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There Is No .bro In Brotli: Google/Mozilla Engineers Nix File Type As Offensive

Posted by Soulskill on from the trying-harder-than-academia dept.

theodp writes: Several weeks ago, Google launched Brotli, a new open source compression algorithm for the web. Since then, controversy broke out over the choice of 'bro' as the content encoding type. "We are hoping to establish a file ending .bro for brotli compressed files, a command line tool 'bro' for compressing and uncompressing brotli files, and a accept/content encoding type 'bro'," explained Google software engineer Jyrki Alakuijala. "Can I talk you out of it?," replied Mozilla SW engineer Patrick McManus. "'bro' has a gender problem, even though the dual meaning is unintentional. It comes of[f] misogynistic and unprofessional due to the world it lives in." Despite some pushback from commenters, a GitHub commit made by Google's Zoltan Szabadka shows that there will be no '.bro' in Brotli. "I have asked a feminist friend from the North American culture-sphere, and she advised against bro," explained Alakuijala. "We have found a compromise that satisfies us, so we don't need to discuss this further. Even if we don't understand why people are upset from our cultural standpoint, they would be (unnecessarily) upset and this is enough reason not to use it."

43 of 781 comments (clear)

  1. Big Sister is watching by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Call it .sis or .vag, that'll work, right?

    Male bad, female good?

    1. Re:Big Sister is watching by Zeio · · Score: 3, Insightful
      List of bro terms (now deemed illegal by the SJW losers):

      Code Monkeys - "Dean In Charge"

      broducer
      broordinator
      brogramming
      bromotion
      brogram
      brotocol
      broficient
      broductivity
      broactive
      broformance
      brotally
      brotocol
      broceed
      brodeo
      brotesque
      bro for it

      I wish the dried up crones working in tech could get bent an loosen up a bit. This type of loser catering is about offending the majority to preserve the feelings of the minority / mentally disabled.

      --
      Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
    2. Re:Big Sister is watching by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Only the tip of the iceberg...

      Remember, git is a derogatory term in England/Great Britain.

      I'm sure to avoid offending people, both the git project and github will immediately change their names.

    3. Re:Big Sister is watching by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You really need to get a sense of humor, or have you not ever heard the crude expression 'bros before hos?' It was a joke. You can laugh now.

    4. Re:Big Sister is watching by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Remember, git is a derogatory term in England/Great Britain.

      And that's exactly why Linus chose that name. "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'".

    5. Re:Big Sister is watching by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I wish the dried up crones working in tech could get bent an loosen up a bit. This type of loser catering is about offending the majority to preserve the feelings of the minority / mentally disabled.

      Yep, it's SJW's to the rescue, the perpetually offended casting about for anything to get their XXXX-Large sized panties in a twist over.

      Seriously, when they start complaining about files extensions, my response is simply, "FUCK OFF!"

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    6. Re:Big Sister is watching by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "I have asked a feminist friend from the North American culture-sphere, and she advised against bro,"

      I asked a friend from a subgroup of the Congolese Luba people and in their dialect of Luba-Kasai "br" means "sodomise my three-year-old with a cucumber". Only three people actually speak this dialect and they're all over ninety, but still, someone somewhere finds it offensive, so your choice of "br" cannot be used as it is both offensive and racist.

      I demand that you change the extension to "cutefluffybunniessoftcottonwoolwarmness", but only after polling every single ethnic group, subculture, and political and religious belief in the world to ensure that none of them can figure out a way in which it offends them.

    7. Re:Big Sister is watching by ultranova · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously, when they start complaining about files extensions, my response is simply, "FUCK OFF!"

      But nobody except the HR cares about your response. After all, this is a corporate-backed project, so what matters is the response of your corporate patron, in this case Google. Which, apparently, cares more about getting things done than defending some arbitrary line in sand.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    8. Re:Big Sister is watching by jcr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your loss, bro. Take it from those of us who actually have a sense of humor, it was funnier than anything any SJW ever said.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    9. Re:Big Sister is watching by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There's no need to artificially truncate filename extensions to 3 letters anymore. Just call it ".brotli" and call it a day. Adobe Premiere professionals deal with ".prproj" every day.

