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In the article they use the example of "Motherboard" and "Landlord" and seem to suggest that these are areas where the Google AI is making mistakes or being ove

In the article they use the example of "Motherboard" and "Landlord" and seem to suggest that these are areas where the Google AI is making mistakes or being overly strict. As a Google employee expressing my own opinion and observations of company culture, I can say that these are 100% not mistakes. Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real world that they believe it is the duty of Google Docs to change the English language to exclude the words "landlord", "motherboard", and even "mother" in most contexts (sub with birthing person). This may seem unbelievable, but the word "motherboard" is literally banned within Google and you are required to use "mainboard" instead. You are not allowed to use this word in documentation or code, and you're also not allowed to say it privately in chats or emails.

GiorgioG 5y ago
Thanks - this gave me the kick in the ass to switch from Gmail to FastMail.
- she46BiOmUerPVj 5y ago
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
This attempt at "de-offensive-izing" all language has the effect of turning clear, evocative phrases to mush. George Carlin's skit couldn't be more timely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMm2vF4uFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMm2vF4uFs
- rhexs 5y ago
  It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    "Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller." https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/450328-don-t-you-see-that-the-whole-aim-of-newspeak-is https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/450328-don-t-you-see-that-t...
- routeerror40 5y ago
  Carlin was a genius and ahead of his time.
- tedsanders 5y ago
  Putting myself in the shoes of a kid learning about computers, I find some of these phrases to be more clear, not less clear. Two examples: Allowlist and denylist are much clearer to a kid learning about computers than whitelist or blacklist. If you've never heard of whitelist before, it's sounds like a list of things that are white. If you've never of allowlist, it's pretty obvious what it means - a list of things that are allowed. Similarly, mainboard is clearer than motherboard. Mainboard implies there's one main board. Motherboard could be more ambiguous to someone who's never seen the inside of a computer. Are there two boards, mother and father? Do boards somehow inherit from one another? Is there a grandmother board that's even bigger? Obvious to us, but not obvious to a kid learning computers for the first time. Not saying these terms are better (there's a huge switching cost and the terms are less colorful), but do want to point out there are dimensions to consider beyond inclusivity. One benefit is better language precision.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - dxhdr 5y ago
    > Mainboard implies there's one main board. Motherboard could be more ambiguous to someone who's never seen the inside of a computer. Are there two boards, mother and father? Am I crazy or does mainboard strongly imply there's more than one -- eg main, supporting / secondary, etc? Stories have a main character which is almost by definition not the only character in the narrative.
    - layer8 5y ago
      Well, there used to be daughterboards (but no sonboards).
    - Pxtl 5y ago
      "Parentboard" is probably better than "mainboard", but given the choice between "motherboard" and "mainboard", which are the two currently-accepted terms for that particular component, I'm going to go with mainboard. Edit: isn't the videocard technically a "non-main-board"? I mean nobody called it a "daughterboard" but it kind of technically is one isn't it? And so if "mainboard" implies the existence of "non-main-boards"... that accurately describes its relationship with the video card, which is a baord.
- MrBlueIncognito 5y ago
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM A short-film/parody on how an extreme obsession with inclusive speech makes it impossible to communicate clearly without consequences.
cynicalkane 5y ago
This entire comment is a lie. Terms like "motherboard" are readily findable on Google's internal search. I could not find anything referencing a banned non-inclusive words policy in the employee policy guide. I have never heard of anything remotely resembling someone catching heat for saying "motherboard" or whatever. Source: I also work at Google.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  You're welcome to ping me internally. It's in the banned words list (happy to share a link internally) and I double checked policy before posting this comment to make sure I was accurately representing the rules that are applied to me as an employee.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    based on dannybee's comments elsewhere, the list you're referring to is actually for external product comms, not internal googler comms.... could you elaborate on your position further?
    - mgraczyk 5y ago
      That's not true, there are a few internal-only lists that have different contents (lots of overlap but not 100%). Different PAs have adopted different lists. This is the public one: https://developers.google.com/style/word-list https://developers.google.com/style/word-list I don't want to share the name of the internal one publicly, but anyone at Google can ping me if they want help finding it, or they can search "respectful words"
  - kevinventullo 5y ago
    Okay but that’s just a list that someone created. People are allowed to create lists; I’ve never heard of anyone enforcing this list.
- itsyaboi 5y ago
  Since you work at Google, maybe you can answer this: does internal tooling exist to flag occurrences of "bad" words in say, code reviews or shared documents?
krastanov 5y ago
I am incredulous at the "mother" to "birthing person" requirement. I have seen one or two people with such prescriptive views on language but the vast majority of people I know consider it ridiculous. And I am in an incredibly "woke" social bubble.
- gfodor 5y ago
  The point is previous things you thought were ridiculous were normalized, in a very deliberate process. So to it will go with "mother", if the past is any indication. However, it may not be, because people are (ironically) waking up to this.
- augustuspolius 5y ago
  Encountering this aspect of the culture war always makes me wonder why are tech companies so focused on these gender minorities and not, say, on the disabled groups. There are more blind, deaf, mute (etc, etc) people in the US than transgender people who will bear a child. It would be equally incoherent to attempt to replace all usages of “see”, “hear” with “perceive”.
  - madamelic 5y ago
    Trans people are frequently in tech. Go to any college and you'll see the CompSci department is the one with the most amount of LGBT individuals. The same can't be said for people who are blind or deaf.
    - enriquto 5y ago
      > Go to any college and you'll see the CompSci department is the one with the most amount of LGBT individuals. Do you have any data on that? It does not coincide with my anecdotal experience. I'm in a Math/CompSci department and there's zero trans people here (that I know of), while there are some in other departments. Anyhow, trans people are a tiny percentage of the total population, so it would be hard to have somewhat solid statistics on them.
hervature 5y ago
> you're also not allowed to say it privately in chats or emails In this context, what does it mean? For the other stuff, it is easily envisioned that it means official documents need to be scanned for prohibited terms. Ultimately, the term "motherboard" has to at least appear in an official document of banned words. In private chats, do they rely on the other party to turn you in? Is it automatically detected? Are you prevented from actually typing it? Can you post this link [1]? [1] - https://www.newegg.com/Motherboards/Category/ID-20 https://www.newegg.com/Motherboards/Category/ID-20
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  It's a code of conduct violation and the other employee can ask you not to use the word. If you continue using it that's an even worse violation.
oh_sigh 5y ago
As someone fairly familiar with the SJWs in a variety of FANGs, motherboard/mainboard doesn't even offend me any more. I kind of get it, even though it is lame logic. I'm waiting until they start marking "Latino" as non-inclusive, and start forcing "Latinx".
- dmitriid 5y ago
  Meanwhile only 2% of Hispanics use the term Latinx, and 40% find it offensive: https://www.newsweek.com/just-2-percent-hispanics-use-term-latinx-40-percent-find-it-offensive-poll-1656412 https://www.newsweek.com/just-2-percent-hispanics-use-term-l...
- filoleg 5y ago
