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This same conversation came up at my job. I personally don't think that the effort put in is worth the advantages that it affords, or if there are any real adva

by kache_ 6y ago

This same conversation came up at my job. I personally don't think that the effort put in is worth the advantages that it affords, or if there are any real advantages at all. However, I largely kept my mouth shut because I was afraid of the social repercussions. I wonder how much of this is occurring in tech companies because of the same phenomenon - people are just probably don't want to risk their jobs over something so unimportant. As always, paycheck comes in, jira ticket gets dragged from left to right. Whatever.

nojito 6y ago
>if there are any real advantages at all. If it brings just one more person into OS isn't it worth it?
- umvi 6y ago
  Only if it doesn't drive >0 people away from the OS
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  If it just puts off one person isn't it not worth it?
  - smachiz 6y ago
    You seem unconcerned about the people who might feel marginalized and harmed by the rampant use of offensive language, and really concerned about people who could simply substitute another word with no impact. It's a really, really false equivalence. If you're offended by being asked to behave civilly you really have a bigger problem to deal with.
    - zug_zug 6y ago
      I don't feel you're arguing in good faith. We should define "offensive language." How will we measure it fairly? Will we poll the english-speaking and set a thresh-hold? Because I sure hope we don't find out "aborting" a process is offensive language to religious coders with a polical agenda.
      - notafraudster 6y ago
        I mean one way to do it would be that when someone brings up a specific term that they feel is a problem, we decide to change the term or not, and if we choose not to, we can revisit later. If someone brings up that they feel the verb abort is an issue, the community can have that conversation. There are no shortage of idioms that are synonymic -- halt, stop, terminate, end -- and it would be trivial to make the changes if it came to that. Either the decision will be to replace with another idiom, or to keep the existing one. If Linux had never used master/slave, and instead used primary/secondary, no one would open up a discussion to say "replace primary with master, primary is unclear and too much work to type" or whatever. So clearly there's no obligation to use the disputed terms, just as there wouldn't be for "abort". Are you hung up on using "abort"? Like, we don't need some cosmic answer once and for all about whether or not ever possible term will ever be offensive. We can just respond to people who bring the issues up. If they seem to be bringing it up in bad faith (for example, if the username is "DefendTheWestGroyper" and they have an anime avatar, probably you don't need to take them seriously) then that can be part of the conversation too. If this is the worst bikeshedding you're experiencing in a team project then you've got an uncommonly productive group. But also you can just opt out of the conversation. If you try to submit a PR later with a banned word in it, someone will flag it. The consequences on the code side seem de minimis.
    - bavell 6y ago
      I'm not being asked to behave civilly though, I'm being asked to coddle infantile behavior of thin-skinned people taking things out of context. I'd much rather have a civil discussion about substantive changes we can make to society as whole, not wasting everyone's time with trivial and performative conformance.
  - hn_check 6y ago
    Who would be put off? Show me a person who is offended at the change from master/slave to primary/secondary, and I'll show you someone who is almost certainly a deplorable person in many other ways and are almost certainly a liability.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    If it puts off any Alt-Right White Supremacists and drives them away from the Linux community, then that's an excellent outcome. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/silicon-valley-tech-alt-right-racism-misogyny/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/silicon-valley-... >Meet Silicon Valley’s Secretive Alt-Right Followers. I investigated the role of “alt-techies” in the extremist movement emboldened by Trump. >“The average alt-right-ist is probably a 28-year-old tech-savvy guy working in IT,” white nationalist Richard Spencer insisted when I interviewed him a few weeks before the election.
    - concordDance 6y ago
      > If it puts off any Alt-Right White Supremacists and drives them away from the Linux community, then that's an excellent outcome. What?! Why? How is getting a less feature rich/buggier kernal due to less devs a good thing? Or is it just that anything bad or exclusionary happening to your political enemies is a good thing?
      - DonHopkins 6y ago
        How are White Supremacists not your political enemies, and why are you so concerned about their feelings?
      - DonHopkins 6y ago