    10. Re:Big Sister is watching by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Picking a neutral name that doesn't have any negative connotations is just sensible.

      It's not just sensible, it's impossible. If your whole raison d'etre is being offended, you will find something to be offended about.

      Now excuse me, I need to go and turn off the ... ummm ... green cauliflower.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Dear SJW morons by Scareduck · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Get a sense of humor.

    --

    Dog is my co-pilot.

    1. Re:Dear SJW morons by tnk1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or failing that, perhaps they could not read gender politics into a three letter file extension.

    2. Re:Dear SJW morons by Panoptes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "bro' has a gender problem"

      No. North America has a gender problem.

    3. Re:Dear SJW morons by NotInHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not just america. Parts of Europe have it, too.

    4. Re:Dear SJW morons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      rant:

      No. The world has a "Whiny immature woman without a spine" problem. Lately we can't even bring up the topic of "gender" without having some fucking whore (yes, I'm using it intentionally. It's the internet. If you don't like it close the window. No one is forcing you to read this comment.) whining that "It's SOOOOOO offensive, and my little brain can't deal with the (non-intended) meanings so let's ban it!"

      /rant

      I've got a one step solution to all of this:
      1. Stop giving a fuck until these morons grow up and actually have a real issue to present.

      Seriously, every time I read shit like this, I wonder what kind of fucked in the head woman read / heard / whatever the material. Because a rational person would not read ".bro" and immediately think of "Gender inequality!" A person who would is either seriously fucked up in the head, or out to get something by taking advantage of others. This needs to stop. It's not solving any real issue and it takes away focus from the real issues that need to be addressed. For example: Equal pay regardless of gender, better support for abuse victims, etc.

      As for the sane women out there, 1. I apologize, but it needed, and still needs, to be said. 2. You need to start decrying these abusers and force them off the stage. Because for every single time you bring up a real issue that does need to be addressed, people think of these abusers and that puts them into a mindset of suspicion of intent, or just an outright unwillingness to help you.

    5. Re:Dear SJW morons by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Problem is you can't really ignore it. Every time some professional victim comes around whining about how much their life sucks (which their life only sucks because they think it sucks -- ask any psychologist this question, they'll agree with me) then we start getting stupid laws that make everybody else bend over backwards for the professional victims.

      Take for example all of the lawsuits against businesses for not complying with ADA rules, even when the supposed "victim" didn't even try to go the business they're suing.

    6. Re:Dear SJW morons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > As amply demonstrated by the SJWs who down-modded my comment.

      If you are arguing that people shouldn't be so sensitive, your whining about being downmodded isn't doing your cause any favors.

    7. Re:Dear SJW morons by dotancohen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I've got a one step solution to all of this: 1. Stop giving a fuck until these morons grow up and actually have a real issue to present.

      Although I agree with every word that you've said, would you not agree that there might be some objection to the following file extensions:
      .jew for racial profiling data
      .old for genealogy data
      .ass for anatomical data

      The fact is that there does exist a border where some three letter combinations are seen as having meaning, that is the whole purpose that letters were invented in the first place. The question is _where_ is the line drawn. You and I agree that .bro has not yet reached it, but clearly we are getting closer and closer.

      --
      It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    8. Re:Dear SJW morons by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      From your linked post:

      Well identified SJW behaviours:
      Spewing vitriol onto the internet with little consideration for persuasive argument.
      Adoption of any claims that reinforce their ideology no matter how poorly founded and conversely...
      Rejection of any evidence, regardless of quality, that undermines their ideology.
      Rejection of persons from their group who do not absolutely conform to the ideology.
      Labelling persons - regardless of the quality of their arguments - who do not follow the ideology as problematic or racist/sexist/misogynist etc.
      Adoption of any and all tactics regardless of how repugnant to further enforce their chosen ideology on others and destroy persons who do not conform.

