A project called “Remove-DEI” shows the tweaks used to remove “forbidden words” from a database about childhood school readiness.

The updates, shown in Github commits, are to a database for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Head Start program. They show a project called “Remove-DEI,” which reveal some of the back-and-forth that is happening behind the scenes to align federal agencies with Donald Trump’s executive orders that forbid almost anything having to do with race or gender within federal agencies. The Github pages show software engineers discussing amongst themselves how to best remove all instances of “forbidden words” from a specific database, and the code updates they used to do it. The changes also show that, while thousands of government datasets are disappearing from the internet, even ones that remain are having parts of their utility deprecated or broken in a way that may not be visible to those outside the government.

    • @[email protected]
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      -6018 days ago

      Internals of state structures being mandated some terminology is not really a violation of free speech.

      In theory there are two approaches to discrimination - the neutral and the compensatory. The neutral one is that eventually discrimination will dissolve if the structure is built truly neutrally. The compensatory one is to detect kinds of discrimination and compensate for them specifically. I can imagine both the former and the latter feeling nicer in theory. The former - well, no special cases, just prevent the structure itself from reinforcing injustice. The latter - well, everything in life is a special case, you’ll never have a perfect structure, so it’s better to work with what you have.

      It’s like different kinds of interference in radio, requiring different solutions. In fact they are not contradictory and both have their place in a working system (I haven’t heard of such).

        • @[email protected]
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          317 days ago

          Yes, there’s no such thing. Just as there’s no such thing as perfect compensation.

          Also by neutral structure I mean what they are pretending to be making now, and by compensatory what’s supposed to have existed before. I hope that hasn’t eluded you.

      • @[email protected]
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        717 days ago

        What the fuck did I just read? This sounds actually a lot like raw unapologetic hate of people that don’t fit [blank] from society. It’s utterly insane. It will hurt you eventually, you know that right?

        • @[email protected]
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          -417 days ago

          I don’t think I’m taking side in that text.

          I do think you shouldn’t make opinions of text you didn’t understand.

          • @[email protected]
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            517 days ago

            You are taking side in that text. I fully understand it, it’s not as elegant and complex as you think. It’s just evil.

            • @[email protected]
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              -417 days ago

              Well, impossible to argue with such a claim, but if you really want for it to be something worth your own time, you can explain what side, in your opinion, I’m taking, when saying that there are two approaches at making a state structure support equality (something almost every ideology, even fascist, in some sense wants, they differ in the core criterion before which people must be equal), and while Musk&Trump&rest are claiming to be transitioning from one to another, they have no intention to finish it, so they are just breaking things.

              Damn right it’s neither elegant nor complex, it’s actually so long because it’s clumsy.

              • @[email protected]
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                17 days ago

                Making a “state structure” that vilifies and exclude humans based on race, sexual orientation, thoughts etc. Is not valid. It’s not a state structure. It’s a tantrum. It’s rage and hate. It’s not a valid state organization because it’s not related to the things those concern, it’s focused on defeating pain from being inferior onto others and doesn’t belong

      • @[email protected]
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        15118 days ago

        This is being done by trump and musk.

        Microsoft just own the company where this is being discussed because the people actually doing the work are treating it like any other software project.

        • @[email protected]
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          117 days ago

          Apologists who sit down at the same table as the Nazis are equivocal to the pre-seated Nazis. Zero sympathy.

          Purge and lance the boil.

          • @[email protected]
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            9418 days ago

            I think you’re missing something here.

            GitHub isn’t doing anything. It’s just a repository where people can track changes that are happening by end users. The end users are using GitHub and are removing DEI stuff from their products at the direction of the US government (AKA. Musk and Trump).

            Being angry at Microsoft is like being angry at a grocery store chain because you saw a kid being told by his grandpa to feed stale bread (from that grocery store) to some ducks.

            • Maeve
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              -2918 days ago

              Maybe, I’ll reread, I’ve something to do shortly that will take most of my day but I’ll come back tonight to this. Thank you

              • @[email protected]
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                2218 days ago

                To add, GitHub is actually a great place to be making these changes, because with GitHub you retain history of the edits and prior versions. So after Trump changes his mind or loses power, the missing information can be brought back in fairly easily. Nothing is permanently lost.

