'Master' and 'slave': Tech terms face scrutiny amid anti-racism efforts

[TimFox]

"Grandfathered" has a very specific meaning in regulations:  it means that a unit that was legal before the current regulations were issued can still be used or sold.  The term is also used for real-estate zoning, where an existing house can still be sold, even if it does not pass current building codes or lot-size regulation.
The term has a sordid history:  After the US Civil War, when former slaves were now allowed to vote, the reaction in some former Confederate states was to allow only those whose grandfathers could vote before 1865 to vote. 
"Legacy" just means something left over from previous generations;  it does not imply that it does not mean current regulations.  The 741 op-amp can be considered a legacy part, and one would normally replace it with something more fashionable, but it is not hazardous.

[SkyMaster]

I wonder if a person is hit on the forehead if this person still black out.

If the person is hit on an eye, will the person have a black eye.

And when we turn off the light at night, is it still pitch black.

 

[ejeffrey]

Told you it never ends. Hope everyone enjoys the future they are creating.

Wait what?
Replace Master/Slave with primary/standby uhhhhhhhh how does that ever going to work?
When a primary device gets no answer from one of its standby devices this standby device is probably in standby mode.

Primary/standby" is not a correct replacement for "Master/slave" in its normal technical usage.

Part of the reason for this is that a lot of these terms are used in multiple ways for what are actually completely different things

Nobody is saying to replace SPI master/slave with primary/standby.  But master/slave is *also* used when referring to things like database and fileserver replication.  In that case, primary + backup or standby are more precise and do not rely on a metaphor to explain their function.  On the other hand in a load balanced topology you would use different terminology because it is a different thing.  Using master and slave in both situations is actively confusing.  For hardware interfaces, initiator / target is often a more appropriate choice although again as master/slave are used in many different ways it won't be always the same.  Probably the worst example are IDE hard drives with jumpers for master/slave.  Which is really just a single bit device address and the drives operate completely independently.  This case is so bad that lots of people believe (or did when IDE drives were a thing) that the host only talks to the master device which then relays commands to the slave or at least that one has priority over the other for access to the bus.  Neither of which are true.

Another example - blacklist. A summary term for entities/places/people/devices/brands that should be denied/avoided/checked with extra care/blocked... Not half of the use cases are covered by the word denylist. There's a restaurant blacklist. What's the newterm for that? Avoidlist? Great, instead of one summary term we get 10 terms

If it is 10 terms for 10 different things, that is a good thing and aids clarity especially when they explicitly state what they mean rather than being an ambiguous metaphor that you have to figure out by context.  Are you really, *really* upset that "restaurants I don't like" and the access controls on your webserver can't have the same word?  Really?

I get that nobody likes change especially they feel that the reasons don't make sense or matter to them but the arguments against a lot of these alternate terms are incredibly stupid.

FWIW, I actually have talked to a number of Black scientists and engineers -- people actually working in the field, not activists or politicians.  And in many (not all!) cases these terms do bother them or at least did when they were learning and entering the field.  They obviously got past it and don't think that the majority of people using these terms are trying to hurt them.  But here is the thing: I'm old.  I'm not going to be practicing in this field forever.  So if this is an inconvenience for me (which it most definitely is) but creates better clearer terminology that also might reduced the alienation some of younger people feel starting off in a field where they already stand out as different, why would I object?

[ejeffrey]

"Grandfathered" != "legacy", in many walks of life.

Example: people that were driving cars in 1935 (when the driving test was introduced) never had to take the test; they had "grandfather rights". Indeed my grandfather never did take a test, despite driving into the 1980s when he was in his 80s. There are other examples in aviation.

As for "y'all" or "folks", no. Just no.

Having said that, I think "allow list" is better than "white list"; the meaning is explicit rather than having to be inferred.

Note the list Dave posted was how Twitter is going to change their internal code and engineering documentation.  In that situation "legacy" is probably more correct than grandfathered since it probably means "code written an old way that we don't do any more but don't want to go back and change" without necessarily conveying a specific policy exemption.

[bd139]

Reminds me of:

https://youtu.be/XFHg7l8vvHM

[james_s]

They obviously got past it and don't think that the majority of people using these terms are trying to hurt them.  But here is the thing: I'm old.  I'm not going to be practicing in this field forever.  So if this is an inconvenience for me (which it most definitely is) but creates better clearer terminology that also might reduced the alienation some of younger people feel starting off in a field where they already stand out as different, why would I object?

