GitHub, Android, Python, Go: More Software Adopts Race-Neutral Terminology (zdnet.com) 413
"The terms 'allowlist' and 'blocklist' describe their purpose, while the other words use metaphors to describe their purpose," reads a change description on the source code for Android -- from over a year ago. 9to5Mac calls it "a shortened version of Google's (internal-only) explanation" for terminology changes which are now becoming more widespread.
And Thursday GitHub's CEO said they were also "already working on" renaming the default branches of code from "master" to a more neutral term like "main," reports ZDNet: GitHub lending its backing to this movement effectively ensures the term will be removed across millions of projects, and effectively legitimizes the effort to clean up software terminology that started this month.
But, in reality, these efforts started years ago, in 2014, when the Drupal project first moved in to replace "master/slave" terminology with "primary/replica." Drupal's move was followed by the Python programming language, Chromium (the open source browser project at the base of Chrome), Microsoft's Roslyn .NET compiler, and the PostgreSQL and Redis database systems... The PHPUnit library and the Curl file download utility have stated their intention to replace blacklist/whitelist with neutral alternatives. Similarly, the OpenZFS file storage manager has also replaced its master/slave terms used for describing relations between storage environments with suitable replacements. Gabriel Csapo, a software engineer at LinkedIn, said on Twitter this week that he's also in the process of filing requests to update many of Microsoft's internal libraries.
A recent change description for the Go programming language says "There's been plenty of discussion on the usage of these terms in tech. I'm not trying to have yet another debate." It's clear that there are people who are hurt by them and who are made to feel unwelcome by their use due not to technical reasons but to their historical and social context. That's simply enough reason to replace them.
Anyway, allowlist and blocklist are more self-explanatory than whitelist and blacklist, so this change has negative cost.
That change was merged on June 9th -- but 9to5Mac reports it's just one of many places these changes are happening. "The Chrome team is beginning to eliminate even subtle forms of racism by moving away from terms like 'blacklist' and 'whitelist.' Google's Android team is now implementing a similar effort to replace the words 'blacklist' and 'whitelist.'" And ZDNet reports more open source projects are working on changing the name of their default Git repo from "master" to alternatives like main, default, primary, root, or another, including the OpenSSL encryption software library, automation software Ansible, Microsoft's PowerShell scripting language, the P5.js JavaScript library, and many others.
And Thursday GitHub's CEO said they were also "already working on" renaming the default branches of code from "master" to a more neutral term like "main," reports ZDNet: GitHub lending its backing to this movement effectively ensures the term will be removed across millions of projects, and effectively legitimizes the effort to clean up software terminology that started this month.
But, in reality, these efforts started years ago, in 2014, when the Drupal project first moved in to replace "master/slave" terminology with "primary/replica." Drupal's move was followed by the Python programming language, Chromium (the open source browser project at the base of Chrome), Microsoft's Roslyn .NET compiler, and the PostgreSQL and Redis database systems... The PHPUnit library and the Curl file download utility have stated their intention to replace blacklist/whitelist with neutral alternatives. Similarly, the OpenZFS file storage manager has also replaced its master/slave terms used for describing relations between storage environments with suitable replacements. Gabriel Csapo, a software engineer at LinkedIn, said on Twitter this week that he's also in the process of filing requests to update many of Microsoft's internal libraries.
A recent change description for the Go programming language says "There's been plenty of discussion on the usage of these terms in tech. I'm not trying to have yet another debate." It's clear that there are people who are hurt by them and who are made to feel unwelcome by their use due not to technical reasons but to their historical and social context. That's simply enough reason to replace them.
Anyway, allowlist and blocklist are more self-explanatory than whitelist and blacklist, so this change has negative cost.
That change was merged on June 9th -- but 9to5Mac reports it's just one of many places these changes are happening. "The Chrome team is beginning to eliminate even subtle forms of racism by moving away from terms like 'blacklist' and 'whitelist.' Google's Android team is now implementing a similar effort to replace the words 'blacklist' and 'whitelist.'" And ZDNet reports more open source projects are working on changing the name of their default Git repo from "master" to alternatives like main, default, primary, root, or another, including the OpenSSL encryption software library, automation software Ansible, Microsoft's PowerShell scripting language, the P5.js JavaScript library, and many others.