      That describes 80% of the comments on this story, and every story about anything to do with women.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Dear SJW morons by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A perjorative label is useful when the target is not only wrong, but wrong in a way sufficiently obvious or well-known that they do not merit the time required to write a detailed refutation of their argument. Sometimes an argument is so pathetic that the correct response is not refutation but outright mockery.

      The suite of arguments characterized as 'SJW' is quite wide, and a lot of them do have serious merit - for example, the 'damsel in distress' is overused in computer games. The problem with the SJW crowd is that they use overwhelmingly poor arguments, ridiculous arguments, and do so in a most obnoxious manner. As we see in this case: Someone, somewhere, cannot see the letters 'bro' used as a contraction for a type of pastry without concluding that this is actually a conspiracy of programmers in the male-dominated world of technology to intimidate females out of the field by creating a hostile work environment.

      The root of the problem is one that can also be seen in many with a single-minded dedication to a religion or to another political cause. To a person who owns only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To a person who has made the crusade against sexism a central pillar of their identity, *everything* looks sexist. Including a .bro file extension. Same applies to race, too.

  3. What next? by jbmartin6 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess the FAT filesystem has to go too.

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    1. Re: What next? by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I just alias apropos to woman for the best of both worlds :-) Honestly, all this SJW crap is demeaning to women, as are the push for more girls to pick up coding and having it be assume that we have to be protected from a three letter file extension.

      OMG 0xCAFEBABE IS SEXIST. Not!

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  4. "Can I talk you out of it?," by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    replied Mozilla SJW engineer Patrick McManus

    FTFTFS

  5. Re: What the fuck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The end of the patriarchy. And it is awesome. 50000 years of injustice are about to be unravelled.

  6. The 1980s called... by Dadoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...and they want their 3-letter filename extensions back. Seriously, "br" would be fine, as well as "brot" or even "brotli". It amazes me that, 20 years after MS/DOS basically reached its end-of-life, people are still thinking within those constraints.

    --
    Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
  7. This is insane by NotInHere · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Centuries ago, you got into serious problems if you ran around claiming you have a mission to fulfil the devil gave you. Now, this gets replaced by feminism, and everybody who doesn't join in the holy movement is an infidel who should be punished. The level of intolerance towards people who aren't "feminists" is raising and raising.

    If they really wanted to help women, they should go to india, help solving its rape problem, or to saudi arabia, where women get stoned when they sleep with men who aren't their husband.

  8. Re:give it a rest by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Respect is something you earn. Whining rarely accomplishes that.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  9. Re: What the fuck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The end of the patriarchy. And it is awesome. 50000 years of injustice are about to be unravelled.

    Because nothing says "We're strong enough to take over!" like screaming "I need to be protected!" whenever dealing with such horrible things as "offensive file extensions".

  10. What have we come to? by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So now a gender is "misogynistic"?

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  11. A timeline... by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Frat boys call each other bro, such that it becomes part of a stereotype.

    Feminists start using the word as a slur to evoke the stereotype in order to ridicule anyone they perceive as too masculine.

    People start using bro ironically in a totally different context.

    Feminists lose their shit and call *that* "offensive".

    I'm guessing what they're really upset about is their insult losing its negative connotation.

  12. Re: What the fuck by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And yet, somehow, the men of slashdot are the ones that have their panties in a bunch.

  13. *.SJW by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's so obvious, it's hard to *not* use.

    Could even have an mascot of such a warrior.

  14. Re:The shouldn't have backed down by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    GIMP is fantastic software, but it's audience is tiny relative to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tinder, etc. If you're aiming at a large audience you've got to mind your PR a little better than calling your product GIMP.