  I mentally cannot process "Latinx" to be pronounced as anything but "Lah-tinks". I am prepared to be fully shafted if I ever have to say that word outloud at work, because people seem to visibly cringe when they hear it pronounced this way.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - xg15 5y ago
    Same here (though not a latino and not in the US, so I wasn't yet under any pressure to use it). The "-inx" suffix (when pronounced "inks") somehow makes the word sound more objectifying, sexist and even lewd than the original words.
    - filoleg 5y ago
      > though not a latino and not in the US, so I wasn't yet under any pressure to use it To be fair, I've literally never heard anyone try to pronounce "latinx" outloud. And I live in one of the most stereotypical liberal/left-wing cities in the US (Seattle). The usage of that term seems to be mostly confined to a vocal twitter/internet minority and written form (whether online or in promotional materials for certain things). Even here, this term is extremely fringe irl. And I don't think I've ever felt pressured to use it either, given I've never heard it in use (despite my friend group having a couple of people who are very left-leaning and are vocal about it). I guess tl;dr, don't mistake a fringe vocal minority on the internet for an accurate representation of what it is like to actually live in the US (even when it comes to certain most heavily stereotyped big cities).
timmg 5y ago
As someone who also works at Google, I agree that there is a vocal minority who want Google to be a promoter of progressive values, but: I think you nay be exaggerating things here. I've never even heard of any controversy over the word "motherboard". I just did some internal searches. It seems to be a well-used word, both in code and in documentation. (I did a code search for both "motherboard" and "mainboard" and they seem to be used by similar amounts, fwiw.) In fairness, I will say that I do watch my language more closely than I think is really needed: The terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" are built into my thought-vocabulary. I do find myself switching to "allowlist" and "denylist" as I translate my thoughts in discussions. Not that anyone has ever "called me out" if I slipped up with "whitelist".
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  It's in the banned words list, I can share a link internally if you want.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    We're sure it's in a List, but the point is that the List is not uniformly enforced, and "motherboard->mainboard" definitely seems like one to go to bat against because it Doesn't Make Sense to get rid of it.
    - zionic 5y ago
      > We're sure it's in a List, but the point is that the List is not uniformly enforced The fact that it’s in a list at all should make you reconsider your employment with them. The inmates run the asylum at Google, just because they haven’t come for your corner/fiefdom yet doesn’t mean they won’t.
      - dekhn 5y ago
        yes, I left google because of stupid shit like this. More importantly: when I was there, I actively fought against this kind of shit, but it was clear at some point that the content moderation team had enough sway with execs that they were going to continue this sort of idiocy untrammelled.
deleted 5y ago
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olalonde 5y ago
Reminds me of when GitHub stopped using "master" for the default branch because it was somehow offensive.
- knorker 5y ago
  Reminds me of when GitHub kicked out a paying customer for using the word "retard" as a verb in the mathematical sense.
  - vincnetas 5y ago
    had to look that up Retarded differential equations (RDEs) are differential equations having retarded arguments. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377042700004763 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037704270...
    - MikeDelta 5y ago
      And quantum physics has degenerate energy levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels
  - trollied 5y ago
    Large planes tell pilots vocally to “retard” when landing…
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Which can be amusing if you don't know what's going on, it suddenly sounds like the autopilot is pissed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI And for those who would like to change this, any change to a pilot's routine has a chance of being the thing that pushes an incident over the edge into a crash. Would it be worth it?
      - knorker 5y ago
twobitshifter 5y ago
On landlord I can’t think of a proper synonym. Property owner and proprietor are broader categories of what a landlord is. They don’t mean the person you’re paying rent to for your housing.
- jmalicki 5y ago
  lessor? Out of curiosity for legalese, I found a California assembly member is actually trying to change landlord -> lessor in its laws https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2503 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
  - skrbjc 5y ago
    What and utter waste of time and effort.
  - twobitshifter 5y ago
    What if you are a tenant at will (without a lease)?
- r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
  rentier - one who lives off the income of property or securities.
  - cscurmudgeon 5y ago
    A landlord can still have a day job.
  - marton78 5y ago
    Sounds like reindeer.
- ______-_-______ 5y ago
  faucet-fixer?
gorwell 5y ago
I can't imagine most employees agree with this. Why aren't they pushing back?
- luxuryballs 5y ago
  Probably better to fly under the radar in most cases especially if they have recently been locked out of the office for not getting mRNA injections.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Pushing back against this type of policy is generally a bad idea... There is a very vocal minority who will make life hard for you. This is a case where the vast majority know it's best to keep their thoughts to themselves.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > the vast majority know it's best to keep their thoughts to themselves. If it's really the case that the vast majority of employees are feeling stifled by the company policy, isn't that a situation where forming a trade union could help? The irony of workers rising up against oppressive supposedly left-wing rule is not lost on me, especially if it were to occur in Google's office in Poland.
- ryathal 5y ago
  Why would they push back? There is evidence doing so can get you publicly shamed and fired if other take sufficient offense.
- ativzzz 5y ago
  Because the amount of effort required to fight people who are passionate about an ideology when you don't particularly care is far greater than just going along and changing a few words. Sure this can result in catastrophic outcomes sometimes (e.g. Nazism) but most people just want to get their paychecks and go home or do whatever job they have without going into politics.
brunooliv 5y ago
So... essentially you have to go around hoops in the way you communicate internally? LEL.
- she46BiOmUerPVj 5y ago
  Sure if you believe it. We also don't speak to each other to cater to people who are deaf, and we don't use sign language to cater to people who are blind.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
xg15 5y ago
Out of couriosity: Why then didn't flag it the actual n-word of all things? > A transcribed interview of neo-Nazi and former Klan leader David Duke—in which he uses the N-word and talks about hunting Black people—gets no notes. Edit: Also interesting that this comment is dropping like a stone in HN's comment ranking, even though currently the comment score is at 1. If I accidentally triggered some anti-flame or anti-profanity filter, I'm sorry.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Perhaps certain words disable the feature entirely? The feature only seems to trigger when it has a suggestion. I can't imagine what suggestion would be suitable to replace the n word.
  - xg15 5y ago
    Good point. maybe even Google didn't want to be seen as "hey, here are some suggestions how you can make your speech about murdering Black people more inclusive..."
  - Auracle 5y ago
    We need Clippy back, with webcam functionality. That way he can suggest ending the word in an “a” if you’re black. If you’re not he’ll report you to HR.
- throw10920 5y ago
  > Edit: Also interesting that this comment is dropping like a stone in HN's comment ranking, even though currently the comment score is at 1. If I accidentally triggered some anti-flame or anti-profanity filter, I'm sorry. Comment order is a function of both score and age. As far as anybody (except those who actually have access to the source), there's no other "hidden" mechanic.
  - politician 5y ago
    Initial ranking depends on the author's karma. From there, the other factors take over.
______-_-______ 5y ago
"Motherboard" is particularly unbelievable. The motherboard runs the machine. It's a woman in a position of power. Isn't that what everyone says they want? Or is the idea to just erase the very concept of gender from the world? Welcome to OkCupid, I am a [PERSON] seeking [PERSON] I want out of this timeline