        And why are you advocating driving away minorities and anti-racist people from working on the Linux kernel by tolerating White Supremacists in violation of the Linux Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct, who consider other human beings genetically inferior and not deserving of the same rights and respect as white people? Are you ok with rapists and murderers, too, or do you just have a special place in your heart for defending White Supremacy? https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-conduct.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-condu... >Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include: >The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or advances >Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks >Public or private harassment >Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission >Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting White Supremacy is clearly inappropriate in a professional setting. Or do you disagree? Do you have a dog in this battle? Can you name any White Supremacist kernel hackers who the community can't get along without? You really need to take a deep look at yourself, and decide which side of history you're on. Advocating and defending White Supremacy online could and should have detrimental effect on your employability. Do you stand by your beliefs enough to share your real name with us, or do you insist on remaining anonymous?
- ta17711771 6y ago
  Depends if it actually does. And if that person can code.
- loceng 6y ago
  Is there a net benefit of coddling unreasonable people to such a degree that we're no longer allowing words to have different meanings, and holding integrity through requiring critical thinking to understand language properly? Organizations playing into this are either pandering to the mob and/or aren't grounded in reason. Let's be strong for our brothers and sisters, even if discomfort increases temporarily due to a mob.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    Do you actually know the people in the linux kernel community who are discussing this change and do you know they are unreasonable people who can be described as a mob? Genuinely asking because I don't know them, and therefore I can't judge on who they are as people, but you are clearly judging them as people so I'm assuming you know them?
    - loceng 6y ago
      I didn't call them a mob - try reading what I said again. Also the length of your argument repeating the same (wrong) thing doesn't strengthen it either. Many people's reading comprehension in this thread suits the arguments they want to make, setting up straw man arguments seemingly without realizing it.
      - neilp1 6y ago
        Perhaps you could be clearer who you’re calling a mob.
      - ryanobjc 6y ago
        You instead accused the Linux kernel team of either "pandering to a mob" or "ungrounded in reason". Hardly charitable. Do you think everyone who has a different view from you total scum of the earth? Maybe they came to a totally rational conclusion, using a completely different set of axioms than you would, that this change is worth it?
        6y ago
gilrain 6y ago
I believe the people those terms affect that they hurt them and subtly reinforce bias. That doesn't feel unimportant to me. What's unimportant is using antiquated, hurtful terms when it would be easy to simply not do that.
- loceng 6y ago
  Instead of actually helping these people we coddle them further by changing words? That's equivalent to defunding the police, a simple shallow action, but doesn't actually address the actual racism and lack of accountability (that affects all races) of police actions. It's coddling and it's lazy - and the mob will start calling people, if they haven't already started, people and organizations who don't change the language as racists - a false accusation but it rallies the mob and doesn't lead to critical thinking.
  - rschneid 6y ago
    False dichotomy. Progress can be made along multiple fronts simultaneously. 'Defunding police' isn't a single action so can hardly be labeled 'shallow' but it's definitely a step towards addressing racism since it's quite clear to anyone who's been paying attention that ridiculous levels of over-policing in America is a major propagator of racial inequality. All of this stuff is related. Nobody is wrong for focusing more or less on one battle than another...
    - loceng 6y ago
      Are you saying we should coddle people as an option? I wasn't arguing an either/or, we can and should look at all options - I was highlighting the shallow nature of both actions vs. actually changing systems - and arguably defunding the police is the wrong mantra, inaccurate; demilitarize the police, yes. That doesn't mean we should give into unreasonable options. Is there a net benefit of coddling unreasonable people to such a degree that we're no longer allowing words to have different meanings, and holding integrity through requiring critical thinking to understand language properly? Organizations playing into this are either pandering to the mob and/or aren't grounded in reason. Let's be strong for our brothers and sisters, even if discomfort increases temporarily due to a mob. Edit to add: it's interesting my top comment was quickly downvoted 3 times right around the time of the above reply, and then my reply here got 3 downvotes quickly too.
hn_check 6y ago
"people are just probably don't want to risk their jobs over something so unimportant" It's important to some people. If the alternatives are unimportant to you, then what possible opposition would you have? Just to be an asshole? Just to show how edgy you are?
maweki 6y ago
I would hazard the guess that enforcing a different naming policy doesn't hurt either.
SambalOelek 6y ago
In all honesty, it doesn't matter how you feel about it. I do feel strongly about it, and I'm Native Mexican, and I have very strong feelings about my ancestors being enslaved. I was taught these words in the context of colonialism and slavery. I'm assuming you weren't. Edit: Glad to see the true nature of your culture. I probably won't come back.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > it doesn't matter how you feel about it. I do feel strongly about it I think that's pretty much the gist of everything these days.
