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

[nuno]

Comments already disabled, I guess telling people what they can and cannot say is easier if you also delete all the historical words you disagree with.

hackaday also closed comments on the related article ( https://hackaday.com/2020/06/29/updating-the-language-of-spi-pin-labels-to-remove-casual-references-to-slavery/ ). Looks like they are supporting the initiative to the point of closing comments.
I am not liking where this is going, at all. I guess I'll have to re-think some of my usual sites and suppliers.

[Kjelt]

I really had to laugh about some comments in that topic.
What are we gonna call all the MSc in the world, SDSc ? 

[Sal Ammoniac]

  Troll topic of the month--congratulations!

[paulca]

This is Jonathon Pie, a UK "angry" political comedian.


EDIT:  People slag the BBC off, especially when they ask us to pay like $200 a year whether we watch it or not.... but, the thing is, they aired that.  They aired Frankie Boyle.  No commercial TV network would dare to air that.  But because they do not rely on commercial sponsors and advertisers they can show whatever they like that's of interest to the public.

[paulca]

Sounding like I've changed sides.  Would you....

Consider a protocol which referred to roles and relationships such as Pimp, Whore, Trick inappropriate?

[Mastro Gippo]

Well, here's a petition:
https://www.change.org/p/oshwa-stop-whitewashing-in-engineering

[bd139]

Well it’s change.org so that’s dead already.

[Nominal Animal]

It's always a good idea to try and examine the idea from a completely different angle, but it is important to not get caught in the mental holes; to be analytical and rational about it.

Consider a protocol which referred to roles and relationships such as Pimp, Whore, Trick inappropriate?

As far as I understand, "pimp" is someone who controls prostitutes, "whore" is a prostitute, and "trick" is either a prostitute's client, a cunning or deceitful action, or one of a few other meanings; and a machine cannot prostitute itself, as it is just an "adult toy" when used for any such purpose.  Also, I believe the term is "bestiality" if animals are involved.

Control, on the other hand, is perfectly generic relationship, and is only objectionable when the controlled one is a sentient being or an animal suffering due to mistreatment.  In a technical context, without anything alive, there is nothing objectionable in master-slave relationship.

So, I do not see the analogy or connection between the two sets of terms: One set has technically-relevant meanings, while the other does not.

(As to "trick", I often describe a particularly important but not immediately obvious part in either software or hardware as "the trick is ...", so I guess I already use that one.)

A better comparison would be to ask if "bleeder" instead of charger and "leech" instead of chargee/charged device would be inappropriate.  (I think charger is better since it directly relates to the thing transferred – charge – but would not consider "bleeder" and "leech" inappropriate or offensive either.)

[Nominal Animal]

That reminds me:  A lot of my programs utilize pools of worker threads.  Do you think they'll ban that, worker, too?

If "master" and "slave" are offensive in a technical context, having a "worker" do menial software tasks must be too, I guess. 

[Mastro Gippo]

After blocking comments on the article, Hackaday also deleted almost all of the 200+ comments on the facebook thread: https://www.facebook.com/hackaday.io/posts/3518305734849345
It's interesting that of the 200+ comments that were there, only 16 are left. The community has spoken, but the hackaday fascists want to impose their way denying free speech. They have no respect for people, but want people to respect their ideology.

[SilverSolder]

Sounding like I've changed sides.  Would you....

Consider a protocol which referred to roles and relationships such as Pimp, Whore, Trick inappropriate?

What about male and female plugs and sockets?   Surely such blatant sexism cannot be tolerated.

[Mastro Gippo]

Also, this is not what I would expect from engineers. CIPO and COPI are simply retarded. Engineers solve problems (assuming there was a problem to begin with) smartly. There:

MISO = Main In Secondary Out
MOSI = Main Out Secondary In

At this point, it's clear that they only wanted free press, and we're giving it to them. What can we do to publicly tell what the actual community thinks? We thought that THEY (oshwa, hackaday, etc) were the ones who spoke for the community, and we gave them that power when they actually were doing good things. Now we don't have anyone to represent us but ourselves.