Okay fine. (Score:5, Funny)
Kiddies don't know the classics (Score:3)
Lol, slashdot is dead. Spinal Tap gets modded down.
The kids just don't study the classics anymore.
So (Score:5, Funny)
Re: So (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe a whitelist would be better. This would clear up the confusion and be a superior mechanism.
Re: (Score:2)
Did they release a blacklist of words so we can avoid them?
Unfortunately, blacklist is on the blacklist.
In related news... NBC will be renaming its long-running show to, The Allowlist [wikipedia.org].
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It is now called Scrumbag [wp.com].
Typical Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Typical Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not so sure. There's a "white=good, black=bad" symbolic color scheme that extends across a broad swath of European (descended) cultures. It's origins may have nothing to do with racism, but it's not much of a stretch to assume that the automatic association it establishes contributes to racial biases. We can certainly see that link on bold display historically, and sometimes even today, whenever someone claimed that dark skin was evidence of the Devil's influence, or light skin evidence of God's favor. Both claims that have seen widespread usage over the centuries.
Granted, even completely eliminating the moral association wouldn't magically fix the problem of racism, but it would reduce an implicit cultural bias that spills over into racism. And since I can't think of any way in which an association between color and morality is actually useful or valuable, there's not much of an argument for preserving it. Especially not in the vast majority of cases where the alternative is actually more usefully descriptive.
Not unlike the "master" and "slave" terminology - which is also not explicitly racist in orgins (though the African slave trade gave it overtones in more recent history). Lots of outrage about changing the names, but the fact is that in almost every case the master/slave relationship wasn't even a good metaphor, so that invoking it with the naming scheme was actually information-negative. (e.g. IDE master and slave drives)
Re:Typical Nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Not unlike the "master" and "slave" terminology - which is also not explicitly racist in orgins (though the African slave trade gave it overtones in more recent history).
Only in America. In Northern Africa, for example, both slaves and masters could be of virtually any colour, and in fact more masters were dark-skinned than white. The islamic slave trade discerned by religion, not skin colour.
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A pope asked, in around 700AD, "who are those slaves?" to be told "They are Angles!" (from what is approximately now the Denmark or the Netherlands), and presumably fair skinned, with strait blonde hair, while the pope, who was presumably Italian, would have been much darker, with dark, curly hair.
The pope replied "Angles? they look more like angels to me!"
Of course, he would have been speaking Latin. English did not exist in 700 AD.
I a
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Yeah but the Pope sure didn't speak it.
Re:Typical Nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
In America, the slave masters could also be black. The slave trade was in indentured servants, who, once their indentures were complete gained grants of land, which they then worked, and in many cases became owners of indentured servants (or slaves, if you will).
The Atlantic slave trade became blockaded and then ceased when indentured servitude became chattel slavery (and yes, in that short period, it was predominantly, though not exclusively, white land owners, though this was influenced heavily by demographic representation in the population as well).
Re:Typical Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
At least initially, the origins of that association definitely had nothing to do with racism. From the earliest days when man walked the earth, night was a scary time, when animals came and ate your children while they slept. And so, culturally, humanity has naturally evolved an association between darkness and death, evil, etc.
Yeah, that's certainly possible.
On the other hand, to play devil's advocate, fear of the dark (as in night time, not skin) is so fundamentally ingrained in our biology that there's not much chance of preventing those associations from occurring. By trying to eliminate terms that are based on non-racist references to darkness, rather than pointing them out and using them as a teachable moment, we risk missing the chance to talk about the psychology behind why darkness gets associated by evil, which might actually make it harder to eliminate any subtle racism that results from that instinct.
It's kind of a coin toss, at least from my perspective, but of course, as a Caucasian, all I can do is talk and reason about this in the abstract. I'd be more interested to hear how African Americans perceive this.
Re:Typical Nonsense (Score:4, Interesting)
From the earliest days when man walked the earth, night was a scary time, when animals came and ate your children while they slept. And so, culturally, humanity has naturally evolved an association between darkness and death, evil, etc.
