JPMorgan Drops Terms 'Master,' 'Slave' From Internal Tech Code and Materials (reuters.com) 285
JPMorgan Chase is eliminating terms like "blacklist," "master" and "slave" from its internal technology materials and code as it seeks to address racism within the company, said two sources with knowledge of the move. Reuters reports: The terms had appeared in some of the bank's technology policies, standards and control procedures, as well in the programming code that runs some of its processes, one of the sources said. The phrases "master" and "slave" code or drive are used in some programming languages and computer hardware to describe one part of a device or process that controls another. "Blacklist" is used to describe items that are automatically denied, like a list of websites forbidden by a company's cybersecurity division. "Whitelist" means the opposite - a list of items automatically approved. While JPMorgan appears to be the first in the financial sector to remove most references to these racially problematic phrases, they're not the only company to do so. GitHub, Google, and Twitter are a few others who have made similar moves recently.
How long... (Score:4, Insightful)
What about Mastercard? (Score:5, Funny)
What I want to know is when Mastercard is going to change their name.
Or maybe they'll just drop the brand entirely and put everything under Visa?
Re: (Score:2)
Highly unlikely, Mastecard is too valuable a brand name to drop.
Noticed when the woke elites declare they would "stand with the oppressed", most of them will only do the minimum they can do to virtue signal without giving away anything of true value. Princeton will do stand for racism by changing its name..... [nytimes.com] Wait not Princeton, the most they'll can sacrifice would be renaming Wilson College. You can bet Yale will still be "Yale" come 2060.
Re: What about Mastercard? (Score:3)
The same day I drop my favorite function Retard(object) which defaults all the objects values to config default.
Most if my functions these days just exist to piss off sjws.
Re: What about Mastercard? (Score:3)
Re:What about Mastercard? (Score:5, Insightful)
I still don't understand why a lady doing an MA isn't a taking a Mistress of Arts. ... um ... access covers? What about the Sherman tank? Or Manchester?
Should mastery be changed to mistressy? Do we need new words?
Must manholes be renamed to
Does mismanagement become mrmanagement? Where will it all end?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Isn't the debtor a slave?
Re:What about Mastercard? (Score:5, Informative)
Tell that to Github, who decided that a "master" branch is bad [zdnet.com], even though it's typically grouped with other branches like "development" or "staging".
Linguistics: not *that* "master" (Score:5, Informative)
Tell that to Github, who decided that a "master" branch is bad [zdnet.com]
It's even funnier/stupider because the word in that context has nothing to do with concepts of giving and receiving orders (unlike the master/slave relationship).
It is called "master" because it is the reference, the "master copy".
The "master copy" is called thus, because it refers to the maestro's original work of art, as opposed to the copies produced by their students (or by copyist monks).
It has nothing to do with a slave owner, and entirely to do with old historical traditions in arts.
It would be akin to virtue-signal by renaming the Black Sea.
Re: (Score:3)
It would be akin to virtue-signal by renaming the Black Sea.
Luckily enough, Slavs mostly do not care, otherwise Montenegro [wikipedia.org] would be in deep troubles.
Re:Linguistics: not *that* "master" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Blows my mind that some people have told us that language means violence, but only when certain people utter it.
That's mind poison. Poisoning the well has been a known attack for centuries. Millennia, even! This seems like a similar attack.
Re: (Score:3)
This distinction may make sense now. But what's stopping those ultra woke from protesting the status differences between master maestros and mere students. Are students not as valuable, not equal humans as maestros? How dare you put down the students and subjugate their contributions to the world of art?
Re:What about Mastercard? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nope. "Master" is a bad word now, sit back and enjoy the shit show because the neo-puritans are here. If words hurt their feelings, it needs to be changed. If you use words they don't like, you need to lose your job. If you defend yourself for using those words, you and your family need to be ruined.
Re: What about Mastercard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have a Master's degree?
Yes, why?
Racist!
Almost as bad as a Bachelor's Degree (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have a Master's degree? Yes, why? Racist!
That's ok, if you have a Bachelor's degree you are clearly sexist.
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The term "master" only has negative connotations when paired with the term "slave".
Let's use "boss" and "wage slave" instead.
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Why would that matter to the SJWs? Master and slave only have racial connotations when applied to specific circumstances. Race wasn't a factor in Roman slavery. Similarly, blacklist/whitelist are not based on race, whatsoever.
