If the author pops in here, I hope he takes a look at this patent, because it might be prior art:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8512151 I complained about it to the "Stupid Patent of the Month" attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (here:
https://www.eff.org/issues/stupid-patent-month) and got a nice response agreeing that it looks obvious.
I think the author is a she.
True, but I didn't see that she identified herself, or her gender, in the article. So what's a commenter to do? That's an honest question. Mangle to use "they"? Use some genderless pronoun that'll piss off x% of readers?
> Mangle to use "they"?
Mangle? "They" is perfectly fine to use in this situation, it's not mangling at all.
In this case, you're right. Or at least, it's what I'd have done. Still, when I learned English, "they" wasn't singular. I guess that it's the norm now, but it still feels odd. And sometimes using it does require mangling. I'd rather have a set of gender-neutral pronouns, but hey.