If the tickets cost $50, there's no way anyone would have thought "this is a good idea." But they charged so much people who could afford to pay for the tickets assumed competence. Parallels with the Titanic are obscene...
I think the separate QA before release step I bet was mostly killed by modern methods of software distribution. It's true that automated testing is great, but let's be real: automated tests have existed for many decades, and certainly overlapped with orgs having manual QA steps as part of release engineering.
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.
I am Black. I'm not ignoring the other Black people posting, I'm just letting the audience know they don't speak for all of us. We are not a monolith.
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 don't appreciate my psychological safety being referred to as "nothing... at stake... of any real value."
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.
I don't view any of this through the lens of changing our language for language sake. I view it through the lens of trying to rectify the injustices of slavery and legalized discrimination, and the inequality that permeates our society as a result.
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.
I'm a black engineer who disagrees with you. I appreciate seeing colleagues and peers make an effort, however small, however symbolic, and that helps motivate me to ignore bullshit and continue working in a team and company where i'm a visibly underrepresented historically oppressed minority. That in turn leads to others seeing me and - people have literally told me this, this isn't me guessing the impact of coming to work - feel like this is a place where they too may be able to survive if not thrive.
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).
This is not about the feelings of processes. It's about the feeling of engineers who have to work in this environment. Names are arbitrary; why not pick a better name that isn't tied to scars in our society that have not healed, and wrongs in our wealth distribution that have not been corrected by reparations?
These hypothetical scenarios don't "flesh anything out a little," they distract from the real world in front of us.
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.
I think in the scenarios where the military decides to no longer respect civilian rule (a coup), it's not particularly hard to occupy the Treasury and the mint.
> One thing that makes SCOTUS interesting is that they have no enforcement mechanism. It's mainly only tradition and respect for the institution that causes people to follow Supreme Court rulings
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.
The worst cases of people losing their shirt tend to be people speculating with options, and it's definitely up to the broker what options trades (beyond those secured by cash or securities) they want to permit their customers to do.
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 agree that fines are not ideal, and I think these are interesting discussions we need to be having to think of better solutions, but I also want to be clear that fines are several orders of magnitude better than jailing people (and I think it goes without saying, even more orders of magnitude better than summary execution).
I do think there's potential for more mandated community service as a response to antisocial behavior. Structure it so people don't have to miss work.
A very large amount of the crimes we prosecute people for are either drug crimes or crimes because of poverty/economic inequality, and these are best addressed with public health and investment.
Even some of the remaining economic crimes - like selling untaxed cigarettes (what Eric Garner was killed for) if they still happen probably don't need public enforcement. Give those that pay the taxes standing to sue those who don't pay the taxes. If those who are paying it aren't bothered enough to pay for enforcement, I don't see why others should be.
Most of what we do in the name of policing is deal with problems that we'd be better off preventing or dealing with by someone other than a man with a gun. This is the low hanging fruit we should pursue immediately, and when we see what's left the opportunities and alternatives for further improvement should become clearer.
You cannot incapacitate multiple people with a taser (once the rounds are in the first person it's unavailable to be fired again) and there were multiple cops there.
If the threat of a taser is a threat that warrants lethal force in self defense, the police are reaching for them far too quickly when they deal with people who are non-compliant. It takes very little provocation for most police officers to deploy their taser. I believe they are almost always used against unarmed people (armed people get shot, not tased).
Laws are passed by Congress, policies are created by the executive to define things left unspecified by law, pursuant to broader powers granted by Congress.
Policies that aren't laws carry the same effective force of law, but they can be changed on a whim by the president with an executive order.
The Federal Home Loan Bank Act established the agencies that would create redlining, but the redlining itself was created by the administrators and independent agencies created by the act.