'Disturbingly high': One in four Australians engaging in online piracy | SBS News: In 2023, Australia's favourite shows and movies could be spread over as many as 10 different streaming services, most of which increased their subscription prices [...] Netflix set to crackdown on password sharing [...] growing cost of necessities and inflation at a three-decade high. Yep total mystery why there was a small (2-5%) increase in the rate of piracy.
The return to the office could be the real reason for the slump in productivity. Here's the data to prove it | Fortune: If quiet quitting and the resultant drop in productivity stemmed from remote work, we should see a drop in productivity right from the start of the pandemic, when office workers switched to remote work. Then, when offices opened back up, especially after the Omicron wave at the end of 2021, we should see productivity going up as workers went back to the office from early 2022 onward. In reality, we see the opposite trend. U.S. productivity jumped in the second quarter of 2020 as offices closed, and stayed at a heightened level through 2021. Then, when companies started mandating a return to the office in early 2022, productivity dropped sharply in Q1 and Q2 of that year. Productivity recovered slightly in Q3 and Q4 as the productivity loss associated with the return to office mandate was absorbed by companies–but it never got back to the period when remote-capable employees worked from home.
More buses in disadvantaged areas better value than major transport projects, Australian research finds | Transport | The Guardian: governments are failing to fully calculate the flow-on financial benefits of smaller public transport projects in poorer urban fringe suburbs, such as lower crime, increased employment, better health outcomes and improved social inclusion In other words, public transport more than pays for itself when considered holistically. The desire to make public transport "profitable" is completely missing the point.