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- she46BiOmUerPVj 5y ago
  It's particularly unbelievable because it's particularly false.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  - snek_case 5y ago
    Well they're not trying to raise up men, they're trying to destroy any notion of gender, see "gender is a social construct".
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - CuriouslyC 5y ago
      They'd do a lot better if it was pitched as giving people the freedom to dress and act as they desired as long as they weren't hurting anyone else, rather than trying to act like biology wasn't a thing. I have zero problems with people dressing however they like, having whatever affectations they want and having sex with whoever is willing. I might not always find it tasteful, but that cuts both ways I'm sure so we can agree to be civil. The buck stops when you try to shame me for not calling a man a woman. Using pronouns should be a kindness like holding the door open for a disabled person, not something that sends emotional children into a socially supported temper tantrum when absent.
svnpenn 5y ago
Post a screenshot, otherwise I agree with others that you're just lying.
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  That is not allowed (for good reason) and I don't want to get fired, if you work at Google you can ping me and I can send it to you.
  - burnished 5y ago
    What is that good reason? The only thing I can come up with is "don't release internal documents", which is a blanket reason and not what I'd consider compelling, but I suspect I'm having a failure of imagination
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      Practically no big company would allow you to post internal documents on Hacker News. Why isn't that a good reason?
      - burnished 5y ago
        Because it isn't compelling? It's purely to avoid admitting to something illegal. I presume that this person has a reason that is more nuanced than that, which intrigues me.
designium 5y ago
I wouldn't mind calling Motherboard site to Personboard... ehhehehe It would be interesting to call landlord as landperson.
- thedrbrian 5y ago
  Could be birthing person board.
deleted 5y ago
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user3939382 5y ago
If we're going to play this game, I think dissuading people from using "mother" in the example of "motherboard" is offensive. Mothers are the source of human life on earth, and in that capacity are revered and honored. When we say motherboard, we're making an analogy that suggests the board's significance and universal connection to everything. To discourage the term as an analogy for things that are a universal source is to demote women and their role as mothers. I'd like to know who at Google puts these lists together and what judge decreed their viewpoint on this more valid than mine or anyone else's, since apparently Google feels that from this judgement they have the right to shape speech for millions of people and therefore, by extension, our culture.
- azth 5y ago
  It's the natural outcome of far leftist ideologies. People need to wake up and start rejecting this destructive ideology where a person is evaluated only based on their identity. I think MLK had something to say about that.
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    MLK was a leftist - and arguably a "far leftist" for his time. If you're going to use him as an example, you may have to concede that this is not a "natural outcome" of leftist ideologies in general, but rather the outcome of some other selection pressure that rewards diversion from initiatives that actually affect peoples' material conditions.
    - azth 5y ago
      I'm referring to modern far leftism, an offshoot from Marxism and post modernism.
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        As a first comment here, I'd point out that defining women independently from solely their role as mothers is judging them on character rather than identity, so you should support such a thing if that's your rallying cry. But also, on MLK and postmodernism: postmodernism dates back to the 1940s, To Kill a Mockingbird is postmodern. MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail is very clearly postmodern (e.g. when he says "But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being.", he's alluding to a failure to consider the viewpoint of the oppressed in the situation). That letter is also very modern-leftist. Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" in 1989 and elaborated on it in 1991, saying "When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when anti-racism does not incorporate oppposition to patriarchy race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other, and both interests lose". The letter from a Birmingham jail includes another famous line from MLK: " Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly". To me, those express similar sentiments: that oppression exists in many forms in many places, and it is unwise to pretend that oppression that fails to inconvenience me is therefore unworthy of my attention. And of course he says later on "there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. " which to me describes the people often criticized as "modern far leftists", those people who create the tension and discomfort in society are, in MLK's view, doing us, collectively, a great service. I'd recommend you read the whole letter[0]. If you're so willing to lionize MLK, but disagree with so much of what he preached, I implore you to consider why exactly that is. [0]: https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-...
brobinson 5y ago
Genuinely curious: what do you do internally for "male" and "female" connectors?
- mgraczyk 5y ago
  That one is in the public list. https://developers.google.com/style/word-list https://developers.google.com/style/word-list You're supposed to use "plug" and "socket" instead.
  - kyleblarson 5y ago
    That google is at a point where they can pay employees to waste time on crap like this and yet still print money is incredible.
  - MatteoFrigo 5y ago
    To be fair, the male/female nomenclature for connectors has been a mess for decades. One old convention, mostly originating with radio-frequency connectors, is that the gender of the connector is the gender of its innermost contact. Thus, the plug of the common 2.5" and 2.1" connector of power supplies is technically female because the inner contact is a hole. The socket on the appliance has a pin in the middle and is technically male. When you try to buy one, half the time the part is labelled as male and the other half it is labelled as female. But there is no problem bad enough that cannot be made worse by government. Years ago some US regulator didn't like the fact that people were plugging big radio antennas into wifi equipment, so they invented the "reverse-polarity" connector. What used to be a "SMA male" connector with a pin in the middle now is a "RP SMA male" connector with a hole in the middle. Here is a random link with a picture: http://cablesondemandblog.com/wordpress1/2014/05/05/reverse_polarity_sma_connectors_sma_tnc_reverse_polarity_tnc/ http://cablesondemandblog.com/wordpress1/2014/05/05/reverse_... If you order this kind of connectors, now you have a 25% chance of getting what you need. One RP SMA male and a SMA female will mate together but not propagate any signals.
  - stefan_ 5y ago
    Haha jesus no wonder they added the "AI-powered" hints because who the fuck can be expected to keep track of all this nonsense? > hang, hung > Don't use to refer to a computer or system that is not responding [..] see Avoid unnecessarily violent language.
droptablemain 5y ago
Sounds like woke gibberish. I suppose we can take some solace in the fact that they haven't renamed "motherboard" as "birthing-person-board."
david38 5y ago
You have got to be kidding. Was this some retaliatory complaint by some dude showing dudes can be triggered by female-emphasizing phrases as well? Should it have been renamed to birthing-person-board? What a joke
moron4hire 5y ago
Is there at least some sort of mailing list you can subscribe to to know which phrases are verboten this week?
Rarebox 5y ago
I can believe this. Around the time I left people were patting backs for fighting racism by getting rid of terms blacklist/whitelist. Not something I feel super strongly about, but the fact that it's so scary to go against these stupid ideas is annoying. It's pure politics, there's nobody benefiting from this except the people claiming impact for antiracist work in their perf.
ajross 5y ago
> Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real world This isn't remotely limited to Google. My company does this too. I've heard of others making similar changes. Are these kinds of arbitrary changes to language usage silly and pointless? Maybe. But tough love here: languages change in arbitrary and pointless ways constantly. They always have. They always will. Your own common usages and idioms would seem outrageously weird to your grandparents. People had these same fights in the 60's, also 80's, and 50's... The 40's too now that I think of it... To wit: we aren't getting oppressed here, we're just getting old. And the attempt to turn it into a political fight (on both sides) is largely just a reaction to the friction. It's not the cause. I mean, really. Is "mainboard" such a hardship? It's not even a new word, it's two bytes and one syllable shorter. Must this be a fight?
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  If Google had shipped a feature that autocorrects my grandparents' slang to "dank" and "yeet", I'd be equally concerned! There's a huge difference between using fun new terms yourself and going around asking everyone to stop using the old ones.
azth 5y ago
I had mentioned this in the previous post about this topic[1], yet some people casually discredit it as nothing. The slippery slope is real folks [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086310&p=3#31087238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086310&p=3#31087238
- MrBlueIncognito 5y ago
  People like turning a blind eye to what they feel uncomfortable accepting. That the world we live in is being increasingly influenced by just a few profit-maximizing entities.
dogleash 5y ago
>Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real world that they believe it is the duty of Google Docs to change the English language to exclude the words "landlord", "motherboard", and even "mother" in most contexts (sub with birthing person). It's frantic activity to avoid looking in the mirror. Making themselves busy fixing something massive and intractable to avoid having to think about the actionable items closer to home.
vimy 5y ago
This is why I’m pessimistic about the West winning the second cold war. While Chinese engineers are working hard on world dominating AI models and other hard tech, Western engineers are wasting man hours on crap like this.
- IAmWorried 5y ago
  But it's over Anakin, we have the moral high ground!
  - jpindar 5y ago
    As someone who lives in a valley, I find that phrase offensive. /s
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  The west will win the second cold war because the communist party will not be able to release its iron grip on its populace. The Chinese people only accept that iron grip now because it's carrying them up from a low place, but once that stops the constriction will become suffocating, leading to civil unrest and diaspora of the upper tier of Chinese society.
  - throw10920 5y ago
    There's a saying - "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent". Even if there was some natural physical law that guaranteed that oppressive nations would eventually be overthrown/atrophy, there's definitely nothing that puts a bound on how long that will take. And, as we've seen with Ukraine, war can break out more quickly than any of us think. (also, if the social justice warriors in the West have their way, the US government itself would be overthrown and replaced with its own, authoritarian, but ineffective regime, long before a conflict with China would occur)
    - Tr3nton 5y ago
      >if the social justice warriors in the West have their way, the US government itself would be overthrown and replaced with its own, authoritarian, but ineffective regime The summer of 2020 was a great preview of what this dictatorship will look like once the USD collapses in value another 30-40%. Burning buildings and more statues of "heroes" like George Floyd, who stood up to White Supremacy. Remember, removing "master" from git repos was done because of the legacy of slavery in the United States.
she46BiOmUerPVj 5y ago
This sounds entirely fabricated. I've been in the hardware department for more than 10 years. Maybe you put a word in a list. I've never even heard of someone considering this.
mrtksn 5y ago
Okay, for a moment, forget about your position or feelings about the issue. Would you say that these restrictions or changes actually changed anything for better or worse? Is there some kind of evaluation going on to track the results of these policies?
as300 5y ago
A worse one is to me is that they aren't allowed to say "Quantum Supremacy", because it reminds some people of "White Supremacy"? Nevermind that you actually give that concept more power when you make it so that even discussing it or inadvertently bring it up is stigmatized. Things are starting to get kind of Orwellian.
deleted 5y ago
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umvi 5y ago
> This may seem unbelievable, but the word "motherboard" is literally banned within Google and you are required to use "mainboard" instead. You are not allowed to use this word in documentation or code, and you're also not allowed to say it privately in chats or emails. Is this really true? I always thought I might eventually apply to work at Google someday, but I hadn't heard there was such aggressive internal thought policing.
varispeed 5y ago
That's part of Marxist long march through institutions. They achieve these goals through bullying and accusations. Nobody at work wants to be (unfoundedly) accused of racism so they silently accept these new rules. I mean it's a small inconvenience that is probably worth the salary they are getting. But the truth is people in these organisations are afraid of speaking their minds in case they say something that is deemed wrong by woke police. I noticed that people have become less open and many limits conversations strictly to the tasks at hand. It's kind of how corporate goals meet with Marxism - they believe people no longer engage in "pointless" socialising that affects the bottom line and if they want to engage, they have a minefield to navigate. Many of my (former) friends who worked at these big corporations have become zombies - it's not possible to have a conversation with them about day to day life, events etc. It's really fascinating and worrying.
- andrekandre 5y ago
  which things did marx say that these companies are now implementing?
ipiz0618 5y ago
When the same kind of people banned "master" branch for being offensive I was surprised. Not so much now if I think in their logic
tomrod 5y ago
Google is a large corporation. Large corporations will often enact arcane rulesets to give HR ways to manipulate their labor costs. This really sounds a lot like why this type of approach would be supported.
babyshake 5y ago
Not trying to troll here...but are there people advocating that we replace "Mother's Day" with "Birthing Person's Day"? If a person gave birth who no longer identifies as a woman is it not inclusive to gender the holiday as we do?
silisili 5y ago
Can someone reasonably explain to me why mother or motherboard is offensive...at all? I try to be somewhat reasonable. I can stretch my mind enough to see the complaint with blacklist at least. But mother being offensive...my mind isn't able to stretch that far unless I'm missing something.
Tao331 5y ago
How about "motherboard/fatherboard"? If we just use that everywhere they'll all be happy. No fatherboards will feel left out. Mother-of-pearl can just be nacre, and I don't know what you'll have to call mother-of-vinegar. Maybe just say it's something special and not to think too much about how fermentation works - especially if it causes you to have evil, non-inclusive thoughts. If I'm writing about a ship and refer to it as a "she", does that set off the autoinquisitor?
dhzhzjsbevs 5y ago
This is the company that fired James damore and then turned around and spouted his talking points a few months later not even realising the hypocrisy. https://mashable.com/article/google-youtube-women-in-tech-diversity-town-hall https://mashable.com/article/google-youtube-women-in-tech-di...
titzer 5y ago
Woke Clippy (to borrow from up-thread) is going to have a field day when it learns German. There. Are. So. Many. Violations.
- samizdis 5y ago
  A brilliant term, and it brings me back to what annoys me the most about all of this: Clippy was shite and got in the way of productivity, and now I'm going to have another "helper" in a tool that I use every day, and it is going to get in my way without even achieving its apparent goals because this stuff just does not work. To push the Clippy thing further, Bill Gates once gave us "content is king". Google's Woke Clippy needs to learn that "context is king" - but it can't ever do that with language; well, not without a general AI.
- mrep 5y ago
  Oh please give us some examples.
johnnyanmac 5y ago
>sub with birthing person eww. This has the same vibes as someone saying "I want to breed with them". Like sure, it's grammatically correct, but you're gonna come off as a creep at best and some weird fetishist at worst.
reaperducer 5y ago
This may seem unbelievable, but the word "motherboard" is literally banned within Google and you are required to use "mainboard" instead No more "motherboard" and "daughterboard?" Sounds like Google has found yet another way to marginalize women. Pay 'em less. Then pretend they don't exist. Way to go, Diversity Champions!