Because it's stupid? Because it will never end? Because it doesn't actually accomplish anything except create extra work? Just look at how quickly the list is expanding and tell me with a straight face that people will ever decide the goal has been achieved and stop trying to change words. Some of us are not as old and still have a good portion of our careers ahead. Think of how many man-hours are consumed changing words and then everyone learning all the new words for stuff they already knew, this is not trivial. Heck just look at how much time has collectively been wasted in this thread, the entire thing is as I believe Dave would say, a "nothing burger."

Context matters, period. If someone has a problem with a word and chooses to ignore the meaning then that is a problem with their own perception that only they can solve. Perhaps they need to seek therapy to deal with their feelings instead of expecting te entire rest of the world to bend over backwards to coddle them.

As I said earlier, I find this ridiculous euphemism treadmill and the fact that people are jumping to conclusions, and trying to force me to keep adapting to a continuous stream of new terms offensive, but of course none of those people care if I'm offended, it's all about them.

[paulca]

Police:  Can you describe your attacker?
You:  No.  I can't.
Police: Did you not see them?
You: Yes, but I can't desribe them
Police: Why?

Well if I said they were a man, that's gender stereo-typing, if I told you the colour of their skin that's racism....   [and so on]

[Kjelt]

I wonder if a person is hit on the forehead if this person still black out.

If the person is hit on an eye, will the person have a black eye.

And when we turn off the light at night, is it still pitch black.

 

At least except for the first case we don't have those problems in our country 

The black eye is called a blue eye
The pitch black is called  git black or dick black (no i do not make this up)

[TimFox]

When I first learned of "black holes" in astrophysics, the professor mentioned that the Russian phrase translated to "frozen stars", since the literal translation from English to Russian was obscene.  Language is tricky.

[ejeffrey]

I wonder if a person is hit on the forehead if this person still black out.

If the person is hit on an eye, will the person have a black eye.

And when we turn off the light at night, is it still pitch black.

 

All of those are using black to refer to the color rather than value.

[james_s]

All of those are using black to refer to the color rather than value.

Yes, it's called context, see how that works?

Likewise a blacklist or whitelist is a list of things that are banned or allowed, it has no relation whatsoever to the amount of melanin in a person's skin. A blacklist does not refer to black people, nor does a whitelist refer to white people. Context, it's important.

[Nominal Animal]

Kjelt, I know that sounds a good idea, but there are serious repercussions that are not immediately obvious.  You see, Finnish police and Finnish media decided a few years ago to do just that.  (The police even stopped gathering and publishing statistics on ethnicities of criminals for exactly this reason.)

There have been cases where a suspect has been able to leave the country, because police refused to post the picture of the suspect because their skin color or ethnic origin would have been detectable.  We have also had our own child grooming rings that were left to operate for years because the police assumed the reports were racist, and refused to investigate.

Because of this, we have a stark divide in Finland.  One group assumes that whenever the details are not told, it is because the suspect is an immigrant; that there is a faction that wants to hide the crimes immigrants commit.  The other group assumes that any complaints about immigrant behaviour are just racist hate speech, because there are none in the media.  (The media here avoids publishing crimes if the suspects or perpetrators are immigrant or of a non-Finn ethnicity.  The only media that does, is labeled "far right".)

It does not work, not here at least.  This only creates a divide, and helps nobody.  The ones who get hurt by this most, are the hardworking immigrants who do pay their taxes and abide by the law.  The ones who benefit, are the ones who have no intention of conforming to local law: they get a free pass just by shouting "racist!".  One half of the nation believes them, and calls the other half racist, while nobody does a thing to fix the underlying issues.

(And the ones whose ideology claims that immigrants only commit crime because of oppression, do not need to consider the evidence otherwise, so politicians in particular are happy.)

Hiding information, with the idea that "the public does not need to know", only makes things worse.  Finland is an excellent example of this.  We don't really have any traditional newsmedia left; the ones we have are all opinion writers, and fully believe their role is to be the gatekeeper of potentially harmful information.  The 56% of Finns that does trust traditional media, are the ones with the same opinions as the writers.

No, I believe openness and educating kids about other people and cultures works, but this avoid-mentioning-details-that-might-be-misused does not. At all.

[SilverSolder]

Kjelt, I know that sounds a good idea, but there are serious repercussions that are not immediately obvious.  You see, Finnish police and Finnish media decided a few years ago to do just that.  (The police even stopped gathering and publishing statistics on ethnicities of criminals for exactly this reason.)

