Comment by graemep

5 days ago

The article strongly implies it is a response to a comment complaining the blog is not inclusive because it uses British English.

There is a constant American assumption that their language and culture is the norm and we should all adjust our language to fit their definitions and culture. I intend to keep eating faggots, having a master branch in git, etc.

16 comments

graemep

throwaway2037 5 days ago

    > There is a constant American assumption that their language and culture is the norm

You write it like it is a moral flaw in American culture. This cultural phenom isn't special to the United States. In my personal experience, any country with a large population suffers from the same: Russia, Brazil, Indonesia, India, China, etc.

    > having a master branch in git

This is a weird cultural battle to pick. In the 2010s, when renaming the git master branch was at its cultural zeitgeist, none of the Americans that I worked with did the rename. It was always someone not from the US who would raise the issue on a team call. It happened so many times that I asked a few of them why they did it. Almost all of them told the same rough story: They say a "nerd news story" about the trend, then did a little bit of reading on Wiki to learn about the cruel history of slavery in the United States. Motivated by this, they decided to do the rename. All in all, pretty wholesome stuff. Never once was it some weird social justice warrior type of bullcrap. But anyway, you do you: Keep rockin' the "master" branch in git.

TFNA 5 days ago

"There is a constant American assumption that their language and culture is the norm"

This is now far more than an American assumption. I have seen younger continental Europeans bristle at UK English because they grew up in a world of social media that is converging on usage that is closer to US English.

throwaway2037 5 days ago

Real question: Post 2010, are there any non-English speaking nations that get most of their English language media from the UK? Since everthing went online after 2010, I assume US has the highest influence (linguistically) only because of "mass". Dear UK readers: Please don't interpret my comment that UK language culture is somehow inferior. HN knows and loves UK humor!

its-summertime 5 days ago

When I read "inclusive", my mind jumped to accessibility, in that colloquialisms can be difficult to understand for a subset of people with autism (and other conditions), and also that they translate poorly when run through a translator, for those that do not speak English at all.

afandian 5 days ago

Equally, I doubt there was a single Brit involved in RFC 2617 Section 4.3 (for example).

phoronixrly 5 days ago

Translation for en-US speakers -- Trump is an example of a nonce, as is his buddy - formerly Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

throwaway2037 5 days ago

I don't understand the reference. I looked it up here: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2617#section-4.3

    4.3 Limited Use Nonce Values

    The Digest scheme uses a server-specified nonce to seed the
    generation of the request-digest value (as specified in section
    3.2.2.1 above).  As shown in the example nonce in section 3.2.1, the
    server is free to construct the nonce such that it may only be used
    from a particular client, for a particular resource, for a limited
    period of time or number of uses, or any other restrictions.  Doing
    so strengthens the protection provided against, for example, replay
    attacks (see 4.5).  However, it should be noted that the method
    chosen for generating and checking the nonce also has performance and
    resource implications.  For example, a server may choose to allow
    each nonce value to be used only once by maintaining a record of
    whether or not each recently issued nonce has been returned and
    sending a next-nonce directive in the Authentication-Info header
    field of every response. This protects against even an immediate
    replay attack, but has a high cost checking nonce values, and perhaps
    more important will cause authentication failures for any pipelined
    requests (presumably returning a stale nonce indication).  Similarly,
    incorporating a request-specific element such as the Etag value for a
    resource limits the use of the nonce to that version of the resource
    and also defeats pipelining. Thus it may be useful to do so for
    methods with side effects but have unacceptable performance for those
    that do not.

Can you explain your (assumed) sarcastic remark?

afandian 5 days ago

That third word, starting with 'n' is British slang, which you are welcome to look up.
Presumably the etymology was in place before it took on its present meaning, but it is not a word I would use in a professional context.
My comment was oblique, but not sarcastic. Partly because I didn't want to use the word directly, and partly in keeping with the tone of the original blog post!

1 reply →
ethersteeds 5 days ago

In British slang, "nonce" is a highly offensive term for a sex offender, particularly one who has harmed children. It is considered derogatory and should be used with caution.

1 reply →
roryirvine 5 days ago

"number used once" wouldn't be the first definition of that word which springs to mind for most people in the UK.

jakobnissen 5 days ago

But being non-inclusive by speaking to a particular cultural reference frame is not the same as being racist.

graemep 5 days ago

I agree, but some people seem to think it is, which i think what the article is a response to: just just in the comment, but in the wider push to use certain language.

dgellow 5 days ago

> I intend to keep eating

Wait, isn't that a cigarette? Why would you eat it?

edit: nevermind, it's actually meatballs, the short version is for cigarettes

ndsipa_pomu 5 days ago

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