[bd139]

That reminds me:  A lot of my programs utilize pools of worker threads.  Do you think they'll ban that, worker, too?

If "master" and "slave" are offensive in a technical context, having a "worker" do menial software tasks must be too, I guess. 

Correct. Subordination is the foundation of hierarchy. Hierarchy is the foundation of order and society.

If we erase this we’re, to use a technical term, fucked.

[Simon]

Also, this is not what I would expect from engineers. CIPO and COPI are simply retarded. Engineers solve problems (assuming there was a problem to begin with) smartly. There:

Hm, controller and peripheral? sounds like a controlling relationship where the victim is marginalized, how dare they normalize such behavior, clearly the controller is male and the peripheral female.

[paulca]

That reminds me:  A lot of my programs utilize pools of worker threads.  Do you think they'll ban that, worker, too?

Workers are disposable.  They are spawned to serve a purpose and complete a task serving client, they are then immediately terminated and all resources they had held are released.  Any children they spawned are considered trash and collected along with their resources.

This could literally be a section from a software framework manual.  Or server daemons like Apache.... and don't tell me that apache.org is racist too, now?

[Simon]

This is Jonathon Pie, a UK "angry" political comedian.


EDIT:  People slag the BBC off, especially when they ask us to pay like $200 a year whether we watch it or not.... but, the thing is, they aired that.  They aired Frankie Boyle.  No commercial TV network would dare to air that.  But because they do not rely on commercial sponsors and advertisers they can show whatever they like that's of interest to the public.

I love this guy, I wish he would put himself up for election. He always says exactly what i feel and struggle to articulate.

[paulca]

This is Jonathon Pie, a UK "angry" political comedian.


EDIT:  People slag the BBC off, especially when they ask us to pay like $200 a year whether we watch it or not.... but, the thing is, they aired that.  They aired Frankie Boyle.  No commercial TV network would dare to air that.  But because they do not rely on commercial sponsors and advertisers they can show whatever they like that's of interest to the public.

I love this guy, I wish he would put himself up for election. He always says exactly what i feel and struggle to articulate.

#jonathonpieforprimeminister

[temperance]

Tomorrow there is a protest against the use of the term totem pole. Thou shalt not not use totem pole outputs for 1 hour.

[Echo88]

Führer Out Goebbels In / Goebbels Out Führer In
FOGI / GOFI

Culturally insensitive but everybody knows whos the commander.
Cant do that with Mussolini, he'll brown out under pressure during communication.

At first i was also headshaking about the topic, but then i remembered that i was never in their shoes, so we'd need to ask actual black people wether it seriously bothers them, not other persons who like to speak on behalf of them.

[paulca]

Hopefully this is a side storm that will fade.  Let them make their changes.  In 6 months when school starts back up properly and a few more of  the younger realise it's always sucked and... we already know that.

In a year we won't even remember this.

EDIT:  They are lighting a beacon, the purpose of which I hope we all support, but it's badly aimed, poorly focused and will be ultimately ineffective.

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I love this guy, I wish he would put himself up for election. He always says exactly what i feel and struggle to articulate.

Funny thing is in many videos, he says one thing and the exact opposite, both equally as funny. I liked the one in which he interviews a feminist about the pay gap etc. It's hilarious.

[Simon]

I love this guy, I wish he would put himself up for election. He always says exactly what i feel and struggle to articulate.

Funny thing is in many videos, he says one thing and the exact opposite, both equally as funny. I liked the one in which he interviews a feminist about the pay gap etc. It's hilarious.

Yes that one is hilarious,The problem is people twist fact by not putting them into context and next there is a protest about it.

[magic]

I found two of my male BNC connectors next to each other.
Are they GAY?

Maybe

Here's what it looks like on mine for the record.

[Simon]

lovely couple.

[Simon]

but one did get a gender change so is the other one into transgender?