  - SambalOelek 6y ago
    Comments deleted due to brigading
    - zug_zug 6y ago
      >> You don't get to feel ... I don't think you get to tell other people what they get to feel. I encourage working on your empathy here. Who gets to decide "what's polite"? What if people disagree? Who gets to decide whose opinion counts?
      - SambalOelek 6y ago
        The trauma of being asked not to make rape jokes can't be compared to the trauma of being raped. Just do the right thing, is it worth the arguing?
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        You started off with a reasonable point, but please take a moment to rethink what you're saying. We're talking about words vs. words here. Nobody is enslaving anyone, which would be the equivalent to your utterly horrible analogy here.
bsaul 6y ago
i think you should have make a stand. I know i wouldn't tolerate this kind of BS to actually interfere with the quality of my work (naming things is hard enough without considering the current political sensitivity of the day). We should find names that reflects the concept best, while keeping its meaning understandable. Period. PS: obviously i don't know anything about your personal situation, so i'm not blaming you for anything.
- geofft 6y ago
  > We should find names that reflects the concept best, while keeping its meaning understandable. Period. Let me repost a comment I made recently: In some contexts (e.g. Jenkins), a "master" tells the "slave" what to do and the "slave" does it. This at least is plausibly connected to the real-world meanings of the term, although given that the "slave" is free to start and stop work at any time and the entire job of the "master" is to keep track of that, the analogy isn't great. "Coordinator/worker" works well here. In some contexts (e.g., MySQL), a "master" sends a copy of all its work to the "slave," and both of them execute it. The "slave" stands ready to replace the "master" if the "master" becomes unavailable, and usually at that point the "master" becomes the new "slave" once it catches up. This makes no sense. "Primary/replica" works well here. In some contexts (e.g., network device bonding, certain types of logical partitioning or RAID), a "master" is a logical construct, consisting of multiple physical "slaves". All interactions with the "master" are actually algorithmically sent to one or more "slaves," and if all the "slaves" are offline, there's no "master" left. This, also, makes no sense. Terms that would make sense include things like "bond/member" (the members being bonded to each other, and the bond being the resulting abstraction), "LV/PV", etc. In some contexts (e.g. disk drives), the "master" and "slave" are both devices that provide the same type of service to the host, but the "slave" connects to the "master" instead of directly to the host, and while the "master" is communicating, the "slave" can't. The "master" exercises no control over the slave beyond occasionally blocking the communication channel and it pays no attention to communications between the "slave" and the host. This, also, makes no sense. "Primary/secondary" works well here. In pseudoterminals, the "master" is a limited API to the PTY object, held by the terminal emulator, which copies text to the screen, interpreters rendering commands, and sends input. The "slave" is a more featureful API to the same PTY object, held by the shell / the command under execution, which does what it wants. This, also, makes no sense. I don't know of a standard term here, but I'd sort of suggest "monitor" and "session," which has the benefit of keeping the initials. The M side is the one connected to your actual monitor and it's also the side that monitors output; the S side is the one connected to the application, and it's associated with at most one session in the sense of setsid(2) (see als credentials(7)). All of these are different uses, and you can't generally map one to another. For instance, if you're used to a database where "master/slave" is used in the primary/replica sense, and you see a database where the "master" just coordinates requests for work and all actual data is sent to/from some "slave," your knowledge of primary/replica architecture is misleading here.
apcragg 6y ago
> However, I largely kept my mouth shut because I was afraid of the social repercussions. So, social norms? There are plenty of things we collectively don't say or do because of enforced social norms yet all of a sudden when those social norms start to include the perspectives of traditionally oppressed groups, certain people start acting like Western Society as we know it is collapsing by the hands of the censorship police.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  When social norms say that you're not allowed to share a dissenting view, we get to call that an "orthodoxy" and should be consider the extent to which it is damaging and repressive, rather than simply taking the merit of the orthodoxy for granted. Such consideration should be all the more important when we happen to agree with those norms. (You've been punished for questioning geocentrism? Should have respected those social norms, Galileo my friend.)
  - apcragg 6y ago
    I mean if you want to conflate social norms with debates about knowledge and practice, sure great zinger you have there. Unfortunately, many people do not have the luxury of treating their race, sexuality, gender, religion, etc, as a matter of ideological debate. The perspective of framing the social treatment of immutable identities as encouraging orthodoxy comes from a position of privilege.