It's those who are creating these racial divisions where there are none who are the real racists.
Snowflakes (Score:2)
Damn hippies!
Pointless and stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't imagine anything that would have less of an impact on racism than this. It is virtue signalling of the highest order. What's next? Will changing the term 'black coffee' to 'no-milk coffee' fix the company culture?
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It's not virtue signalling, it's just a corporation moving on a point it doesn't care enough to argue about. It's meaningless but resisting the current paranoia would eventually lead to someone somewhere calling for a boycott so JPM have just decided to go with the flow. It's lowest-common-denominator decision making.
Re: Pointless and stupid (Score:2)
Humans were afraid of the blackness of a dark night long before that noticed anything about skin colors. Also black were he remnants of the burned area... Lots of non racist reasons to associate black with bad.
So what are they going to use for the new terms? (Score:2)
"Whitelist" and "Blacklist" are fairly easy - "Approved List" and "Not Approved List" comes to mind immediately.
But "Master" and "Slave"? I've seen "Dominant" and "Recessive" used for these terms along with:
- "Primary" & "Secondary" or "Replica"
- "Server" & "Agent"
- "Controller" & "Worker"
From: https://www.theserverside.com/... [theserverside.com] there's the unbelievable list:
- "Agency" & "Operatives"
- "Captain" & "Conscripts"
- "Master" & "Masons"
- "Hive" & "Drones"
- "Schemer" & "Patsies"
- "Pr
Stunning and Brave! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
If you have a solution to end racism then let's hear it.
Otherwise stop shitting on efforts by other people. At least they are trying and when the stakes are so high and the effort so low there's little reason not to give it a go.
You're a fucking idiot if you think this stupid shit you call an "effort" is going to actually do a damn thing about the problem of racism. It's time for you to learn what virtue signaling is.
STOP making shit worse.
Virtue signaling. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now this is virtue signaling. For all the things that get called virtue signaling, this absolutely is virtue signaling. They could have done this all silently and not bothered telling anyone but then entire point of this exercise was to tell as many people as possible that they are changing them to make the appearance that they care.
Only the most extreme of individuals would care about such things. Meanwhile, black people just don't want to get murdered by cops.
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Non blacks don't want to get killed by cops either:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Non blacks don't want to get killed by cops either:
Alas, they are not the current subject nor the group being disproportionately killed by police. That said, the changes in policing that BLM is advocating around the country should prevent deaths of all colors.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
On the contrary whites are MORE likely to be killed while the cops are trying to arrest them, but overall less likely to be in a situation where the police are trying to arrest them.
Based on 2019 statistics compiled by the washington post...
The odds of being killed while unarmed and being arrested:
Black: 1 in 292,373 arrests
White: 1 in 282,629 arrests
In 2019 in the entire united states, 9 unarmed black were killed by police, compared to 19 unarmed whites.
Unarmed Blacks Are Disproportionately Killed by Cops
Re: Virtue signaling. (Score:3)
You might not. But this is more a class warfare issue. The cops shoot plenty of addicts, the mentally ill and the homeless.
Basically anyone that people in gated communities fear or pity is a target. And especially people that don't have the resources to fight back.
Re: (Score:2)
easier than actually hiring black people (Score:4, Insightful)
I used google imagine and looked at all their leaders, directors and such in the very large city I live near. Buncha pasty white guys and some asians of the eastern and southern areas. The city is 31% black.
Yup, virture signalling is soooo much easier, don't want to scare those big corp boards by sending in a frizzy haired darkie...
Who is complaining about that? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Calling yourself "African american" is a way of differentiating yourself from other americans..
You don't hear european americans calling themselves "european americans", and you don't have the same issues in other countries - you don't hear of "african british" or "african french" etc.
If you hold US citizenship you are an american, that's it. You have the same rights as any other US citizen, unless you have relinquished some of those rights by being convicted of serious crimes.
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>"You don't hear european americans calling themselves "european americans"
Yep. Because if Whites call themselves "European American", which would be an equal/equitable term (area/continent-American) with "African American", "Asian American", "Native American", and "Latin American", it is somehow racist. I kid you not. Being equal is now the new racism.
