As a “customer”, I consider github down if I can’t push, but not down if I can’t update my profile photo (literally did this today, sending out my github to potential employers for the first time in a long time). This stuff is notoriously hard to define
Main is also an easier name for beginners. I’m old school and always got the comparison of master branch to master tapes and such things, but people new to this stuff wouldn’t necessarily have the same intuition about the name. Main is just clearer (for now). Similar to blacklist/whitelist. I had no context for either of those and it took me soooooo long to remember what they meant. Allowlist/denylist is just so much clearer. Any reduction in harm, however tiny, is a nice bonus to just making things clearer for more people
No, blacklist and whitelist are far superior because blacklist is a normal English word. It isn't even a term of art, programmers just adopted a word that already existed in the English language (and used whitelist by way of analogy). The argument that the new terms are better holds no water whatsoever. The old terms were superior.
How is "allowlist" or "denylist" not more clear to, say, someone for whom English is a second language?
Sure blacklist was already an English word, but it's not necessarily _common_, and the distinction between blacklist and whitelist is kinda arbitrary. If you'd like to explain Why the word means what it does I'd love to hear it
Allowlist and denylist are clearer, in that the meaning is in more clear alignment with the words it's made up of.
The old terms just make more sense to those who are old enough to be used to it.
The etymology is interesting - Pebble Voting was used in the early democracies in Greece from 500 BC. Black pebbles meant 'no' and white meant 'yes'. The tradition evolved to the black and white marbles used in the Roman senate centuries later, i.e. two millennia ago. The practice has since continued – it was used in the early American republic in the 18th century, and the word 'ballot' used today for voting means just that - a 'little ball'.
The word 'blacklist' probably originated from this meaning. It was in use in England since before, but it was probably the "Black List of Regicides” that popularised the term. It was a list compiled by the administration of King Charles II England of those to be punished for the beheading of his father King Charles I in 1649, following the restoration of the monarchy of England in 1660. As this list was rather long, it was a probably a bit of a traumatic event for the gentry in London and it’s not hard to imagine that the memory of the dreaded "blacklist" stuck. A century later the word was in general use for a list of enemies, detractors, and unwanted people.
Conversely, "in the black" is the notion of having no debts or a positive cash flow. This obviously comes from the centuries old principle of using black for credit, and red ink for debit and negative balances in the double-entry accounting system codified in the 15th century.
A tangential but equally fascinating concept is the practice of forbidding - or blacklisting - words in totalitarian regimes like Maoist China. Controlling language was a key strategy to influence thought, define in-groups, and ostracize out-groups. It's a hallmark of a totalitarian systems aiming to shape thought through language. Very much not at all in line with the principles of ballot voting in a democratic system one should think.
(The last argument can be used with any word. I could find your Gallicism offensive and demand that all words with a French etymology should be removed from English to restore it to it's Old-English form before the oppressive Normand rule, since after all, the old words would just make more sense to those who are old enough to be used to it, and my feelings are important.)
Thank you for sharing the etymology! It's quite interesting, I agree!
I may have been a bit too pithy/I sufficiently clear with that last statement I made.
I meant it in the sense that understanding the word relies on a lot of contextual/colloquial/cultural understanding that's typically gained via time and exposure. At least, more of it than allow/deny requires.
Imagine an alien culture encountering blacklist vs Denylist. The latter requires a lot less context to translate, because Deny is used a lot more consistently.
My argument is mainly one about _clarity_, not hurt feelings.
To me (where English is a second language), Allowlist and denylist seem unclearer. Is it a block list, a exclude list, or a permission list? Allow/deny would lead me to the last one, as in authenticate users who has some permissions but not others.
Blacklist and whitelist would be closer to include/exclude, so the replacement would be a includelist and excludelist, or include/exclude as shorthand.
I feel like a permission list is kind of a superset of a block list and an exclude list. Or they're all different perspectives/solutions to the same kind of problem, that a permission list is the more generalizable solution for.
Or it's a way of framing the problem that doesn't embed the "exclusion" idea in the naming.