GiorgioG 5y ago

Thanks - this gave me the kick in the ass to switch from Gmail to FastMail.

she46BiOmUerPVj 5y ago

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

This attempt at "de-offensive-izing" all language has the effect of turning clear, evocative phrases to mush. George Carlin's skit couldn't be more timely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMm2vF4uFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMm2vF4uFs

rhexs 5y ago
It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  "Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller." https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/450328-don-t-you-see-that-the-whole-aim-of-newspeak-is https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/450328-don-t-you-see-that-t...
routeerror40 5y ago
Carlin was a genius and ahead of his time.
tedsanders 5y ago
Putting myself in the shoes of a kid learning about computers, I find some of these phrases to be more clear, not less clear. Two examples: Allowlist and denylist are much clearer to a kid learning about computers than whitelist or blacklist. If you've never heard of whitelist before, it's sounds like a list of things that are white. If you've never of allowlist, it's pretty obvious what it means - a list of things that are allowed. Similarly, mainboard is clearer than motherboard. Mainboard implies there's one main board. Motherboard could be more ambiguous to someone who's never seen the inside of a computer. Are there two boards, mother and father? Do boards somehow inherit from one another? Is there a grandmother board that's even bigger? Obvious to us, but not obvious to a kid learning computers for the first time. Not saying these terms are better (there's a huge switching cost and the terms are less colorful), but do want to point out there are dimensions to consider beyond inclusivity. One benefit is better language precision.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dxhdr 5y ago
  > Mainboard implies there's one main board. Motherboard could be more ambiguous to someone who's never seen the inside of a computer. Are there two boards, mother and father? Am I crazy or does mainboard strongly imply there's more than one -- eg main, supporting / secondary, etc? Stories have a main character which is almost by definition not the only character in the narrative.
  - layer8 5y ago
    Well, there used to be daughterboards (but no sonboards).
  - Pxtl 5y ago
    "Parentboard" is probably better than "mainboard", but given the choice between "motherboard" and "mainboard", which are the two currently-accepted terms for that particular component, I'm going to go with mainboard. Edit: isn't the videocard technically a "non-main-board"? I mean nobody called it a "daughterboard" but it kind of technically is one isn't it? And so if "mainboard" implies the existence of "non-main-boards"... that accurately describes its relationship with the video card, which is a baord.
MrBlueIncognito 5y ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM A short-film/parody on how an extreme obsession with inclusive speech makes it impossible to communicate clearly without consequences.

cynicalkane 5y ago

This entire comment is a lie. Terms like "motherboard" are readily findable on Google's internal search. I could not find anything referencing a banned non-inclusive words policy in the employee policy guide. I have never heard of anything remotely resembling someone catching heat for saying "motherboard" or whatever. Source: I also work at Google.

mgraczyk 5y ago
You're welcome to ping me internally. It's in the banned words list (happy to share a link internally) and I double checked policy before posting this comment to make sure I was accurately representing the rules that are applied to me as an employee.
- dekhn 5y ago
  based on dannybee's comments elsewhere, the list you're referring to is actually for external product comms, not internal googler comms.... could you elaborate on your position further?
  - mgraczyk 5y ago
    That's not true, there are a few internal-only lists that have different contents (lots of overlap but not 100%). Different PAs have adopted different lists. This is the public one: https://developers.google.com/style/word-list https://developers.google.com/style/word-list I don't want to share the name of the internal one publicly, but anyone at Google can ping me if they want help finding it, or they can search "respectful words"
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  Okay but that’s just a list that someone created. People are allowed to create lists; I’ve never heard of anyone enforcing this list.
itsyaboi 5y ago
Since you work at Google, maybe you can answer this: does internal tooling exist to flag occurrences of "bad" words in say, code reviews or shared documents?

krastanov 5y ago

I am incredulous at the "mother" to "birthing person" requirement. I have seen one or two people with such prescriptive views on language but the vast majority of people I know consider it ridiculous. And I am in an incredibly "woke" social bubble.

gfodor 5y ago
The point is previous things you thought were ridiculous were normalized, in a very deliberate process. So to it will go with "mother", if the past is any indication. However, it may not be, because people are (ironically) waking up to this.
augustuspolius 5y ago
Encountering this aspect of the culture war always makes me wonder why are tech companies so focused on these gender minorities and not, say, on the disabled groups. There are more blind, deaf, mute (etc, etc) people in the US than transgender people who will bear a child. It would be equally incoherent to attempt to replace all usages of “see”, “hear” with “perceive”.
- madamelic 5y ago
  Trans people are frequently in tech. Go to any college and you'll see the CompSci department is the one with the most amount of LGBT individuals. The same can't be said for people who are blind or deaf.
  - enriquto 5y ago
    > Go to any college and you'll see the CompSci department is the one with the most amount of LGBT individuals. Do you have any data on that? It does not coincide with my anecdotal experience. I'm in a Math/CompSci department and there's zero trans people here (that I know of), while there are some in other departments. Anyhow, trans people are a tiny percentage of the total population, so it would be hard to have somewhat solid statistics on them.

hervature 5y ago

> you're also not allowed to say it privately in chats or emails In this context, what does it mean? For the other stuff, it is easily envisioned that it means official documents need to be scanned for prohibited terms. Ultimately, the term "motherboard" has to at least appear in an official document of banned words. In private chats, do they rely on the other party to turn you in? Is it automatically detected? Are you prevented from actually typing it? Can you post this link [1]? [1] - https://www.newegg.com/Motherboards/Category/ID-20 https://www.newegg.com/Motherboards/Category/ID-20

mgraczyk 5y ago
It's a code of conduct violation and the other employee can ask you not to use the word. If you continue using it that's an even worse violation.

oh_sigh 5y ago

As someone fairly familiar with the SJWs in a variety of FANGs, motherboard/mainboard doesn't even offend me any more. I kind of get it, even though it is lame logic. I'm waiting until they start marking "Latino" as non-inclusive, and start forcing "Latinx".