Imagine the reaction if you reply to someone saying "African American" this and that and "White" in the same conversation, and you reply back with "Eur
Let's count the ways (Score:3)
Need to remove the following from our language:
blacklist and whitelist
black box warning
black label
whitewash
slave and master
mastery
master bedroom
ship master
white
red
yellow
black
brown
There. Racism should be gone now.
Re: (Score:2)
Stupidity...
Anyone who wants to be racist will invent new derogatory terms to refer to the groups they dislike.
Someone could take offense at virtually anything, you will end up in a situation where everyone is afraid to say anything at all incase someone somewhere takes offense to it.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a better idea... How about we stop letting people refer to other PEOPLE as being either Black or White.
The people are not those colors anyways... Nobody's skin has an RGB value of 0,0,0 or 255,255,255... they generally aren't even shades of color that come anywhere close to being Black or White or whatever. Grab a piece of white paper and a piece of black construction paper
and compare it to a bunch of photos... basically No person's color will be anywhere close to these prototypic
Modern day compliance (Score:5, Insightful)
I now refer to the people chained to the wall of my basement as Cost Minimization Enablers.
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Plumbers union is joining the initiative (Score:3)
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Down with the Theorem! (Score:4, Informative)
Wait for someone at the Human Resources to discover, that Pythagoras has owned a slave.
Is it not time to abolish his patriarchal theorem? The very terms Hypotenuse and Cathetus — attributes of a Right-angled triangle — are so offensive, hearing them is an equivalent to a punch in the face to the oppressed world-wide!
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New name for Blacklist/Whitelist (Score:3)
From now on I suggest that we all call them NaughtyList and NiceList.
The PC PC (Score:4, Insightful)
That's by far not enough. I have said it before and I will say it again, there's so much more left to be done.
man pages need to be called person pages.
To avoid offending dog owners and canine furries, cat shall henceforth be quadrupled_domestic_animal. No, symlinking is not allowed, learn to type!
mail is considered a remnant of the more patriachic times of Linux and will henceforth be gender.
touch is no longer allowed to be used by privileged users due to continued abuse.
more is finally completely phased out and replaced by the more environmentally friendly less
Likewise, LaTeX is being replaced by the biodegradable KlEeNeX
The kill command will now be replaced by the more acceptable euthanize and can only be used on tasks that consented to the use.
nice will be complemented with sue to avoid abuse by privileged systems engineers that told everyone they need to be nice and let them have more resources.
quota is now enforced by default.
history has been rewritten and is now herstory.
abort() will henceforth be known as choice()
daemons are appealing to an exclusive Judeo-Christian user circle and will now be called spiritual_guides
We shall no longer refer to terminals as dumb. They are now equally valuable and may only need special guidance and assistance.
X-Window is now NC-17 Window
Reverse causality (Score:5, Informative)
Are you sure that using specific words causes racism? And that that suppressing them will consequently remove racism?
I was more of the impression of the contrary: racism causes the use of some words and if you don't want to see these words you'd better try to end racism. But maybe I'm missing something obvious.
Putting the thermometer in the freezer does not remove the fever. It only hinders your ability to measure the problem...
Re:That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
this is a matter of increasing the amount of control they have over you.
I control your world.
Master will be Host. Slave will be Client. Whitelist will be allowlist. Blacklist will be blocklist.
Only those of you in blackface will suffer. For everybody else, nothing changed.
Re:That's nice (Score:4, Insightful)
"Host" and "client" are discriminatory to poor people since they are unable to afford hosting or paying as a client. "Blocklist" is ableist since it excludes those that don't meet your privileged arbitrary criteria.
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Better do something about your username there, buddy.
I suggest "absence of light LED"
Re: That's nice (Score:2)
So why chess videos are banned?
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Re:That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Newspeak. It is actually terrifying to those of us who are not too stupid to see what is happening.
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Perhaps you should research the term "appeasement" and see what it is that really gets us into wars.
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Indeed, do look it up. And see if it is about your delicate feefees. Or something else.
Fucking snowflake.
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Oh, the irony.
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>"Indeed, do look it up. And see if it is about your delicate feefees. Or something else. Fucking snowflake."
