It's only unethical if it 1) doesn't work or 2) is carried out involuntarily or without appropriate counseling, or without an actual diagnosis. Around here, that isn't the case (or at least it didn't use to be, things may have changed). People undergoing the procedure know full well what they are getting into, they are rigorously screened and diagnosed, and offered options (for some, counseling is enough, for others, hormone treatments without surgery). And given the low incidence of regret, and the generally improved quality of life following surgery, the conclusion must be that both the treatment and the screening work.

Other than the things I mentioned, how do you imagine that gender dysphoria is treated? It's no longer considered to be a mental disorder either, but something akin to being gay: it's all in the head, but it is innate to the person and not something that can be treated or "prayed away".

Grades are usually ranked certification systems. Grading gemstones, surface plates, instruments, whatever, aren't just a ranking system. They're a certification of belonging to a particular quality class. The ones from accredited educational institutions awarding certifications are certainly not meant to be just a blocky ordering of students in a class.

Steppers skip steps without damage.

Anyway, this software does not replace the firmware.

It's French. The French guy who created it calls it key-cad because, in French, it is indeed written that way:

https://youtu.be/V9y8H2JMRow?s...

If you're American it's not terribly surprising you've never heard it pronounced that way. You may have never heard croissant, champagne, or St. Louis pronounced or seen connaisseur spelled correctly either. The single syllable "ki" is even more subject to anglicisation, especially if even a few popularisers pronounce it that way.

KiCad seems to support both pronunciations. The creator has said he doesn't care which you use.

Everybody uses the public's tax money. You do, your employer does. That by itself isn't much of an argument.

Is there something specific you think CERN should open source that they haven't?

"It is worth noting that it is at least almost always comorbid with depression and anxiety, and transitioning does not alleviate those symptoms." Actually, it does, to varying degrees. And yes, surgical intervention for a mental disorder seems weird, but it's the best "cure" we have. People with gender dysphoria do not "grow out of it", and the incidence of regret for sex reassignment surgery is low. Very low. 0.1% or so, and to put that into perspective, that is 1/10th of the incidence of regret for knee surgery. At least it was before they started offering the surgery to people not diagnosed with gender dysphoria (and that is a condition almost impossible to accurately diagnose in children and adolescents, for instance)

The depression and anxiety often remain not because of disappointment after the transition, nor other internal issues, but by the acceptance (or lack of it) of transgenders by society. Thankfully that has improved by leaps and bounds: 30 years ago it was unheard of, 20 years ago it was awkward, 10 years ago something to be curious about. These days people hardly bat an eyelid.

errr... Apple doesn't charge for its operating system. macOS literally doesn't have a price.

Fascism, command economics or capitalism... choices, choices. Apparently #3 is the anti-American one. Huh.

Tech people love to classify things, including companies, as hardware or software. The really successful companies recongize that neither works without the other, there are a lot of opportunities that come with making both, and customers value not having to chase down various suppliers when they have a problem.

Also, anything sounds big when you put it in gallons. Doesn't sound so big when you mention that's 92 acre feet, the amount used by less than 20 acres / 8 hectares of alfalfa per year. Or when you mention that a typical *closed loop* 1GW nuclear reactor uses 6-20 billion gallons of cooling water per year (once-through uses 200-500 billion gallons, though most of that is returned, whereas closed loop evaporates it)

I don't think it has anything to do with that. As soon as I saw the headline, my mind went "cohort study". And sure enough, yeah, it's a cohort study. Remember that big thing about how wine improves your health, and then it turned out to just be that people who drink wine tend to be wealthier and thus have better health outcomes? And also, the "sick quitter" effect, where people who are in worse health would tend to stop drinking, so you ended up with extra sick people in the non-wine group? Same sort of thing. This study says they're controlling for a wide range of factors, but I'd put money on it just being the same sort of spurious correlations.

RCS isn't a good standard. It was so crappy that Google essentially bought it, added the minimum necessary to turn it into an acceptable messaging platform and made their proprietary version (as opposed to the original GSM's proprietary version) their messaging platform. Er, their fourth (fifth?) messaging platform.

Why? If she's an experienced speaker I suspect the VP of strategic alliances for a multinational private equity holding company is used to talking to a very specific type of audience. We even have a phrase for that that comes from a similar type of speaker: "preaching to the choir."

The real hilarity is that someone from a humanities college thought she'd be a good pick.

That, by its very definition, is an area where AI should have very limited use

The definition of AI is essentially:

"to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."

So no, by definition, the stuff those humanities students do is a prime target. We used to think that the creative humanities stuff was going to be really hard, maybe the ultimate goal for AI, but it turns out it's not.

Jensen Huang to college grads: "Run. Don't walk" toward AI

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/...

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang told graduates at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh yesterday that demand for AI infrastructure is creating a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to reindustrialize America and restore the nation's capacity to build."

Why it matters: With many college grads fearing AI could obliterate their career dreams, Huang pointed to boundless opportunity as a "new industry is being born. A new era of science and discovery is beginning ... I cannot imagine a more exciting time to begin your life's work."

Nvidia, which makes AI chips, is the world's most valuable company. Huang told 5,800 recipients of undergraduate and graduate degrees that the AI buildout will require plumbers, electricians, ironworkers, and builders for chip factories, data centers and advanced manufacturing facilities.

"No generation has entered the world with more powerful tools â" or greater opportunities â" than you," he said. "We are all standing at the same starting line. This is your moment to help shape what comes next. So run. Don't walk."

"Every major technological revolution in history created fear alongside opportunity," Huang added. "When society engages technology openly, responsibly, and optimistically, we expand human potential far more than we diminish it."

Full speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...