dmitriid 5y ago
Meanwhile only 2% of Hispanics use the term Latinx, and 40% find it offensive: https://www.newsweek.com/just-2-percent-hispanics-use-term-latinx-40-percent-find-it-offensive-poll-1656412 https://www.newsweek.com/just-2-percent-hispanics-use-term-l...
filoleg 5y ago
I mentally cannot process "Latinx" to be pronounced as anything but "Lah-tinks". I am prepared to be fully shafted if I ever have to say that word outloud at work, because people seem to visibly cringe when they hear it pronounced this way.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- xg15 5y ago
  Same here (though not a latino and not in the US, so I wasn't yet under any pressure to use it). The "-inx" suffix (when pronounced "inks") somehow makes the word sound more objectifying, sexist and even lewd than the original words.
  - filoleg 5y ago
    > though not a latino and not in the US, so I wasn't yet under any pressure to use it To be fair, I've literally never heard anyone try to pronounce "latinx" outloud. And I live in one of the most stereotypical liberal/left-wing cities in the US (Seattle). The usage of that term seems to be mostly confined to a vocal twitter/internet minority and written form (whether online or in promotional materials for certain things). Even here, this term is extremely fringe irl. And I don't think I've ever felt pressured to use it either, given I've never heard it in use (despite my friend group having a couple of people who are very left-leaning and are vocal about it). I guess tl;dr, don't mistake a fringe vocal minority on the internet for an accurate representation of what it is like to actually live in the US (even when it comes to certain most heavily stereotyped big cities).

timmg 5y ago

As someone who also works at Google, I agree that there is a vocal minority who want Google to be a promoter of progressive values, but: I think you nay be exaggerating things here. I've never even heard of any controversy over the word "motherboard". I just did some internal searches. It seems to be a well-used word, both in code and in documentation. (I did a code search for both "motherboard" and "mainboard" and they seem to be used by similar amounts, fwiw.) In fairness, I will say that I do watch my language more closely than I think is really needed: The terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" are built into my thought-vocabulary. I do find myself switching to "allowlist" and "denylist" as I translate my thoughts in discussions. Not that anyone has ever "called me out" if I slipped up with "whitelist".

mgraczyk 5y ago
It's in the banned words list, I can share a link internally if you want.
- dekhn 5y ago
  We're sure it's in a List, but the point is that the List is not uniformly enforced, and "motherboard->mainboard" definitely seems like one to go to bat against because it Doesn't Make Sense to get rid of it.
  - zionic 5y ago
    > We're sure it's in a List, but the point is that the List is not uniformly enforced The fact that it’s in a list at all should make you reconsider your employment with them. The inmates run the asylum at Google, just because they haven’t come for your corner/fiefdom yet doesn’t mean they won’t.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      yes, I left google because of stupid shit like this. More importantly: when I was there, I actively fought against this kind of shit, but it was clear at some point that the content moderation team had enough sway with execs that they were going to continue this sort of idiocy untrammelled.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

olalonde 5y ago

Reminds me of when GitHub stopped using "master" for the default branch because it was somehow offensive.

knorker 5y ago
Reminds me of when GitHub kicked out a paying customer for using the word "retard" as a verb in the mathematical sense.
- vincnetas 5y ago
  had to look that up Retarded differential equations (RDEs) are differential equations having retarded arguments. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0377042700004763 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037704270...
  - MikeDelta 5y ago
    And quantum physics has degenerate energy levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_energy_levels
- trollied 5y ago
  Large planes tell pilots vocally to “retard” when landing…
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Which can be amusing if you don't know what's going on, it suddenly sounds like the autopilot is pissed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmbzKsqKQoI And for those who would like to change this, any change to a pilot's routine has a chance of being the thing that pushes an incident over the edge into a crash. Would it be worth it?
    - knorker 5y ago

twobitshifter 5y ago

On landlord I can’t think of a proper synonym. Property owner and proprietor are broader categories of what a landlord is. They don’t mean the person you’re paying rent to for your housing.

jmalicki 5y ago
lessor? Out of curiosity for legalese, I found a California assembly member is actually trying to change landlord -> lessor in its laws https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2503 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
- skrbjc 5y ago
  What and utter waste of time and effort.
- twobitshifter 5y ago
  What if you are a tenant at will (without a lease)?
r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
rentier - one who lives off the income of property or securities.
- cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  A landlord can still have a day job.
- marton78 5y ago
  Sounds like reindeer.
______-_-______ 5y ago
faucet-fixer?

gorwell 5y ago

I can't imagine most employees agree with this. Why aren't they pushing back?

luxuryballs 5y ago
Probably better to fly under the radar in most cases especially if they have recently been locked out of the office for not getting mRNA injections.
londons_explore 5y ago
Pushing back against this type of policy is generally a bad idea... There is a very vocal minority who will make life hard for you. This is a case where the vast majority know it's best to keep their thoughts to themselves.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > the vast majority know it's best to keep their thoughts to themselves. If it's really the case that the vast majority of employees are feeling stifled by the company policy, isn't that a situation where forming a trade union could help? The irony of workers rising up against oppressive supposedly left-wing rule is not lost on me, especially if it were to occur in Google's office in Poland.
ryathal 5y ago
Why would they push back? There is evidence doing so can get you publicly shamed and fired if other take sufficient offense.
ativzzz 5y ago
Because the amount of effort required to fight people who are passionate about an ideology when you don't particularly care is far greater than just going along and changing a few words. Sure this can result in catastrophic outcomes sometimes (e.g. Nazism) but most people just want to get their paychecks and go home or do whatever job they have without going into politics.

brunooliv 5y ago

So... essentially you have to go around hoops in the way you communicate internally? LEL.

she46BiOmUerPVj 5y ago
Sure if you believe it. We also don't speak to each other to cater to people who are deaf, and we don't use sign language to cater to people who are blind.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

xg15 5y ago

Out of couriosity: Why then didn't flag it the actual n-word of all things? > A transcribed interview of neo-Nazi and former Klan leader David Duke—in which he uses the N-word and talks about hunting Black people—gets no notes. Edit: Also interesting that this comment is dropping like a stone in HN's comment ranking, even though currently the comment score is at 1. If I accidentally triggered some anti-flame or anti-profanity filter, I'm sorry.

londons_explore 5y ago
Perhaps certain words disable the feature entirely? The feature only seems to trigger when it has a suggestion. I can't imagine what suggestion would be suitable to replace the n word.
- xg15 5y ago
  Good point. maybe even Google didn't want to be seen as "hey, here are some suggestions how you can make your speech about murdering Black people more inclusive..."
- Auracle 5y ago
  We need Clippy back, with webcam functionality. That way he can suggest ending the word in an “a” if you’re black. If you’re not he’ll report you to HR.
throw10920 5y ago
> Edit: Also interesting that this comment is dropping like a stone in HN's comment ranking, even though currently the comment score is at 1. If I accidentally triggered some anti-flame or anti-profanity filter, I'm sorry. Comment order is a function of both score and age. As far as anybody (except those who actually have access to the source), there's no other "hidden" mechanic.
- politician 5y ago
  Initial ranking depends on the author's karma. From there, the other factors take over.

