Rachel de Sain

Study finds hybrid work benefits companies and employees The largest study yet of working-from-home professionals found that employees who work from home two days a week are just as productive and likely to get promoted as those in the office full time.

Jane Hume has been cherry-picking to support her claim that workers should return to the office because of productivity concerns.

“The results are clear: Hybrid work is a win-win-win for employee productivity, performance, and retention,” says Professor Nicholas Bloom at Stanford University
#auspol

Arguing against WFH, Hume cites research that supports hybrid work Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume pointed to Stanford Research when arguing that working from home hurt productivity. That same research found working from home part-time actually saw productivity gai...

The research Jane Hume cited to justify the Coalition’s attack on WFH in the APS actually found hybrid work improves productivity + employee happiness & reduces turnover by 1/3, in particular among non-managers, female employees & those with long commutes

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03... #auspol

TC Alfred to become the first system to cross NSW, south-east Queensland in 50 years With Tropical Cyclone Alfred set to make landfall, being the first to do so in over 50 years, torrential rain and winds above 125 kilometres per hour are set to shortly follow.

Warmer than normal - ever wonder why?

“The survival of Alfred well outside the tropics has been partially possible thanks to warmer than normal seas, which are around 27 degrees Celsius off the coast of Brisbane”

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03...

Lots of column inches about what Trump’s America means for British military, v little attention given to how c20/21 military & IT are closely intertwined, & how Trumpian IT firms are already climbing all over our public services, including NHS & health data, & what *that* means now…

Random thought: if in 2008 the SNA reclassified R&D so it was “productive” an investment in future capacity and earning potential, can we change how we classify investment in prevention and reducing harm to people and planet as building capacity in future? Probably already exists? Hmmm… #phdreading

Every week I get several emails from people asking "what should I do?". Everyone can contribute in different ways, but the basics are fairly straightforward: join a union, work toward the creation of a mass-based ecosocialist party, and develop anti-imperialist solidarities.

Rereading Mariana Mazzucato's "The Value of Everything," where the word "avarice" appears- an excessive desire for wealth or gain—and how apt it feels in our increasingly divisive times, where such greed is often normalized and even portrayed as justifiable when directed at the so called "others."

Genuinely shocked and confused by how much it appears ALL major US tech companies seem to be making these types of changes to appease the new “regime”. How do I consciously decouple from these services when they are so intertwined in my business and personal life for communication?

YouTube video by The Ezra Klein Show Don't Believe Him | The Ezra Klein Show

Learnt a new phrase today - muzzle velocity. People largely learn about what the government is doing through the media, so if you overwhelm the media or “flood the zone” you prevent a coherent opposition narrative to form.
This is a really interesting video worth a watch youtu.be/K8QLgLfqh6s?...

Google is ready to work on AI weapons now The company’s promise to avoid building AI applications that cause harm has been deleted

I wrote about Google unveiling its 'responsible AI progress report' by quietly deleting the part of its AI principles where it promised not to work on weapons www.platformer.news/google-ai-pr...

Great @mrchrisadams.bsky.social post here on the rebound effect, deepseek etc

rtl.chrisadams.me.uk/2025/01/will...

And how does this nudge when we have large buttons inviting us to "let AI - do it/write it/find it/fix it/ draw it " impact our future behaviour and abilities?

The increasing "comes as standard" integration of AI into many existing core applications used by both business and personal users who are unknowingly driving up their data creation and consumption and in turn energy and for some expenditure.

Has the Deep-Seek announcement perhaps demonstrated that there is an element of "drive more narrative around volume and dependency" built into the current rhetoric around the future of AI ?

There is a fairly well-known story, some say conspiracy, that ESG was created by the Big4 to provide a new income stream for auditors in developing the annual corporate accounts and governance processes.

How much energy is being "wasted" through poor architecture decisions and coding? and how much of this is either directly or inadvertently linked to the shift in how we pay for most of our IT infrastructure - licence to access and volume of usage.

I do wonder how much redundancy exists in most applications, often built using templates or development software with a GUI that may inadvertently create more load and more calls than perhaps waste needed.

Thinking about #DeepSeek, It's astounding to think only twenty years ago, I was limited to 9kb per page when building mobile websites using WAP. You often wrote code in pretty basic editors & while it led to limited functions, I admit, it did force you to think about redundant and wasteful coding.

27 June 2024, Winter for us in Adelaide, South Australia is June/July/August minimum temp 7 or 8 Celsius, but rewarded with the most beautiful sunsets over the ocean. This is my husband and dog on our evening beach walks. Ps currently summer and expecting 40celsius this weekend 🥵

The difference between data and knowledge. Context is king.