Calling someone who is opposed to PC speech a "snowflake" is the ultimate irony.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Gets us INTO wars? Sometimes the war is already there. Here's a little exercise:
Ever played the board game "Risk"? Try a strategy where you do nothing for each of your turns. Just sit there, being all kind, complacent, and inclusive. Ignore the little battles that occur around you as pieces of land change hands. Turn after turn, just pass, while the other players continue with their own strategies.
Lemme know how that game ends for you.
Do I control Australia?
Re:That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is proven by the BLM protestors currently burning a statue in Portland.
Of a slave trader?
Or a racist?
Oh no, of an elk.
Does anyone still think its got anything to do with blacks mattering or otherwise?
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This is offensive to people in the BDSM community!
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No, these sacred words will now be reserved entirely for their use!
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This is offensive to people in the BDSM community!
As I remember this thing against master slave started with some of the bdsm community changing the nomenclature to top/bottom and then it spread to a protest about it's use in scsi where it lost steam and wasn't successful. Won't claim this is an historically accurate description but it is how I remember the discussion.
Santa Claus (Score:2)
Naughty and nice lists.
Re: (Score:2)
The reason I use whitelist and blacklist is that they're not the same as what's allowed/denied. If you implement say a spam filter and somebody wonders why something does or doesn't get through then "it's whitelisted" or "it's blacklisted" are complete explanations that someone has overridden the regular spam filter that'll also allow and deny emails. If the rules are exhaustive there's no reason not to be more direct. I have no strong opinion about master and slave, I tend to use manager/worker anyway sinc
Re: (Score:3)
I care because I don't want constantly worry about offending someone.
Even the statement "Why do you care so much" contains at least 2 words that could be found offensive if I searched hard enough to find offense.
Much: well that refers to rich people have a lot, no use it.
Care: my parents didn't care for me do use that word.
Re: Seriously? (Score:2)
It's clear you don't care about any of this. Beyond the inconvenience that it seems to cause you. Feel free to ignore all of it.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
I care because I don't want constantly worry about offending someone.
Even the statement "Why do you care so much" contains at least 2 words that could be found offensive if I searched hard enough to find offense.
Much: well that refers to rich people have a lot, no use it. Care: my parents didn't care for me do use that word.
Oh, untwist you panties and relax. They are just switching out the terms Master/Slave for the more modern and less controversial Oligarch/Pleb.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
... how do you function?
if you use a word to convey a meaning, eg the color black, but the person you are addressing is "offended", that is _their_ problem to solve. If they have shell-shock and have panic attacks on hearing these words, understandable, they are welcome to hand me a piece of paper which informs me of this peculiarity. I dislike dogs. When i am approached by someone with a dog i ask them to "please keep the dog from touching me" and that's it. I'm not running a campaign with all others who dislike dogs and believe me there are _lots_ of "us". Words exist only to convey meaning, they do not exist outside that scope. Is frasobenadibok a word? No. Why not? Because it carries no meaning whatsoever. Is redboltstoneblanket a word? Possibly. There's some meaning in there. You think of something when i speak this word to you. Whether it's the thought i wanted to convey to you is a different matter.
If i say "try setting the samsung hard drive as master and the hitachi as slave instead" but you feel insulted merely because i used the word "master", ignoring the context, i ain't changing the nomenclature because you can't tell the difference. That's objectively stupid: You are creating difficulties where none exist. Should physicists rename black holes? Fuck off, catch fire and die, in your order of preference.
"master" is the same word as "maestro", it has nothing to do with slavery. Do you have any idea how many common words have another meaning in the underworld's language?
this insistense that we somehow need to "cleanse" our language implies that _we are all speaking that language_ as if we are _all members of that society_
Ultimately, changing the vocabulary does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to solve the still existing problem of mistreatment of humans (and animals and nature in general)
It's the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
What's *actually* insulting and despicable is: people who do NOT suffer from slavery, trying to use the situation where people DO suffer (or have suffered), for their own causes.
go fuck a fruitbasket
georgios tsiros, physics msc, 6946235091, greece
Re: (Score:2)
>"I care because I don't want constantly worry about offending someone."
The answer is to stop worrying about it. In reality, very few are offended about such stuff and those who are, they are the problem, not you. You will never satisfy such people, and they are really only happy when they can find something to be "offended" by, to validate their victim mentality.