______-_-______ 5y ago

"Motherboard" is particularly unbelievable. The motherboard runs the machine. It's a woman in a position of power. Isn't that what everyone says they want? Or is the idea to just erase the very concept of gender from the world? Welcome to OkCupid, I am a [PERSON] seeking [PERSON] I want out of this timeline

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
she46BiOmUerPVj 5y ago
It's particularly unbelievable because it's particularly false.
CuriouslyC 5y ago
- snek_case 5y ago
  Well they're not trying to raise up men, they're trying to destroy any notion of gender, see "gender is a social construct".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago
    They'd do a lot better if it was pitched as giving people the freedom to dress and act as they desired as long as they weren't hurting anyone else, rather than trying to act like biology wasn't a thing. I have zero problems with people dressing however they like, having whatever affectations they want and having sex with whoever is willing. I might not always find it tasteful, but that cuts both ways I'm sure so we can agree to be civil. The buck stops when you try to shame me for not calling a man a woman. Using pronouns should be a kindness like holding the door open for a disabled person, not something that sends emotional children into a socially supported temper tantrum when absent.

svnpenn 5y ago

Post a screenshot, otherwise I agree with others that you're just lying.

mgraczyk 5y ago
That is not allowed (for good reason) and I don't want to get fired, if you work at Google you can ping me and I can send it to you.
- burnished 5y ago
  What is that good reason? The only thing I can come up with is "don't release internal documents", which is a blanket reason and not what I'd consider compelling, but I suspect I'm having a failure of imagination
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    Practically no big company would allow you to post internal documents on Hacker News. Why isn't that a good reason?
    - burnished 5y ago
      Because it isn't compelling? It's purely to avoid admitting to something illegal. I presume that this person has a reason that is more nuanced than that, which intrigues me.

designium 5y ago

I wouldn't mind calling Motherboard site to Personboard... ehhehehe It would be interesting to call landlord as landperson.

thedrbrian 5y ago
Could be birthing person board.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

user3939382 5y ago

If we're going to play this game, I think dissuading people from using "mother" in the example of "motherboard" is offensive. Mothers are the source of human life on earth, and in that capacity are revered and honored. When we say motherboard, we're making an analogy that suggests the board's significance and universal connection to everything. To discourage the term as an analogy for things that are a universal source is to demote women and their role as mothers. I'd like to know who at Google puts these lists together and what judge decreed their viewpoint on this more valid than mine or anyone else's, since apparently Google feels that from this judgement they have the right to shape speech for millions of people and therefore, by extension, our culture.

azth 5y ago
It's the natural outcome of far leftist ideologies. People need to wake up and start rejecting this destructive ideology where a person is evaluated only based on their identity. I think MLK had something to say about that.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  MLK was a leftist - and arguably a "far leftist" for his time. If you're going to use him as an example, you may have to concede that this is not a "natural outcome" of leftist ideologies in general, but rather the outcome of some other selection pressure that rewards diversion from initiatives that actually affect peoples' material conditions.
  - azth 5y ago
    I'm referring to modern far leftism, an offshoot from Marxism and post modernism.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      As a first comment here, I'd point out that defining women independently from solely their role as mothers is judging them on character rather than identity, so you should support such a thing if that's your rallying cry. But also, on MLK and postmodernism: postmodernism dates back to the 1940s, To Kill a Mockingbird is postmodern. MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail is very clearly postmodern (e.g. when he says "But I am sorry that your statement did not express a similar concern for the conditions that brought the demonstrations into being.", he's alluding to a failure to consider the viewpoint of the oppressed in the situation). That letter is also very modern-leftist. Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality" in 1989 and elaborated on it in 1991, saying "When feminism does not explicitly oppose racism, and when anti-racism does not incorporate oppposition to patriarchy race and gender politics often end up being antagonistic to each other, and both interests lose". The letter from a Birmingham jail includes another famous line from MLK: " Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly". To me, those express similar sentiments: that oppression exists in many forms in many places, and it is unwise to pretend that oppression that fails to inconvenience me is therefore unworthy of my attention. And of course he says later on "there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. " which to me describes the people often criticized as "modern far leftists", those people who create the tension and discomfort in society are, in MLK's view, doing us, collectively, a great service. I'd recommend you read the whole letter[0]. If you're so willing to lionize MLK, but disagree with so much of what he preached, I implore you to consider why exactly that is. [0]: https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-...

brobinson 5y ago

Genuinely curious: what do you do internally for "male" and "female" connectors?

mgraczyk 5y ago
That one is in the public list. https://developers.google.com/style/word-list https://developers.google.com/style/word-list You're supposed to use "plug" and "socket" instead.
- kyleblarson 5y ago
  That google is at a point where they can pay employees to waste time on crap like this and yet still print money is incredible.
- MatteoFrigo 5y ago
  To be fair, the male/female nomenclature for connectors has been a mess for decades. One old convention, mostly originating with radio-frequency connectors, is that the gender of the connector is the gender of its innermost contact. Thus, the plug of the common 2.5" and 2.1" connector of power supplies is technically female because the inner contact is a hole. The socket on the appliance has a pin in the middle and is technically male. When you try to buy one, half the time the part is labelled as male and the other half it is labelled as female. But there is no problem bad enough that cannot be made worse by government. Years ago some US regulator didn't like the fact that people were plugging big radio antennas into wifi equipment, so they invented the "reverse-polarity" connector. What used to be a "SMA male" connector with a pin in the middle now is a "RP SMA male" connector with a hole in the middle. Here is a random link with a picture: http://cablesondemandblog.com/wordpress1/2014/05/05/reverse_polarity_sma_connectors_sma_tnc_reverse_polarity_tnc/ http://cablesondemandblog.com/wordpress1/2014/05/05/reverse_... If you order this kind of connectors, now you have a 25% chance of getting what you need. One RP SMA male and a SMA female will mate together but not propagate any signals.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Haha jesus no wonder they added the "AI-powered" hints because who the fuck can be expected to keep track of all this nonsense? > hang, hung > Don't use to refer to a computer or system that is not responding [..] see Avoid unnecessarily violent language.

droptablemain 5y ago

Sounds like woke gibberish. I suppose we can take some solace in the fact that they haven't renamed "motherboard" as "birthing-person-board."

david38 5y ago

You have got to be kidding. Was this some retaliatory complaint by some dude showing dudes can be triggered by female-emphasizing phrases as well? Should it have been renamed to birthing-person-board? What a joke

moron4hire 5y ago

Is there at least some sort of mailing list you can subscribe to to know which phrases are verboten this week?

Rarebox 5y ago

I can believe this. Around the time I left people were patting backs for fighting racism by getting rid of terms blacklist/whitelist. Not something I feel super strongly about, but the fact that it's so scary to go against these stupid ideas is annoying. It's pure politics, there's nobody benefiting from this except the people claiming impact for antiracist work in their perf.

ajross 5y ago

> Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real world This isn't remotely limited to Google. My company does this too. I've heard of others making similar changes. Are these kinds of arbitrary changes to language usage silly and pointless? Maybe. But tough love here: languages change in arbitrary and pointless ways constantly. They always have. They always will. Your own common usages and idioms would seem outrageously weird to your grandparents. People had these same fights in the 60's, also 80's, and 50's... The 40's too now that I think of it... To wit: we aren't getting oppressed here, we're just getting old. And the attempt to turn it into a political fight (on both sides) is largely just a reaction to the friction. It's not the cause. I mean, really. Is "mainboard" such a hardship? It's not even a new word, it's two bytes and one syllable shorter. Must this be a fight?

