonym of "excretory", were it actually a word.

You got it: https://twitter.com/gassee/status/767576827963453440

When mashing prefixes onto words in a way which is unfamiliar, it's usually customary to use a hyphen. E.g. "post-fact[0]" instead of "postfact". Strangely, to me, the former seems to imply that "post-" is a prefix while the latter seems to be a fact involving postal mail.

[0] https://granta.com/why-were-post-fact/

Given that you put the letters together, it is a word. The only question is how many understand it, and which dictionaries (if any) you can find it in.

Creative word generation is always welcome.

I think it's a corruption of "persnickety," which in my experience means "overly precise" as in a lock can be persnickety because dirt gets in and fouls the workings because there's no room for grime in the lock.

I'll guess that the root term is "perfunctory."

I think it's like saying "extinct": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perisphinctes

Indeed. Ironically, your comment is now one of the 8 results for me.

First thing I did is google that word, it's rather poetic.

"persphinctery", one word to capture the brokenness of waiting for updates the provider has no incentive to create.

I laughed because it's a very erudite sounding word with a very vulgar interpretation: "persphinctery" == "as they are shat out".

>In less than two years, the CPU inside the TV quickly becomes obsolete

If it's Linux based, this just means that the SoC vendor hasn't kept the board support package (BSP) up to date.

These kinds of things are hardly ever mainlined, so it becomes difficult to update drivers, kernel versions and then even software versions (think X11)

BSPs are never updated, so that's a given. But I think he was more likely talking about codecs (no H.265? too bad) or DRM.

Yeah, I think it's an invented term. It's not in my dictionary as a word.

Given the limited google search results, it would appear to be a very neo neologism.

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