And this is why renaming programming terms (to which I do not object, mind you) will not solve anything. Not in a meaningful way. Black (dark of night) will always be scary. Red (blood) and orange (fire) will always be danger. Meanwhile blue and green (sky/water and vegetation) are considered positively.
Until we implant night-vision and color randomizers into our eyes at birth this will always be true.
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This morning I was putting a white coat of paint on my walls and I got some of it on my skin. I noticed that they weren't the same color even though everybody says that I'm white. I noticed I'm quite a bit more brown in color. Does this mean that I'm really brown?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Though in all seriousness it feels like there's a concerted effort to turn the words master, slave, black, and white into four letter words that you never say (with the exception of the latter two when talking about
Re: Typical Nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
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You must be new here.
Re: Typical Nonsense (Score:5, Informative)
White/light = good and Black/dark = bad is a universal human thing, across all cultures.
It's not. In China or Japan the white color is associated with mourning and death, while black is a neutral color. "Whitelist" is not even translated into Japanese, an English transliteration is usually used instead.
Re: Typical Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps we could change whitelist to Frenchlist then
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If we’re gonna start using “Red” and “Green” for that, we’re gonna need more duct tape.
Re: Typical Nonsense (Score:3)
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Anderson Powerpole has done away with that notion completely. https://powerwerx.com/anderson... [powerwerx.com]
Oh just fuck off already (Score:2, Insightful)
I've had it with these woke ideologues fascists and it being their way or the highway. They need to read Orwell PDQ and take a good hard look at themselves or someone else will and itll end in tears for all of us.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
They have read Orwell. And they're using his books as instruction manuals.
eg in trhe UK we had a 2 minutes "clapping for carers", then it became "2 minutes clapping for migrant carers". And then, almost as if it were planned, "2 minutes of Booing for Boris" (the PM).
So 2 minutes of hate, planned and executed. Fortunately it didn't take off that much, so they're now back to redefining the newspeak language, so that "racist" now means "white".
Re:Oh just fuck off already (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had it with these woke ideologues fascists and it being their way or the highway. They need to read Orwell PDQ and take a good hard look at themselves or someone else will and itll end in tears for all of us.
They damn sure are reading Orwell. It's their checklist.
Facecrime: check
Thoughtcrime: check
Doublespeak: check
Universal tracking: check
Ministry of Truth: check
Two-minute's hate: check
Damn, man, they're more than half way there. And most Slashdotters defend this.
Re: Oh just fuck off already (Score:3)
Antifa have no clue what real fascism is just like 99% of these woke idiots.
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Does obsolete devices will be updated for SJWs? (Score:2)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Master by itself isn't a problem, as in master copy. Mastering has a specific meaning.
It's only when used in relation to controlling something else.
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And yet, Github still seems to feel the need to act here, scared to death that someone will accuse them of being closet racists simply because of a bit of wrongname. After all, what is "master" in a git repository paired with? Probably something like "development" or "staging", and likely a bunch of other branches besides.
I can see getting rid of master/slave if there are better terms to use. Those terms have ugly connotations, regardless of race. I can also see finding better alternatives for blacklist
Re: Meaningless garbage (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You missed the 1984 reference to Newspeak [wikipedia.org]. Very Orwellian.
What if allowlist offends me / my group? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no possible way that any rational human, whom understands the language in question, English in this case, could mistake Master and Slave, as used in technology, for the context of non-voluntary human slavery. In the same vain Whitelist / Blacklist doesn't have the same context being misappropriated to it, by people who put feelings before understanding.
Is it really that big a deal? No, but at least have the decency to call out these changes for what they are, and that's feeling protection for idiots. The core of this issue is that major changes are being taken for the wrong reason, backed by the wrong understanding, to "solve" something that was never a real issue and that can't cause harm to people who take the micro-second of time to adopt the correct understanding.
Lets go full on retard about these issues and change any possible occurrence of Black, White, Master, Slave, etc... to something else, and that includes ALL occurrences. The colour / shade Black, would not longer be allowed to carry that name, because it's could be offensive. In the same regard you couldn't even use the hex code #000000, because someone might take offence to the octothorpem.
How far are we willing to go to bubble wrap the world so no one can get offended, over anything, even by accident, and their own willingness to not understand?
