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Linux kernel will no longer use terms ‘blacklist’ and ‘slave’ (2020)

2 points by Cieplak 6y ago

cable2600 6y ago
In Software Psychology they try to avoid using words in software that triggers others. For example abort or kill might offend someone because it could be used for ending life. Yet I am certain Cancel Culture is behind this one. Computer Science has used blacklist, master, slave, etc for a long time now and books have to be updated to the new terms.
- salawat 6y ago
  ... >For example abort or kill might offend someone because it could be used for ending life. This makes me weep. I remember in my late Junior/Senior year in college taking the Operating Systems course in which we dove down into the nitty gritty details of "what does an OS do anyway?" Half of the fun (which given the other classes I was taking at the time, was sorely needed) came from the word play and at times absurd sounding valid statements that were completely normal within the context of computing. Jokes included: -Processes forking, creating child processes. -Parent processes killing child processes -child processes killing their parents, becoming orphans -The perils of Dining at a table of Philosophers, with insufficient silverware -no Abort jokes, but strangely, I seemed to have missed the part of the curriculum that originally explained signalling. ...Later, upon graduating to my first industry job, I got to enjoy the simple joys of occasionally explaining to the unitiated that no, we weren't planning heavy family rearchitecture and downsizing, merely trying to figure out why one piece of software was telling another piece of software to stop doing what we put it there to do. Every technical field has this. I've not even heard of Software Psychology, but I'm willing to bet it's and offshoot of computational linguistics which puts a bit too much "human" into crafting efficient input spaces for guiding the machine. Some degree of that is fine, but as with most things, moderation is advised.
hntroll666 6y ago
Here's what this will accomplish: it will very temporarily placate extremely mentally fragile people. That's it. The people who were upset about "blacklist" and "slave" will just be back again later with more demands to change the environment for their (again, very temporary) comfort rather than changing themselves to be less bothered by things that don't actually matter. They're trying to pave the world with leather rather than just covering their own feet. Unwise behavior leads to bad outcomes.

2 points by Cieplak 6y ago

In Software Psychology they try to avoid using words in software that triggers others. For example abort or kill might offend someone because it could be used for ending life. Yet I am certain Cancel Culture is behind this one. Computer Science has used blacklist, master, slave, etc for a long time now and books have to be updated to the new terms.

salawat 6y ago
... >For example abort or kill might offend someone because it could be used for ending life. This makes me weep. I remember in my late Junior/Senior year in college taking the Operating Systems course in which we dove down into the nitty gritty details of "what does an OS do anyway?" Half of the fun (which given the other classes I was taking at the time, was sorely needed) came from the word play and at times absurd sounding valid statements that were completely normal within the context of computing. Jokes included: -Processes forking, creating child processes. -Parent processes killing child processes -child processes killing their parents, becoming orphans -The perils of Dining at a table of Philosophers, with insufficient silverware -no Abort jokes, but strangely, I seemed to have missed the part of the curriculum that originally explained signalling. ...Later, upon graduating to my first industry job, I got to enjoy the simple joys of occasionally explaining to the unitiated that no, we weren't planning heavy family rearchitecture and downsizing, merely trying to figure out why one piece of software was telling another piece of software to stop doing what we put it there to do. Every technical field has this. I've not even heard of Software Psychology, but I'm willing to bet it's and offshoot of computational linguistics which puts a bit too much "human" into crafting efficient input spaces for guiding the machine. Some degree of that is fine, but as with most things, moderation is advised.

hntroll666 6y ago

Here's what this will accomplish: it will very temporarily placate extremely mentally fragile people. That's it. The people who were upset about "blacklist" and "slave" will just be back again later with more demands to change the environment for their (again, very temporary) comfort rather than changing themselves to be less bothered by things that don't actually matter. They're trying to pave the world with leather rather than just covering their own feet. Unwise behavior leads to bad outcomes.