SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Microsoft's adoption of the Google-developed Chromium browser engine for Edge has resulted in a proposal to cleanse the open-source code of "potentially offensive terms."
Issue 981129 in the Chromium bug log lists a suggestion by Microsoft to “cleanup of potentially offensive terms in codebase” aims to rid the software blueprints of language such as whitelist (change to allowlist), blacklist (change to blocklist), “offensive terms using ‘wtf’ as protocol messages,” and other infelicities.
This bug report was raised by a Microsoft contributor, who stated: “We are just sharing a subset of what PoliCheck scanned for us,” Policheck being “a machine-learned model that another team manages that does context based scanning on hundreds of file formats.”
Googler Rick Byers, a Chromium engineer, gave the issue a cautious welcome, saying: "This sounds like a good strategy to me, thanks for doing this! We certainly have never intended for anything in the codebase to be potentially offensive, but I'm also not aware of anyone making an effort to find them all." He added:
I don't expect Chrome teams to necessarily make these bugs a priority (we haven't seen this pose a problem for us in practice as far as I know), but if cleaning this up is valuable for Microsoft (or any another Chromium contributor) then we should have no trouble getting the necessary code reviews (at least in the platform code). And yeah there are folks who look for GoodFirstBug and may want to pick up some easy commits.
Although changing comments or variable names in the source code is generally invisible to the user, this kind of revision can be problematic if it wrecks things like names in preferences and policies.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by KritonK on Thursday September 05 2019, @08:11AM (16 children)
According to the dictionary [merriam-webster.com], one of the meanings of "blue" is "profane, indecent".
I am extremely offended by the profane indecency of using this word!
Some other colors we might also want to ban, because one of their meanings can also be offensive:
Red (inciting or endorsing radical social or political change especially by force)
Yellow (sometimes offensive : having a yellowish or light brown complexion or skin)
Green (marked by a pale, sickly, or nauseated appearance)
Purple (marked by profanity)
Brown (a brown-skinned person)
Gray (prosaically ordinary : dull, uninteresting)
Orange seems to be OK, though. For now.
Perhaps we should clean every language of every word that has some alternative meaning that someone might consider offensive. Then, we'd resort to using emoticons to communicate, and, if we want to swear, using innocuous words such as Belgium [fandom.com] or Semprini [urbandictionary.com] (yes, I know, I'll see myself out), but we'd be politically correct, which is all that matters.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @08:16AM (3 children)
Hah, tell that to the gingers!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @08:34AM
It's ok, they have no souls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @03:45PM
Oh no you didn't... That's our word!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @05:50PM
Only a ginger can call another ginger ginger
(Score: 3, Touché) by Nuke on Thursday September 05 2019, @09:21AM (1 child)
Now you are winding us up. "Orange" means anything to do with Trump, as in "Orange man".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @04:06PM
Orange man wants to ban the words micro and soft.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Thursday September 05 2019, @09:31AM (4 children)
You forgot some.
"Pink" means gay, even though it used to mean girl's stuff. BTW how did the gays hijack pink? - you'd have though that mauve was more logical.
"Grey" (that's English spelling) sounds a bit like "gay", so don't use that.
"Yellow" means Chinese, as in "Yellow Peril".
Perhaps transparent is the only safe colour, so paint shops should only sell varnish from now on. But doesn't "transparent" make us think of see-through lingerie and nighties, does me - so I'm sexist and we'd better not go there either.
We all need to go underground with no lighting, then we won't be able to see any colours of be accused of racial prejudice. Everything will just be black - oh wait a minute ........
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VanessaE on Thursday September 05 2019, @12:01PM (1 child)
First, ask how girls "hijacked" pink -- historically, it was a boys' color because it was "strong" in tone, while blue was "dainty" (Ladies Home Journal, June 1918). Besides, isn't it more magenta that means "gay", if not the whole rainbow (as a unit)?
Personally, I favor purple. 😛
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 06 2019, @12:23AM
It was Eisenhower's wife, Mamie. She wore pink dresses all the time. Originally, she was somewhat mocked for that choice, but then she became First Lady. Naturally, that meant that all the women wanted to copy America's Royal Family de jure. And just like that, pink was the girl's color. And because all the manufacturers already had a ton of blue dye, naturally they claimed blue was the color for boys and came up with all sorts of ad hoc reasons why.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 05 2019, @12:06PM
Ummmm... go all the way inside a black hole, you mean? That would be both racist and sexist, astronomically speaking aside (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 05 2019, @01:54PM
As with many things, by intentionally adopting what was meant to be an identification by those who wished to destroy them [wikipedia.org], just in this case it was literal destruction. Want to go for double jeopardy and try to figure out how the Nazi's came to use that color?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by knarf on Thursday September 05 2019, @09:53AM
I can even go further on the issue with the colour 'blue' by naming the fact that in earlier times a man with a dark skin colour was called 'blåman' (blue man) in the Nordic countries. Afrika was called 'Blåland' (blue land). This all for the simple reason that the word 'blå' stood for both 'blue' and 'black' in those times. While times have changed, the word has not so think of this the next time you say you're feeling blue (cultural appropriation!) or refer to the second full moon in a month as a blue moon (you racist!).
(Score: 5, Funny) by Rivenaleem on Thursday September 05 2019, @10:12AM (1 child)
Ah yes, the ol' "Blue screen of - Fucking shitballs cuntnugget useless computer - death"
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 05 2019, @03:51PM
You can contract that all down to one word... Windows.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday September 05 2019, @06:20PM
http://childbiblesongs.com/song-30-jesus-loves-the-little-children.shtml [childbiblesongs.com]
So, guess that one's right out.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday September 05 2019, @07:29PM
But what if orange evokes a sense of near panic in someone? As in "code orange".