Re: What if allowlist offends me / my group? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
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There's a difference between using a word like "black" or "white" as an adjective to describe something it's actually relevant, and using those same words in a metaphorical context where they perpetuate a cultural association of "black=bad, white=good". An association which has been documented countless times being used to justify a subservient, even subhuman role for dark-skinned people.
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If you (a generic you), associate the terms black with bad and white with good, then that's on you. I have never once associated, automatically, the term black to be bad, and white to be good, they're colours / shades, and that's all.
Ah, so the terms "blacklist" and "whitelist" never made any sense to you anyway. You should be very happy to replace them with the clearer terms "denylist" and "allowlist", respectively.
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There's a difference between using a word like "black" or "white" as an adjective to describe something it's actually relevant, and using those same words in a metaphorical context where they perpetuate a cultural association.
Obviously you were implying that black as a colour for a culture is bad, where as white is associated with being "good". Luckily lists aren't cultures, they're simply records so the cultural association doesn't exist, which means in order for those terms to offend you, you'd have to insert the association, which leaves the problem with the generic you.
Iptables frontend (Score:2)
> Is it really that big a deal? No, but at least have the decency to call out these changes for what they are, and that's feeling protection for idiots. The core of this issue is that major changes are being taken for the wrong reason
The Linux "firewall" softwares are front ends for iptables. Adding something to the "blac klist" in the GUI simply adds it to the deny list in iptables. That's the iptables terminology and always has been - deny. Is it really a major change to have the GUI use the correct
Re: (Score:2)
It's not a big deal to me, is correct, but the reason it's not a big deal is because I understand the context, and because of that I'm not asking for it to change. Applying your point, if 9 / 10 parts of the software, backend / DB's all use the term replica for slave and primary fo
Re: (Score:2)
TBH I'm not so fussed about this change in terminology as the new words do mean something, I'm concerned they'd use primary/replica to refer to worker processes though.
I am concerned that this is yet another time when the minorty woke have decided for the rest of us, and are flexing their muscles to bully everyone else - we will adopt the new terms, because our new Mas... err Primaries have decided it for us. Bullying. Plain fascist bullying.
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In the same regard you couldn't even use the hex code #000000, because someone might take offence to the octothorpem.
Just wait. Soon there will be a demand to invert the values of color in electronics, because #000000 is the least color and therefore it should be white, not black, because it's racist for it to mean black.
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It would be hard because people aren't as dumb as you think they are. 4chan has tried, e.g. "cancel father's day".
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As TFS said about one of the points, it's a negative cost change since the new terminology is clearer.
Except that it isn't. "blacklist" is a much more generic term that can be used for a variety of reactions, such as blocking, bouncing, dropping, quarantine, etc. etc. - "blacklist" and "blocklist" are NOT synonyms - one is merely a subset of the other.
But it is good to have such a generic term, because it allows you to communicate a STRATEGY across various devices or technologies that results in the same consequence, irrespective of specific implementation.
Re: (Score:2)
Same for master/slave versus primary/replica. The latter is much more accurate, the replica replicates the primary. It doesn't do stuff for the master.
Not in the case of I2C bus (and many other communications buses). The master controls the bus and dictates when others - the slaves - do actual actions for the master. They are in no ways replicates of the primary, as that defeats the entire purpose of multiple different devices sharing a common communications bus. But I guess it's still racist somehow, even though it is 100 times more appropriate and descriptive as compared to "primary/replica".
Re: (Score:2)
The master controls the bus and dictates when others - the slaves - do actual actions for the master. They are in no ways replicates of the primary, as that defeats the entire purpose of multiple different devices sharing a common communications bus.
Then use terms "leader" and "follower" in this case. Works perfectly fine.
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Re: What if allowlist offends me / my group? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not in the case of I2C bus
Well, excuse me for reading TFS. Last I checked, Drupal wasn't an I2C bus.
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Well, excuse me for reading TFS. Last I checked, Drupal wasn't an I2C bus.
Nor are Android, Python, Go or GitHub. But there's a crap-ton of embedded software on GitHub.
Master and slave are part of the freaking specification [i2c.info], so I guess you will eschew any product that uses the I2C bus since it's racist.
