The apology is released right before American Thanksgiving when, more or less guaranteed, the story will be buried almost immediately beneath a pile of stories about travel, Black Friday, football, and recipes.

OMG, the review embargo actually worked! Totally dodged a bullet there. I wonder how many more times we can pull that one off?

Last year, after the ice storm knocked out power to large parts of Toronto for several days, the local utility published some numbers of what it would cost to fully bury Toronto's power lines; it was a mind boggling number -- in the billions. No one has the will to spend that kind of money to improve the grid's up time by .1%.

But ... above-ground lines aren't the worst thing in the world. First, if there is a problem, above-ground lines are far easier to repair. Second, parts of Toronto are prone to flooding. We lost part of our subway system for a few days a couple years ago due to flooding shorting out the buried power infrastructure downtown.

FWIW, it's not the aboveground nature of Toronto's grid that causes most of our problems; it's 60 year-old infrastructure with a rated lifespan of 50 years that kills us. Coming out of WWII, there was public will in Toronto to build grand projects -- the citizens were fine with the idea of doing without for the greater good. Once the boomers came into power, they started nickel and diming everything and put off maintenance. Infrastructure spending? Not cool. Lowering tax rates far below what their parents paid? That's cool.

Seriously, people. Looking at the comments here for the last couple of years, you can see the same people say, "NSA surveillance is bad because it violates my constitutional and civil rights. The government requires a warrant to gather information about me." The same people will say, "Suck it up, buttercup, because the cops are in the right when they stop and search you [for no reason other than your age and skin colour]."

Snark on:

Does anyone have a guide for which anonymous #GG users are legit and which anonymous #GG users are not?

Snark off.

The message has shifted since #GG became a thing; you can poke around the stories here, at Ars, and elsewhere and see that people who identified with the movement, early days, were often (note: I said "often", not "always" or "frequently") OK with calling people "feminazis" (since replaced with SJW). They also, sometimes, went on explain how "rape" and "kill" are almost used affectionately in gaming or dismissed the threats with arguments that, basically, said, "She hurt our feelings." I think that, as #GG has become more organized, the obvious trolling gets smacked down, at least in the forums (seriously, that's a positive step forward) ... but you can't walk back the fact that the harassing comments, (and fabricated stories about trading sexual favours for positive reviews) early on, muddled the message.

And it's the early comments that framed the debate. And those early, juvenile, minority opinion comments absolutely proved Sarkeesian's point better for more people than her videos ever could -- and gave her a FAR wider audience than she could ever have dreamed of.

Seriously, I have no idea why the #GG people interested in journalism ethics continued to use the #GG tag when its brand had been tarnished beyond repair. It tied a legitimate cause to one tainted in the public's eyes with threats (rape and murder), lies (sex for positive reviews), intimidation (doxxing, mass murder threats at the university), and outright misogyny (seriously, it's not OK to call someone a Nazi). No amount of damage control will fix that.

And, finally, since I'm about to modded down to troll anyway ... ethics in gaming journalism is not a big deal to most people. Gaming journalism rates as a cut below entertainment journalism. And, frankly, gaming (let alone ethics in gaming journalism) receives fewer column inches than the obituary section in most newspapers. It is, simply, not a subject most people care about because it doesn't affect them personally, any more than the extravagant gifts given to film journalists at film festivals (iPads, private parties) do.

So ... here's an article from the Globe and Mail, http://www.theglobeandmail.com... .

You want men and women working together. Simple as that.

The business case goes like this:

Credit Suisse is not exactly some radical feminist organization out to overthrow patriarchy.

The Lee-Enfield eventually replaced the Canadian-made Ross rifle during WW I for Canadian soldiers. The Ross rifle was incredibly accurate with great range, but needed to be fired in clean conditions with perfect ammunition. Not a weapon for the trenches, but a handful of snipers kept their Ross rifles even as they were phased out for regular infantry. Ross, the manufacturer, blamed a lot of the rifle's problems on bad British ammunition, but the army eventually decided that using a less accurate rifle that actually allowed to a soldier shoot at stuff was more important than having a rifle that required a maintenance crew.

We got the kids a Kano. Daughter 1 asks, "Do you two know how to program?" Parents, "Does the Kano have Turbo Pascal?" Daughter 2, "Is that like some kind of 80s cartoon character?"

Notice I said "apparently ... 137." The numbers are from Audi, not me.