There have been cases where a suspect has been able to leave the country, because police refused to post the picture of the suspect because their skin color or ethnic origin would have been detectable.  We have also had our own child grooming rings that were left to operate for years because the police assumed the reports were racist, and refused to investigate.

Because of this, we have a stark divide in Finland.  One group assumes that whenever the details are not told, it is because the suspect is an immigrant; that there is a faction that wants to hide the crimes immigrants commit.  The other group assumes that any complaints about immigrant behaviour are just racist hate speech, because there are none in the media.  (The media here avoids publishing crimes if the suspects or perpetrators are immigrant or of a non-Finn ethnicity.  The only media that does, is labeled "far right".)

It does not work, not here at least.  This only creates a divide, and helps nobody.  The ones who get hurt by this most, are the hardworking immigrants who do pay their taxes and abide by the law.  The ones who benefit, are the ones who have no intention of conforming to local law: they get a free pass just by shouting "racist!".  One half of the nation believes them, and calls the other half racist, while nobody does a thing to fix the underlying issues.

(And the ones whose ideology claims that immigrants only commit crime because of oppression, do not need to consider the evidence otherwise, so politicians in particular are happy.)

Hiding information, with the idea that "the public does not need to know", only makes things worse.  Finland is an excellent example of this.  We don't really have any traditional newsmedia left; the ones we have are all opinion writers, and fully believe their role is to be the gatekeeper of potentially harmful information.  The 56% of Finns that does trust traditional media, are the ones with the same opinions as the writers.

No, I believe openness and educating kids about other people and cultures works, but this avoid-mentioning-details-that-might-be-misused does not. At all.

What's really wrong with the principle "everyone is equal before the law",  there should be no rules making any group different...  that is in itself racist and/or unfair to one group or another, in most instances.

[coppice]

We have also had our own child grooming rings that were left to operate for years because the police assumed the reports were racist, and refused to investigate.

Although the authorities have been very evasive with the UK public, its quite clear that a considerable number of people with the power to act knew exactly what was (and still appears to be) going on with the UK grooming gangs. Sadly, their highest priority appears to have been avoiding being tagged as racists themselves.

[james_s]

What's really wrong with the principle "everyone is equal before the law",  there should be no rules making any group different...  that is in itself racist and/or unfair to one group or another, in most instances.

Nothing (IMHO) however it comes down to the same old argument of equality of opportunity/treatment vs equality of outcome. A percentage of the population is devout in their view that the tail should wag the dog and as with most things that are based on a belief, no amount of logic, evidence, reason or statistics will change their mind, in many cases they will just accuse you of being racist to silence you if you even question their assertion.

[Nominal Animal]

... You see, Finnish police and Finnish media decided a few years ago to do just that.  ...

What's really wrong with the principle "everyone is equal before the law",  there should be no rules making any group different...  that is in itself racist and/or unfair to one group or another, in most instances.

Well, the Finnish Constitution does explicitly say that, that everyone is equal before the law, but the new Woke police interpret the laws using the Marxist-intersectionalist ideology; for example, here in the official Finnish Police blog, they say that in the case of majority population being the target of racism ("incitement against a group of people"), "the threat, slander or insult should be exceptionally serious, as the majority population does not need as strong protection as minority groups."  Simply put, it is not racist to attack me just because of my skin color, because it is white.

We Finns cannot even dispute this, because we do not have a constitutional court (that could examine if laws, policies, or governmental guidelines are in violation of the constitution).

The Helsinki Police are also tasked with hate speech monitoring on the net: they have several dozen officers just for that job.  However, the same police do not have the resources to investigate storage break-ins or random violence (between strangers).  That's what this kind of "don't talk about things that might help racists" approach led to, here.

[SilverSolder]

... You see, Finnish police and Finnish media decided a few years ago to do just that.  ...

What's really wrong with the principle "everyone is equal before the law",  there should be no rules making any group different...  that is in itself racist and/or unfair to one group or another, in most instances.

Well, the Finnish Constitution does explicitly say that, that everyone is equal before the law, but the new Woke police interpret the laws using the Marxist-intersectionalist ideology; for example, here in the official Finnish Police blog, they say that in the case of majority population being the target of racism ("incitement against a group of people"), "the threat, slander or insult should be exceptionally serious, as the majority population does not need as strong protection as minority groups."  Simply put, it is not racist to attack me just because of my skin color, because it is white.