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
If Google had shipped a feature that autocorrects my grandparents' slang to "dank" and "yeet", I'd be equally concerned! There's a huge difference between using fun new terms yourself and going around asking everyone to stop using the old ones.

azth 5y ago

I had mentioned this in the previous post about this topic[1], yet some people casually discredit it as nothing. The slippery slope is real folks [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086310&p=3#31087238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31086310&p=3#31087238

MrBlueIncognito 5y ago
People like turning a blind eye to what they feel uncomfortable accepting. That the world we live in is being increasingly influenced by just a few profit-maximizing entities.

dogleash 5y ago

>Many Google employees are just so out of touch with the real world that they believe it is the duty of Google Docs to change the English language to exclude the words "landlord", "motherboard", and even "mother" in most contexts (sub with birthing person). It's frantic activity to avoid looking in the mirror. Making themselves busy fixing something massive and intractable to avoid having to think about the actionable items closer to home.

vimy 5y ago

This is why I’m pessimistic about the West winning the second cold war. While Chinese engineers are working hard on world dominating AI models and other hard tech, Western engineers are wasting man hours on crap like this.

IAmWorried 5y ago
But it's over Anakin, we have the moral high ground!
- jpindar 5y ago
  As someone who lives in a valley, I find that phrase offensive. /s
CuriouslyC 5y ago
The west will win the second cold war because the communist party will not be able to release its iron grip on its populace. The Chinese people only accept that iron grip now because it's carrying them up from a low place, but once that stops the constriction will become suffocating, leading to civil unrest and diaspora of the upper tier of Chinese society.
- throw10920 5y ago
  There's a saying - "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent". Even if there was some natural physical law that guaranteed that oppressive nations would eventually be overthrown/atrophy, there's definitely nothing that puts a bound on how long that will take. And, as we've seen with Ukraine, war can break out more quickly than any of us think. (also, if the social justice warriors in the West have their way, the US government itself would be overthrown and replaced with its own, authoritarian, but ineffective regime, long before a conflict with China would occur)
  - Tr3nton 5y ago
    >if the social justice warriors in the West have their way, the US government itself would be overthrown and replaced with its own, authoritarian, but ineffective regime The summer of 2020 was a great preview of what this dictatorship will look like once the USD collapses in value another 30-40%. Burning buildings and more statues of "heroes" like George Floyd, who stood up to White Supremacy. Remember, removing "master" from git repos was done because of the legacy of slavery in the United States.

she46BiOmUerPVj 5y ago

This sounds entirely fabricated. I've been in the hardware department for more than 10 years. Maybe you put a word in a list. I've never even heard of someone considering this.

mrtksn 5y ago

Okay, for a moment, forget about your position or feelings about the issue. Would you say that these restrictions or changes actually changed anything for better or worse? Is there some kind of evaluation going on to track the results of these policies?

as300 5y ago

A worse one is to me is that they aren't allowed to say "Quantum Supremacy", because it reminds some people of "White Supremacy"? Nevermind that you actually give that concept more power when you make it so that even discussing it or inadvertently bring it up is stigmatized. Things are starting to get kind of Orwellian.

deleted 5y ago

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umvi 5y ago

> This may seem unbelievable, but the word "motherboard" is literally banned within Google and you are required to use "mainboard" instead. You are not allowed to use this word in documentation or code, and you're also not allowed to say it privately in chats or emails. Is this really true? I always thought I might eventually apply to work at Google someday, but I hadn't heard there was such aggressive internal thought policing.

varispeed 5y ago

That's part of Marxist long march through institutions. They achieve these goals through bullying and accusations. Nobody at work wants to be (unfoundedly) accused of racism so they silently accept these new rules. I mean it's a small inconvenience that is probably worth the salary they are getting. But the truth is people in these organisations are afraid of speaking their minds in case they say something that is deemed wrong by woke police. I noticed that people have become less open and many limits conversations strictly to the tasks at hand. It's kind of how corporate goals meet with Marxism - they believe people no longer engage in "pointless" socialising that affects the bottom line and if they want to engage, they have a minefield to navigate. Many of my (former) friends who worked at these big corporations have become zombies - it's not possible to have a conversation with them about day to day life, events etc. It's really fascinating and worrying.

andrekandre 5y ago
which things did marx say that these companies are now implementing?

ipiz0618 5y ago

When the same kind of people banned "master" branch for being offensive I was surprised. Not so much now if I think in their logic

tomrod 5y ago

Google is a large corporation. Large corporations will often enact arcane rulesets to give HR ways to manipulate their labor costs. This really sounds a lot like why this type of approach would be supported.

babyshake 5y ago

Not trying to troll here...but are there people advocating that we replace "Mother's Day" with "Birthing Person's Day"? If a person gave birth who no longer identifies as a woman is it not inclusive to gender the holiday as we do?

silisili 5y ago

Can someone reasonably explain to me why mother or motherboard is offensive...at all? I try to be somewhat reasonable. I can stretch my mind enough to see the complaint with blacklist at least. But mother being offensive...my mind isn't able to stretch that far unless I'm missing something.

Tao331 5y ago

How about "motherboard/fatherboard"? If we just use that everywhere they'll all be happy. No fatherboards will feel left out. Mother-of-pearl can just be nacre, and I don't know what you'll have to call mother-of-vinegar. Maybe just say it's something special and not to think too much about how fermentation works - especially if it causes you to have evil, non-inclusive thoughts. If I'm writing about a ship and refer to it as a "she", does that set off the autoinquisitor?

dhzhzjsbevs 5y ago

This is the company that fired James damore and then turned around and spouted his talking points a few months later not even realising the hypocrisy. https://mashable.com/article/google-youtube-women-in-tech-diversity-town-hall https://mashable.com/article/google-youtube-women-in-tech-di...

titzer 5y ago

Woke Clippy (to borrow from up-thread) is going to have a field day when it learns German. There. Are. So. Many. Violations.

samizdis 5y ago
A brilliant term, and it brings me back to what annoys me the most about all of this: Clippy was shite and got in the way of productivity, and now I'm going to have another "helper" in a tool that I use every day, and it is going to get in my way without even achieving its apparent goals because this stuff just does not work. To push the Clippy thing further, Bill Gates once gave us "content is king". Google's Woke Clippy needs to learn that "context is king" - but it can't ever do that with language; well, not without a general AI.
mrep 5y ago
Oh please give us some examples.

johnnyanmac 5y ago

>sub with birthing person eww. This has the same vibes as someone saying "I want to breed with them". Like sure, it's grammatically correct, but you're gonna come off as a creep at best and some weird fetishist at worst.

reaperducer 5y ago

This may seem unbelievable, but the word "motherboard" is literally banned within Google and you are required to use "mainboard" instead No more "motherboard" and "daughterboard?" Sounds like Google has found yet another way to marginalize women. Pay 'em less. Then pretend they don't exist. Way to go, Diversity Champions!