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Scoping this to technology and using the correct meaning of the terms where "X has power of and control of Y and where Y is
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Replica / Primary doesn't provide more clarity then Master / Slave, but it also doesn't provide less. You can infer that the replica is a replicate of the primary, but the term doesn't actually require it to a replicate of a primary source, it can replic
Re: What if allowlist offends me / my group? (Score:3)
You might have noticed but a LOT of people seem to be deeply offended by this.
Seem is the operative word here. The reality is there are a relatively small number of very vocal people who are on a Crusade to eliminate anything they deem to be "offensive" from the English language. Most of them take offense at terms not because the terms are offensive but because the person is ignorant. A perfect example is the word "niggardly."
Re: (Score:2)
Seem is the operative word here. The reality is there are a relatively small number of very vocal people who are on a Crusade
So we can ignore the small number of people on a crusade and the changes can proceed then.
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Not so, a lot of people are not offended by this.,
A relative handful are though, and they are so vocal that it seems there is a lot of people offended. And I'd say a lot of those woulndn't care either way unless their peers were telling them to be offended (or else)
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A relative handful are though, and they are so vocal that it seems there is a lot of people offended. And I'd say a lot of those woulndn't care either way unless their peers were telling them to be offended (or else)
Oh well good. In that case the removal of the words from various codebases can proceed as normal then since very few people are actually offended by the removal.
"master/slave" to "primary/replica", got it wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
replace "master/slave" terminology with "primary/replica"
They got this wrong. Its not about replication, its about one object being an agent of another.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"master/slave" to "primary/replica", got it wro (Score:5, Funny)
If your Whore Drive isn't working, make sure there's a Pimp Drive on the ribbon.
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Bruh, it should be Pimp/Ho.
The Pimp drive slaps the data onto the Ho drive.
Problem solved, time to hang out my consultant shingle and make that $$$.
Re: (Score:2)
How about Lannister/Clegane ?
It's harder than you think to come up with a better term. Queen/drone is sexist. Xi/politburo will offend the Chinese. General/grunts? AWACS/fighters? PHB/Dilberts?
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replace "master/slave" terminology with "primary/replica"
They got this wrong. Its not about replication, its about one object being an agent of another.
Agreed. In this case, the closest analogy to "master/slave" would be "employer/employee" ... :-)
More seriously, I can get behind "allow/block-list" instead of "white/black-list" and understand that "master/slave" has problematic real-world associations, but the latter exactly describes the relationship as it's usually used in technology -- pseudo-terminals, brake cylinders, etc ... One controls, the other does. In addition, the words are dissimilar so they can't get easily mixed up (like when coding) wh
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Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
replace "master/slave" terminology with "primary/replica"
They got this wrong. Its not about replication, its about one object being an agent of another.
It's not about accuracy, it's about controlling other people.
The thought police don't really care what it was you were thinking before - the important thing is that from now on you ask them permission to think it.
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It's accurate. It's kinda like RAID1 for web services, you have an identical copy that replicates the primary so you can switch over in the event if failure.
One does not control the other any more than one HD in a RAID1 controls the other.
Such a dumb overreaction (Score:5, Insightful)
These terms make sense and are not referring to people. Leave them be.
More "perfect is the enemy of the good" idyllic pseudo-logic from the generation that values their own "fee-fees" over anything else because they got participation trophies for everything that happened in their childhood.
Creative management??? (Score:3)
Creating Racism! (Score:3)
This creates racism, this does not stop or hinder it. Here we are again going down the exact road that creates the problems were are trying to prevent.
Just imagine if white folks were allowed to do just this exact thing toward minorities. Ever notice how totalitarians like to control your language? I recall when people were bitching about the 7 words you can never say on TV and Radio... now that one group has had their control disabled to control speech another group wants to fill that void.
This will not end well and history will see this as just another form of racism under the guise of fighting it. Like all other forms of oppression and tyranny, they are "always introduced under the guise of fighting some enemy" preferably foreign but domestic will often times be good enough!
And besides, there is only one race... the human race! Get the fuck over yourselves!
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I recall when people were bitching about the 7 words you can never say on TV and Radio...
This made realize how irrelevant TV has become in my world.......not only do I not watch it (I watch other things), I don't even talk much to people who watch it regularly.