And it kinda bridges over to the idea of Access Control Lists a bit better?
Allowlist/Denylist are clear and perhaps more specific, but blacklist/whitelist are not arbitrary, they're just using black in valid ways according to common English dictionaries, which is similar to how other languages use the word black, but it is less specific.
> If you'd like to explain Why the word means what it does I'd love to hear it
Simply because black means different things depending on the context. Evil, invisible, mysterious, absence of light, sinister. It's not arbitrary because that's how the word black is commonly used.
I'm not trying to argue about validity here, but rather that these definitions/meanings of the word black are not "primary" definitions but secondary meanings based on that contextual/cultural/colloquial use. Arbitrary in the sense that that "commonality" is arbitrary and cultural, and language could just have easily developed to flip the colloquial definition.
Contrasted against using words where the Primary definition is the one that matters.
Imagine an alien culture encountering the word. Blacklist versus Denylist. The latter requires a lot less context to understand the meaning, because "Deny" has a single pretty consistent definition.
> Imagine an alien culture encountering the word. Blacklist versus Denylist.
Seems like it's just another step in developing one's language skills, no more or less ambiguous than "deny" for someone who doesn't know either word, but I'd wager than "black" would probably be encountered earlier in the vocab training list. It's a bit of a stretch, imo. "Reject" or "Turn-away" or "Block" works too, as well as many others, language is flexible, it doesn't seem names for lists are worth so much energy.
This master tape thing didn't even cross my mind. subversion used trunk. git used master which sounded way better for me. End of story. They're just words, non-native words for me.
As for whitelist and blacklist, I don't remember having any difficulties with them. Maybe on the first encounter, but that's it.
You're already complaining about the price of food, when farmers are barely breaking even on it.
You won't pay ten quid for a sustainably-farmed chicken, and I bet you're really really not going to pay ten quid for one single hand-grown ecologically-neutral farmed carrot.
And if you are, I've got some carrots for you right here. Discount if you order them in multiples of ten.
How are they terrible musicians? They played their specific type of music extremely well. Like, technically better than most people will ever be at music. People loved seeing them play. I still enjoy their records. So, what is terrible?
Maybe it was part of his schtick but johnny often bragged about not practicing. He wanted the concerts to be raw. The mistakes were part of the art.
I played guitar for a while and didn't have much trouble playing them and I was barely adequate at best.
The hardest song for me was California Sun. I just couldn't figure it out until I realized it had 4 chords instead of three. I learned later that it was a cover.
I guess with them touring and playing basically non-stop a certain kind of that is inevitable.
Their concert frequency was on par with the otherwise known as most prolific band ever, The Beach Boys. It's just that The Ramones' members all died around third of the way (~20 years of touring vs 60).
The Beach Boys also unabashedly liked money. I saw The Beach Boys - what was left of them anyway - with one the original members talking on stage basically talking about how he still did touring because he liked driving around in a Bentley.
How delightfully cynical. Instead of thinking taste in music “must” spring from your cynical take on what authenticity us (which I agree is impossible to define and almost a useless term at this point), maybe people just… like the music, and it somehow speaks to them. Musical taste is famously subjective and entirely down to what music you heard before etc
Literally every information source has biases. We are human after all. Well, most of us. If you reject Wikipedia on this you basically have to reject everything anyone says, ever
It's rejecting Wikipedia strictly as a means to measure who lies more; even discounting ideological bias, I'm sure other people who are less scrutinized and publicized tell just as many, if not more, lies. They wouldn't have a Wikipedia page because relatively few people will care to read about Joe Nobody telling his wife that he was at a friend's house after he gets back from the strip club.
With respect to ideological bias, I strongly doubt that other Presidents never made "false or misleading statements" but I can't seem to find, for example, the page of "False or misleading statements made by Joe Biden". It seems a stretch to say he made none, to the point one might wonder about the discrepancy.
True, and also when you actually go to apply for a job it often kicks you out to another website, that will use who knows how many mbs? And you have to fill in your details again and again. Each one a different flavour. Sometimes saying the same thing multiple times for the same job ad.
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