I don’t think the 2% figure includes the steam deck, but I might be wrong

Ford has right hand drive escapes in Australia. Your callout about specific vehicle models is one, not entirely correct, and two, not relevant to the point of the parent comment.

That’s not really true. Banks getting higher interest on loans also pay out more interest on deposits, otherwise they’re unable to attract and retain customers. FI profitability is based on net interest margin (revenue from lending - losses from deposits), and they need deposits to have the money to lend out so they can’t arbitrarily lower their deposit account rates to increase NIM.

Banks get richer no matter what happens, because people need loans. If anything, higher rates make it more challenging for banks to make money as people are less able to make repayments and less likely to take out loans for luxury purchases or holidays.

I would say it’s actually only a small amount to think about.

Non profit does not mean what you think it means

Do a retro! Lol

Microsoft’s use of CrowdStrike meant that a significant number of their cloud and SaaS offerings also failed, impacting users who likely didn’t know what CrowdStrike was.

Heck even 30 minutes ahead for 1% of devices wouldve had a reasonable chance of catching this

Automatic updates should still have risk mitigation in place, and the outage didn’t only affect small businesses with no cyber security capability. Outsourcing does not mean closing your eyes and letting the third party do whatever they want.

100%. When one of the cons is no meaningful protection against injury, a helmet should be a huge pro. It absolutely saves lives.

peak Aussie humour

That’s really unusual. My experience has been the opposite on Linux Mint, most games run the same or better than when I was on windows. I had a little bit of trouble getting world of warcraft to work at first, but I was mostly done playing that anyway. I guess it’s all down to what games you play.

Nope, carbon tax is different to carbon offsets. A carbon tax is intended to put an immediate financial burden onto energy producers and/or consumers commensurate to the environmental impact of the power production and/or consumption.

From a corporations perspective, it makes no sense to worry about the potential economic impact of pollution which may not have an impact for decades. By adding a carbon tax, those potential impacts are realised immediately. Generally, the cost of these taxes will be passed to the consumer, affecting usage patterns as a potential direct benefit but making it a politically unattractive solution due to the immediate cost of living impact. This killed the idea in Australia, where we still argue to this day whether it should be reinstated. It also, theoretically, has a kind of anti-subsidy effect. By making it more expensive to “do the wrong thing” you should make it more financially viable to build a business around “doing the right thing”.

All in theory. I don’t know what studies are out there as to the efficacy of carbon tax as a strategy. In the Australian context, I think we should bring it back. But while I understand why the idea exists and the logic behind why it should work, I don’t know how that plays out in practice.

There it is!

I don’t know if you’re interpreting the situation the same as I am. From my perspective, the other commenter and I are having a pretty genuine discussion from two different points of view about the issue. Being ambivalent or apathetic about the inclusion of pronouns in the email signatures does not preclude someone from joining into the conversation, and it also doesn’t preclude someone from having a strong opinion about the surrounding context.

They aren’t debating whether or not people should be allowed to use any particular pronouns, just stating a pretty valid opinion that it shouldn’t be all that important and in their lived experience it hasn’t been. For what it’s worth, I actually agree with that stance in a certain sense. I don’t think we as a society should be placing any stock into gender or sex or sexuality as something that needs to be declared. However, while we do, and while we still have people ostracising and attacking others for being true to themselves, these are issues that need to be tackled. Maybe one day everyone will be on the same page and we can do away with the social construct of gender all together, and maybe we won’t.

I really don’t see anything in their comments that indicates they are secretly hateful. I especially don’t see enough to presume anything about them as an individual.

Very relevant anecdote! There are definitely a lot of different attitudes to names and pronouns outside the context of gender identity. I personally don’t really mind when people get my name wrong, I’ve got a common name spelt a little differently. On the flip side I’ve worked with “Matt”'s that are very serious about not being called “Mat”, and others still who will refuse to respond if you shorten their full name.

That’s a good point. Honestly, given other headlines I’ve seen and also things I’ve experienced in my own working life it wouldn’t surprise me if HR or legal wasn’t involved (or were steam rolled by a signature happy leader surrounded by too many yes-men). In saying that, I’d think it’s more likely that they were.

This comment will serve as my springboard to go and find my favourite, gender neutral word for “yes-man”.

What about people named Ashley. Or Courtney. Or Kelly. Or Sam. Etc.

Plenty of other commenters here who are similarly ambivalent to pronouns have provided reasons that they can understand their practicality if nothing else.

Sure, for a lot of people being misgendered is nothing but a minor inconvenience. For someone who is used to being intentionally misgendered out of spite, such a small change makes a big difference.

If being misgendered in emails was the only problem trans and non-binary people faced in the world, then maybe saying people should get over it is fine. That isn’t the case. This is just one of a million things someone in that situation might experience each day that acts as a barrier to participating in society and it is such an easy one to change. In fact, the situation in question was already working fine. Effort was put in, in response to some misguided outrage, to actively prevent the simple solution.

I understand your position of apathy, and maybe if the cost of addressing this particular issue was high, it would make sense to weigh up the solution, but the cost of this is nil so why not facilitate an easier world for all people.

They are almost certainly restricting the amount of information they release under the advice of the legal team at the University, in preparation for the impending commercialization. I agree, it’d be great to have the details and to live in a world where all information is free and open. However, we don’t on both counts. The assumption that they could only be attempting to mislead people when this isn’t even a product for sale yet, is at best naïve and at worst willfully obtuse.

The snippet quoted in the original comments and referenced in subsequent comments refers specifically to the decibel reduction of the frequencies being targeted by the invention, not the volume of the overall sound.

Wow private servers aren’t uncommon, although I do think they violate the TOS as it stands. I imagine people would continue to use those in the event blizzard shuts the official servers down.