Political correctness speech is a like a disease that constantly mutates and changes, infecting more and more parts of the body, and with no
Re: (Score:2)
Tu uso del idioma Inglés es racista.
Re: Seriously? (Score:2)
Re:Instead, (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Deny-list, allow-list. Done.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Instead, (Score:4, Insightful)
there is nothing racial about black and white.
only racists see racism everywhere
(its you, you're the racist)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Instead, (Score:4, Insightful)
Fairly soon you will not be able to use "black" and "white" in most contexts, regardless of their origin. Common sense is being drowned in the bathwater just before it is discarded, complete with wet baby.
Re: (Score:2)
Just replace them with "Ebony" and "Ivory".
Re: (Score:2)
What about red and yellow?
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Fairly soon you will not be able to use "black" and "white" in most contexts, regardless of their origin. Common sense is being drowned in the bathwater just before it is discarded, complete with wet baby.
As I understand it some people objects to the use of colors to describe non-color properties as it has adverse side effects, to me this does not seem like an idea entirely without merit.
Re: (Score:2)
if you want to replace master and slave there's alternate terms but blacklist and whitelist is pretty difficult to replace
I have had the same problem.
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if you want to replace master and slave there's alternate terms but blacklist and whitelist is pretty difficult to replace
I have had the same problem.
Denylist / allowlist
Re: (Score:3)
I actually support avoiding master and slave terminology. But blacklist is a false etymology. It comes from the early 1600s in England; people with dark skin living in or visiting England at the time were (while not nonexistent) extremely rare, and not an issue affecting everyday life. Quite to the contrary, black was used - entirely unrelated to skin - to mean evil, sin, disgrace, etc. A "black book" or "black list" would contain the names of people who had done some sort of wrong. Same origin as "black
Re: (Score:2)
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Security uses red team / blue team -- no black, except for "black hat", which comes from Westerns (outlaws vs white hats, sherrifs -- or maybe they had brown hats), and I think "black hat" might be PC-incorrect too. Unsure.
Red/black tree, there's no PC-incorrect connetation (that _I_ can come up with), so presumably they're fine. Though I am wondering if the word "black" will be allowed to remain in the American language.
Re: Instead, (Score:2)
The car industry will have a hard time by updating all their wiring harnesses.
And you won't be able to buy black or white cars anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Especially on black Friday.
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Well that's obviously blatantly political, red and blue. Also "red" is a reference to native Americans, which is offensive.
This is fun! I bet I can come up with reasons why any proper noun is offensive quicker than someone else can come up with appropriate nouns.
Re: (Score:2)
Better do away with yellow too, as that can be a term used to refer to the chinese.
Re:Instead, (Score:4, Interesting)
Blank space was suggested. No-go, as Blanc means white in other European languages.
Text free space was suggested. No-go due to the implication that the rest of the text is therefore non-free.
Intentional gaps was suggested. No-go due to the implication that the rest of the text is not intentional.
Last I checked the discussion was round using the term "Areas included for typographic flow", which is a huge mouthful.
Yes, we have got to this stage.
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Red and blue? They will claim it's racist because it references the minorities in the bloods and crips.
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking more Red Indians and Scotsmen.
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Leading to a followup question what do we do with concepts like red/black separation, used in the field of security, and red/black trees, common in computer science, with the name chosen because it was easy to draw them with red and black pens? There's no use of the word white in there, but other colors are mentioned.
I'm not qualified to make a specific suggestion here, but as a general rule I'd try to use terms that are descriptive and relevant. As whiteboards are becoming more rare chances are the current naming will become more of an archaic curiosity. Although I don't have any specific suggestions here I can see how this might be an opportunity to improve the nomenclature.
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...and pi is 3.14.
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"Slave" and "master" ok, I see why those would want to be changed but "blacklist" is only racist if you make it so. Black was a color long before it was a race.
I believe the point you're making is why some people think the usage is wrong and should be changed, colors shouldn't have the added connotation of being bad. Blacklists in programming can be a fairly neutral term, but generally it's been used to list people considered bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Communist temp moderator! (Score:2)
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Words are like symbols. Something simple minded people get hung up about. What matters is not the symbol but its use. Do you honestly think anyone thought about BDSM or slavery when refering to master/slave setups in computers?
How long can we still use "servers"? Same reason, servers are after all also people bringing you stuff that you order them to bring you.