We Finns cannot even dispute this, because we do not have a constitutional court (that could examine if laws, policies, or governmental guidelines are in violation of the constitution).

The Helsinki Police are also tasked with hate speech monitoring on the net: they have several dozen officers just for that job.  However, the same police do not have the resources to investigate storage break-ins or random violence (between strangers).  That's what this kind of "don't talk about things that might help racists" approach led to, here.

If there is no separate constitutional court, presumably the "regular" high courts can make constitutional interpretations? 

[nuclearcat]

When I first learned of "black holes" in astrophysics, the professor mentioned that the Russian phrase translated to "frozen stars", since the literal translation from English to Russian was obscene.  Language is tricky.

Thats weird, because black hole is literally black hole in Russian. Nothing obscene ever existed.
* Russian is my native language

[Fred Basset]

A lot of this is not really real you know?

I mean it is real in that it is being reported, and some organizations are indeed actually trying to change the langueage used.  But some of these "cases" have been around since the 80s in Britain, where "jokers" reported them as being offensive as a way of trying to ridicule those who were trying hard not to offend others.  Only the gullible believed them, and lo and behold - Nothing ever came of them and the real world carried on using most of the old language.

Now with BLM, it is a field day (for some) in ressurecting these old things again and pretending they are real issues for non-whites/non-male or whatever dreamed up maginalization they think they can get away with.  Only now people seem to have forgotten most of these were tasteless pranks, and some are now being taken seriously.  I have several friends from different countries and words do not bother them much.  They are far more concerned about the violence (from anyone), institutionalised racism and Covid-19.  These were wind-ups to see who would take them seriously and regretably they still seem to have the power to get people on both sides worked up.  Lots of fire and little light.

Don't sweat the words (I don't), it seems like they are the least of my friends worries right now.

[Nominal Animal]

... You see, Finnish police and Finnish media decided a few years ago to do just that.  ...

What's really wrong with the principle "everyone is equal before the law",  there should be no rules making any group different...  that is in itself racist and/or unfair to one group or another, in most instances.

Well, the Finnish Constitution does explicitly say that, that everyone is equal before the law, but the new Woke police interpret the laws using the Marxist-intersectionalist ideology; for example, here in the official Finnish Police blog, they say that in the case of majority population being the target of racism ("incitement against a group of people"), "the threat, slander or insult should be exceptionally serious, as the majority population does not need as strong protection as minority groups."  Simply put, it is not racist to attack me just because of my skin color, because it is white.

We Finns cannot even dispute this, because we do not have a constitutional court (that could examine if laws, policies, or governmental guidelines are in violation of the constitution).

The Helsinki Police are also tasked with hate speech monitoring on the net: they have several dozen officers just for that job.  However, the same police do not have the resources to investigate storage break-ins or random violence (between strangers).  That's what this kind of "don't talk about things that might help racists" approach led to, here.

If there is no separate constitutional court, presumably the "regular" high courts can make constitutional interpretations?

Nope.

[Nominal Animal]

A lot of this is not really real you know?

Many of the free/open source software projects I've contributed to, are deadly serious about this.

Right now, they're just changing both sources and documentation to replace "offensive" terms with whatever else they can come up with, but there are movements underway to include requirements in the contributor agreements to avoid those terms or face banning.

I may sound coherent occasionally, but me fail English often, since it's not my native language, and I read and write a lot but speak very little (which means I miss a lot of cues, and phrase stuff awkwardly).  The idea of having a Language Commissar vetting whether my output is Ideologically Acceptable freaks the fuck out of me.

[Kjelt]

Kjelt, I know that sounds a good idea, but there are serious repercussions that are not immediately obvious.  You see, Finnish police and Finnish media decided a few years ago to do just that.  (The police even stopped gathering and publishing statistics on ethnicities of criminals for exactly this reason.)

.........................

No, I believe openness and educating kids about other people and cultures works, but this avoid-mentioning-details-that-might-be-misused does not. At all.

That sounds like it way overshot its original intention.
Ofcourse statistics should be maintained otherwise you can never have a debate.
Still in many cases I think we Europeans are too kind and taken a piss at.
We open our countries for refugees which I fully support, then a part of the group are found to be no refugees at all but economic welfare seekers, but there is no way that the original country will take them back. Worse the part that are severe criminals, we can jail them but we can not sent them back. Luckily these are only small fraction, still they are the ones dominating the news media thereby biasing the countries opinion and occupying the places that real refugees need.