                • @[email protected]
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                  717 days ago

                  So after Trump changes his mind or loses power, the missing information can be brought back in fairly easily. Nothing is permanently lost.

                  It’s funny they have absolutely no idea.

                • @[email protected]
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                  118 days ago

                  Missing information being brought back? Assuming they don’t destroy backups. Assuming there are backups.

          • @[email protected]
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            5018 days ago

            Excusing what? Someone called out the “free speech absolutist” hypocrisy. You assumed they were talking about Github or Microsoft for some reason. I corrected you.

            Maybe learn how to contribute to a conversation?

            • Maeve
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              -7218 days ago

              And people discussing it are employed by musk?

              • TJA!
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                2018 days ago

                The people that are discussing it are exposing it and showing what is happening. And the tools provided by GitHub are helping.

                So your original comment was celebrating Microsoft?

          • snooggums
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            18 days ago

            Are you too stupid to understand the difference between hosting software source code and modifying it?

            Microsoft/github are not the ones making changes through commits.

  • *dust.sys
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    17018 days ago

    Read 1984, if you haven’t already.

    This is exactly what The Party does through simplifying the Newspeak dictionary - targeting words to remove from the lexicon to make even communicating against The Party’s narrative impossible.

    DEI is being Unpersoned

    • @[email protected]
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      5418 days ago

      This is why it’s essential, now more than ever, to keep these words and notions alive, let the truth be an act of rebellion in itself.

      Life is meaningless without diversity, and it is up to each and every one of us to protect it.

      • @[email protected]
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        517 days ago

        They usually don’t care, they just claim some imaginary East-Asian country banned any kind of self-expression to the point all people are wearing the same clothes, which made crime disappear over night or some similar bullshit. They want to claim humans are not different by nature.

    • @[email protected]
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      -1018 days ago

      The irony that the author was red scared… all this authoritarianism… certainly Trump’s a commie.

      • @[email protected]
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        217 days ago

        The author got backstabbed and almost killed by Stalinists, who turned on them instead of fighting the fascists.

      • @[email protected]
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        118 days ago

        The author was that after getting a look at how Stalin’s USSR worked.

        I think we can agree that even a marxist-themed totalitarianism in an English-speaking country is extremely unlikely to be Stalinist, thus similar to 1984.

  • Cat without eyebrows
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    3617 days ago

    I’m a contractor for uscis. We were ordered to change all instances of the word ‘immigrant’ to ‘alien’. We said ok and shrugged because our systems actually use the word ‘person’. They didn’t say anything about that and we didn’t ask

  • @[email protected]
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    18 days ago

    This level of pettiness could be amusing if it wasn’t in control of the world’s largest army and nuclear arsenal.

    Edit: and not actively trying to murder people, now that I think about it.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 days ago

      I recently took a critical eye to the lyrics of the USA national anthem and was surprised to realize that it’s basically about killing people all night long and not getting killed yourself.

      It’s not about equality, the American dream, honor, economic strength, ingenuity. It’s about killing people with bombs. And a flag.

      • @[email protected]
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        1018 days ago

        To be fair, when the poem was written we were getting our asses kicked and survival was not assured.

        If you look at the events of the moment, the significant part is the “not getting killed” part.

        If things had gone differently, we could all be speaking English today!

        • @[email protected]
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          818 days ago

          To be fair, it wasn’t even adopted as the national anthem until 1931in the middle of decades of nationalism, and hateful “patriotism” designed to force a very specific image of America that is NOT inclusive to others.

          Today there are far too many morons who think so many of these oppressive things were instituted by the founders and therefore it should remain as is forever. The same assholes who think some past heyday was “better” than today.

          It’s up there with the pledge of allegiance, in god we trust, and various statues and shit.

          Fuck these people.

    • @[email protected]
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      518 days ago

      Let’s hope that jarheads have some common sense.

      Wasn’t there some top brass saying during first term that it’s not that clear-cut “obey bitch” if Mango Mussolini says “fire”?

  • @[email protected]
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    2418 days ago

    Apparently the new slogan is “Vox Populi No DEI”.

    The content filtering approach to government, or, if you will, a filterocracy.

