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.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499202/

Here’s an interesting study showing that silicone does break down into nanoparticles under mechanical wear, although the particles are chemically stable and non-toxic, and notably compared to plastic, are not released by heating alone.

Warm sun + 0 wind chill + being acclimatised to 5C or less. Same deal as people suffering from heat stroke in 29C when parts of the world regularly don’t fall below that for months out of the year.

Not the OP, and I don’t actually know, but paid streaming services differ from YouTube in that everyone who accesses the content is paying for the service. On one hand, you can validate that everytime a video is served, it’s served to a paying user. On the other, you are receiving revenue directly from consumers to fund the infrastructure to store and serve the videos.

YouTube, on the other hand, stores significantly more content, for free, and can be accessed for free, without being signed in.

When you pay for enterprise equipment, you are typically paying a premium for longer, more robust support. Consumer products are less expensive because they don’t get this support.

Ah, brexit

I think we can request to vote by post although I’m not really sure. We can vote early in person though, and many people do

Eh, not fucking things up in the way that seems to happen in the states. Our conservative government is much more corporate oriented and less strong on climate policy, but they aren’t insane. They don’t tend to strip rights from women, and almost the entire party supported gay marriage legalisation with many openly stating they personally disagreed with it but understood that their constituents needs should come before their own opinions.

Edit: I guess to expand upon my point, mandatory voting means candidates need to run on a platform which considers the needs of the whole population. Optional voting means that if 50% of the population doesn’t turn up, and 30% of the remaining population feels very strongly about an extreme view, it becomes easier for that extreme view to win an election.

You are allowed to cast an empty ballot, or write in a candidate who isn’t running. You just have to participate. When you go, you get marked off an electoral roll. Those people who don’t show up get a fine in the mail of something like a couple of hundred dollars. Not bad in isolation but this applies to state, federal and local elections so about 3 times in a 3-5 year period, for something which takes all of 15 minutes out of your day.

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.

The operative word is “mandatory”. Medical professionals should have a level of discretion available to them, since not all treatments work for all people, even if it wasn’t such an ineffective treatment being discussed.

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.