    - fennecfoxen 6y ago
      If you think that the current cancel-culture zeitgeist (on the right and the left alike) doesn't shut down questions about knowledge and practice, you're blind or an ideologue. But I thank you for being so kind as to include Religion in the list of acceptable "identities". As you have framed the matter, I do NOT happen to have the luxury and privilege to blindly extend deference to our glorious champions of freedom™ and equality™ and accept their diktats without criticism or debate. This is because they are hypocrites and they are tyrants. The Democratic Party in particular treats my church as an archenemy and longs to see it destroyed. They can't even leave a convent of nuns alone to not-pay-homage to their birth control diktats.
gigatexal 6y ago
Lol effort? A few more unit tests and some integration testing are too high a bar to be inclusive or on the right side of history? Did you fight non gendered bathrooms at your workplace too?
gruez 6y ago
>I wonder how much of this is occurring in tech companies because of the same phenomenon - people are just probably don't want to risk their jobs over something so unimportant. I can't wait till 4chan weaponizes this with some innocuous term as a joke, and everyone else either goes along with it thinking it's genuine, or doesn't speak out despite the absurdity. Kind of like how they turned the "okay" hand gesture into meaning "white power". eg. https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3c5e24b75e755aa25bd6031be6274cf6 https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3c5e24b75e755aa25bd603... Basically this[1] in action. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082 "Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."
- dathinab 6y ago
  Sorry, but in most of the world this is still the okay hand gesture. (EDIT: To clearify parts of the world which did use this sign before, many cultures have different signs). It's maybe a bit like the term "master" (decoupled from slave) which has very differently nonces in many countries outside of the US. Mainly it's then often not strongly (or not at all) associated with slavery or suppression of people of color. For example the German word "Meister" is often translated as "Master" but is mainly associated with someone who became really good at a skill, i.e. who mastered it. It's also used in a context of a person who is qualified to teach some from of craft (job), through there the roots are somewhat similar as historically you complied pretty strictly with what your teacher told you. Anyway, using more inclusive terminology for anything new doesn't cost anything and as such should be done.
  - kace91 6y ago
    >It's maybe a bit like the term "master" (decoupled from slave) which has very differently nonces in many countries outside of the US. Mainly it's then often not strongly (or not at all) associated with slavery or suppression of people of color. Cultural translation is always a bit weird. For example, in Spanish (or at least Spain's) BDSM circles, people use the term "maestro" for "master" (despite the term meaning only "teacher" or "skilled person/virtuoso" in Spanish). I assume at some point it got badly translated and it stuck in the community.
dathinab 6y ago
> don't think that the effort put in is worth the advantages that it affords That's why they mandate it for new parts merged into the kernel tree. In which case it's basically free.
- kache_ 6y ago
  Inconsistent naming of concepts is not ideal
bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago
> I wonder how much of this is occurring in tech companies because of the same phenomenon - people are just probably don't want to risk their jobs over something so unimportant. It's the same really as not questioning things in the soviet union. See the fine HBO program "Chernobyl" for details on what happens when truths are avoided in favor of bullshit. The danger with the new leftist fascism we see in the US is that people are afraid of saying the truth. Eventually this will be a problem.
- altacc 6y ago
  > people are afraid of saying the truth. The vast amount of people on traditional and social media saying all the things that you claim people are afraid to say refutes this. Whatever you think people are too afraid to say, there is somebody saying it. Free speech doesn't mean people get to voice any idea without scrutiny. Other's people's free speech also exists. What people tend to mean is "I used to be able to say this without being criticised" and the loss of that privilege is unsettling. If they can't express an opinion and sufficiently support it against objections and criticism then it might not be such a good opinion.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    Finding someone’s employer and harassing that employer into firing the person isn’t “criticism”.
    - altacc 6y ago
      But it is a consequence of their actions. Free speech can exist, but not free speech free of consequences. That person would need to find an employer who aligns with their desired actions.
      - philwelch 6y ago
        Idi Amin once said, “there is freedom of speech but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.”
thrownaway954 6y ago
"However, I largely kept my mouth shut because I was afraid of the social repercussions" "As always, paycheck comes in, jira ticket gets dragged from left to right. Whatever." 10,000% agree with you my friend.