  • @[email protected]
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    1617 days ago

    Will they return the master-slave terminology? It’s actually funny how the Newspeak wheel is turning.

  • HubertManne
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    917 days ago

    Smartest thing would be to just adjust the output so that its easily reverted.

    • @[email protected]
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      817 days ago

      This is literally what I’ve been doing, but there are people that are just overwriting shit.

      • HubertManne
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        717 days ago

        their idiots. if anything breaks doing something more akin to masking to nothing will make them look like a hero. doing something that can’t be undone is wack.

  • @[email protected]
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    518 days ago

    It’s not that unlike what companies were doing to appease the woke gods, a friend works at Salesforce and he had to change the name of a class called Blacklist to something else because apparently they’re not allowed to use the word black in any context in the code

    • @[email protected]
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      3518 days ago

      But, it is unlike that. Companies were changing the name of an existing feature to be more inclusive. Trump is more REMOVING data sets or data fields entirely. It’s not renaming “gender” to “sex” because they believe there is no difference, it’s completely removing climate change information from websites.

    • @[email protected]
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      18 days ago

      I wonder how they communicated GUI colors then.

      draw.set_color(r=0,g=0,b=0) # Adjust text color to very very dark grey

    • @[email protected]
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      1417 days ago

      Some parts of some DEI initiatives were dumb during the BLM protests, therefore we must do digital nazi bookburnings.🤡

      • @[email protected]
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        1118 days ago

        You what the master terminology comes from? Master and slave. USB devices do this day use this terminology master device and slave device. There’s no reason to be perpetuating the terms sever and client work fine. Main branch also works fine.

        • Aatube
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          717 days ago

          The server does not necessarily control the client though. Looking at the list of alternatives, I like boss/controller–worker the most.

          • @[email protected]
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            217 days ago

            I like boss/controller–worker the most.

            Meh, might need to change it in the future if the commie government comes to power.

        • The Octonaut
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          718 days ago

          Master in branch meant the same as the master of an audio track or video. We haven’t all stopped saying “remaster” or “masterpiece”.

          As it turns out, there are software developers from outside the country with people whose grandparents-grandparents were chattel slaves, and they name things without the same baggage. It’s Gulf of America stuff, but for the ‘good guys’.

          • @[email protected]
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            618 days ago

            I don’t think the argument is worth having.

            Only thing I will say is that the audio world has no common meaning for a slave.
            Programming does.

            • The Octonaut
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              717 days ago

              The point is that no branch was ever called a slave branch, just as no audio copy was ever called a slave copy. One does not direct the other in the same way that master and slave implies. Usually quite the opposite.

              Oh and master-slave usually refers to hardware infrastructure, not programming. Where, as you mentioned, client-service is the equivalent, or parent and child.

        • @[email protected]
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          318 days ago

          Main branch sounds like it’s pro-tree and therefore anti-mushroom! Get him, everyone!!!

        • @[email protected]
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          016 days ago

          You what the master terminology comes from? Master and slave.

          You know who cares and makes a fuss about it? White 'murican virtue-signaling programmers.

          No one else cares or gives it any other connotation. Oh no! The slave branch is being oppressed! Let’s free the slave branch! is something no one ever said (except maybe the Monty Pythons).

          The difference is that racism is still quite trendy in the US (suspected to make a fabulous come-back now that they reelected Mango Mussolini and his fascist side-kick); in Rest of the World™ not as much although right-wing fucks are also on the rise.
          And the US was probably last abolishing slavery (but i could be wrong on that one).

          • @[email protected]
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            016 days ago

            Is not about freeing the “slave branch” you numb skull it’s just about using more appropriate terminology in every day life and in the work force. I don’t want to talk to my boss about the slave device and master devices if I’m working on USB shit. No fucking reason to keep it the same other than to appease whiny ass conservative bigots who have nothing better to do then bitch about the world trying to better itself.

      • Amon
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        317 days ago

        Imo the main branch should be called the trunk.

  • Bob Robertson IX
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    518 days ago

    Does anyone have a list of words that the new administration is now allowing that the previous administration had blocked?

      • Bob Robertson IX
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        918 days ago

        No, I’m curious to know which words or phrases the last administration wasn’t allowing. My guess is that there isn’t such a list.