    The limited use of GIMP has very little to do with its name, and very, very, very much to do with its appalling, abysmal, clunky, counterintuitive user interface. For example, developers who do stupid things like removing the ability to save as anything other than GIMP's own .xcf format from the 'save as' dialog, thereby making it even less intuitive and even less compatible with any other GUI app out there.

    I mean, seriously, when I have to search the web to find out how to save a .jpg with a new GIMP release, the UI is fscked.

  15. A better society has more ridiculous complaints. by trout007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Think about it for a second. Things are so great for women in the western world that this is what generates complaints. When the complaints are I get hit with rocks trying to go to school, or they cut off my clitoris then you know you are living in a hell hole. Those women don't have time to worry about .bro extensions. When it gets down to the only complaints being file extensions it's means thing are pretty damn good.

    --
    I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
  16. Re:Gag? by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I assume the objection is a gag. Nobody is this brainless.

    SJW's are, so are 3rd wave feminists. Which of course is why you now see popular culture starting to mocking them. And why 82% of women no longer call themselves feminists, rather they're following egalitarianism or something along those lines. They already know that modern feminism has a man-hatred problem, and large numbers of people see a serious problem with SJWs and their public attacks on people, and being perpetually outraged.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  17. Fixed article summary by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    replied Mozilla SW engineer Patrick McManus

    Pretty sure that should read "replied Mozilla SJW engineer Patrick McManus"

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  18. The World Does Not Revolve Around You by Princeofcups · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The constant problem I see here are people who think that their tiny little tech community represents society. Let me hit a few with the clue bat, but the major whining comes from YOU, not your imaginary feminists or social warriors. The world is large, with people who have lives, feelings, social ties, community, family, careers, etc. that do not match your idea of how things should be. The real problem is looking down on other peoples' viewpoints without even talking with them to discover their mindset. "Stupid bitch" leads to lots of pats on the back, so it just continues.

    Learn to communicate. Try to understand others that are not white male middle class techies. Yes, "bro" is offensive, and I say that as a white male middle class techie. Maybe we should name it .pdg for "pencil dicked geek." Because one is just as offensive as the other.

    --
    The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
  19. Re:The North American culture-sphere? by quantaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who says that?

    My hunch is someone who doesn't live in the North American culture-sphere.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  20. Re:This is ridiculous by ameoba · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Is the anti-SJW crowd really this thin skinned?

    Yes. There's vast armies of young white men who are so insecure in their identities that they must rage and rage and rage at anything that reminds them that there's other sorts of people in the world.

    I don't remember being Slashdot being so fucking bitter & reactionary. Nearly every post in this thread is raging over an exchange that went like "I wanna call this shit 'BRO'" - "somebody might be offended" - "Oh, I can see that, let's do something else". This isn't protesters taking down some long-standing technical standard, it's simply somebody being slightly sensitive and empathic. I don't think MSFT ever got this much hate during their heyday as a Slashdot whipping boy.

    --
    my sig's at the bottom of the page.
  21. Re:Seriously? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1, Insightful

    +4 Troll!

    I've not seen one of those in a long time. Congratulations, I guess...

    You are right of course though. The people complaining loudest about "SJW" seem permanently offended by more or less everything. Most of this thread can be summarised as:

    "Someone changes a file extension OMG I am so offended!!!1111!!! SJW are evil. Men are so oppressed! Your sexist!"

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  22. Re:Dump your outrage here by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I invite posters to list below everything that offends. I expect a long list, so I'll start the ball (!) rolling:

    I'm really, DEEPLY offended that some random people on the internet decided to change a file extension for a file format I have never used and have no say in. It offends me to my very core for reasons I can't fully explain.

    Yes, I am being sarcastic about a large number of comments on this thread from the permanently offended crowd.

    It's a file extension and it's not yours. Person gets to change it if he likes for any reason he likes. Don't like that it's not ".bro" any more? Well, your only recourse is to whine all over the internet about it.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  23. Re:Seriously? by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We're offended that open source projects have to waste time considering this kind of PC femi-nazi stupidity, and moreover that they then cave into it.