dannypgh
Joined 13 years ago
Joined 13 years ago
If you're duplicating floppies, minting CDs, DVDs and so forth it's very expensive to make corrections. If you're pushing remote updates and digital downloads, or just running the software as a service and making it available over the network (e.g. a website) there's not the same expense associated with correction.
These methods of distribution also let careful organizations release to a small things out to a fraction of users first, which can minimize the costs and risks associated with a bad software push as well.
If you're talking about GFS, that's been gone for a decade, and was not a filesystem as far as the kernel was concerned.
I don't particularly care about blacklist/whitelist (as there's a clearer connection to light) but a lot of the defenses against even considering that change sound racist as fuck to me -- there's lots of people who explicitly argue the status quo is OK and that it couldn't be worth any changes here.
Master/slave, however, does bother me. It's led to one too many conversations where people need to, or so, say things like "the slave isn't keeping up with the master" or "the master should detect that and kill the slave" or "we should add more slaves" and those words are grating to me. I don't want to say them, and if a coworker is saying them sometimes I'm not sure if they're enjoying getting to use those words a little too much.
I also want to add, none of this is as important to me as meaningful reparations for slavery and institutionalized racism. But the fact that other things are more important doesn't mean this isn't important. If I meet someone who is in a position to significantly advance reparations or rename these tech terms, I'll be talking with them about the former, not the latter. But most people are not in a position to move the needle on both of these issues.
I know that's probably not what you intended, but I've reread it several times and that's how I'm interpreting it each time. I think this disconnect between people -- a modicum of safety in a world that doesn't value our lives is seen as huge and worthwhile by some, but trivial and unimportant by others.
So if we gain momentum here, I see the next step as seeking other forms of reparations, not going after other words.
If there are others who are suffering who want to advocate for ways to improve our language to reduce the unintended harm it has, they're of course welcome to.
Also c'mon this slippery slope argument sounds like this to me: "Where does it stop? Will people object to every word and I'll be forced to express myself just through grunts? What if they then come for my grunts? Therefore I should continue to call things whatever I want because slippery slope."
Where does it stop? It stops when people stop pushing.
This change barely moves the needle on Black representation in tech, but I think it does, however little. Improving Black representation in tech /barely/ moves the needle on racism, but I too think it does, however little (these are good jobs and I know it's helped me and my family close some of the racial wealth gap).
It's very obnoxious when as a real world person with a real world request, I hear "but what about [insert hypothetical here that isn't actually happening]?" and there's an easy answer: "if that arises, let's deal with it then."
I am descended in part from African slaves. I work in tech. I have dealt with, because of my racial characteristics, a variety of micro and not-so-micro aggressions from my coworkers and that's on top of the bullshit I've had to deal with from neighbors and society. All of this causes me to consider walking away to find something where I don't have to deal with as much BS, and that also makes me sure that the diversity issues in tech are not just a pipeline issue, it's an issue of this work environment not being welcoming to people with different backgrounds. All of these issues are additive - few people want to enter a pipeline for hostile working environment in the end, and those that did have to endure constant bullshit in order to be retained.
Efforts to use more inclusive language aren't going to fix nearly any of the big problems, but it is very, very nice to see /any/ effort here, given the history of none at all. Seeing the effort makes these space more bearable, and in my estimation that justifies the very, very minimal cost of committing to trying to use inclusive language going forward (as a software engineer I'm not keen on renames for renames sake, but we're not talking about renames anywhere - we're talking about preferring inclusive names for new things). Likewise it's disheartening to see how many white folks want to proclaim that there are no diversity and inclusion issues in tech.
You're underselling this, I think.
It is "respect for the institution" why the military accepts the civilian authority of the POTUS as commander in chief. If we are only considering the ability to use violence to enforce one's position as legitimate, it's the military and police forces who rule. Once you factor in laws, the SCOTUS is authoritative as to how the laws can be legally interpreted.
There are different levels of options trading for a reason. Giving level 3 options trading out to anyone is reckless; in the hands of many people these are tools that are pretty much being used for making leveraged speculative bets, not careful hedges of risk.
I'm guessing it is trying to seek, or running a stat first to check filesize or similar.