So your country has then shown that not mentioning etniticity etc is also not working, I wish there was a good answer.

[Fred Basset]

I agree with you.  Lots of people are taking this seriously now.  I know they mean well - They want to be kind people who do not offend others.  I respect them for that, but this seems to be out of all proportion now.

I think a lot of it is companies being afraid of seeming insensitive and losing money.  So nothing is too much trouble to be careful to leave nothing that could cause offense.  My non-white friends are not complaining about such things, it is seemingly white people who are complaining about them.  Some are well-meaning I suppose, but I wonder about the motives of the others?

Incidentally, your English is superb.  Like most languages is is harder to write than speak.  Yet I would not have known you are not a native speaker unless you told me.  You must have to concentrate and work very hard on subjects such as this, where the nuances are incredibly subtle at times.

I can however see why this must all be so scary for you.  It would be for me also as there are so many words and phrases that are in everyday use and yet you have to be cafeful over.  It was only a few weeks ago I made a really bad mistake.  A (black) friend asked if I was busy?  I was thinking about what I was doing and so said without thinking - "I am working like a slave on this".  There was an awkward silence BUT ONLY FROM ME.  My friend had not even noticed what I had said.

The worst I ever came across was a TV repair man in the early 80s I knew.  He had a very bad experience in a bar.  In Britain "a foreigner" is also another term for working for cash in hand, no tax and it does not go through the company's books.  He said a man came up to him on Satuday night who he knew a bit, because he had fixed his rented TV.  He said the TV was faulty and the family would have no TV over the weekend, and could he just come and have a look at it please?  He said he did not "do foreigners" and noticed with horror that the guy had brown skin.  The man went bezerk, thinking he had just been terribly insulted.  He pointed out he was NOT a foreigner, but born in Britain.  He treatened to call the head office and report him and so on.  He had never heard the term "foreigner" for doing a job off the books, so of course he thought it was a racist insult.  The TV repair guy said it took longer to calm him down than going to fix the blasted TV would have done.  Not only that, but to prove he was not a racist, he had to buy him a drink as well...

The English language can be one massive trap, sometimes more so if you are a native speaker as so much "throw-away" sayings seem full of problematic words.  So don't worry, even native speakers make mistakes all the time.

[daqq]

The idea of having a Language Commissar vetting whether my output is Ideologically Acceptable freaks the fuck out of me.

I am from a post communist country, Slovakia (Czechoslovakia at the time, it's complicated). I have not been alive during the previous regime, aside from a few years as a baby, but from the recollections of colleagues, family and historical accounts, I can tell you that you do not want that and you are justifiably freaked out by the possibility.

Just a little taste:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media_in_Communist_Czechoslovakia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Czech_Republic#Censorship_during_the_Cold_War

There is extensive literature, but mostly in Slovak or Czech, I never looked at the availability of English sources on the topic.
edit: There are probably more English sources on the same topic in the USSR if you are interested.

You could easily lose a job or worse (much worse) if you had something ideologically unsound to say, or, say, voiced opinions on sensitive topics, like, say, the 1968 Soviet occupation brotherly intervention. Or someone else said that you had said something naughty, regardless of whether you actually said it... People I know told me stories that even I find hard to believe, but I would not discount them.

And from what I'm looking at, a lot of the west is heading in that direction. Not full "You said that there are two genders, go to Gulag", but... it's getting out of hand and I see no good outcome down the road where engineers have to, in addition to adhering to technological standards, doing complicated tasks, analyzing loads of data, have to check their language against an ever expanding list of phrases that got blacklisted. We are here to develop the technology of the future, provide solutions for humanity, not analyze whether the wheel could be of a shape that's offensive to someone.

[EEVblog]

I agree with you.  Lots of people are taking this seriously now.  I know they mean well - They want to be kind people who do not offend others.  I respect them for that, but this seems to be out of all proportion now.

Yes, I know people caught up in this and say "I just want to be a good person" etc, and that's fine. The problem is that you can't explain the bigger picture to them and the threat to society all this SJW identity politics and cancel culture poses. They will only learn when it finally impacts them. When eventually they won't be able to speak up about something for fear of being canceled. They don't realise that no matter how good an "ally" they have been, they will get eaten alive like everyone else should they take one false step. They just don't understand the precarious society they are creating for themselves.
And to many all this fuss and resistance to this may seem hyperbolic, but there is never ending evidence of where this is leading, and has already led.

You're next, eventually, just wait....