Never tried going that fast -- we bought the car because it was, at the time, the most fuel efficient luxury automobile we could get in Canada. And the only other cars, period, that were more efficient were hybrids (seriously, it's more efficient than a Smart on the highway). FWIW, speed kills fuel economy. That's why I don't drive with a lead foot.

My four cylinder diesel A3 apparently has a top speed of 137 MPH.

In metric, I can get ~ 5.0 litres / 100km with a driver, 3 passengers, and luggage doing 80km / hour. At more typical highway speeds, it gets 5.5 or so litres / 100km. That works out to about 47 / 42 MPG -- and fueleconomy.gov's "guesstimate" is 42 MPG on the highway for this car. The US's guesstimate more or less nails my realworld results.

But did he manage to deliver the "think about the children line" with a straight face? 'Cause that's like the all time best argument for when you've got nothin' else. Or you're asking someone to do something that fails the basic sniff test of, "Is this reasonable?"

So ... here's the thing. Metro was designed around keyboard and touch, not mouse. Desktop was designed around mouse and keyboard. Many of the years-old keyboard shortcuts such as alt-f4 and alt-tab (definitely Win95 era, possibly Win3) work perfectly fine in Metro. Just because Metro looks "touchy" doesn't mean you can't interact with it in other ways.

I am frankly ... kind of amazed that a nerdy crowd that frequently crows about the number of ways they can interact with gadgets (different iterations of Android, MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Amiga, BeOS, BSD, BASH and on and on) have such a hard time wrapping their heads around keyboarding through Metro.

The standard Beer Store keg in Ontario is 58l (half barrel). That's 58 (give or take) kilograms of beer + the weight of the keg. That's closing in on 150 pounds.

If you think your kegs aren't carbonated, I have a quick test for you. Give the keg a few shakes, or roll it on the floor for a couple minutes. Take your coupler, shut off the gas to it. Attach to it a new keg. Most Sanke D couplers (at least the good ones) have blow-off valves (it's a safety feature so that the keg doesn't go BOOM! if things reach over 100PSI or so). It usually looks like a ring. Pull it open -- I will personally guarantee that you will first hear the gas leak. And then see foam. Gushing. Beer can only hold about 1 volume of CO2 (per volume of beer) -- the other 1.5 volumes typical for a beer keg will energetically fly out, taking some beer with it.

Less entertaining, you can simply hook up the coupler to the keg and open up the tap. Depending on the length of your draft run (this will work on a short run, where your line pressure is about 8 PSI), you'll be able to slowly pour beer as, again, the CO2 comes out of solution and pulls some beer with it. Warning: if you do this, the rest of the keg will be flat unless you crank up the PSI to 20 with a CO2 (not beer gas) tank or so for a few hours to force CO2 back into solution in the beer.

There are "beer in a box" systems that carbonate flat beer on the fly, but they're exceptionally rare.

FWIW, a huge part of pulling the perfect pint is to control the pour so that you get enough CO2 coming out of the beer to form a decent head. Too hard / too fast, too much foam. Too gentle / too slow, not enough; the bubbles will come out with time (or gentle shaking), however.

I'm a brewer. I go to lots of bars, speak to lots of bar managers and owners, and poke around lots of beer fridges.

First, high volume bars, if they want metrics, install flow meters on draft lines. The sophisticated ones communicate with the PoS and report when the beer is flowing and how much. If the server's pouring freebies, the system will know and rat on the bartender. The system also knows if a brewer is shorting their kegs or is making foamy (over-carbonated) kegs that lead to spillage. Managers love that. Second, the meters are integrated into the lines so there's no ****ing around with flying saucers; you will always get the right data for your taps. Always. Third, most beer fridges are wet, dank pits. No one likes spending time in them. Telling bar staff to pick up a keg that weighs upwards of 150lbs and place it on a disk is ... hopeful. Telling bar staff to perform the same maneuver on a disk stuck in a keg fridge? That's borderline stupid. Those saucers are going to get punished.

Also, it's not rocket science to keep a few extra kegs around if you're managing 30 taps; you, by definition, have lots of storage. And if 4 or 5 lines blow without replacement? That is not a big deal. In fact, some bars won't replace blown kegs after dark because it makes them look busier (no, seriously, I've seen this in action) and helps to push people to less popular brands.

Seriously? Has this guy worked in a brewery ... or a bar ... recently?

My feelings are summed up by Joseph Volpe's article at Engadget, http://www.engadget.com/2014/0...,

In my own case, I would be most likely to use one while working ... but work involves dust, steam, liquids, and 70kg kegs. It's not a good environment for something on my wrist.