by kache_ 6y ago

nojito 6y ago

>if there are any real advantages at all. If it brings just one more person into OS isn't it worth it?

umvi 6y ago
Only if it doesn't drive >0 people away from the OS
FeepingCreature 6y ago
If it just puts off one person isn't it not worth it?
- smachiz 6y ago
  You seem unconcerned about the people who might feel marginalized and harmed by the rampant use of offensive language, and really concerned about people who could simply substitute another word with no impact. It's a really, really false equivalence. If you're offended by being asked to behave civilly you really have a bigger problem to deal with.
  - zug_zug 6y ago
    I don't feel you're arguing in good faith. We should define "offensive language." How will we measure it fairly? Will we poll the english-speaking and set a thresh-hold? Because I sure hope we don't find out "aborting" a process is offensive language to religious coders with a polical agenda.
    - notafraudster 6y ago
      I mean one way to do it would be that when someone brings up a specific term that they feel is a problem, we decide to change the term or not, and if we choose not to, we can revisit later. If someone brings up that they feel the verb abort is an issue, the community can have that conversation. There are no shortage of idioms that are synonymic -- halt, stop, terminate, end -- and it would be trivial to make the changes if it came to that. Either the decision will be to replace with another idiom, or to keep the existing one. If Linux had never used master/slave, and instead used primary/secondary, no one would open up a discussion to say "replace primary with master, primary is unclear and too much work to type" or whatever. So clearly there's no obligation to use the disputed terms, just as there wouldn't be for "abort". Are you hung up on using "abort"? Like, we don't need some cosmic answer once and for all about whether or not ever possible term will ever be offensive. We can just respond to people who bring the issues up. If they seem to be bringing it up in bad faith (for example, if the username is "DefendTheWestGroyper" and they have an anime avatar, probably you don't need to take them seriously) then that can be part of the conversation too. If this is the worst bikeshedding you're experiencing in a team project then you've got an uncommonly productive group. But also you can just opt out of the conversation. If you try to submit a PR later with a banned word in it, someone will flag it. The consequences on the code side seem de minimis.
  - bavell 6y ago
    I'm not being asked to behave civilly though, I'm being asked to coddle infantile behavior of thin-skinned people taking things out of context. I'd much rather have a civil discussion about substantive changes we can make to society as whole, not wasting everyone's time with trivial and performative conformance.
- hn_check 6y ago
  Who would be put off? Show me a person who is offended at the change from master/slave to primary/secondary, and I'll show you someone who is almost certainly a deplorable person in many other ways and are almost certainly a liability.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  If it puts off any Alt-Right White Supremacists and drives them away from the Linux community, then that's an excellent outcome. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/silicon-valley-tech-alt-right-racism-misogyny/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/silicon-valley-... >Meet Silicon Valley’s Secretive Alt-Right Followers. I investigated the role of “alt-techies” in the extremist movement emboldened by Trump. >“The average alt-right-ist is probably a 28-year-old tech-savvy guy working in IT,” white nationalist Richard Spencer insisted when I interviewed him a few weeks before the election.
  - concordDance 6y ago
    > If it puts off any Alt-Right White Supremacists and drives them away from the Linux community, then that's an excellent outcome. What?! Why? How is getting a less feature rich/buggier kernal due to less devs a good thing? Or is it just that anything bad or exclusionary happening to your political enemies is a good thing?
    - DonHopkins 6y ago
      How are White Supremacists not your political enemies, and why are you so concerned about their feelings?
    - DonHopkins 6y ago
      And why are you advocating driving away minorities and anti-racist people from working on the Linux kernel by tolerating White Supremacists in violation of the Linux Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct, who consider other human beings genetically inferior and not deserving of the same rights and respect as white people? Are you ok with rapists and murderers, too, or do you just have a special place in your heart for defending White Supremacy? https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-conduct.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/code-of-condu... >Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include: >The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or advances >Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks >Public or private harassment >Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission >Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting White Supremacy is clearly inappropriate in a professional setting. Or do you disagree? Do you have a dog in this battle? Can you name any White Supremacist kernel hackers who the community can't get along without? You really need to take a deep look at yourself, and decide which side of history you're on. Advocating and defending White Supremacy online could and should have detrimental effect on your employability. Do you stand by your beliefs enough to share your real name with us, or do you insist on remaining anonymous?
ta17711771 6y ago
Depends if it actually does. And if that person can code.
loceng 6y ago
Is there a net benefit of coddling unreasonable people to such a degree that we're no longer allowing words to have different meanings, and holding integrity through requiring critical thinking to understand language properly? Organizations playing into this are either pandering to the mob and/or aren't grounded in reason. Let's be strong for our brothers and sisters, even if discomfort increases temporarily due to a mob.
- TeaDrunk 6y ago
  Do you actually know the people in the linux kernel community who are discussing this change and do you know they are unreasonable people who can be described as a mob? Genuinely asking because I don't know them, and therefore I can't judge on who they are as people, but you are clearly judging them as people so I'm assuming you know them?
  - loceng 6y ago
    I didn't call them a mob - try reading what I said again. Also the length of your argument repeating the same (wrong) thing doesn't strengthen it either. Many people's reading comprehension in this thread suits the arguments they want to make, setting up straw man arguments seemingly without realizing it.
    - neilp1 6y ago
      Perhaps you could be clearer who you’re calling a mob.
    - ryanobjc 6y ago
      You instead accused the Linux kernel team of either "pandering to a mob" or "ungrounded in reason". Hardly charitable. Do you think everyone who has a different view from you total scum of the earth? Maybe they came to a totally rational conclusion, using a completely different set of axioms than you would, that this change is worth it?
      - 6y ago

