hangonasecond

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.

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_insemination

If you don't have it already, maybe you should look at a steam deck in the future. I find it to be really good for times in my life when my time to play is limited, and a better source of unwinding than just mindlessly scrolling Lemmy or Instagram when I have a spare 15.

Taking harm reduction measures in the meantime is absolutely not a waste of time. We cannot be so naive as to think that your suggestions will happen in the short term as each of them require radical changes to the political and social landscape that will take (have been taking) decades.

The context where the person reading them is also a bigot?

I agree, it was incredibly clear that no one should support "Victoria's favourite bookshop" anymore. The one that really got me was the line about children's books needing to have more white people, nuclear families and less indigenous art on the covers. Sure, white kids don't have any media to look to for role models except for 95 fucking percent of media out there.

I really hope this business crashes and burns and we stop seeing cultivation of this kind of hate in this country.