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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 exag
by 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 agoIt's in the banned words list, I can share a link internally if you want.
- dekhn 5y agoWe'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 agoyes, 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.
- kurupt213 5y agoFrom a purely linguistic point of view, doesn’t ‘content moderation’ imply a work slowdown? I would think any company would be against using anti-productivity language.
- bombcar 5y agoI think all companies realize they have a large amount of "sway" in the actual work that gets done, and things like TPS reports and content moderation get in even if they're a net productivity loss. Once you stop thinking of companies as single entities and instead as large kingdoms containing many fiefdoms it starts making more sense. You can see it even in this thread, there exist Lists and tools that can be used as weapons against other groups, even if sometimes they're not currently being used because they're not currently at war.
- zionic 5y agoAt these wealth levels it’s not about “productivity” anymore lol
- userbinator 5y agoThank you for your service. That said, consider that leaving just means one less opponent for the other side.
- zionic 5y agoI disagree. Let’s assume OP is talented, his talent can best be used for google’s competitors. Meanwhile, Google is rotten at the executive layer. No amount of good people working for them will fix things.
- DannyBee 5y agoThe list it is on is about what words to use in external product documentation and marketing. Not some "if you use these words internally the word police are going to come after you" list. I'm going to be charitable and suggest this person is just accidentally leaving out context, rather than deliberately trying to rile people up because they disagree with something :)
- lubesGordi 5y agoI mean, I'm still pretty shocked to hear 'motherboard' isn't allowed in external product documentation. I don't think it matters if it's internal or external.
- mattkrause 5y ago"Mainboard" is arguably a bit more literally descriptive: it is the main board of the device. The figurative part of "motherboard" is pretty vague: it's just larger than the "daughterboards" and in charge of them--it doesn't birth or nurture them or do anything that's stereotypically maternal.
- fluoridation 5y agoOften power is transmitted from the motherboard to be daughterboards, and the two are connected via a conduit like a fetus in the womb. It's not a completely arbitrary metaphor. As for whether it's the main board or not, surely that's a matter of opinion. An AI researcher would be much more interested in what the GPU board is doing than on what the motherboard is doing.
- mattkrause 5y agoIt's certainly more central to the device itself. You can run a computer without a GPU, NIC, sound card, etc, but regardless of the peripherals you want, you're gonna need some kind of motherboard/mainboard to tie everything together. I've heard claims that it's a motherboard because it has female connectors (i.e., sockets), but that's sort hard to square with the contemporary coinage of "daughterboards."
- elihu 5y agoDoes "motherboard" even make sense as a term? It's not like a motherboard gives birth to little baby boards that eventually grow up to be mother and father boards of their own. It's just one of those weird words we accept because it's been part of a shared vocabulary for so long. I don't particularly see any harm in assigning a gender role to a hardware device, but I don't see anything is particularly gained either. "Mainboard" is fine.
- UberFly 5y agoAll the little components live on the Mother Board just like you live on the Mother Earth.
- chipotle_coyote 5y agoI'm fairly sure that "motherboard" came about as a term specifically for computer logic boards with slots that other cards -- "daughterboards" -- plugged into. It's very much from the 1970s era when we referred to "microcomputers", "minicomputers" and "mainframes". Granted, I'm a Mac user -- the last time I bought a "motherboard", I think it was a Pentium 4 -- and we tend to use the phrase "logic board" over here in Apple land, probably because, other than debatably the Mac Pro, we haven't had motherboards using the canonical definition for a very long time. At any rate, while I wouldn't go out of my way to squelch the word, I wouldn't go out of my way to insist on it, either. "Logic board" and "mainboard" both work and get the point across.
- kansface 5y agoPresumably, that would be Main Earth.
- johnnyanmac 5y agoWell, not at this rate. Hope our sub earths are habitual in the next century or 2.
- goatlover 5y agoThere's only one earth so far, so that wouldn't make a lot of sense.
- ushakov 5y agowhy does a company have a say which words are allowed to be used? i mean there are some bad words you shouldn’t use, but i just can’t grasp why is there something like “motherboard” on that list?
- IAmWorried 5y ago
- JaimeThompson 5y agoWhen do you feel cancel culture started?
- pageandrew 5y agoStarted kicking off in universities around 2014-2015, really accelerated on social media (and by extension legacy media) through the Trump years, and has been solidly established across the corporate world as the college students of 2015 entered the workforce.
- JaimeThompson 5y agoIn the United States the fundamentalists have been doing it for much longer then that as well as people such as the members of the Parents Music Resource Center who controlled a considerable amount of political power. This idea that it is a recent invention isn't really supported by the reality on the ground. Things like the satanic panic, Dungeons & Dragons / Metal being satanic, Rock being evil, and a host of other things have long been used to remove "undesirable" people for a long time before 2014 on both the local and national level. The extremes have always used shunning and economic warfare tactics to shut up those who disagree with them.
- flippinburgers 5y agoUhhh ok yeah all those people who lost jobs and couldn't find employment because they listened to rock music/played DnD. Sure. The DnD panic was about kids. It was about kids. I find it absurd to go after DnD like that but I don't recall ever reading about people being shunned, losing there jobs etc as happens these days.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoI believed you enough to defend your claim on Twitter. And then Stella proved you wrong: https://twitter.com/blancheminerva/status/1517836300342202371?s=21&t=25_WLGEnT3NKGgFMwTKwCQ https://twitter.com/blancheminerva/status/151783630034220237... Your claim is somehow going a little viral. You have a responsibility to try to correct it.
- scythe 5y ago"Allowlist" and "denylist" are sonically awkward. Why not "inlist" and "outlist"?
- scottyah 5y agoIn the context of IP filtering, I would assume those lists would differentiate one-way traffic instead of the regular all or nothing.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoDirectional terms like that would be confusing in a lot of infrastructure discussions. An outbound firewall rule's "outlist" is the list of things that don't go out.
- layer8 5y agoThat’d discriminate against the outgroup. Although I guess “denylist” would be offensive to <whatever> deniers?
- rougka 5y agoI want to offer greenlist and redlist And to those who say this is not inclusive to the colorblind, I say traffic lights
- onion2k 5y agoGreenlist and redlist would fail in a global company. Plenty of cultures use red as a color that promotes positivity rather than a negative color. Japan has blue rather than green for their "Go" color. And so on.
- rougka 5y agoI still think traffic lights would work as that’s almost a universal global standard (isn’t Japan the only exception?) and it works well in English But I think we can agree that the goal when choosing these names isn’t really being concise and easy to use
- 5y ago
- mensetmanusman 5y agoDo you think your brain power increases or decreases with the additional thought-crime concern that you have to reprogram yourself to prevent?