gilrain 6y ago

I believe the people those terms affect that they hurt them and subtly reinforce bias. That doesn't feel unimportant to me. What's unimportant is using antiquated, hurtful terms when it would be easy to simply not do that.

loceng 6y ago
Instead of actually helping these people we coddle them further by changing words? That's equivalent to defunding the police, a simple shallow action, but doesn't actually address the actual racism and lack of accountability (that affects all races) of police actions. It's coddling and it's lazy - and the mob will start calling people, if they haven't already started, people and organizations who don't change the language as racists - a false accusation but it rallies the mob and doesn't lead to critical thinking.
- rschneid 6y ago
  False dichotomy. Progress can be made along multiple fronts simultaneously. 'Defunding police' isn't a single action so can hardly be labeled 'shallow' but it's definitely a step towards addressing racism since it's quite clear to anyone who's been paying attention that ridiculous levels of over-policing in America is a major propagator of racial inequality. All of this stuff is related. Nobody is wrong for focusing more or less on one battle than another...
  - loceng 6y ago
    Are you saying we should coddle people as an option? I wasn't arguing an either/or, we can and should look at all options - I was highlighting the shallow nature of both actions vs. actually changing systems - and arguably defunding the police is the wrong mantra, inaccurate; demilitarize the police, yes. That doesn't mean we should give into unreasonable options. Is there a net benefit of coddling unreasonable people to such a degree that we're no longer allowing words to have different meanings, and holding integrity through requiring critical thinking to understand language properly? Organizations playing into this are either pandering to the mob and/or aren't grounded in reason. Let's be strong for our brothers and sisters, even if discomfort increases temporarily due to a mob. Edit to add: it's interesting my top comment was quickly downvoted 3 times right around the time of the above reply, and then my reply here got 3 downvotes quickly too.

hn_check 6y ago

"people are just probably don't want to risk their jobs over something so unimportant" It's important to some people. If the alternatives are unimportant to you, then what possible opposition would you have? Just to be an asshole? Just to show how edgy you are?

maweki 6y ago

I would hazard the guess that enforcing a different naming policy doesn't hurt either.