Big Brother is pleased (Score:2)
Doubleplus good.
pathetic (Score:2)
The terms 'allowlist' and 'blocklist'
are ridiculous.
First, saying "black" instead of the N-word doesn't change what a racist thinks. (and "people of colour" belongs to clown school, not a serious conversation). The assumption that words guide thought is not entirely misguided, but it's just as easy to hate black people as it is to hate n-word people.
And if you say "african-american", that's fine with me if and only if you also say "european-american". Otherwise it's just a more complicated way of saying that someone isn't a "normal" american.
S
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How are they any more ridiculous than whitelist and blacklist? What about "white" or "black" tells you anything about what those lists are supposed to do?
I'll tell you what - the cultural association of white=good, black=bad. An association that using such otherwise descriptively-useless terms helps to perpetuate. And an association with a long and well-documented history of being used to justify the denigration of dark-skinned people as being stained by the devil and thus not deserving of the same consi
"It's clear that there are people who are hurt" (Score:4, Insightful)
No it isn't. It's clear that there are people who have made a choice to be offended by them. No one was actually hurt in any way.
It's a sort of victim-control abuse - I can't remember the term for it - where someone invents a problem or creates an injury solely in order to be seen as the person who rescues the victim. Tell people they should be offended and then make a show of having the words that weren't offending anyone before removed.
It's pathetic how easily lead people are.
Keep all the terms, adjust skin color reference (Score:3)
The fundamental problem is the linking some people have of the words "white" and "black" to skin color.
Here's the thing - no real skin is white (not even albinos), no skin is truly black.
We are all just shades of tan.
So basically when referring to "race" we should all just switch to using Pantone color numbers. It would be more accurate anyway, and then no-one could be offended by a term like "blacklist" since it's not "SCRPA-307list".
Rename black holes (Score:3)
Not black and white (Score:2)
Language and especially techincal language has evolve to contain all sorts of potentially concerning phrases. Bus masters and slaves. Male and female connectors, or non-gendered connectors. stables of workers, mechanical Turks, wooden Indians. Class hierarchies. Black lists and white lists,
Some of the most potentially offensive are deeply ingrained in language: Black list, black hats, black ops, etc.
How do we decide which terms to keep and which to drop?
Oh for fuck's sake.. knee-jerk much, humans? (Score:3)
You want 'racism' and all of it's offshoots to disappear from our species? Then you have to rewire the parts of our brains that are amenable to racist urges to begin with. The tool that enables you to do that is called 'evolution'. We have to evolve away from this shit if we want our civilization to survive in the long run, because let's face it, racists: 'white people' are a minority in the world. You want to wreck our civilization? Keep being racist. All it does is get in the way of pretty much everything.
But I diverge from the subject at hand.
I like to wear 0x000000 color shirts
You really think that's going to work? How about this:
I like to wear shirts-that-absorb-all-wavelengths-of-light
A bit cumbersome, don't you think?
I like to wear shirts that look like carbon
..well, I guess that'd work, but what if someone doesn't know what carbon looks like?
No, that's graphite, which is something else entirely, and it's not bl--.. oops, you almost made me say a Bad Word! Shame on you!
This isn't going to work.
Listen, everyone: everyone is on edge right now. As if the pandemic bullshit hasn't frayed everyones' nerves down to just one nerve, and that one is fraying, too, then racist asshole cops go around killing dudes, and you may as well have set off a nuclear bomb, socially-speaking. Everyone, regardless of color, is completely out of their heads and out of control right now. I don't think there are many people who are really, truly thinking rationally right now.
Trying to re-write our entire concept of language? Just another symptom of that.
Like all the pandemic bullshit, eventually things will calm down, people will start being more thoughtful and rational about things, and then maybe something productive can come out of all this. But right now? Not so much.
Peace, out.
Drop git, migrate to subversion! (Score:2)
Not a real problem for me: My most important project never made the move from subversion to git.
In subversion, the traditional name for the equivalent of what git traditionally calls "master" is "trunk".
Speciesist! (Score:3)
"what git traditionally calls "master" is "trunk"."
You insensitive clod. The elephants will get you for that.
