Hmm. Some highlights.

So you can't say a process has "hung" or "hanged".

You can't say you've "killed" a process.

Can't say "Sanity check". That isn't allowed. Can't even say "Sane".

Can't use "Dummy variable".

Can't say "Manpower", "Manned", "Manmade". You also can't use "Male/Female Adapter".

Can't say "Dumb down".

To be far these restrictions operate in a fairly narrow domain (Developer documentation) where some restrictions on idiomatic usage are probably warranted to maximise the number of people that can fully comprehend the docs (for example not all languages refer to adapters as 'male' or 'female' and the meaning may not be obvious to a non native speaker.)

Secondly, "This guide contains guidelines, not rules. Depart from it when doing so improves your content."

> the meaning may not be obvious to a non native speaker

In Russian you’d say “mom-dad” adapter. I mean, the principle it refers to is universal.

I also think this is the first step towards aggressively policing the language, even though it starts as a guideline.

It says the metaphor isn't universal. Russian having a similar metaphor doesn't disprove that.

> I also think this is the first step towards aggressively policing the language, even though it starts as a guideline.

Language changes over time, as easy as that. Sometimes change comes in gradually over decades or centuries, sometimes change comes revolutionary (e.g. rap music lingo establishing itself in mainstream culture).

Especially in the example case of music, "policing" has been a constant reality (e.g. "bleeping out" of words or outright refusal to air content on TV/radio or parents forbidding their children to listen to rap or metal music because of "satanism" fears), yet no one complained there while now there is constant complaining about replacing of actually racially charged words?!

> Especially in the example case of music, "policing" has been a constant reality [...], yet no one complained

Ummm. Did you somehow grow to adulthood without being a teenager? Did you grow up somewhere other than the United States? The notion that nobody has ever complained about censorship in music is so hilariously wrong, it makes me want to send you CAPTCHAs to see how well the bots are doing nowadays.

Seriously, go listen to every top selling rap album from the first twenty years. The majority of them complain about censorship.

> Seriously, go listen to every top selling rap album from the first twenty years

Well, what Wikipedia calls the “Golden Age” as opposed to “Old School” period, sure; anything just after the PMRC decided sex, drugs, and the occult in music were problems requiring government action in the absence of industry self-censorship.

The thing is, the ones who complained were the rappers. The mainstream didn't care about censorship in music, to the contrary - the (WASP) mainstream wanted censorship. And it is exactly this social group that is now crying about not being allowed to use actually offensive words.

Spoiler - WASP kids listen to rap. Artists like Eminem were the mainstream when they were complaining about censorship.

> yet no one complained

I constantly complain about Eminem’s music videos cutting the words out.

> replacing actually racially charged words

You said it yourself, language changes. Just don’t charge the words, simple as that. Words are sound waves, or pixels on the screen. And it’s people who give them meaning. It seems to me that the ideas behind the words won’t get anywhere if you just ban words.

Departure from this list probably means very difficult political navigation.

This kind of assault on language is really hostile to newcomers. Open docs, Ctrl + F for "blacklist" to figure out how to quickly stop a nefarious user, can't find it, look somewhere else.

How much economic damage will it cause to deliberately muddy the waters of terminology?

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. You make a very valid point and this type of political correctness nonsense will get some people get in some dangerous situations. It's like I am living in the twilight zone.

Not all PC is nonsense. Language is indeed sometimes used as a weapon, and disadvantaged groups are often the least able to defend themselves.

Asserting that all PC is nonsense is just the kind of violation of the curious-not-dogmatic ethos that prevails here that will attract downvotes. If you have difficulties understanding why some might consider the GP post on the edge, you maybe don't understand this culture and should perhaps spend some time reading dang's moderation comments.

So you also can't say "First class". Guess that rules out "First class concept"

You can't say it, but you can fly it? :-)

> Male/Female Adapter

I dunno. I don't care about any of the other terms, but describing plugs and receptacles in terms of penetrative heterosexual intercourse has always made me a little uncomfortable.

I will never forget the embarrassment of visiting the electronics store as a kid, and naively asking for a DB-9 sex changer :D

It's the perfect analogy. Most people will understand it without an explanation.

It's great too because it has no bias.

Terms like man-in-the-middle, master-slave, whitelist/blacklist, abort which I barely learned 5 years ago in University are now being cancelled. Even first-class isn't to be used according to Google. But "premium, or platinum-level" is okay. I guess the people making these political decisions must be elites with "premium platinum level" control over Google.

If this wasn't HN, I would have posted some super obscene comment on how absolutely "slowed, invalid and insensible" some of these political ones are.

Are we going to change traffic lights from yellow and red to something else too now? How long before terminal commands need to be renamed from kill, man, fat32 to something else?

We'll change traffic light colors if some white people with Ph.D.s in Silicon Valley decide they're racist and need do their daily virtue signalling so they can pat themselves on the back and say "we did it! we fixed racism!".

Oh my god, I get like such bad acid reflux and ever since I've taken like 1 gramme of THC a day, it has been so much better. No vomitting. It works.

Interesting datapoint. I've built my tolerance up to other nootropics but need to conduct a more thorough analysis on the effects of THC on myself. How bad was your reflux before/after THC? Did anything else help?