SambalOelek 6y ago

In all honesty, it doesn't matter how you feel about it. I do feel strongly about it, and I'm Native Mexican, and I have very strong feelings about my ancestors being enslaved. I was taught these words in the context of colonialism and slavery. I'm assuming you weren't. Edit: Glad to see the true nature of your culture. I probably won't come back.

luckylion 6y ago
> it doesn't matter how you feel about it. I do feel strongly about it I think that's pretty much the gist of everything these days.
- SambalOelek 6y ago
  Comments deleted due to brigading
  - zug_zug 6y ago
    >> You don't get to feel ... I don't think you get to tell other people what they get to feel. I encourage working on your empathy here. Who gets to decide "what's polite"? What if people disagree? Who gets to decide whose opinion counts?
    - SambalOelek 6y ago
      The trauma of being asked not to make rape jokes can't be compared to the trauma of being raped. Just do the right thing, is it worth the arguing?
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        You started off with a reasonable point, but please take a moment to rethink what you're saying. We're talking about words vs. words here. Nobody is enslaving anyone, which would be the equivalent to your utterly horrible analogy here.

bsaul 6y ago

i think you should have make a stand. I know i wouldn't tolerate this kind of BS to actually interfere with the quality of my work (naming things is hard enough without considering the current political sensitivity of the day). We should find names that reflects the concept best, while keeping its meaning understandable. Period. PS: obviously i don't know anything about your personal situation, so i'm not blaming you for anything.

geofft 6y ago
> We should find names that reflects the concept best, while keeping its meaning understandable. Period. Let me repost a comment I made recently: In some contexts (e.g. Jenkins), a "master" tells the "slave" what to do and the "slave" does it. This at least is plausibly connected to the real-world meanings of the term, although given that the "slave" is free to start and stop work at any time and the entire job of the "master" is to keep track of that, the analogy isn't great. "Coordinator/worker" works well here. In some contexts (e.g., MySQL), a "master" sends a copy of all its work to the "slave," and both of them execute it. The "slave" stands ready to replace the "master" if the "master" becomes unavailable, and usually at that point the "master" becomes the new "slave" once it catches up. This makes no sense. "Primary/replica" works well here. In some contexts (e.g., network device bonding, certain types of logical partitioning or RAID), a "master" is a logical construct, consisting of multiple physical "slaves". All interactions with the "master" are actually algorithmically sent to one or more "slaves," and if all the "slaves" are offline, there's no "master" left. This, also, makes no sense. Terms that would make sense include things like "bond/member" (the members being bonded to each other, and the bond being the resulting abstraction), "LV/PV", etc. In some contexts (e.g. disk drives), the "master" and "slave" are both devices that provide the same type of service to the host, but the "slave" connects to the "master" instead of directly to the host, and while the "master" is communicating, the "slave" can't. The "master" exercises no control over the slave beyond occasionally blocking the communication channel and it pays no attention to communications between the "slave" and the host. This, also, makes no sense. "Primary/secondary" works well here. In pseudoterminals, the "master" is a limited API to the PTY object, held by the terminal emulator, which copies text to the screen, interpreters rendering commands, and sends input. The "slave" is a more featureful API to the same PTY object, held by the shell / the command under execution, which does what it wants. This, also, makes no sense. I don't know of a standard term here, but I'd sort of suggest "monitor" and "session," which has the benefit of keeping the initials. The M side is the one connected to your actual monitor and it's also the side that monitors output; the S side is the one connected to the application, and it's associated with at most one session in the sense of setsid(2) (see als credentials(7)). All of these are different uses, and you can't generally map one to another. For instance, if you're used to a database where "master/slave" is used in the primary/replica sense, and you see a database where the "master" just coordinates requests for work and all actual data is sent to/from some "slave," your knowledge of primary/replica architecture is misleading here.

apcragg 6y ago

> However, I largely kept my mouth shut because I was afraid of the social repercussions. So, social norms? There are plenty of things we collectively don't say or do because of enforced social norms yet all of a sudden when those social norms start to include the perspectives of traditionally oppressed groups, certain people start acting like Western Society as we know it is collapsing by the hands of the censorship police.