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In subversion, the traditional name for the equivalent of what git traditionally calls "master" is "trunk".
Huh - so why doesn’t github move to use “trunk” instead ? It works perfectly with “branch”, and people already talk about a “trunk workflow”. Plus it might be more acceptable to the guys who have a hard time dealing with change, since most of them probably used subversion at some point.
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Publicity, I guess.
Changing to "trunk" wouldn't be very controversial. "trunk" is an established term; especially conservative developers would probably happy to go back. The change would just happen without much of an echo in the media.
Choosing "main" instead of "trunk" to replace "master" makes the move more controversial. So GitHub gets more publicity (or more effective virtue-signalling or whatever you want to call it) out of it. GitHub will be remembered by many as an organization actively fighting aga
If BLM thinks this has any effect (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes there is racism in this world. But banning words is not going to solve that. At all. It literally has no effect on actual racism. People feel bad about those words because they are discriminated, not the other way around.
Racism is about opinions of other people. About people being afraid. About how people deal with power or lack of it. About why people show inappropriate behavior and deal with it. It is about culture. And in the country where people give the least f*** about others, especially the poor, that is where the problem is the biggest.
Until the dual-party system is changed in the US, racism will stay as strong as it is. Because it is a result of fear, uncertainty, doubt and a lack of appreciation of different minded / cultured / looking people. Unfortunately, the country that markets itself as the strongest country, is very weak in this aspect.
Now the disclaimer: There are worse places on the world [wikipedia.org] and Europe is rather lacking in providing actual shelter for people running from war. Being discriminated is not fun (I witnessed it once), having to fight for your live is worse.
Modernizing language (Score:3)
Praytell, what is the Newspeak term for a "Master's degree"? How we avoid thoughtcrime when we want to say "I've mastered all knowledge on this field"? What will be the MinTrue approved term for an international chess master?
Speaking of chess, can we start naming the square colors (if "color" is not an exclusive term) and pieces by their hex code? Such as #fff for what is known as white, and #000 for what is currently known as black? Perhaps these conventions should be inverted, as black should never be lesser than white?
Maybe we should ban chess after all, because it implies competition.
Where the hell is this world going?
And the word "git" is still ok (Score:4, Interesting)
git
n 1: a person who is deemed to be despicable or contemptible;
"only a rotter would do that"; "kill the rat"; "throw the
bum out"; "you cowardly little pukes!"; "the British call a
contemptible person a `git'"
Re: (Score:2)
The worker threads are the ones that do the actual work and have a much higher workload than the manager threads, seems like a very Marxist-friendly construct :-)
So it's better. Active/spare, primary/secondar etc (Score:2)
> A 'replica' is not equivalent to a 'slave'. A replica is supposed to be a duplicate of the primary, but the slave can be different,
Right. So in a database context where it is a duplicate, "replica" is more descriptive. As you read that, are you unsure whether the the "slave" is in fact a replica? You wouldn't be unsure if it were called "replica". :)
In enterprise networking we typically have a primary and secondary, or an active/passive, where only one device is used a time. Active/passive or acti
Re: (Score:2)
Reviewing our terminology is an opportunity to use the best words for different meanings.
I agree on that, however I give one more point to consideration:
As a GENERIC terminology, master/slave is widely establish to describe a top-down hierarchical relationship across different more specific meanings. We also need a new generic term.
Re: (Score:2)
Let's go back to the orange lettering on gray background.
Jerk, that's racist against presidents.
Re: (Score:2)
Not only are we now proposing to split the community defaults for no good reason, it also makes existing uses of “master” suspect. Like, “oh that project from 2008 has a 'master' branch? Those dirty racists!”
Language matters.
Why do they have to create yet another term ("main")? Why not just go back to the term "trunk" that is established terminology in version control systems before git?
Re: (Score:2)
I say we have to rename git itself. "git" is a derogatory term and is offensive (which was possibly a deliberate move by Torvalds).
Either way, git must go!
(this is how it works isn't it, woke allies?)
Re: (Score:2)
Because, in git, there's nothing special about the master branch, other than being a default.
Re: (Score:2)
If you don't feel a sense of superiority due to your race, you're not racist. No matter how many times you scream "blacklist".