fennecfoxen 6y ago
When social norms say that you're not allowed to share a dissenting view, we get to call that an "orthodoxy" and should be consider the extent to which it is damaging and repressive, rather than simply taking the merit of the orthodoxy for granted. Such consideration should be all the more important when we happen to agree with those norms. (You've been punished for questioning geocentrism? Should have respected those social norms, Galileo my friend.)
- apcragg 6y ago
  I mean if you want to conflate social norms with debates about knowledge and practice, sure great zinger you have there. Unfortunately, many people do not have the luxury of treating their race, sexuality, gender, religion, etc, as a matter of ideological debate. The perspective of framing the social treatment of immutable identities as encouraging orthodoxy comes from a position of privilege.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    If you think that the current cancel-culture zeitgeist (on the right and the left alike) doesn't shut down questions about knowledge and practice, you're blind or an ideologue. But I thank you for being so kind as to include Religion in the list of acceptable "identities". As you have framed the matter, I do NOT happen to have the luxury and privilege to blindly extend deference to our glorious champions of freedom™ and equality™ and accept their diktats without criticism or debate. This is because they are hypocrites and they are tyrants. The Democratic Party in particular treats my church as an archenemy and longs to see it destroyed. They can't even leave a convent of nuns alone to not-pay-homage to their birth control diktats.

gigatexal 6y ago

Lol effort? A few more unit tests and some integration testing are too high a bar to be inclusive or on the right side of history? Did you fight non gendered bathrooms at your workplace too?

gruez 6y ago

>I wonder how much of this is occurring in tech companies because of the same phenomenon - people are just probably don't want to risk their jobs over something so unimportant. I can't wait till 4chan weaponizes this with some innocuous term as a joke, and everyone else either goes along with it thinking it's genuine, or doesn't speak out despite the absurdity. Kind of like how they turned the "okay" hand gesture into meaning "white power". eg. https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3c5e24b75e755aa25bd6031be6274cf6 https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-3c5e24b75e755aa25bd603... Basically this[1] in action. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082 "Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good company."

dathinab 6y ago
Sorry, but in most of the world this is still the okay hand gesture. (EDIT: To clearify parts of the world which did use this sign before, many cultures have different signs). It's maybe a bit like the term "master" (decoupled from slave) which has very differently nonces in many countries outside of the US. Mainly it's then often not strongly (or not at all) associated with slavery or suppression of people of color. For example the German word "Meister" is often translated as "Master" but is mainly associated with someone who became really good at a skill, i.e. who mastered it. It's also used in a context of a person who is qualified to teach some from of craft (job), through there the roots are somewhat similar as historically you complied pretty strictly with what your teacher told you. Anyway, using more inclusive terminology for anything new doesn't cost anything and as such should be done.
- kace91 6y ago
  >It's maybe a bit like the term "master" (decoupled from slave) which has very differently nonces in many countries outside of the US. Mainly it's then often not strongly (or not at all) associated with slavery or suppression of people of color. Cultural translation is always a bit weird. For example, in Spanish (or at least Spain's) BDSM circles, people use the term "maestro" for "master" (despite the term meaning only "teacher" or "skilled person/virtuoso" in Spanish). I assume at some point it got badly translated and it stuck in the community.

dathinab 6y ago

> don't think that the effort put in is worth the advantages that it affords That's why they mandate it for new parts merged into the kernel tree. In which case it's basically free.

kache_ 6y ago
Inconsistent naming of concepts is not ideal

bE9a3S5So8igd3 6y ago

> I wonder how much of this is occurring in tech companies because of the same phenomenon - people are just probably don't want to risk their jobs over something so unimportant. It's the same really as not questioning things in the soviet union. See the fine HBO program "Chernobyl" for details on what happens when truths are avoided in favor of bullshit. The danger with the new leftist fascism we see in the US is that people are afraid of saying the truth. Eventually this will be a problem.

altacc 6y ago
> people are afraid of saying the truth. The vast amount of people on traditional and social media saying all the things that you claim people are afraid to say refutes this. Whatever you think people are too afraid to say, there is somebody saying it. Free speech doesn't mean people get to voice any idea without scrutiny. Other's people's free speech also exists. What people tend to mean is "I used to be able to say this without being criticised" and the loss of that privilege is unsettling. If they can't express an opinion and sufficiently support it against objections and criticism then it might not be such a good opinion.
- philwelch 6y ago
  Finding someone’s employer and harassing that employer into firing the person isn’t “criticism”.
  - altacc 6y ago
    But it is a consequence of their actions. Free speech can exist, but not free speech free of consequences. That person would need to find an employer who aligns with their desired actions.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      Idi Amin once said, “there is freedom of speech but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.”

thrownaway954 6y ago

"However, I largely kept my mouth shut because I was afraid of the social repercussions" "As always, paycheck comes in, jira ticket gets dragged from left to right. Whatever." 10,000% agree with you my friend.